WASHINGTON -- Isolated from his political allies and cut off from his financial patrons, Stephen Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, issued a striking mea culpa on Sunday for comments he had made that were critical of the president's eldest son.
Bannon, who is quoted in a new book calling Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians in 2016 "treasonous," tried to reverse his statements completely, saying that the younger Trump was "both a patriot and a good man." Bannon spoke out after five days of silence.
He said in a statement that his reference to "treason" had not been aimed at the president's son, but at another campaign official who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Paul Manafort.
"My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate," Bannon said. "He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr."
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As soon as excerpts from Wolff's book leaked out in the media, many of Bannon's friends and colleagues urged him to release a statement defending himself. But before he could do so, the White House released a personal statement from Trump, who claimed that his former adviser had "lost his mind."
At first, Bannon did not want to apologize, people who have spoken to him said. But after meeting with allies and advisers, he reportedly grew convinced that things would only get worse unless he did.
Those close to Bannon said that as the controversy unfolded, he seemed eager to find a way to try to repair his relationship with the president.
"I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president's historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency," Bannon said in the statement, first obtained by the news site Axios. Bannon said his support for Trump and his agenda was "unwavering."
In the book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, Bannon said Trump had "lost his stuff."
On Sunday, two days after the book's release, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to an electronic image of the text. Posting the text of a book without permission would violate copyright restrictions and potentially damage sales. Yet, hours after WikiLeaks tweeted the link, Fire and Fury remained No. 1 on Amazon's lists of hardcover and ebook bestsellers.
Earlier on Sunday, the administration continued its criticism of Bannon, with Donald Trump's senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, saying in an interview on CNN that comments by Bannon in the new book were "out of touch with reality," "vindictive" and "grotesque."
Miller also pushed back against the perception that Bannon, whose harsh criticism of Trump and his family in the book has caused a sharp falling-out with the president, had ever played a Svengali-like role as chief strategist in the White House and on the presidential campaign.
He said Bannon's role had been "greatly exaggerated."
Miller, in his defense of the president, called him a "political genius" who could rattle off complete paragraphs on the fly in response to news events and then deliver them "flawlessly" to a campaign audience. On Saturday, the president, responding to the book's depiction of his actions in office as erratic, had called himself a "very stable genius."
The interview, on the CNN's State of the Union, quickly grew heated as host Jake Tapper accused Miller of being "obsequious" and speaking to an "audience of one." Before it ended, Tapper told Miller that he was wasting his audience's time.
Tapper then turned to the camera, even as Miller was still speaking, and cut to a commercial.
On Twitter, Donald Trump said Miller had "destroyed" Tapper in the interview.
"Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!"
In addition to assailing Bannon, Miller sharply criticized Wolff and his book, saying it "is best understood as a work of very poorly written fiction."
The president, who was returning from Camp David, where he had met with Republican congressional leaders and Cabinet officials about the 2018 legislative agenda, weighed in with his own criticism.
"I've had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!"
Wolff, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, defended the accuracy of his book and contradicted the White House account of how often he had talked to the president.
Wolff said he was given access to the White House in the early months of Trump's term, and that his "goal was to keep going until somebody said go away."
White House officials said their records showed that Wolff had last talked to the president in February, but Wolff said he had talked to the president several times after that. In all, Wolff said, he talked to the president for about three hours, including interviews during the campaign.
He said that Trump had initially flattered him about the project, and that he had told interview subjects that "the president said he likes this idea" of a book.
Wolff also repeated an assertion in the book that many in the White House had talked about the possible invocation of the 25th Amendment, a constitutional provision that permits a president's powers to be transferred to the vice president when the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet or a body created by Congress conclude that the president is incapable of performing his duties. "This is alarming in every way," Wolff said, adding, "This is worse than everybody thought."
Appearing on Sunday talk shows, others in Trump's inner circle dismissed any such worries.
Mike Pompeo, the CIA director, said that he had no concerns about Trump's ability to receive and process the kind of intelligence typically presented to presidents, and that Wolff's descriptions of Trump's mental state were "pure fantasy."
"I'm with him almost every day," Pompeo said on Fox News Sunday. "We talk about some of the most serious matters facing America and the world, complex issues. The president is engaged. He understands the complexity. He asks really difficult questions of our team at CIA."
Pompeo said Trump was "completely fit" to lead the country, pausing before answering because, he said, it was such "a ludicrous question."
"These are from people who just have not accepted the fact that President Trump is the United States president and I'm sorry for them in that," said Pompeo, who gives Trump his regular intelligence briefings.
Trump has been an "active, engaged and effective leader," said Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, on ABC's This Week.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she is at the White House once a week, and "no one questions the stability of the president."
"I'm always amazed at the lengths people will go to, to lie for money and for power. This is like taking it to a whole new low," she said, also appearing on This Week.
Haley defended Trump's stability and said, "he didn't become the president by accident."
Information for this article was contributed by Jeremy W. Peters, Michael Tackett, Noah Weiland, Jill Colvin and Hope Yen of The Associated Press; by Ben Brody, Ros Krasny and Jordan Yadoo of Bloomberg News; and by Ashley Parker of The Washington Post.
A Section on 01/08/2018