Steve Bannon Called Ivanka Trump 'Dumb as a Brick' and Being the 'Queen of Leaks' in White House

Former president Donald Trump got furious with his former White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon when he called Ivanka Trump 'dumb as a brick' in a new book. In 2018, journalist Michael Wolff released a scathing book titled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which contained excerpts from staff and officials who worked with the Republican leader. In the book obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Bannon revealed several hidden details about the Trump administration, he also allegedly referred to the then-first daughter as the "queen of leaks," to which she retaliated by labeling him a "f***ing liar." After the scandalous comments emerged Ivanka unfollowed Bannon on X, as per Newsweek. 

Bannon also criticized Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic," with speculation that the president was also present. "The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor—with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon reportedly said. "Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."

As per CBS News, the book also shockingly claimed that Ivanka was on a stand-by to 'run for president', "Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner made a deal that if the opportunity came up, "she'd be the one to run for president. "The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; It would be Ivanka Trump," Wolff wrote. Bannon's response: "'They didn't say that?" he said. "Stop. Oh, come on. They didn't actually say that? Please don't tell me that. Oh my God.'" 

In response, the then White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Bannon's tenure as executive chairman at Breitbart News should be terminated. Sanders responded to the question of whether Bannon ought to be fired for the remarks made in the book by saying, "I certainly think it's something they should consider and look at." She continued, "I think, furious, disgusted, would probably certainly fit when you make such outrageous claims and completely false claims against the president and his family." She added, "This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House. Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy," in a statement. 

As per CBS News, Trump released a lengthy statement accusing Bannon of 'leaking information from the White House', "Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican Party." It continued, "Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretended to influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books." 

This article was originally published on 07.05.24.