one of his senior strategists. >> reporter: jake, it was quite a day here. and certainly, we have seen the president zidismiss some of his closest advisers before, put them at a distance. but steve bannon was no ordinary adviser. this was the president acting like steve bannon was the coffee boy, if you will. but that statement released this afternoon saying that the president had a personal hand in actually writing, it said this, let's take a look, jake. it said, "steve bannon had nothing to do with me or my presidency. when he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people, with no access and no clue whom he helped write phony books." so if you unpack that there, a, they're trying to discredit steve bannon, b, trying to discredit this book that's out, of course. but all the while, steve bannon's comments, when you take away the layers of family drama, he is undermining the white house argument for more than a