Not just a friend, just a good guy, a friend for a very long time. Thats what the president said. And the two of course do seem particularly close in photo after photo. Here they are greeting the tesla ceo, elon musk, in the state dining room as trump signs an Executive Order about the oil pipeline industry. And this, trump speaking on the phone with vladimir putin, and who is there . Steve bannon. And then when they worked together in the white house, check this out, their offices, steps apart. In fact the only person who sat closer to the president of the United States than bannon was President Trumps soninlaw, jared kushner. Even the official chief of staff, reince priebus, sat farther away from President Trump. And of course as trump knows well from his real estate days, power is all about location, location, location. Slamming bannon, though, was only part of the white house operation today. The Press Secretary tried to rip the book itself and its author, Michael Wolff. Could you just give a few examples of things that have been said in this book that are false, that you would like to set the record straight on . There are numerous mistakes, but im not going waste my time or the countrys time going page by page talking about a book thats complete fantasy and just full of tabloid gossip, because its sad, pathetic, and our administration and our focus will be on moving the country forward. Okay. It is not complete fantasy. I want to make it clear, we have not independently corroborated many of the details in the bombshell book, but lets just take two examples. Two of the people who are in the book are verifying part of whats in it. Trump supporter anne colter confirmed her quote to the washington examiner. She said to trump nobody is telling you this but you cant, you just cant hire your children. And janice minn said everything she knew about an intimate d
wolff said he didnt know who that was. Not true. Weve heard donald trump talk about john boehner for years. But on the whole this has rocked the white house, this has overtaken their agenda. They wanted to start 2018 talking about immigration. Republican leaders im told are going to camp david this weekend to talk about the agenda. On the same day this book is coming out. So the president will be meeting tomorrow at camp david at the very moment this book is coming out. So the reality here is in terms of winning or losing, i dont think we know the answer to that yet. One thing is clear, the president had a close connection to steve bannon. Well see if thats ever rebuilt or not. At this point it seems unlikely, erin. That is for sure. Of course another thing that is for sure is this book is a best seller. Outfront tonight, the White House DeputyPress Secretary. I appreciate your time coming on to talk about this and give your side of the story. You heard Sarah Sanders downplaying the relationship between President Trump and steve bannon today. The reality, you just saw it. Bannon was in the room constantly. I was in a meeting, right, it was kellyanne conway, reince priebus, sean spicer, jared kushner, the president , at the time the president elect, and steve bannon. He was there all the time. Okay. I mean im looking at a picture now, youre showing multiple people in the same picture. It wasnt like the president was sitting alone with steve bannon plotting and deciding how to move forward. I mean obviously steve bannon was on the campaign. Obviously he was in the white house. But he wasnt on the ballot. The people voted for donald trump. Steve bannon was not some svengali for the campaign. Donald trump was able to defeat 16 republican candidates, accomplished republican candidates, seven weeks before Hillary Clinton could defeat three and that was without steve bannon. We just passed tax reform without steve bannon so im not sure what youre trying to get at here. Even you just made the point that you havent corroborated so many of the stories in this book. I do want to make one point if i may. Right, but i dont want to confuse that with that weve tried and failed and are saying
it isnt true. Im just saying cnn has not had the time to go through and corroborate that. I just want to make it clear. This morning i released a statement on behalf of the white house about a meeting that President Donald Trump was having with several sitting United States senators about a major agenda item moving forward and it was immigration. I received no and i also had an on the record statement in that email. I received no fewer than three inquiries from cnn asking for corroboration, which is exactly what cnn is supposed to do. However, this book comes out and you guys run it lock, stock and barrel out deciding to corroborate any of it ahead of time . What were showing you are Steve Bannons quotes, which were on the record from steve bannon, okay . He has not questioned any of them. That is all you have seen on this program right now and of course as i point out, Janice Minn Corroborating a dinner she was at and ann coulter
corroborating his. Sean spicer denied his, Mick Mulvaney denied his, so i just want to know where it stops because its pretty obvious that there are many discrepancies. This is full of false information, inaccuracies, and quite frankly this author is quite frankly a crackpot, fake news Fantasy Fiction Writer and its been proven time and time again. By his own admission he says hes loose with the facts and journalists say thats his reputation. So lets not run this wall to wall on cnn saying its all factual, its not. Again, what were saying is this is what the book says and the quotes im sharing are from steve bannon. I want to talk to you about some of the allegations who they are attributed to say they happened, okay . Okay. But first i want to talk about the effort today to Say Steve Bannon wasnt a big player, Wasnt Instrumental to the winning, all the things you just said. Its not just the pictures, which youre right, its not just him and the president , but
it includes jared kushner, who i think we all know is close to the president. Whos still there, by the way. Right. Im just simply saying if youve got a group and its jared kushner, steve bannon, the president and someone else, i think people know the point im making. It isnt just the pictures, its what the president of the United States himself said about steve bannon, who again is on the record in these quotes in the book. Heres the president. I have a very good relationship, as you know, with steve bannon. Steve has been a friend of mine for a long time. I like steve a lot. Steve is very committed. Hes a friend of mine and hes very committed to getting things passed. I like mr. Bannon, hes a friend of mine. Bannon has you know, i like him a lot. Hes actually a very good guy. Steve is a very good guy. Now the book comes out and, what, hes just a total liar . All thats false . Im trying to understand. Well, that was then and this is now. Obviously over the course of mr. Bannons time in the white house, youve seen the results that he produced, which was
desist. Theyre not ceasing and desisting. In fact they have pushed the publish date up by four days. Its coming out tomorrow at 9 00 a. M. The publisher says we see it as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse. Whats your response to that . Im no attorney so im going to leave the attorneys to litigate with the attorneys for the the spokes people for this piece of tabloid trash, but its pretty obvious that if i were an attorney, there are plenty of accusations in that book that have already been disproven. There are plenty of accusations in that book that are not credible. And again, im not an attorney but it seems like id have a field day with that in a court of law. Let me just take one. Janice minn, editor for the Hollywood Reporter was at that dinner which included roger ailes and steve bannon. She said that it was an astonishing dinner, everything in the book is absolutely accurate. One of the exchanges that was reported in the book about that dinner went like this. What has he gotten himself into with the russians, pressed yes, and thats what we do every single day. Thank you so much, hogan, i appreciate your time. Absolutely, thanks, erin. I want to go to mark preston. Your reaction, mark. Well, a couple things. I think the most important thing that hogan said out of that interview, erin, is that he said all bets are off now. Meaning that the war that weve been discussing or we think might come to fruition between steve bannon and between President Trump is very much real and is very much not going to be over any time soon. We saw steve bannon kind of try to put i guess a fig leaf or olive branch out to the president by saying some nice things on his breitbart radio program, but the fact of the matter is its clear that the president wants blood now from steve bannon. Look, theyre engaging in a he said, he said, he said, she said, whatever it is. Well, two said that but how many more people you heard that whole exchange and back and forth. They want to raise doubt on everything in here, and as he points out, there are some things in here which are directly contradicted, the people who are in, not about
that particular exchange but others that people said didnt happen. They think that raising more questions will cause a problem. But of course the book will be a top best seller. How does it play out . It plays out this way. If we go over the past year and take the book and overlay it with the reporting with cnn, the washington post, the associated press, there does seem to be a lot of similarities. Certainly the way that donald trump came to decisions. One of the most important things that i read that came out of that book is the disinterest that we saw from President Trump when it came to details about very important subjects. People that i have talked to over the past year have corroborated that. They told me that he was very disinterested in these details and the chaos in the white house is very much real. Yeah, certainly we have that. Theres a couple instances of things in here that i know from talking to the people involved also happened as reported. Again, a couple out of many, but well see as the reporting continues. Thank you so very much, mark. Next, did trump really need a crash course on the constitution . The man who briefed him mentioned, quoted in this book, will be my guest next. And growing alarm tonight about trumps mental state. A yale psychiatrist actually briefed lawmakers about it. And the big chill. The bomb cyclone as its called crippling cities across the entire east coast. The storms pressure expected to drop to a level that you would see in a massive hurricane. Smoi but when we brought our daughter home, that was it. Now i have nicoderm cq. The Nicoderm Cq Patch with unique extended release Technology Helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. Its the best thing that ever happened to me. Every great why needs a great how. Steyer the president S National Security adviser guilty. His Campaign Chairman under indictment. His soninlaw secret talks with russians. The director of the fbi fired. Special counsel Robert MuellersCriminal Investigation has already shown why the president should be impeached. You can send a message to your representatives at needtoimpeach. Com and demand they finally take a stand. This president is not above the law. A heart transplant. Thats a whole different ballgame. I was in shock. I am very proud of the development of drugs that can prevent the rejection and prevent the recurrence of the original disease. I never felt i was going to die. We know so much about transplantation. And were living longer. You cannot help but be inspired by the opportunities that a transplant would offer. My donors mom says you were meant to carry his story. Including within that at least two dozen requests of him asking to have an interview with the president , which he never did. Wolff, though, said he had extraordinary access to trump. He said he was able to take up Something Like a semipermanent seat on a couch in the west wing, an Idea Wolff Claims was encouraged by the president himself. Wolff says he conducted over 200 interviews over 18 months, says he has tapes and says those interviews include the president himself and most members of the senior staff. Also according to axios, the reporting outlet, wolff says some of those conversations are taped, including those with steve bannon. So outfront now, one of the people quoted in the new book, sam nunberg. Good to have you back on, its been a while. The white house is calling the book complete fantasy, sad, pathetic. You just heard hogan gidley in a similar vein. You spoke to Michael Wolff for the book. Three times. You had conversations. Youre quoted in the book. Youre mentioned in the book several times and now were looking at it, sam hasnt seen all of the times, but one time he quotes about how you were explaining the constitution to trump. Right. He quotes you as saying i got as far as the Fourth Amendment before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head. Tell me the context in which this happened. Sure. First of all, the context of it was that the president before the first debate, i was out of the Campaign Starting around september of 2015. The president before the first debate was going to one of his properties in europe and we were trying to get a lot of issues in before he left so he couldnt get these Gotcha Questions or infamous Gotcha Questions before the 2016 cycle. The infamous one asking Rudy Giuliani the difference between a sunni and a shia. I was able to go over some of these questions where i thought possibly on the constitution some people either on the stage as competitors or some of these moderators would try to ask him quick questions. It wasnt to teach him the constitution. He knows the constitution. It was to say heres per se something that has been asked before. We didnt get we only got to the Fourth Amendment there and at that time he remembered. Besides running for president , he was running his business. So im not criticizing michael. I like michael. A political book, i believe its not nonfiction, but on the other hand, they use puffery and try to create a narrative. So you did get as far as the Fourth Amendment. You dont know his motive for becoming disinterested. He had a ton of things to do. One other thing in general that i wanted to say thats perhaps not in this book is the president and i had a common disagreement. The president was 100 correct and i was incorrect. About whether there was going to be a gotcha question. In general what the average voter wanted. If the average voter wanted cerebral esoteric minutia answers, then they werent going to vote for donald trump to begin with. The president understood if he was going to win the nomination,
he understood this better than me that it was going to be about big ideas. So youre getting to the motive of whatever it was, disinterested or and im not spinning for him. Im a supporter of his. I dont work for the white house and dont try to make money off the white house. From where i stand hes appointed the best judges. And you agree with his politics. You were working for them briefly. Many of the quotes here, rupert murdoch, expletive, and by the way, thats the trend all the way through the book. Theres a lot of cursing. Were new yorkers. You know what i mean . This is a very aggressive type and those quotes are in there. Yes. But most of them consistently point to trumps wideranging ignorance. Youre framing that, it sounds like in this conversation, the context of he had other things to do or he judged that the voter wouldnt care. In general but whats your takeaway about his ideas and interest in
policy. In general, he is a stubborn, stubborn man in a way where you can argue with him about what he needs to know, you can argue with him about what he wants to do, but i tell you what, hes sitting in the oval office. Say what you want about him, he got 306 electoral votes. He won the states that i didnt think he was going to win up to four days before when i was talking to people in the campaign and the trend was going there. And i could see that and im surprised from reading the book. I dont know this because i dont talk to him while hes in the white house. I can see hes not going to change. That is him. That is it. So you know steve bannon well. Yes. You just heard hogan gidley come on and say they dont know each other. Its absurd. He did a pretty bad job, by the way. Were they close . Theyre very close. They were very close. I can tell you when i worked from the president from 2011 through 2015, and i was essentially with Michael Stone and roger stone, the only people supporting and believing that he could be elected president , there were two people that would take our phone calls. Steve bannon at breitbart, chris ruddy at news max, that was it. And he was a very good person for us to get you know, to spring ideas off of. Im sorry that this happened. I disagree with what steve said about don junior. He should not have said that. Steve should also not havin sin waited anything about Money Laundering with the trump organization. I had nothing to do with President Trumps business or President Trumps business. Anything i heard of anything, there was nothing above the letter of the law there. L