Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon claimed “the Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election” in an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, CNN reports.
Naming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker
Paul Ryan specifically, Bannon told CBS’s Charlie Rose: “They do not
want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be
implemented. It’s very obvious.”
Bannon recalled a meeting with McConnell in Trump Tower, when the
Kentucky Republican asked Trump to clamp down on his “drain-the-swamp”
rhetoric.
“Oh, Mitch McConnell when we first met him, I mean, he said — I
think in one of the first meetings in Trump Tower with the President —
as we’re wrapping up, he basically says, ‘I don’t want to hear any more
of this ‘drain-the-swamp’ talk,'” Bannon recalled. “He says,
‘I can’t — I can’t hire any smart people,’ because everybody’s all over
him for reporting requirements and — and the pay, et cetera, and the
scrutiny. You know, ‘You gotta back off that.'”
Asked about attacking the very people Trump needs to enact his
agenda, Bannon said GOP leaders won’t provide such help “unless they’re
put on notice.”
“They’re going to be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States,” he said. “Right
now there’s no accountability. … They do not support the President’s
program. It’s an open secret on Capitol Hill. Everybody in this city
knows it.”
Neither McConnell nor Ryan’s offices immediately responded to CNN requests for comment about Bannon’s remarks.
Bannon criticized the House and Senate leadership for what he said
was their overpromising and underdelivering on health care, saying they
told the WhiteHouse that they would repeal and replace Obamacare in the
first few months of the administration and the new Congress before
moving on to a tax overhaul by summer and infrastructure legislation by
year’s end — none of which, as of yet, has happened.
While Bannon said he does not entirely blame the Republican leaders
for their inability to move such major legislation, he said they were
unaware of the divisions within their own party.
“There is wide discrepancy in the Republican Party, as we know today, now that we’re in it,” Bannon said. “But I will tell you, leadership didn’t know it at the time. They didn’t know it ’til the very end.”
Bannon was ousted in mid-August amid a reshuffling of power within
the White House, just a few weeks after retired Marine Corps Gen. John
Kelly took over as chief of staff with a goal of instilling order in a
chaotic operation beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a
storm of controversies.
Bannon has since returned to his role as executive chairman at the
conservative online publication Breitbart News, a job he held before
joining Trump’s campaign. Sunday’s interview is the first time has
spoken out publicly since his firing.
His exit meant one of the White House’s most controversial
staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind
Trump’s “nationalist” ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.