for brian williams. day 349 of the trump administration, a day in which donald trump and steve bannon face-off in a war of harsh words and accusations. bannon one of the architects of trump s populous agenda during last year s campaign went onto serve as chief white house strategist before being dismissed in august of 2017. he s leveling stunning charges in a new book by michael wolf called fire and fury. the author s account based on more than 200 interviews and a visit to the white house. among them is this quote from bannon about that trump tower meeting between donald trump, jr., jared kushner, paul manafort and several foreign russian nationals promising dirt on hillary clinton. quote, 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.
under article 1 of the constitution, to be an a coequal branch and check the powers of the president. so when we look at the six or seven hot spots around the world that are boiling tonight, we look at his assaults on institutions in this country, we look at him through the prism of someone who acts more erratically, the more cornered he feels. what this book is a validation of what we already know, that he s ignorant, that he s undisciplined, that he s incurious, that he s erratic. and those qualities in the office that is possessed by the most powerful man in the world, the president of the united states, could have deadly consequences. and our political class in country has a real lack of imagination, i think, about the magnitude of the type of tragedy that can be caused by someone as
potential investigation revealed in this book. and even if half of the political dysfunction accounted in this book is true and accurate, it s very disturbing. it paints a very disturbing portrait for the country. they re charged with enforcing the laws, and if they can t organize themselves into a publicity formation a book, god help us when we re under attack. thank you so much. coming up jared kushner, ivanka trump, and steve bannon. the 11th hour back after this.
doubts that he harbors about trump s leadership, about the people that trump surrounds himself with and their qualifications. that includes first and foremost the trump children and his son-in-law jared kushner. and on the other hand, you have bannon s belief in the trump movement and the ideas that trump ran on and this notion that the people that trump represented finally had a voice. and so reconciling those two conflicting impulses was always very difficult for steve. and his frustrations spilled out in a rather impulsive way himself. an impulsive way for steve here by mouthing off to a reporter and saying some very indiscreet things that ended up making the man who is leading the movement that steve sees himself as kind of a shepherd of look very bad. robert costa, this is clearly
[ bleep ], and i happen to think it s all of that, you should have called the fbi immediately. the chance that don jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father s office on the 26th floor is zero. and bannon reportedly adds later, quote, they re going to crack don jr. like an egg on national tv. president trump has denied having knowledge of the meeting until it came to light a year later. and the russian lawyer tells nbc news that she and her cohorts at the june 2016 trump tower meeting did not meet or see then candidate donald trump. here is how white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders responded. did the president s son, donald trump jr. commit treason? i think that is a ridiculous accusation and one that i m pretty sure we ve addressed many times from here before. if that s in reference to comments made by mr. bannon, i d refer you back to the ones he made previously on 60 minutes where he called the collusion with russia about this president