US President Donald Trump has said that he feels "betrayed" by his former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon who was highly critical of him and his family in a book published last week.
Bannon who worked with him first as his campaign manager and then as his chief strategist at the White House was fired by him last August.
In a book 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House' published last week, Bannon is extensively quoted as being highly critical of him and his family, even going to the extent of claiming that the president was not interested in winning the presidential election and that first lady Melania wept after the election result because she did not want Trump to win.
"I feel betrayed because you are not supposed to do that, but I have many people that work for me who were far more important than Steve, right there," Trump was quoted as saying by The Wall Street Journal.
"I always liked Steve, but Steve became very ineffective because he was such a lightning rod. And Steve, in the end I fired Steve," Trump said.
Soon after the excerpts of the book was released, Trump in a statement said that Bannon has nothing to do with his presidency and that he has lost his mind.
"Is that relationship permanently broken between you and Steve?" he was asked.
"You never know, I don't know what the word permanent means. We will see what happens, but Steve had nothing to do with my win. Well, certainly very little," he asserted.
"Steve's greatest asset is he was able to convince a corrupt media that he was responsible for my win. Hope, just out of curiosity, you were there from day one. What do you think Steve in a percentage had to do with my victory? I mean he was there. Corey [Lewandowski] had more to do with it," Trump said.
Asserting that the liberal media dislikes him, Trump said he is smart.
"I was successful, successful, successful. I was always the best athlete, people don’t know that. But I was successful at everything I ever did and then I run for president, first time—first time, not three times, not six times. I ran for president first time and lo and behold, I win. And then people say oh, is he a smart person? I am smarter than all of them put together, but they can’t admit it. They had a bad year," Trump said.
"When I won against the 17 people, you can’t then say that oh, gee, somebody comes in two months after I won, and he gives me new policy, new idea. I can’t change those ideas, those ideas are wedded," he said.
Trump said that Bannon's remarks against his son were horrible.
"My son had a brief meeting based on the fact that he thought whatever he thought. And somebody said bad stuff on an opponent. I don’t know of one politician in Washington—if you’re a politician and somebody called up that they have information on your opponent that might be negative," he said.
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