Trump 27: Happy Holidays Orange Menace

[AmazonGrace]

Every word of this:

 

[GrumpyGran]

So, I have some questions about this book for those of you who have read it. Does Wolff cite specific sources? Or are they unnamed? I think Bannon's comments are contributed to him, aren't they?

They will have to parse this and try to weed out the things that they can cast reasonable doubt on. People will deny, the problem is that the majority of this country was already primed to believe these things and this book will just act as a re-affirmation. And Dumpy himself proves that much of it is true.

What I have had clarified for me is that Jared and Ivanka are just working to position themselves for public office. What they are doing now is "experience" that they planned to claim. I don't think it's worked out the way they wanted. Bannon is determined to take them down because he has his own aspirations and they equally want to take him down. Meanwhile the immature moron wanders around tweeting and creating havoc, while everyone around him jockeys for power. 

[apple1]

Supposedly, Wolff has recordings (and more recordings). It will be interesting to see whether he releases them. Which still, of course, doesn't prove that the statements as made by the person being recorded are correct or true. But it would prove that Wolff had actual sources for what he wrote.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book.

Showing more evidence of proofreading and of vetting his information would have helped. I cannot decide whether this is another thing that will blow over in a few days, or whether it will cause investigations into legitimate issues, or whether it will end up actually hurting the process of getting the truth out due to increasing polarization and associating legitimate issues with errors that appear in the book.

 

ETA: Other topic. This morning's tweets are unbelievable. Even for Trump. (rolling eyes)

[Destiny]

Uhhh. If you are going to bring up Ronald Reagan, you might want to consider consulting a history book. It’s HISTORICAL FACT that Reagan was suffering from dementia in office, and was enabled by those around him, which is a historical fact that pisses me the fuck off to this day.

In both cases, someone should have had the courage to stand up and say uh, no. 

[iweartanktops]

I didn't think these were real at first. What. The. Fuck ?? 

Very stable genius? 

[onekidanddone]

Ted Kaczynski was supposed to be a genius, I just won't want him having access to the codes.

[onekidanddone]

Love her posts.  She is the wife of one my most fave singer/song writers. Ray Wylie Hubbard

 

[GrumpyGran]

Good Lord, what will happen next week? I keep thinking it can't get worse, it just can't. And then it does. I'm pretty sure that next week he will call some one a poopyhead, threaten a world leader, claim that he has an IQ of 276, try to get Bannon arrested and play golf three times.

Soon he'll summon the Olympic athletes and give them a pep talk. Then when any of them wins a medal, he'll take credit. I almost feel sorry for the suck-up congressmen that are with him this weekend. Can you imagine? Burnt steak for dinner, him boasting about everything and demanding they praise him non-stop. And I'm sure they're getting marching orders and an update on what Dumpy knows about them. Look out, craziness ahead from the top Repubs.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s ill-advised claim that the media is covering his mental fitness like Reagan’s"

Spoiler

President Trump is fond of Ronald Reagan comparisons. As he campaigned on a promise to “Make America Great Again,” Trump cited Reagan's presidency as the last time America was great.

But Trump might have thought twice before tweeting Saturday that the media is “taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.”

... < tweet from twitler >

The news media did indeed question Reagan's mental health at times, but such questions were at least somewhat validated by the 40th president's Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1994 and his son's 2011 claim that Reagan displayed symptoms of the disease while in office.

If Trump's aim is to dismiss concerns raised by Michael Wolff's “Fire and Fury” as completely unfounded, then Reagan is not the best historical reference.

Trump's characterization of Reagan coverage isn't quite right. Journalists didn't speculate about Reagan's “stability and intelligence” so much as wonder whether his memory lapses — sometimes apparent in public — could impair his ability to govern.

A New Republic magazine cover in May 1987 asked, directly, “Is Reagan Senile?”

A Washington Post article from the same year began by noting that “Washington wags with an eye on past scandals have taken to rephrasing the central question of Watergate to fit the Iran-contra affair: The question, they say, isn't 'What did the president know and when did he know it?' but 'What did President Reagan forget and when did he forget it?'”

The joke referred to Reagan's self-professed inability to recall information during congressional testimony.

Reagan famously struggled toward the end of the first general-election debate of 1984. A college debate coach interviewed by United Press International said after the event that the president had appeared “oddly disoriented and confused with regard to many of the subjects.” Pro-Reagan members of a focus group convened by The Post said the president's performance gave them pause.

Here's an excerpt from an Oct. 9, 1984, report:

“It was apparent that he was not as confident or sure of himself in this particular debate,” said Sanford Johnson, a Republican who works in marketing for a chemical firm and had come to the debate with no doubt that he would vote for Reagan. “That raises the question that maybe he is too old and his mind isn't as sharp as it used to be.”

Johnson said Reagan's debate performance caused him to shift. He is now only leaning toward Reagan and wants to watch him very carefully because he does not want a president who is not up to the job.

The New York Times revisited the issue of Reagan's mental fitness in 1997. “Even with the hindsight of Mr. Reagan's diagnosis, his four main White House doctors say they never detected any evidence that his forgetfulness was more than just that,” the Times reported. “His mental competence in office, they said in a series of recent interviews, was never in doubt.”

For Trump's purposes, Reagan might serve as evidence that a president can remain capable into his 70s, despite periodic memory lapses. (Wolff reports in his book that Trump has begun to repeat himself in conversation more frequently.) Reagan's example does not, however, help Trump make the case that it is unfair for reporters to inquire about his mental health, at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if Agent Orange started tweeting that since he is the greatest and bigliest ever, Reagan was only the second-most forgetful president. He would think this is a good thing.

[IrishCarrie]

I'm reading the book and thoroughly enjoying it! Being Irish, I haven't been as over-exposed to all of the preliminaries around the book and I hadn't read any excerpts so I'm coming to it pretty fresh.

I'm 37% in (on kindle!) and to be honest, I almost feels like it's therapy for me. I've never understood how Trump got elected; to be honest, I've never understood how him imitating the disabled reporter wasn't the end of it, even before the pussy-grabbing thing. And the book is kind of clearing my mind on how the perfect storm happened and I'm oddly grateful!

My overwhelming impression so far is that Jared/Ivanka will suffer from the book far more than Trump. What's in it about Trump is generally widely-known (that he's unintelligent, vain, unread, erratic, cheats on his wife, has no business acumen or natural ability) whereas it's definitely educating me on Javanka, their attitude, their sense of entitlement, their odd relationship with Trump. Of course, we've all guessed a lot of it but seeing it confirmed in black and white is oddly compelling.

More updates as I read on!

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Dana Milbank: "And the Trumpie goes to . . ."

Spoiler

Of all the scandalous revelations in the Michael Wolff book, the most revealing may be the one about the apricot swirl atop the president’s head.

For years, Donald Trump has labored to convince us that “I actually don’t have a bad hairline,” that “it’s not really a comb-over,” that “it’s my real hair.” His personal physician attested that Trump “has all his hair.”

Whom were we to believe: Trump or our own eyes?

Now, via Wolff, comes a plausible explanation from Ivanka Trump of her father’s bouffant: “She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction ­surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray.” And the color “was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.”

There it is, in orange and white: Everything about the man is deceptive, even the style of his hair — and the size of his button.

There are valid questions about the validity of some anecdotes in the book, “Fire and Fury,” but former top Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose quotes are the most damning, hasn’t disputed their accuracy. It’s as if Trump has a force field of falsehood around him: The further people get from him, the more they succumb to reality.

In September, when Bannon had just left the White House and was still in Trump’s force field, he proclaimed to “60 Minutes” that “there’s nothing to the Russia investigation. It’s a waste of time.” In the book, Bannon is quoted as saying that the Trump campaign meeting with Russians was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” that there is “zero” chance Donald Trump Jr. didn’t introduce the Russians to his father, and that investigators are “going to crack Don Junior like an egg.”

It’s no small irony that book excerpts showing Trump’s perfidy appeared the day after Trump announced that he would host “THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS,” featuring “Bad Reporting in various categories.” Call it the Trumpies?

For once in his life, Trump is being modest. In the field of dishonesty, it is he who deserves the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement: Obama wiretapped him. He had the largest inauguration audience ever. The Russia story is fake news. Muslims celebrated in New Jersey on 9/11. He only got a small loan from dad. Hillary Clinton started the “birther” movement. The tax cut will cost him a fortune.

Glenn Kessler and his Fact Checker team at The Post report that Trump has made 1,950 false or misleading claims in office.

I would nominate Trump in the “Best Original Story” category for his recent claims that President Barack Obama’s plane “never got to land” in the Philippines: “The plane came close but it didn’t land.” This is pure fabrication.

In the “Best Adapted Fact” category, I would nominate Trump for his claim this week via Twitter: “Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news — it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!” There hasn’t been a fatal passenger crash by a U.S. airline in America since 2009.

In the “Best Actor in a Misleading Role” category, I again nominate Trump, this time for boasting, some 85 times by Kessler’s count, about stock market records — contradicting his claim that the same bull market under Obama was “artificial” and “a bubble.”

And, in the “Best Made-up” category, I nominate Trump’s claim Thursday that Wolff had “zero access to the White House.” Reporters saw Wolff at the White House many times.

Maybe Trump and his few still-loyal aides are telling the truth: Former Trump aide Katie Walsh didn’t say working with Trump was “like trying to figure out what a child wants,” Melania Trump didn’t weep with sorrow when her husband won, and various aides and pals didn’t describe Trump as an “idiot,” “dumb,” “stupid,” “crazy,” a “dope” and semiliterate.

But on the “Today” show Friday, Wolff had a compelling retort: “My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has walked the earth.”

Give a Trumpie to that scalp-reduced guy with the $7 dye job!

There should also be a "Worst Reality Program" category. This administration would win it, hands down.

[AmazonGrace]

Trump: "I'm like, really smart person, everybody is saying I am a genius."

Steve Bannon:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'll go with option B:

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "The ‘stable genius’ isn’t even functioning as president"

Spoiler

Like clockwork, on Saturday around 7 a.m., no doubt feeling the sting of widespread discussion that he is — as his own advisers described to Michael Wolff for his book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” — a dope, a moron, a man-child, a semi-illiterate, President Trump confirmed it all with a tweet. How perfect. A tweet. “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.” Later in the day he railed at the notion of free speech. “It’s a disgrace that he can do something like this,” he said at a brief news conference at Camp David. “Libel laws are very weak in this country. If they were stronger, hopefully, you would not have something like that happen.” Both his desire to prevent criticism and his ridiculous “cease and desist” letters sent by his lawyers to Wolff and his publisher betray his contempt for the First Amendment and his inability to take himself out of the equation and recognize the pillars of democracy, a democracy he took an oath to defend.

Trump’s emotional and mental limitations should debunk a number of rationalizations from his devoted cultists, who insisted he was the best choice in 2016, cheered his first year in office and continue to pretend he’s fit for office. He’s sounding presidential. No, he’s reading off a teleprompter, likely with very little comprehension. He’s playing four-dimensional chess with Kim Jong Un. No, he’s impulsively lashing out, with the risk of provoking a deadly clash. He’s a master manipulator when he shifts from position to position, sometimes in the same sentence. No, he likely doesn’t realize what contradicts what or remember what he originally said. His use of alternative facts is a brilliant scheme to control the press narrative. No, he’s incapable of processing real information and driven by an insatiable need for praise and reaffirmation.

Seen in the context of his intellectual and emotional limitations, some decisions should set off alarm bells. Take the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “Bad. Obama’s deal. Worst ever. Get rid of it. People will love me if I get rid of it.” That is very likely the sum total of his “thinking” on the subject. He’s not considering the next step, the reaction of allies, the implication for America’s standing in the world, the available evidence of Iranian compliance or any other data point that would go into a rational consideration of  United States’ policy. Policy isn’t being made or even understood by the president. What comes from his fears and impulses is whatever aides are able to piece together that might satisfy his emotional spasm of the moment without endangering the country. (The compromise was to “decertify” the deal, freaking out our allies but leaving the deal in place — for now.)

Anyone who listens to him speak off the cuff about health care or tax legislation knows he will not raise any specifics or make a logical argument for this or that provision. It’s all “great,” “fabulous,” “the biggest,” etc. It’s not a sophisticated marketing ploy; it’s evidence of a total lack of understanding or concern about what is in any given piece of legislation. There is serious question whether he knows what is in the Affordable Care Act, how Medicaid works or specifically how the GOP health-care bills would have worked.

Unfortunately, interviewers tend to shy away from asking questions that will provoke a dreaded word salad. (In the case of Fox News, its Trump enablers know to stay away from anything hard that could prompt him to humiliate himself.) Recall that he told the New York Times: “We’ve created associations, millions of people are joining associations. Millions. That were formerly in Obamacare or didn’t have insurance. Or didn’t have health care. Millions of people.” Too bad he wasn’t asked to explain in coherent sentences what all that free word association meant.

To defend his continued occupancy of the office or to insist he’s “better than Hillary” is to reject the notion of democracy. We cannot accept, let alone applaud, courtiers scurrying around to create the appearance of a functioning government. He, not they, is the chief executive and commander in chief. We have a vice president elected specifically to take over if the president is incapable of serving; the 25th Amendment does not say “but in a pinch, let the secretaries of defense and treasury run the show.” What we have is a type of coup in which the great leader is disabled. He is propped up, sent out to read lines written by others and kept safely away from disastrous situations. This is not how our system works, however.

We’re playing with fire, counting on the ability of others to restrain him from, say, launching a nuclear war and, nearly as bad, jettisoning our representative democracy. Vice President Pence, the Cabinet and Congress have a moral and constitutional obligation to bring this to a stop.

I like the comparison of the current situation to a coup led by a disabled person. Sadly, it's true.

[GreyhoundFan]

I believe this is true: "The Trump Recession is coming"

Spoiler

It may have been Donald Trump’s most conventional move as president. During his holiday break at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, he convened meetings to start planning his reelection campaign.

Given the garish accounts in the new book by sometimes-reliable writer Michael Wolff — of Trump’s horror at winning in 2016, of his wife’s angry tears at the prospect of being first lady, of his lonely hours in bed with a cheeseburger, ranting at the TV — you might wonder why Trump would want a second term.

Rare is the president who doesn’t want one, despite the pressures and isolation of the job. Reelection is the ultimate ratification, the political equivalent of Sally Field’s 1984 Oscar moment: “The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny that you like me. You like me!”

Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump wants to be liked. So I don’t doubt that he’s laying plans for 2020, though a great many Democrats, some rival Republicans, and maybe special counsel Robert S. Mueller III have other plans in mind. When he schedules his next skull session, then, a certain topic ought to be on the agenda: timing the Trump Recession.

Yes, recession. I know this is one of those moments when people imagine the rules of economics have been suspended. The stock market races endlessly upward. Help-wanted signs paper shop windows. Economies around the world are in a rare period of simultaneous growth, and tax cuts have brightened corporate boardrooms from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore.

But a downward turn lies somewhere ahead, be it a recession, slump or, God forbid, crash. A necessary part of the energy of economic cycles comes from the ebbing of each wave.

History suggests that the next recession is not far off. The current expansion, though relatively weak, has been steady since June 2009, making this the third-longest upward climb on record. Juiced by the tax cut, the United States is on track to record 107 months without a recession in April, passing the boom of the 1960s in duration. That will leave only the decade-long, 120-month run in the 1990s — when the end of the Cold War met the rise of the Internet to create a Golden Age for the U.S. economy — to be beaten.

In other words, just when the 2020 election begins to warm up, in spring 2019, the economy (if it isn’t already in recession) will break the existing record and begin testing the outer limits of the cycle. It’s not hard to imagine shocks that could trigger a drop. Democrats could win control of the House and ignite an impeachment crisis. Mueller’s investigation could take an unsettling turn. The Federal Reserve could raise interest rates faster than the economy can digest them. Or the opposite: The Fed could move too slowly and smoldering inflation could catch fire. China’s debt bubble could burst. North Korea could erupt. Or the very real threat, dreaded by Trump’s own economic advisers: The president could deliver on his trade war threats.

As the saying goes, it only takes one pin to burst a balloon.

Trump might ask George H.W. Bush what it’s like to have a recession arrive during a reelection campaign. The hero president of Operation Desert Storm, whose approval rating briefly reached 89 percent (even puppy videos aren’t that popular), lost 60 points in just 18 months. The mild recession of 1990 turned into a dogged job-killer, and though most economic indicators were blinking cheerfully by Election Day 1992, the damage was done. With help from H. Ross Perot, Bill Clinton made Bush a one-term president.

By delaying the inevitable, Trump’s tax cut may prove to be a double-edged sword. The recession that might have arrived in 2018 and passed like a summer storm will likely be shoved back a couple of years. If the piper presents his bill in the midst of Trump’s reelection campaign, the president better look out, because Democrats going back to John F. Kennedy score their wins when Republican presidents stumble into late-term economic woes.

Perhaps Trump should have followed Ronald Reagan’s example, accepting a recession early in his first term and trusting the recovery would come in time to lift him to reelection. That option is gone now. Having juiced the economy with tax cuts, Trump must either find a way to skim the froth — prod the Fed for rapid rate increases? unsettle the world with ill-advised trade wars? — or cross his fingers and power through. My prediction is that he’ll throw open the government’s liquor cabinets and pour out every stimulating drop he can get his hands on in a desperate effort to keep the party going through 2020.

What a morning-after that is likely to be.

 

[onekidanddone]

Another good one.

 

[AmazonGrace]

A Michael Wolff interview in the link

[PsyD2013]

A little humor because Trump is so fucking scary.  

[47of74]

And there's some comedy gold on Amazon showing what Agent Orange would write for a review...

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Trump screams at clouds to demonstrate mental stability. 

Honestly, no one, NO ONE, imagined it would devolve to this level of insanity. 

And let me just say that I hope Stephen Miller has his balls put through the wringer by Mueller & Co. 

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Another good one.

 

I laughed and cried at the same time. Since I watch it, I can see this happening! But then, it's fucking scary. too.

[fraurosena]

Well, I've just finished the book. Pfff. What a slog it was! It wasn't that it was written badly, but it wasn't written all that well either. It just doesn't grab you and suck you in, as it were. In fact, at times I found my mind wandering as I read. I had to make myself read on rather frequently, hoping that certainly in this next chapter something of note would be revealed...

First off, let me tell you that it does not live up to all the hype. Like I said in my last post, nothing really new or unexpected is revealed. It's mostly about the incompetence and ineptitude of the administration at large and of the presidunce in particular.  He's stupid as fuck, and everybody knows this. When I started reading, I wrote down what I thought might be noteworthy, but I soon stopped doing that. Not only was it a distraction from actually reading (which was difficult in and of itself because it was so very boring), but nothing really stood out in an important way. I began to notice that all I was writing down was examples of how really dumb the presidunce is. But we know that already. Do we really need these petty examples to underline it? I decided not.

Secondly, I soon found out this book is not about the presidunce, it's not even about the administration, really. It's all about Bannon. He's the one that is centermost in all the chapters, what Bannon thought, did, surmised, anticipated, predicted, connived, achieved. It's almost, but not quite, all told from Bannon's pov. Wolff says he spoke to a great many people in the WH, but when writing the book, it seems he relied most heavily on what Bannon (or one of the Bannonites) told him. The book ends when Bannon is ousted. The very last sentence is:

“Standing on the Breitbart steps that October morning, Bannon smiled and said: “It’s going to be wild as shit.”

It has left me feeling that Wolff is biased; he's for Bannon and against "Jarvanka", a term Bannon coined for Jared and Ivanka, and which Wolff almost hungrily adopts and consistently uses to describe them. It's as if, in a way, he kind of admires Bannon. It made me feel icky, to be honest.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started this book, but it has left me feeling more than disappointed. I would certainly not recommend anyone buying it. The excerpts are freely available, and they are the only (mildly) interesting things about it.

There you have it, my two cents worth. Now I'm off to read all the stuff you've posted in the meanwhile. 

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

11 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

It has left me feeling that Wolff is biased; he's for Bannon and against "Jarvanka",

This confirms what I suspected. This is Bannon's revenge against Ivanka and Jared. He thinks they got him fired. I do think that if Dumpy hadn't trashed him this past week he might be covering for Dump. I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that most of what Bannon said about Dump could be spun one way or the other. But he mistakenly thinks he can get Dumpy to turn on Javanka.

This does seem to give us an idea of who might have been "leaking" in the first months of the administration-Wolff setting up interest for the eventual book. Just hilarious that people were so dazzled at the idea of a book being written about them and their "fabulous" administration that they didn't keep their mouths shut.

[fraurosena]

44 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

This confirms what I suspected. This is Bannon's revenge against Ivanka and Jared. He thinks they got him fired. I do think that if Dumpy hadn't trashed him this past week he might be covering for Dump. I suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, that most of what Bannon said about Dump could be spun one way or the other. But he mistakenly thinks he can get Dumpy to turn on Javanka.

This does seem to give us an idea of who might have been "leaking" in the first months of the administration-Wolff setting up interest for the eventual book. Just hilarious that people were so dazzled at the idea of a book being written about them and their "fabulous" administration that they didn't keep their mouths shut.

I wouldn't call it Bannon's revenge exactly, but you're not far off the mark either. According to the book, Bannon resigned. It was meant as a bluff and then backfired. However, Wolff does constantly harp on the different camps in the WH, which were diametrically opposed and continuously tried to one-up each other. Bannon/Priebus/Spicer against Jarvanka/Hicks/Powell. And according to Wolff, team Jarvanka heavily influenced the presidunce in accepting Bannon's resignation.

Also, this... 

Exclusive: Bannon apologizes

Spoiler

Battered by the backlash from Michael Wolff's book, Steve Bannon is trying to make amends with the Trump family, providing a statement to Axios that expresses "regret" to President Trump and praises his son, Donald Trump Jr.

• "Donald Trump, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man. He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around."
• "My support is also unwavering for the president and his agenda — as I have shown daily in my national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama."
• "President Trump was the only candidate that could have taken on and defeated the Clinton apparatus. I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of Trump and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breech for this president's efforts to make America great again."
• "My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of 'the evil empire' and to making films about Reagan's war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton's involvement in selling uranium to them."
• "My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr."
• "Everything I have to say about the ridiculous nature of the Russian 'collusion' investigation I said on my 60 Minutes interview. There was no collusion and the investigation is a witch hunt."
• "I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president's historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency."

The backstory ... In Wolff's book, Bannon is quoted as saying of Mueller's prosecutors: "They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.'"

Be smart: While Bannon's statement may seem like a baby step, he's as stubborn as Trump when it comes to apologizing and admitting he has made a mistake. He views any concession as a sign of humiliating weakness.

What's next: Look for Don Jr. to accept the statement graciously. But Bannon has further to go with President Trump: Axios has learned that POTUS has said that he wants surrogates who appear for him on TV to "bury Steve."

Axios' Jonathan Swan reported last night: Trump has been working the phones over the past several days, telling allies they need to choose between him and Bannon.

P.S. "Fake book" ... Trump tweets as he leaves Camp David: "I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author."

"Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!"

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Edit to add Ted Lieu's tweet: