The atmosphere was “toxic” in the White House of former United States President Donald Trump (2017-2021) at the time the far-right and strategist Steve Bannon worked for him as an adviser, found last week convicted by a jury of contempt of Congress.
This is stated by Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser Yared Kushner in his book “Breaking History: A White House Memoir”, which will be published next month and was advanced this Friday in excerpts by the US media.
According to Sources, in his work Kushner describes a scene in which Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, asked him to call a journalist from The New York Times to prevent the publication of an article.
That article reported that Priebus and Bannon had been kicked off Air Force One because Trump was unhappy with them.
“Why are you coming to Florida today? I don’t need you. Stay here,” Trump told Priebus and Bannon, according to his son-in-law’s account.
Immediately afterwards, the president alluded to the repercussions of the decision of the then Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to recuse himself from the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, which could be “disastrous” for the Government.
After Kushner called out the New York Times reporter not to run the story, Bannon took his anger out on him.
“How the hell dare you leak something about me? If you leak something about me, I’m going to leak things about you in the next 28 days from Sunday,” Bannon threatened.
Kushner writes in his book that Bannon, who was fired by Trump in August 2017, caused him more trouble than anyone else during his time in the White House, “probably leaked and lied about me more than anyone.”
In another excerpt from the work, published by The Washington Post, Kushner focuses on what was Trump’s second chief of staff, John Kelly, whom he describes as a kind of “Jekyll and Hyde” and whom he accuses of having given a push to his wife, Ivanka Trump, daughter of the former president, after an argument in the Oval Office.
“One day, (Kelly) left a contentious meeting in the Oval Office,” Kushner noted. “Ivanka was walking down the main hallway of the West Wing when she passed him. Unaware of his agitated mood, she said ‘hi, Chief (of Cabinet)’. Kelly pushed her out of the way. He didn’t hurt her and she didn’t want to make a big deal out of the altercation, but in her anger Kelly showed her real character.”
Kushner says that an hour later Kelly went to Ivanka Trump’s office to apologize, which she accepted.
In an email sent to The Washington Post, Kelly assured that he does not remember anything described by Trump’s son-in-law, adding: “It is inconceivable that I would push a woman, inconceivable, it never happened.”
“I would never intentionally do something like that, I also don’t remember apologizing for something I didn’t do, I don’t remember,” he settled.