Trump Slams 'Sloppy Steve' Bannon, Calls Michael Wolff 'Author Of Phony Book'

Amid the furore created by upcoming book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” President Donald Trump launched a new wave of attack against its author Michael Wolff and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who is quoted extensively in the book making disparaging remarks about the president and his family.

The president said Wolff’s book was “full of lies” and called Bannon “Sloppy Steve.”

In a tweet late Thursday, the president asked everyone look at Wolff's past and said he was given “zero access” to the White House for writing his book. "Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist,” he wrote about the book.

Excerpts of the book began to surface online before its release Friday and seemed to portray Trump as someone who was ill-equipped for office. They revealed that Bannon criticized Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner for their meetings with a group of Russians who promised damaging information against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

Soon after Bannon’s comments came to light, Trump slammed him saying when he was fired "he not only lost his job, he lost his mind".

Despite Trump’s scathing attack, Bannon—who was talking to a caller on Brietbart Radio on Thursday morning — said, "Nothing will ever come between us and President Trump and his agenda" adding that "we're tight on this agenda as we've ever been.”

On Wednesday night, he praised Trump personally while hosting the Breitbart News Tonight radio show on SiriusXM. "The President of the United States is a great man," Bannon said. "You know, I support him day in and day out."

Trump touted the line from his former aide, saying, "I don't know, he called me a great man last night, so he obviously changed his tune pretty quick."

His reference to Bannon on Thursday as “Sloppy Steve” seemed to get an endorsement from Trump Jr, who quoted his father’s tweet and wrote:

Several others on Twitter also seemed to think the name assigned to Bannon was one of Trump’s better nicknames.

The president, when asking people to look at Wolff’s past, seemed to refer to accusations against the author that he did not behave responsibly when it came to portraying facts in his previous stories, a concern echoed by several other journalists on Twitter.

Meanwhile, White House also disavowed “Fire and Fury,” with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying the book was "filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House.”

Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, sent cease and desist letters to Wolff, Steve Rubin, the president of the book’s publisher, Henry Holt and Co., as well as Steve Bannon, alleging that the book contained libelous and defamatory information against his client.

He even threatened Bannon with legal action and demanded in the letter that Bannon “cease and desist from any and all further disclosure of Confidential Information, disparagement of Mr. Trump, his family members, his or their companies, and/or the Company, and communication with the media, including but not limited to Mr. Wolff and any and all other journalists, reports, authors and bloggers.”