Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., trolled the newly ignited feud between President Trump and Steve Bannon on Wednesday with a smug tweet from his official campaign account.
McConnell's account tweeted a GIF of the leader smiling contently, without any context, shortly after the president slammed his former senior adviser Bannon in a statement for his comments in a new book excerpt. It was widely seen as a sign that McConnell is thrilled that Trump is finally disowning his former chief strategist, who has vowed to remove McConnell as majority leader.
pic.twitter.com/683UJFlKL4— Team Mitch (@Team_Mitch) January 3, 2018
It's the same GIF others have used to mock McConnell on Twitter, and its use by McConnell's own team won rave reviews on Twitter.
Bannon and McConnell have fought since Bannon left the White House, and the feud grew more intense after Bannon unsuccessfully pushed Roy Moore for the open Senate seat in Alabama. That seat was in GOP hands for years, but Moore lost, prompting McConnell to mock Bannon as the "genius" who helped lose a Senate race in a deep red state.
The Trump-Bannon fight began after excerpts of a new book were published that said Bannon criticized Donald Trump Jr. for his "treasonous" meeting with Russian officials during the campaign. Trump issued a statement that for the first time acknowledged that Bannon was "fired," and said Bannon had "lost his mind."
"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind," Trump said on Wednesday in response to his former advisor's comments in the book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff.