Top Trump Adviser Continues Assault on Bannon in Heated TV Interview

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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, continued the administration’s assault on Stephen K. Bannon on Sunday, saying in a heated interview on CNN that comments by Mr. Bannon in a new book were “out of touch with reality,” “vindictive” and “grotesque.”

Mr. Miller also pushed back against the perception that Mr. Bannon, whose harsh criticism of Mr. Trump and his family in the book has caused a sharp falling-out with the president, had ever played a Svengali-like role as chief strategist in the White House and on the presidential campaign.

He said Mr. Bannon’s role had been “greatly exaggerated,” even as the CNN host Jake Tapper ticked off a long list of policies he said Mr. Bannon had played a key role in formulating.

In the book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, Mr. Bannon said Mr. Trump had “lost his stuff,” and he described a meeting with Russians attended by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as potentially treasonous.

Mr. Miller, in his defense of the president, called him a “political genius” who could rattle off complete paragraphs on the fly in response to news events and then deliver them “flawlessly” to a campaign audience. On Saturday, the president, responding to the book’s depiction of his actions in office as erratic, had called himself a “very stable genius.”

The interview, on the CNN program “State of the Union,” quickly grew heated as Mr. Tapper accused Mr. Miller of being “obsequious” and speaking to an “audience of one.” Before it ended, Mr. Tapper told Mr. Miller, who is known for his hard-edge attacks on political opponents and the news media, that he was wasting his audience’s time.

Mr. Tapper then turned to the camera, even as Mr. Miller was still speaking, and cut to a commercial.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump said Mr. Miller had “destroyed” Mr. Tapper in the interview.

In addition to assailing Mr. Bannon, Mr. Miller sharply criticized Mr. Wolff and his book, saying it “is best understood as a work of very poorly written fiction.”

The president, who was returning from Camp David, where he had met with Republican congressional leaders and cabinet officials about the 2018 legislative agenda, weighed in with his own criticism.

Others sympathetic to the president also appeared on Sunday talk shows to defend him.

Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, said that he had no concerns about Mr. Trump’s ability to receive and process the kind of intelligence typically presented to presidents, and that Mr. Wolff’s descriptions of Mr. Trump’s mental state were “pure fantasy.”

“I’m with him almost every day,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We talk about some of the most serious matters facing America and the world, complex issues. The president is engaged. He understands the complexity. He asks really difficult questions of our team at C.I.A.”

Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, said Mr. Bannon owed the Trump family an apology for his comments in the book. “I can’t justify what Steve said,” Mr. Lewandowski said on “Fox News Sunday.” “To accuse someone of treason is so out of line.”