Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon needs to “actually apologize” for his comments after Bannon walked back on some of his statements featured in the now-released tell-all book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
“It’s inside the red zone of an apology but he needs to cross into the goal line of an apology and actually apologize for what he did,” Scaramucci, who infamously made lewd comments about Bannon during his brief tenure at the White House, told Fox News host Howard Kurtz on Sunday.
“The unprecedented access that they gave this guy, Michael Wolff, who is a non-fact checker and an actual liar, is ridiculous. He has to flat-out apologize rather than parse his words like that on Axios.”
Content from the book, which was released on Friday, led Trump to denounce Bannon after it was revealed Bannon said unflattering things about Trump’s family once excerpts started to emerge. One of the passages said that Bannon called a Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
Bannon issued praise for Trump Jr. in his statement on Sunday and said his comments were “were aimed at Paul Manafort” who was “a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate.”
"Donald Trump, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man,” Bannon said in a statement to Axios on Sunday. “He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around."
“[Paul Manafort] should have known they [the Russians] are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr,” the apology continued. Bannon also added that he regretted not apologizing for the remarks sooner, saying that it has sidetracked people from Trump’s first-year accomplishments.
The book’s integrity has been questioned by critics, who have pointed out several inconsistencies in Wolff’s reporting and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday pushed back against some of the allegations made in the book and called it “trashy tabloid fiction."
Scaramucci served in the White House for a total of 10 days in August before being fired. He previously worked on Wall Street and has since launched the Scaramucci Post.
