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US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, 3 January slammed his former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, claiming that he had "lost his mind" after being "fired".
Bannon, 64, was the top manager of the Trump campaign and the White House chief strategist in the first seven months of the Trump administration. He was fired on 18 August.
"Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country," said the President.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was, Trump alleged.
Bannon was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with him and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books, Trump said.
Trump's statement came amid a media report about a book in which Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president's son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic", according to the book seen by the Guardian.
The book written by Michael Wolff gives an insight into the Trump's election campaign.
In a statement, the White House has disputed the contents of the book.
First Lady Melania Trump's spokesperson Stephanie Grisham said: "Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy. The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section.
"Mrs Trump supported her husband's decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did".
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