Bannon Believes Trump Has Dementia and Called For 25th Amendment

Steve Bannon told a “60 Minutes” producer that he concluded that Donald Trump was suffering from “early-stage dementia” while still in office. Bannon, who was fired as a White House strategist in August 2017, amid fallout over Trump’s praise for white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, also revealed that he launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to have Trump removed by invoking the 25th Amendment.

Ira Rosen appeared on the “Skullduggery” podcast to talk about his new book about his experience at the legendary news show and told the hosts, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman that Bannon “didn’t want to talk about it on ’60 Minutes’ at the time … but he had laid out the record at that time,” Rosen said. “This was a period of time where he had great frustrations with Trump.”

“Trump was kind of throwing him under the bus a little,” Rosen said. “There was a Time magazine portrait of Bannon, of the person who got Trump secretly elected, and Trump took a lot of shit for that from his New York friends. He kind of turned on Bannon and Bannon was a little on the outs in this period of time.”

“Bannon realized that Trump was repeating the same stories over and over again… and Bannon wanted to do something about it,” Rosen explained, adding that Bannon believed he could take over the right-wing movement from Trump.

While at WH, Steve Bannon concluded Trump was suffering from "early stage dementia" & later started a covert campaign for invoking the 25th A to remove him, veteran @60Minutes producer Ira Rosen tells @dklaidman and me in new @SkullduggeryPod. (Hes got B's texts to back it up.) https://t.co/z3w5UGwBvS

— Michael Isikoff (@Isikoff) February 16, 2021

 

Bannon also regularly cited a New York Times column by David Brooks, in October 2017, which said some Republicans visiting the White House suspected Trump might have Alzheimer’s disease but remained loyal anyway.

“Bannon kept saying this, and he wanted to do something about it,” Rosen said. “Now, the secret was that Bannon crazily thought that he could be president.”

Asked to what extent Bannon’s claims represented “legitimate news versus Bannon just kind of trying to get attention”, Rosen said: “That’s exactly the trick in trying to deal with Steve, because a lot of it is to draw attention to himself.”

I missed that DOJ has posted the individual certificates listing what offenses Trump pardoned for each person listed in his January 19 master clemency warrant, which had names but didn't spell out the covered crimes. https://t.co/oL44VoCVbr
Here's Steve Bannon's, for example. pic.twitter.com/PkN0b3wZDE

— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) February 16, 2021

After his defeat by Joe Biden, Trump pardoned Bannon on a fraud charge relating to a fundraising effort for a wall on the US border with Mexico.