Stephen Bannon, former chief strategist of President Donald Trump, said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may be fired “very shortly.”
In an interview that will be broadcast on Wednesday evening in the United Kingdom, Bannon said that Rosenstein “either…is going to take the direct order of the President of the United States or I think Rosenstein will be fired.”
Bannon also stated that Trump should give his testimony in writing, but not in person, to special counsel Robert Mueller, who he called an “honorable guy.”
According to The Hill, the comments, which come amidst increasing pressure on Rosenstein from Trump and his allies, were made in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s “Newsnight,” which was conducted on Tuesday in Prague.
Bannon was exiled from Trump’s immediate orbit in January after he was quoted making several provocative comments in Michael Wolff’s best-selling book Fire and Fury. Trump then said that Bannon had “lost his mind.”
However, Bannon left the White House before Wolff’s controversial memos. He left the administration in August 2017, soon after John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as chief of staff.
Confronting the charges of racism against Trump, Bannon at that time insisted that “Martin Luther King would be proud of him, what he’s done for the black and Hispanic community for jobs.”
Meanwhile, Bannon also blamed the media for boosting the profile of the kind of white nationalist figures with whom the former strategist has sometimes been said to harbor sympathy.
“These guys don’t exist unless you make them a big deal,” Bannon told Maitlis. “First off, they’re all cranks…[Richard] Spencer and [David] Duke — these guys are cranks. The only reason they exist is because MSNBC and BBC are down there with a camera, giving them a platform. If you cut them off, nobody would ever hear from them.”
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