During the election, Ann Coulter was a firm believer that President Trump could Make America Great Again. But after he removed Steve Bannon from the White House on Friday, the firebrand conservative commentator said in an interview with The Daily Beast that she’s had it with the president, sarcastically referring to him as the “Emperor God.”
Coulter explained that she believed once he took office, Trump would quickly implement his economic and immigration agenda, including his now-infamous plan to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border. But by removing Bannon, who has been seen as the mastermind behind the far-right elements of Trump’s policies, Coulter now believe that these plans will never happen.
“If Trump wants to prove that he didn’t get the good ideas from Bannon, then it better be pedal-to-the-metal on deportations, the Wall, that tax hike on people who make more than $5 million a year, which I understand was Bannon’s idea but perhaps I was wrong,” Coulter told The Daily Beast. “If that was Trump’s idea, then let’s have it!… Did you hear that on Wall Street, they were cheering today?”
Coulter also lambasted Trump for his “tiny ego,” saying that the president is easily swayed by the media he constantly denounces as “fake news.” As proof, she cited the Time Magazine cover that showed a picture of the former chief strategist with the phrase “President Bannon,” as well as a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Bannon, depicted as the Grim Reaper, was shown sitting at the desk in the Oval Office.
“…every time he’s asked about Bannon, the Emperor God goes, ‘He didn’t win it for me! He only came in August! I already wrapped up the nomination!’” she said. “You don’t have to be a very sensitive person capable of reading body language to understand that Trump is obsessed by that. It’s driven him crazy.”
“All you have to do with whatever White House staffer the media would like to get fired — just put him on the cover of a magazine and call him ‘President Whatever the Guy’s Last Name Is.’ It’s not good to show the media that you are so easily manipulable… The media is running the staffing at the White House now.”
And Coulter didn’t just take aim at Trump. She also took aim at two of the most prominent aides still by Trump’s side in the White House, Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Miller. Coulter pointed out that Conway didn’t support Trump from the start of his campaign, but instead backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during the primary.
“As late as the summer [of 2016], Kellyanne was saying that Trump built his business on the backs of the little guy,” Coulter said. “You know I love the Emperor God, but he does have flaws. And one of them is his vast, yawning narcissism. He just seems to be obsessed with the fact that people give Bannon credit. And we all know that [Jared] Kushner is the one who won the White House for him.”
As for Miller, who has rankled liberals with his interviews and White House press conferences in recent weeks, Coulter dismissed him as ” just a speechwriter for the White House staff.”
While this is the most intense criticism of Trump that Coulter has made so far, she has voiced her frustrations in the past with Trump and the GOP’s struggles to get policy done in 2017. Last month, she called the bill Republicans put forth to replace the Affordable Care Act a “idiotic bill.” She also mocked Sean Hannity’s defense of Trump as “zealotry” and joked that the Fox News pundit would “endorse communism if Trump decided to implement the policies of ‘The Communist Manifesto.’” As far back as March, she spoke out against Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan for failing to focus on the policies she believed Trump’s supporters put him in office to implement.