A new book is getting lots of attention today for an excerpt that says Steve Bannon once told Ivanka Trump, “you’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”
That quote, from Howard Kurtz’ new book “Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The War Over The Truth,” is all the more striking because it’s almost identical to something Michael Wolff says Bannon screamed at Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks in his book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
In “Fire and Fury,” Wolff includes this passage:
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” shouted a livid Bannon at Hicks, demanding to know who she worked for, the White House or Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka. “You don’t know how much trouble you are in,” he screamed, telling her that if she didn’t get a lawyer he would call her father and tell him he had better get her one. “You are dumb as a stone!”
Wolff says that according to one account, Hicks then ran from Bannon, “hysterically sobbing” and “visibly terrified.” This marks the second scene in the book in which Wolff describes her running away. In an earlier passage, Trump sends her running from the room by telling her, in reference to an ex: “You’re the best piece of tail he’ll ever have.”
Both “Media Madness” and “Fire and Fury” join other reporting that has described a feud between Bannon and Kushner and Ivanka, or as Wolff calls the couple, Jarvanka.
“Media Madness” said Bannon was a little less hysterical with Ivanka Trump than Wolff says he was with Hope Hicks.
“You love your dad. I get that,” Bannon told Ivanka, according to Kurtz. “But you’re just another staffer who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”
There’s no indication she ran from the room.
Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.