"Steve doesn't represent my base - he's only in it for himself."
The 45th President of the United States of America has started 2018 as he presumably means to go on; rounding on his enemies and holding nothing back.
On Wednesday, he took to Twitter to respond to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's latest nuclear threat in typical Trump fashion, before adding that the world's media is next on the agenda.
Next in line after disgraced former White House staffer Steve Bannon, that is.
Bannon has been quoted in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House; a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, in which Bannon describes a meeting between Donald Trump Jr and a group of Russians at Trump Tower during the 2016 election campaign as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic".
Ever fond of the concept of right of reply, President Trump moved quickly to distance himself and his administration from Bannon, accusing his former chief strategist of leaking information to the media during his time in the White House, noting that such a tactic is "the only thing he does well".
The scathing official statement immediately attacks Bannon, as Trump contends that he "lost his mind" in the wake of his exit last August.
Elsewhere, he diminishes Bannon's importance throughout the presidential campaign and accuses him of being responsible for losing significant Republican political ground.
The full statement reads as follows:
"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented ever assembled in the Republican party.
"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. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn't represent my base - he's only in it for himself.
"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. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was very rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
"We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down."
