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highplainsdem

(48,968 posts)
Thu Feb 9, 2017, 11:30 AM Feb 2017

Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus Want You to Know They Are Friends (New York magazine)

Yeah, right...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/bannon-and-priebus-want-you-to-know-they-are-friends.html

It was Tuesday morning and, having just returned from a weekend jaunt to the “Winter White House” in Palm Beach, President Donald Trump’s chief strategist and the White House chief of staff huddled in the latter’s West Wing office to, as they put it, “help make the truth come out.” Specifically, the two men wanted to address, in each other’s company, reports in the media — many based on quotes from high-level White House officials —that they are engaged in a bitter, zero-sum power struggle to win primacy with Trump, instead of continuing to function as improbable co-equals. The contest is now, the story goes, being waged in the form of damaging leaks about each other.

Plenty of savvy media observers see obvious intent in the gush of leaks now coming out of the White House. “If you read between the lines in some of the anonymous quotes,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Obama, said, “it’s clear that Bannon, [Jared] Kushner, and Priebus are spending half their time blaming each other and the other half ensuring they don’t get the blame.”

But Bannon and Priebus said these impressions are wrong, and that rumors and reports that they are furiously leaking to gut each other and gain more sway with Trump are mostly media inventions. Any leaks come from lower down the totem pole. The truth, they said, is that they are rather chummy.

Bannon and Priebus spoke with me on a prearranged conference call, joined by Katie Walsh, Priebus’s deputy, and Lindsay Walters, deputy to press secretary Sean Spicer. For about 25 minutes, talking into Walsh’s cell phone on speaker mode, Bannon and Priebus performed a buddy comedy, finishing each other’s sentences and swearing up and down that they are good friends who work together well — and constantly.

-snip-

Claims to the contrary, Priebus said, are upsetting to both of them. “It bothers us because it’s not true, and we actually like and care about each other a lot. So it’s sort of like, if we were just sort of colleagues that kind of tolerate each other every day, maybe it wouldn’t bother us. But because it’s the total opposite — and we’re sitting here, and we’re friends and we’ve kind of been to hell and back ten times together and we like each other — so then we see these things, yeah, it bothers us because it sort of hurts our friendship, and it’s not truthful.”

-snip-

“They have to come up with the gossipy stuff. It’s just like on the campaign,” Bannon continued.

He criticized the “well-paid media” and “all the commentators” who couldn’t predict Trump’s victory, blaming them for having “never rolled up their sleeves” to do the hard work of analyzing demographics and economics, which, he believes, would have revealed Trump was tapping into something. “It’s very easy to write the gossipy stuff,” he said, mocking the media for reading into Priebus’s Republican National Committee background, or casting himself and Stephen Miller as “wild men” and people “who are crazy.”

Writing those stories, he said, was “easy” because it only required talking to “underlings around here” and then “you just kind of type it up.”

-snip-



Awww, the stories hurt their tender widdle friendship...and so they came up with this laughable act.

Just call them Evildumb andd Evildee.
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monmouth4

(9,694 posts)
3. Who in the hell cares? I mean, seriously. Shouldn't they be worrying and caring about stuff
Thu Feb 9, 2017, 12:07 PM
Feb 2017

concerning that thing they report to and things involving the USA? Geez..

 

TrekLuver

(2,573 posts)
4. I don't give a crap what kind of relationship they have....the simple fact is they are BOTH pieces
Thu Feb 9, 2017, 12:08 PM
Feb 2017

of shit. And Bloaty has blood in his.

MrScorpio

(73,630 posts)
5. It's probably a lot of unresolved sexual tension between those two
Thu Feb 9, 2017, 12:21 PM
Feb 2017

Perhaps they ought to book a room together and get it out of the way.

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