White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said Wednesday that he was “livid” with Breitbart News for publishing a report suggesting that President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus could lose his job.
Bannon, who took a leave of absence from his role as Breitbart News chairman to serve as Trump’s campaign CEO, told CNN that he was “not upset — livid.”
Breitbart News published the report by Matthew Boyle, titled “As Flynn Resigns, Priebus Future In Doubt As Trump Allies Circulate List of Alternate Chief of Staff Candidates,” on Tuesday after White House national security adviser Michael Flynn stepped down.
Bannon called the report “totally untrue.”
“Reince is doing a great job. I couldn’t ask any more from a partner,” he said as quoted by CNN.
He told The Atlantic in an email on Tuesday that the story was “absurd.”
Bannon called Boyle after the report was published and gave him “both barrels,” according to an Axios report published Wednesday citing an unnamed source familiar with the conversation.
In 2015, however, Bannon praised Boyle as “one of the few reporters in Washington who isn’t afraid to ruffle the feathers of the establishment and relentlessly tell the stories grassroots conservatives care about,” as quoted by Adweek.
Neither Boyle nor the White House immediately responded to TPM’s requests for comment.
