'Shell-shocked Bannon' claims Trump would 'lie about anything to win': new book

In yet another book on the Donald Trump years, Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire reports that former Trump advisor Steve Bannon claimed he was taken aback at the ease with which the former president would lie, or order others to do so, just so he could briefly look good in the press.

According to the Guardian, which has obtained a copy of Lemire's book, "The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020," Bannon was more forthcoming on his early dealings with the now-former president than he had been in the press while Trump was still in office.

As the Guardian's Martin Pengelly recalled, in 2018 Bannon sat down for an interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl who pointed out to the Trump advocate that the then-president didn't always tell the truth.

Bannon then replied, "I don’t know that” while asserting the accusation was “another thing to demonize him.”

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“The president’s never lied?” Karl pressed to which Bannon bluntly replied, “Not to my knowledge, no.”

However, as Lemire reports, Bannon told another story when he wasn't on camera and under the watchful gaze of the media-obsessed president.

According to Lemire's book, "... even for Bannon, Trump was something new. The chief strategist told me that Trump ‘was not looking to win a news cycle, he was looking to win a news moment, a news second.’"

“An at-times shell-shocked Bannon would relay to aides that ‘Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything to win that moment, to win whatever exchange he was having at that moment," Lemire continued. "Entire campaign proposals had to be written on the fly, policy plans reverse engineered, teams of aides immediately mobilized to meet whatever floated through Trump’s head in that moment to defend his record, put down a reporter, or change a chyron on CNN.”

You can read more here.