Olivia Nuzzi: “Trump is dissatisfied and looking to assign blame for a first 100 days in office defined by humiliation and defeat, according to half a dozen sources I’ve spoken to in recent days. At any given moment, what irks him might be the death of the healthcare bill, or the early misstep on the travel ban, or, perhaps most painfully of all, the old media chatter that Bannon is, in the words of Time, ‘the great manipulator.’ Trump attempted to dispel the latter perception last week in a remark to the New York Post, denying Bannon credit for the election victory against Hillary Clinton (‘I’m my own strategist’)… Bannon also might be paying the price for press Trump believes, accurately or not, Bannon engineered: ‘He thinks Steve was leaking against Jared and Ivanka,’ the source said. ‘If I was trying to fuck Steve? That’s what I would do.'”
“White House sources tell me the ideological split with Kushner is real but not quite the point — Bannon’s primary ‘gunfight’ is with economic adviser Gary Cohn, a longtime Democrat whose influence has ballooned as Bannon has fallen out of favor with the president. The Goldman Sachs alums — Bannon was an investment banker there in ‘80s, Cohn was the COO until earlier this year — can comfortably ‘shoot the shit,’ but mutual suspicion looms beneath the superficial friendliness.”
