Book Claim: Steve Bannon Called Trump Org “Criminal Enterprise,” Said “Scumbag” Trump Isn’t A Billionaire

The Guardian reports:

The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”.

The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is a sequel to Fire and Fury: Trump in the White House, which was a bestseller in 2018. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Amid publicity surrounding Fire and Fury, Bannon was ejected from circles close to Trump and his position at Breitbart News.

Another excerpt via Axios:

Of the eight justices currently serving, all were either Jews or Catholics. Kavanaugh was also a Catholic. Trump wondered: Weren’t there any WASP lawyers anymore? (Yes … Bob Mueller.) …

“You had all Protestants and then in a few years none. Doesn’t that seem strange?” he ruminated. “None at all.” The nominally Presbyterian Trump went on: “But I can’t say, ‘I want to put a Protestant on the Court for better representation.’ No, you can’t say that. But I should be able to.”

This fed into a larger theme that had surfaced during the Gorsuch nomination: Why wasn’t he being allowed to choose people he knew? He knew a lot of lawyers; why couldn’t he just pick one?