ROBERT KUTTNER, The American Prospect:

Well, I got an e-mail from someone at the White House who says that Mr. Bannon would like me to come into the White House and meet with him.

So, I double-checked the e-mail address, which looked legit, and I called the guy, and he seemed legit. And I said, look, I'm on vacation, but this is kind of a fast-moving story, so I would be happy to speak with him by phone, if he would like to.

And what had happened was, he had read a column I had written the day before basically making the point that, because we have been so passive in taking on illegal Chinese trade practices, that Beijing now has a huge amount of leverage over us, where we want them to help us with North Korea, but the price for that is we have got to fold our hand in terms of taking a hard line with them on trade.

So, Bannon apparently read that and felt he had a soul mate, and didn't take the precaution of making clear whether we were on background or on the record, and called me up and sounded as if we were soul mates and best friends.

And it was like I was part of a private strategy session with Stephen Bannon, which was really quite bizarre. And about two or three minutes in, I said to myself, oh, wow, he is not putting this off the record. And I'm certainly not going to mention it if he doesn't mention it.

And, of course, the ground rules are that when a government official calls you and doesn't say whether it's off the record or on the record, the default setting is that it's on the record.

And so, 25 minutes later, I have this astonishing interview, which I recorded.