Sanders: Bannon likes to speak in ‘the most extreme measures’

Responding to Steve Bannon’s lengthy interview on “60 Minutes,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist tends to speak in extreme language and suggested that she does not agree with everything he said.

At Monday’s daily briefing, Sanders fielded several questions about Bannon, whose lengthy interview with Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes” aired on Sunday. It made news for, among other bombastic remarks, his blunt criticism of the Catholic Church and former colleagues in the White House, like economic adviser Gary Cohn (Bannon said he should quit).


Bannon, who chaired Trump’s presidential campaign in its later stages and refers to himself as a nationalist and populist, left the administration last month and returned to the right-wing website Breitbart News, where he is executive chairman.

When a reporter asked Sanders to respond to Bannon’s assertion that the immigration debate could cause a “civil war” within the Republican Party, Sanders deflected, saying, “I think that Steve always likes to speak in kind of the most extreme measures. I’m not sure that I agree with that.”

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Sanders said Trump has seen clips from the interview but she was not sure if he had seen it in full.

The press secretary also dodged a question about whether the president agrees with Bannon's assessment that Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan want to "nullify" the results of the presidential election.

"Not that I'm aware of, but I haven't had that conversation with him," she said.