Steve Bannon believed Trump had early stage dementia, TV producer claims

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon thought Donald Trump was suffering from early-stage dementia and campaigned covertly to remove him from office via the 25th amendment, according to a veteran TV producer.

Ira Rosen, the author of a new memoir about his work for CBS, Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes, was speaking to Skullduggery, a podcast from Yahoo News.

Rosen told hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman his book was “not a dish on this person or that person”, then gave listeners a taste of the dish inside.

He was asked about his relationship with Bannon, which developed around attempts to set up a 60 Minutes interview. “Steve is a big talker, a big gossiper,” Rosen said. “He became a source for a lot of media people in Washington.”

The former investment banker and failed Hollywood producer who came to run the ultra-rightwing Breitbart News website was Trump’s campaign chairman in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton. But Bannon was fired as a White House strategist in August 2017, amid fallout over Trump’s praise for white supremacist marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Bannon was a source for tell-all books but re-entered Trump’s orbit as the 2020 election approached. After his defeat by Joe Biden, Trump pardoned Bannon on a fraud charge relating to a fundraising effort for a wall on the US border with Mexico. Bannon remains a media gadfly, hosting a hard-right podcast.

In the early days of the Trump administration, Rosen said, he “became kind of a therapist” for Bannon, “loitering in the chief of staff’s office, drinking Diet Cokes … and he would kind of download to me on stories”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/16/trump-dementia-claims-steve-bannon-25th-amendment