Michael Wolff Quote

The face-off quickly escalated into an existential confrontation between the two sides of the White House—two sides on a total war footing. You don’t know what you’re doing, shouted a livid Bannon at Hicks, demanding to know who she worked for, the White House or Jared and Ivanka. You don’t know how much trouble you are in, he screamed, telling her that if she didn’t get a lawyer he would call her father and tell him he had better get her one. You are dumb as a stone! Moving from the cabinet room across the open area into the president’s earshot, a loud, scary, clearly threatening Bannon, in the Jarvanka telling, yelled, I am going to fuck you and your little group! with a baffled president plaintively wanting to know, What’s going on? In the Jarvanka-side account, Hicks then ran from Bannon, hysterically sobbing and visibly terrified. Others in the West Wing marked this as the high point of the boiling enmity between the two sides. For the Jarvankas, Bannon’s rant was also a display that they believed they could use against him. The Jarvanka people pushed Priebus to refer the matter to the White House counsel, billing this as the most verbally abusive moment in the history of the West Wing, or at least certainly up among the most abusive episodes ever.