Amid the 2016 Presidential campaign, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly told late Fox News head Roger Ailes to "go fuck yourself" during the Trump campaign’s battle with the news network.
New York Magazine reported that Ailes, who died in May, sent his personal lawyer, Peter Johnson Jr., to Breitbart headquarters in D.C. to tell Bannon to stop running stories against then-Fox News host Megan Kelly, who questioned to President Trump during a primary debate about his behavior and language about women.
As The Hill reports, Bannon reportedly refused to call off the coverage, calling Kelly “pure evil” and saying that she would turn on Ailes one day.
“We’re going full-bore. We’re not going to stop. I’m gonna unchain the dogs,” Bannon said, according to the magazine, before telling Johnson to “go back to New York and quote me to Roger. ‘Go f--- yourself.’”
Ailes initially called Bannon after the debate over the negative coverage, saying that it wasn’t “fair and it’s killing us. You have to stop it,” the magazine reported.
“F--- that, that was outrageous what she did!” Bannon reportedly said. “She pulled every trick out of the leftist playbook.”
Ailes and Bannon didn’t speak for a year after the exchange, according to New York Magazine.
Bannon later took a leave of absence from Breitbart to join the Trump campaign and then the president's administration.
Given these comments to a generally 'friendly' media outlet, we can only imagine the behind the scenes words used in discussions with Zucker and CNN...