YIKES

Steve Bannon Media-Coached Jeffrey Epstein Prior to Arrest: Report

Bannon reportedly recorded more than 15 hours of interviews with Epstein, who believed he was rehearsing for a big “60 Minutes” interview.

In 2019, according to a new book, media executive and erstwhile Trump confidant Steve Bannon took time out of his busy schedule to sit down with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and coach him through an imaginary 60 Minutes interview Epstein believed he would soon be doing. Bannon’s advice: Look into the camera occasionally, don’t be racist, deny you’re a pedophile. “You’re engaging, you’re not threatening,” Bannon reportedly told the sex offender at the end of the coaching session, “you’re natural, you’re friendly, you don’t look at all creepy, you’re a sympathetic figure.”

That’s the incendiary, previously unreported anecdote included at the end of a new book by writer Michael Wolff, author of the bestseller Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Though Bannon was an indispensable source for Wolff in Fire and Fury, Wolff wouldn’t tell The New York Times’ Ben Smith where he got these new Epstein transcripts. Bannon, in a statement, confirmed to the Times that he recorded more than 15 hours of interviews with Epstein, though he denied that he had ever “media-trained anyone.” Instead, Bannon claimed, the interviews with Epstein were not for 60 Minutes but an unreleased documentary Bannon was making on the billionaire’s “perversions and depravity.”