After former President Donald Trump fired Steve Bannon, other White House advisers joked that Bannon’s only job was leaking stories to the press, Jared Kushner wrote in his new memoir. “Stephen Miller joked to Hope [Hicks] and I, “I have a plan to divide Steve Bannon’s extensive workload. I hope you leaked it to Jonathan Swan at Axios. Jared, you’re calling Mike Bender from the Wall Street Journal. I’m going to call Jeremy Peters from the New York Times and … we’re done,” Kushner wrote, according to CNN. “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” details the crisis between former Trump adviser Kushner and Bannon. Kushner calls Bannon adept at “manipulating the media” and writes that Bannon had threatened to “leak” Kushner to the press after a call he made with The New York Times. At the time, Kushner was trying to shut down a story about Trump’s displeasure with Bannon and former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, CNN reported. According to Kushner’s account, after telling Bannon to stop leaking stories about Senior Financial Adviser Gary Cohn, Bannon said he would “break” Kushner “in half.” “Jared, right now, you’re the one undermining the President’s agenda,” he continued, his eyes intense and his voice rising to a scream. “And if you go against me, I will break you in half. — with me,” Kushner wrote, according to CNN. Kushner wrote that Bannon’s termination as Trump’s chief strategist and senior adviser in 2017 was his achievement. “Admitting that I still had no significant political success to show for my seven months in administration, I joked, ‘At least I managed to fire Steve Bannon,’” Kushner wrote. Bannon’s lawyers did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
