President Donald Trump and Breitbart News honcho turned top White House advisor Steve Bannon were once BFFs set on destroying American together. Ah, the good ol’ days! But then Bannon offended his boy, and Trump did what he usually did, which was get mad, and cut ties.
The public divorce got even worse in the past week, owing to the fact that Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, a fly-on-the-wall account of the author’s time as an embedded reporter in the first year of the Trump administration, contains a portion where Bannon calls the Trump campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer “treasonous.” (It majorly factors into Robert Mueller’s investigation of the legality of the 2016 Trump campaign.) Trump got real mad this time, and had his lawyers send a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, as if that would do anything.
Now, Donald Trump isn’t good at a lot of things—staying married, keeping his temper in check, being president—but he is good at making up ridiculous nicknames for his increasingly long list of enemies, and to those who slight him in some way. In the past, Trump has gifted the world with taunts like “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, “Little Marco” Rubio, “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Low Energy Jeb” Bush, “Crazy Bernie” Sanders, “Crying Chuck” Schumer, “Psycho Joe” Scarborough, and “Crazy Megan” Kelly, to name just a few.
They aren’t always terribly accurate, fair, or nice, but they are amusing and memorable. In the wake of his public spat with Steve Bannon, Trump has come up with his best derisive nickname yet. In a primetime tweet last night deriding both Wolff and his old “partner in crime,” Trump made us all forever want to refer to Steve Bannon as “Sloppy Steve.”
I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018