DONALD Trump has accused former chief strategist Steve Bannon of having “lost his mind” over explosive claims in a new book.
In a book about his time in the White House, Mr Bannon called a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr and his father's top campaign officials "treasonous" and “unpatriotic” .
In an angry statement this evening, Mr Trump hit back, accusing the Breitbart boss of “leaking false information to the media to make himself seem more important than he was”.
He blasted: “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency.
“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
He went on: "Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look.
“Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.
“Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans.
“Steve doesn't represent my base - he's only in it for himself.
"Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was.
“It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”
According to the new book, 'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House', by Michael Wolff, Mr Bannon had expressed astonishment over the meeting in Trump Tower in New York.
At the sit-down, it is claimed a Russian lawyer was offering damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The meeting arranged by Trump's son also included MrTrump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
It has become part of a federal investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the election. Mr Trump has denied any such collusion.
Mr Bannon says in the book: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor - with no lawyers.
“They didn't have any lawyers.
"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s***, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."
The book, due out next Tuesday, was based on more than 200 interviews with Trump, senior White House staffers and confidantes conducted by Wolff, a contributing editor for The Hollywood Reporter.
Mr Bannon became Trump's campaign manager in the months before the November 2016 election, but after the Trump Tower meeting, and was chief White House strategist during the turbulent first eight months of Trump's presidency.
The President fired Mr Bannon in August, removing a far-right architect of his election victory and a driving force behind his nationalist and anti-globalisation agenda.
In the book, Mr Bannon also said he believed the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow will focus on money laundering.