A sneak peek for Axios readers at a passage from "A Very Stable Genius," by the WashPost's Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, out Tuesday:
The night of January 23 [2017], the first Monday of his presidency, Trump came face‑to‑face with House and Senate leaders from both parties at a White House reception ... At a long table in the State Dining Room, Steve Bannon ... could not stop looking at Nancy Pelosi...
Pelosi assumed Trump would open the conversation on a unifying note, such as by quoting the Founding Fathers or the Bible. Instead, the new president began with a lie: "You know, I won the popular vote." He claimed that there had been widespread fraud, with three to five million illegal votes for Clinton. Pelosi interjected. "Well, Mr. President, that’s not true," she said. "There’s no evidence to support what you just said, and if we’re going to work together, we have to stipulate to a certain set of facts.
"Watching Pelosi challenge Trump, Bannon whispered to colleagues, "She’s going to get us. Total assassin. She’s an assassin."
Go deeper: The one book to understand Steve Bannon
