Doug Jones: I’m going to keep on ignoring Bannon

Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) said early Thursday he “doesn’t want to get in the middle” of the feud between President Trump and former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon. 

“I’m ready to work for the people of Alabama and to get going right now,” Jones, who was sworn in on Wednesday, said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“I ignored Steve Bannon during the campaign, I’m going to ignore him right now,” he added.

{mosads}Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election last month to fill Attorney Jeff Sessions’s old seat. Bannon backed Moore both in the GOP primary and the general election.

On Wednesday morning, quotes from Bannon criticizing Trump and his administration were published in excerpts from an upcoming book by journalist Michael Wolff titled “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

In the excerpts, Bannon described a July 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that included Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

He also said he believed there was “zero” chance that the president was not aware of the meeting, which contradicts previous White House statements.

Bannon, who was fired from his White House post in August, is quoted often in the excerpts as a central figure in President Trump’s inner circle. 

President Trump tore into Bannon on Wednesday afternoon, painting him as someone who inflated his role within the administration and who “lost his mind” when he left the White House.

Jones on Thursday repeatedly said he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to comment on Bannon’s statements.

He said the truth will come out through ongoing investigations in Congress into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. 

“I do think that it’s important that people in Congress, people around in the Senate and the House, to let these investigations take their course,” Jones said. “Rather than just making public comments a lot, I think they need to take their course.”