White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday told Fox News host Chris Wallace he was “going bananas” when the anchor repeatedly asked about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with a Russian official about sanctions.
“Michael Flynn calling the Russian ambassador saying ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll review the sanctions,'” Wallace said. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that?”
“You don’t know he [Flynn] said that,” The former Republican National Committee chief told Wallace.
Priebus said that in the course of Flynn’s former job he would call “30 different leaders a day” and it would be expected such issues would come up in conversation.
“What are these people supposed to do? Not talk about the actual issues of the day, Chris?” Priebus asked.
The two circled back and forth as Priebus became frustrated with Wallace’s questions and said, “I don’t know why you are going bananas, Chris.”
“I’m not going bananas,” Wallace responded, before rephrasing the question. “It seems odd that the president of the United States, then Barack Obama, imposes sanctions because he said that Russia had interfered with — undermined the election coming and you have Michael Flynn calling the Russian ambassador saying, ‘don’t worry about it, we’ll review the sanctions.’ You don’t think there’s anything wrong with that?”
Priebus denied that Vice President Mike Pence did not know for 14 days that he had been misled by Flynn on matters related to that conversation.
“What the vice president did not know, I believe, was that Sally Gates gave an initial heads up to Don McGahn. But once the next day came, that investigation was closed, Chris. That topic did not come up again. This whole conversation shifted to whether or not Michael Flynn was honest with the vice president. He was looped in on the conversation, and it was determined that he was not. That was it,” Priebus said.
