Tuesday, January 9, 2018

NEW: Arpaio Met With Steve Bannon In December, "Discussed Politics" (LISTEN)

Former Maricopa County Sheriff and longtime Trump surrogate Joe Arpaio met with President Trump's Senior-Strategist-Turned-Sloppy-Steve Bannon to "discuss politics" last month. Today, Arpaio announced that he will run to replace the retiring Jeff Flake (R-AZ) in the Senate.

Arpaio announced the meeting in an interview with Fox News' Todd Starnes in response to a question about former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has been running for Flake's seat for several months, and Bannon. He side-stepped Ward, but said "I know Bannon. I spent some time with him last month. We did discuss politics, but that's not my issue."

He then used the opportunity to point out that "I was with (Trump) since day one...when nobody would even stand next to him."


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Bannon stepped down from his role as executive chairman from Breitbart News today, as he has come under withering attacks for the past month for his roles in the Alabama Senate race and the new book Fire and Fury.

Arpaio also used the interview to dismiss criticism from both Flake and the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. He said "I don't deal with that Senator," when asked about Flake. Perez was in charge of the Justice Department's lawsuit against the MCSO alleging racial profiling; Arpaio promised today to talk more about that in the future and warned Perez that he should be more worried about his own party.

Arizona's Politics has asked the Arpaio campaign for more details about the Bannon meeting, and will update this article as warranted.

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