The Righteous Brothers make this picture so much better.

With the revelation in Michael Wolff’s book that Steve Bannon seemed to have a low opinion of his former meal ticket’s ability to understand what was going on, Bannon became a target of both the Trump Administration and a large swath of the conservative base that Bannon used to get Trump elected in the first place.

In an effort to get back in the good graces of the President, Bannon had prepared a statement regarding the book and, specifically, addressing comments he appears to have made about Don Jr. and his meeting with the Russians.

However, before Bannon could get that statement out, Trump himself took to Twitter and disavowed Bannon, later giving him the “low-level staffer” treatment he’s afforded others who have fallen from grace.

The Daily Beast has apparently gotten ahold of Bannon’s statement, summarizing one part and quoting another in this piece about Bannon and Trump’s relationship gone awry.

The Daily Beast has obtained portions of the final draft of Bannon’s unreleased statement.

In them, the Breitbart chairman noted that he has previously and repeatedly called the Trump-Russia investigation baseless and a “witch hunt by the left.” (The term “witch hunt” is one of the president’s preferred ways of describing the ongoing Russia probes.)

Bannon then went on to praise the president and his son.

“Don Jr., like his father, is a great American and a patriot. And we all know Don Jr. did not knowingly meet with Russian agents,” the next paragraph of Bannon’s unreleased statement read.

[…]

The text of Bannon’s written statement that was obtained by The Daily Beast does not mention Kushner, a top White House adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law who Bannon had feuded with in the West Wing and whom Bannon repeatedly disparages to Wolff.

The information we have to go on indicates that Bannon has learned the age-old lesson regarding political power: No one sits higher than the king.