He lied
Jonathan Lemire has a new book out in which he reminds us about that ridiculous assertion by Bannon. No one in their right mind believed him, of course. Lemire writes:
The chief strategist told me that Trump ‘was not looking to win a news cycle, he was looking to win a news moment, a news second.’
“An at-times shell-shocked Bannon would relay to aides that ‘Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything to win that moment, to win whatever exchange he was having at that moment.’
“Entire campaign proposals had to be written on the fly, policy plans reverse engineered, teams of aides immediately mobilised to meet whatever floated through Trump’s head in that moment to defend his record, put down a reporter, or change a chyron on CNN.”
Bannon sees this as a tremendous asset for his own project, which is to destroy the world, What better instrument could you ask for?