That could happen, at least according to Trump himself. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Trump said when I asked him about Bannon in February, during an Oval Office interview. “I watched Bannon a few times, four or five times over the last six months. Nobody says anything better about me right now than Bannon. I don’t know.”…

A person close to the White House who was previously a member of the administration said that he had “noticed” Trump recently “softening” toward Bannon. “I want to say yes, but then he does stuff that hurts his own cause.” This person, who asked for anonymity in order to not imperil professional relationships, says that Trump was upset that Bannon cooperated with Wolff on Siege, but not nearly as upset as he had been with Fire and Fury. (The White House declined to comment on the record for this story.)

“He will never be back in an official capacity,” the White House insider adds, “but if he’s smart, he could get back into good graces.”

Nothing Trump told me suggests those rumors are untrue. Our conversation moved on, but then the president later returned, unprompted, to the subject of his former chief strategist. “There is nobody that has been more respectful of the job I’m doing than Steve Bannon,” Trump told me.