Told Trump “has not always told the truth”, Bannon said: “I don’t know that” and also said claims Trump lied were “another thing to demonise him”.

His host, Jonathan Karl, asked: “The president’s never lied?”

Bannon said: “Not to my knowledge, no.”

But Lemire writes that “even for Bannon, Trump was something new. 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.”