He gets bounced. It is going to get worse every day. Inside the departure of the white house. Threats of war from the world of breitbart. Is there going to be a war in this white house. Why he doesnt fix the problem with race. You have to ask yourself, where does it stop . Another mass resignation from a white house counsel. Excuse me. Excuse me. Actor cal penn. A look back at trumps worst week yet. Have you talked to him directly yet . Um, i have not and i will not. All in starts now. Good evening from new york, im joy reid in for chris hayes. Steve bannon is out, but hes not going easy. Exactly a year and a day after taking over the trump campaign, the former breitbart chairman and right wing lightning rod was dismiss zed, effective today from his job of chief white house strategist telling the weekly standard, the Trump Presidency we fought for and won is over. We will make something of that presidency, but that presidency is over. Bannon positioned himself as a voice inside the white house for the president s political base. Keeping a list of Trumps Campaign promises on a white board in his office. This week, he was the only white house official to publicly embrace and encourage the president s widely condemned response to the violence in charlottesville, which he defended participants in a White Nationalist rally. Business leaders and others denounced trumps white house. The president to dismiss bannon and any other aides who have connections of any kind to the White Nationalist movement. Bannon was known to clash with white house colleagues, including hr mcmaster and economic advise zer, gary cohen. Rules of it accelerated with john kelly as the chief of staff and bring order to the west wing. According to reports, it may have been a book that decided bannons fate. The devils bargain on bannons role and paving the way for the trump campaign. Listen to the response when asked about bannon earlier this week. I like mr. Bannon. Hes a friend of mine. Mr. Bannon came on very late, you know that. I went through 17 senators, governors and i won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that and i like him. Hes a good man, but, well see what happens with mr. Bannon. Buzz feed reports he said that fing steve bannon taking credit for my election. He told the weekly standard, i feel jacked up. Now im free. I have my hands back on my weapons. Joining me now to talk about what just happened are two men deeply sourced inside the Trump Administration. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Gabe, ill start with you at the table, thats quite a quote and another one from bannon. Im definitely going to crush the opposition. Theres no doubt. I built a bleeping machine at breitbart and about to go back knowing what i know and we are about to rev that machine up. Who is bannon going to war against . Is it donald trump . Thats classic bannon. He is a bombastic character. He is going to war against the moderate enemies inside the white house, that includes jared kushner, hr mcmaster, gary cohen. These are the people he was battling to to execute his populist agenda. This is a matter of bannons ideas. He has ideas, whether you agree or disagree. He was going to fight from the white house to pressure the white house not to abandon the message. Bill, to talk about how this came out. Of course you have the white house and the bannon folks leaking, then confirming, saying he really resigned on the 7th. Thats when he resigned, it was just effective today. Is that true or was he flat out fired . That is what bannon is telling his friends. Other white house officials are saying he was fired and this is a decision that general kelly largely made himself, of course with the blessing of President Trump. Its important to remember what kelly is trying to accomplish here. He is trying to bring order to a white house that for seven months have been ridden by back stabbing. Nothing is happening when it comes to the priorities the president wants to get done. Kelly is trying to bring order and getting rid of bannon is a way to do that. Phil, well stay with you. Where was javonka, jared and ivanka . We know jared and ivanka trump made a direct appeal to try to get their father and fatherinlaw to fire steve bannon. This is back in april or may. Theres long been tension between bannon and the kushner group. Trump didnt act on it then. Certainly, they are encouraging removing bannon. This is really a kellydriven decision to fire him. Lets talk about the mercers, they are the money behind breitbart and kellyanne conway. What might they do now that he is done. They are the money behind breitbart. They brought him into the campaign. They see bannon as the avatar of the movement. Now that he is out, they are billionaires, they are going to contribute millions of dollars to whatever venture he does next. Right now, it is going to be breitbart. I would not be surprised to see him leverage the billions of dollars and turn breitbart into a television network, buy a company. I think he sees himself in world, historical terms. He is not going to want to do something small. Whatever he does next, its going to be a big thing. Just stay with me for a second. Because they have always had fox news, the Republican Party has fox news in their corner. There are other medias swirling around. Trump thought trump might make one. What you are saying is bannon might go out and try to create his own media empire . Without question, that has to be on the table. We know theres a lot of tension between bannon and murdock. We used to know from reports Rupert Murdock told trump to fire steve bannon. He sees bannon and fox news as the right wing. Steve bannon sees them as part of the d. C. Swamp and wants his voice to be the new media right. And the demographic is 40 years younger, which is something that makes breitbart valuable. Donald trump is not yet, i havent checked his twitter feed in seven minutes, but he hasnt attacked bannon. Is donald trump afraid to attack bannon . We have heard rumors who say if bannon goes, we are unleashing our research on this white house . He is not engaged with bannon. Its interesting, the president didnt issue any kind of statement praising bannon for his service. He is worried about the impact or damage bannon could have on the outside, certainly if he is going to try to go to war with people inside the administration and hold the president to campaign promises. It could get ugly at some point. The plot thickens. Thank you guys, have a great weekend. Thank you so much. Now, i want to turn to somebody whose been vo tall about the president s behavior. Democrat of hawaii joins me from honolulu. Senator, welcome. Thanks. Thanks for having me. After charlottesville, you said this is not your president , that donald trump is unfit for office. Its not something we havent heard before. With bannon gone, does that change your view . No, it really doesnt. There was a fascinating panel about what happens next with steve bannon. He is obviously an outside character, grandiose character and dangerous person to have proximity to that much authority. In the end, the failures of this presidency are the president s failures. What happened in the wake of charlottesville was a perfect example of that. What we saw was that by all accounts, the president had a script that he was supposed to read where he met the basic moral test of being the leader of the free world, which is to say he knows the difference between nazis and people who protest against nauzs and hes the one that went off script. As dangerous as steve bannon is and as thankful as many of us are that hes leaving the white house, i think the real problem is the president of the United States and thats not going to change anytime soon. I want to put up the tweet you put up on tuesday. The day after Donald Trumps unprecedented conference. You wrote as a jew, an american as a human, words cannot express my disgust. He is not my president. A loaded meaning when people at breitbart use that term. Do you believe that jewish members of this cabinet should resign in protest, particularly given that breitbart is signaling they are coming for them . Yes. I think they have to. I think people of conscience cant pretent this president is something they hoped he would be. That they were hoping he would be competent, he would be a deal maker in the middle, a pragmatist. I remember reading an article online at the beginning of the presidency, he was going to function as an executive chairman and allow each one of his cabinet officials to run the government as they see fit. None of that happened. His ability to make deals and make pragmatists and be a leader for the United States, none of it came through. What i thought was really hopeful over the last few days is there are republicans who are patriots, who are finally standing up and saying enough is enough. Mitt romney, both president s bush, many of the leaders of the Service Branches of the department of defense and finally, some of my Senate Colleagues on the republican side whom i have been critical of for not doing enough. They said harsh things and i think this is the beginning of the end of republicans being able to hide behind some imaginary donald trump that clearly doesnt exist anymore. This person is not capable morally, politically or in terms of incompetencies to lead the free world. Notably on that list of people who stood up to donald trump in the wake of the monday press conference are Mitch Mcconnell who issued a statement later and private concerns and on the house side, paul ryan. Without their leadership, do you expect your colleagues on the other side of the aisle to have the courage to standup to him with more than words . I think theres a ground swell. The majority leader mcconnell and speaker ryan will be among the last to turn. One of the things that was exciting for the country in the last week or the work period was john mccains no vote where we rejected what they were going to do. A 982 vote for tougher sanctions, which the president was trying to stop all the way through. Yeah. Even in that week, add to that jeff flakes sharp comments that week, you have the beginning of the mouse that is the legislative branch starting to roar. I dont want to overstate this because we have a long way to go. I was encouraged by republican patriots, people with whom i disagree on almost everything when it comes to policy, but who are moral and decent human beings who want to do the right thing by the country, who say look, i have few bright lines, but understanding the difference between nazis and those who oppose are one of those bright lines. We are going to see more of that rather than less. You would think. Thank you for your time tonight. Thanks, joy. Thank you. Lets turn for republican reaction. Mickeyedwards represented oklahoma for 16 years. He is Vice President of the aspen institute. Thanks for being here. Glad to be here. This is a staff photo of the oval office in the beginning, this must be in january. Steve bannon, reince priebus, sean spicer, general flynn. You can see it there. Everyone at that table, with the exception of mike pence is gone. Most of the people around that table represented the republican establishment, except for bannon. What do you make of the fact bannon is gone, too. I dont make much of it, joy. The problem is not steve bannon. I mean hes a terrible human being with crazy ideas, the problem is donald trump. I agree with what brian was just saying. It is donald trump who doesnt know the difference between people who are neonazi or whatever term they want to use that the White Nationalists and the people standing up against them. It is donald trump who doesnt understand that you have to have a certain level of competence in order to make things work. You know, this is he has a good habit here for himself that switches our direction and gets us to look in the other direction. Its not steve bannon, its donald trump and he is still there. Lets talk about the republican base. Run in the Republican Party. Donald trump knew something about the gop base that the rest of the party did not. He defeated 16 other people who are establishment types. Is the base of the party more bannonite than republicans want to admit . They might be. I think there are a lot of people in the Republican Party, especially those who are from areas that have been hard hit economically, who are just desperate. They are looking for something different. I will tell you, i mean, im concerned by the number of people who remained silent, not only as we talked about, both Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan. Let me add, there are people within the Republican Party, in the leadership and in the mix who are speaking out not supporting bigotry. Big deal. It is not about that. Thats easy to say. What you need to do is call out the president. These people voted for him. They put him in office. He didnt just parachute in. They have a great responsibility now. I, personally think those members of congress, republican or democrat, those who dont call out donald trump by name at this point are going to have a legacy they are never going to be able to repair. Should congress sensor the president . I think they should for a lot of things. Here is the enabler of what the White Nationalists are doing. He is the validater. He is not somebody who sits there and failed to say the right things. You know, he kind of messed up, didnt say the right things when this happened. He is the person who gives them the credibility to say, look, the president does this, why cant we. Yeah. What do you say to members of congress who are in, you know, still actively in politics who say, if we turn against this president , we will lose our seats. Then they lose their seats. The United States is more important than who stays in congress forever. Theres life after congress. What is happening is you see among members of congress, this is part of the partisanship that i talk about all the time. These are members of congress who took an oath of office. It was not to defend their party. It was not to help their party or to pass a particular tax bill or a particular budget. The oath of office was to defend the United States and the constitution of the United States. If you lose your seat, because you stood up to do what was right, people are going to cheer you and look back and say that was somebody who had courage, principles and people now who arent doing it. I dont know how they are going to live with themselves. History will judge. Mickeyedwards, thank you for joining me. Thank you, joy. Next, more on what steve bannon means for the Trump White House after this two minute break. You know whats awesome . Gigspeed internet. You know whats not awesome . When only certain people can get it. Lets fix that. Lets give this guy gig really . And these kids. And these guys. Him. Ah. Oh hello that lady. These houses yes, yes and yes. And dont forget about them. Uh huh. Sure. Still yes you can get it too. Welcome to the party. Introducing gigspeed internet from xfinity. Finally, gig for your neighborhood too. Long before steve bannon joined up, donald trump launched his campaign with this. When mexico sends their people, they are not sending their best. They are bringing drugs, crime, they are rapists, some, i assume are good people. Without help from bannon, trump claimed this. People cheering on the other side of new jersey where you have large arab populations were cheering when the World Trade Center came down. Then theres the birther conspiracy. A birth certificate is not even close. A certificate of live birth is not signed by anybody. I saw his. I read it very carefully. Doesnt have a serial number of signature. Decades before that, in 1989, trump stoked racial tensions with fullpage ads calling for the execution of the teenagers dubbed the central park five when they were falsely accused of rape. He was incensed when the wrongly convicted men received a settlement from the city. So, as the president s chief strategist leaves the Trump Administration, does anything really change inside the white house . Jason johnson and john harwood are joining me now. Jason, donald trump has a reputation that far proceeds steve bannon. Right. Was steve bannon the reason donald trump seemed to truck with racism and sooen phobia . Not really. Who you hire is a reflix of your values. You had bannon, miller. Trump was racist enough before he brought bannon in. He didnt need bannons help. He provided him with a cover in media so trump could pretend it was okay. I want to play what bannon said at cpac. This was a thing donald trump didnt have when bannon joined up. This is him talking about globalists. Its not only not going to get better, its going to get worse every day. Here is why. The logic makes sense. They are corporatists, globalists media that are adamantly opposed adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda that donald trump has. John, is there a case to be made that the racism piece in the sort of, you know, allowing White Nationalists to march saying they are good people. He didnt need bannon for that. What you heard is what bannon brought to the table, the populism, the agenda trump may not have had going on. I dont think so, joy. Donald trump was talking about bad trade deals for a very long time, back to nafta and before nafta. I think donald trump, as jason was indicated, was reaching out for somebody with some of the same sentiments he had at a time when his campaign was doing badly. What donald trump does when times are tough is go more fiercely toward his comfort zone because that is where he is going to get applause. Internally, bannon reflected that. Externally, the rallies reflect that. He wants to be bathed in applause. The other thing, its not irrelevant in this week, when we are talking about White Supremacists and neonazis that 90 years ago, Donald Trumps father was arrested at a klan event in new york and years after that, in the 1970s, a Republican Justice Department sued the Trump Company that involved the father and the son for discriminating against africanamericans. So, there are some things that are deep within donald trump that steve bannon had nothing to do with. Jason, to that point of needing to get applause and the things he wants applause for. I want to play donald trump in march 10, 2016 before steve bannon came on to the campaign. I think islam hates us. Theres something theres something there thats a tremendous hatred there. Theres a tremendous hatred, we have to get to the bottom of it. That didnt come from steve bannon. Bannon is like the emperor and trump is like vader. Hes like teach me how to be more racist and more effectively racist. That is what their relationship was. Whats dangerous is now that bannon is on the outside, he can pretend he has a globalist agenda, start a media empire, expose how dangerous and how close this administration is to White Nationalists and how dangerous that is going to be for all of us. Trump has no ground to stand on. He cant say i dont have these beliefs. He is surrounded by people who dont agree with that. That is the question, john harwood, for the Republican Party. Because to admit this is the core base, that donald trump still has it has base would be to say that White Nationalist base is the base. If donald trump loses steve bannon, does the bottom drop out of his base . Not necessarily. I think the kind of people that we are talking ability, you could call them White Nationalists, you could call them people who are motivated by racial resentment, its part of the republican base. Its not most of the Republican Party, but the part that got donald trump the nomination and put him over the top in the rust belt states. I think the Republican Party, if they are rational and looking to the future, a country Getting Better educated and more diverse with every passing year, a majority, minority country in 30 years, they are going to have to separate themselves from the rawest elements of this base, which bannon speaks to and figure out a way to develop a different identity. Some of them are talking about doing that, talking about pretending as if the president doesnt exist and trying to define the Republican Party their own way. A pollster had this theory that donald trump proved, that republicans max out the white vote and resentment helps you do that. Does donald trump prove they should triple down on that or can they win the election without the bannonites. Trump didnt believe they could win with the white base only. You can. With Voter Suppression and making sure they are turning out to vote on a regular basis. The other thing is this, bannon, is gone, but you have republicans who want to push forward the policy. They want to limit immigration. It is a Winning Strategy for the Republican Party. Whether it will be in 2020, i dont know. For now, they have no reason to change. Thank you guys. Have a great weekends. Still to come, my interview with the cal penn on the message of the president from the Trump White House. That story is next. Trump lost an average of one Advisory Group a day since the tuesday press conference on white supremacist in charlottesville. Half a dozen ceos ditched his manufacturing counsel. His policy forum was dismantling themselves. Rather than putting pressure on the Business People i end them both. You cant quit me, i quit you. Abandoning the Infrastructure Council while being formed. Today, they quit en masse, politico pointing out they are an official agency making it the First White House department to resign. The president insisted, no, no, he was doing the dumping. A white house spokesperson saying earlier this month it was decided President Trump would not renew the executive order for the arts and humanity. Thats not the way the Arts Community remembers it. Cal penn was on that committee and joins me live to respond to the white house, next. The entire president s committee on the arts and humanities resign in protest of equivocation of White Supremacists and neonazis. The letter included they are not american values. Your values are not american values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, we call on you to resign your office, too. The note included one additional message. The first letter of each paragraph spelled out one word, resist. The man behind that message, actor and former member of the Arts Committee is here. Thanks for having me. You tweeted the letter. You said earlier this month, it was decided sorry, you said dear donald trump here is our letter of resignation. That got retweeted a lot. Then the white house made a statement, no, no, no. They decided to disband it. It wasnt these guys. Who broke up with whom . Unfortunately, we broke up with him first. He is not allowed to break up with us after that. I learned that in fourth grade. How did it come together . Discuss the process the members decided to quit together. Sure. Probably half the original members left after the administration change but the we were a committee that doesnt turn out. You mentioned we are technically a white house agency. Half of us figure we dont agree with the president on almost anything. If our mandate is Arts Education and cultural diplomacy, that is what we are there for, why not see how much we can get done. This week was particularly pronounced and a lot of us didnt want to be complicit with this. A few of us said, look, im thinking of resigning, is anyone else feeling the same way. Turned out we all did. We have had over the course of a few weeks, several honnorees say we are not going to show up. Business leaders walked away from the business councils. Maralago losing five or more charity events. Were you influenced by the trickle that is turning into a flood of people walking away . No. I dont think so. Look, we didnt set out to influence anybody else or to do what anybody else has done. We looked at ourselves and said this is far beyond you have a sitting president who is equating a terrorist with the quote, unquote, other side. We said, look, we have this incredible arts program turn around arts launched through the president s committee. It is vibrant and doing well. What do we tell our kids when they ask us, is this normal . We said, we cant stand around and have our names attached to Something Like this. For us, that certainly was the right decision. You mentioned the kennedy center. I have only gone one time, i got to go last year. People know you as having gotten involved in the quasi governmental programs during the obama administration. How difficult has it been for people in the arts to reckon with this Administration Given the blatant statements against muslims, mexicans or against, you know, pick a group. Great question. Artists view themselves and folks who work in humanities do, to. You try to spark a conversation. The arts should, in an ideal world, spark that conversation. I think the president s fy 2018 budget, not shocking, was definitely disturbing. Zero dollars for the nea and neh. You can have trumps talk all they want publicly about how great the arts are and how we should be educating our children in the arts, but when, particularly ivanka when she was Senior Adviser and theres zero dollars for it, it is clear how they feel. Most artists know how to do a lot with little. You have very small arts organizations with incredible staffs and outreach, folks like americans for the arts doing everything they can to make sure not just the nea and neh budgets are put back in, but folks are aware of this. If you were invited to the white house, would you go . I dont think im getting that invite. If he wanted to invite you to come, would grow . I would politely decline right now. I have to say i certainly hope they dont abandon the arts. If folks dont know theres a huge economic compareson. Thats the between an Engineering Education and stem with the arts. If they are serious about this, i hope they continue down that path. Cal penn, currently part of the great cast on designated survivor. He is doing Amazing Things as an artist. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Still to come, the catastrophic week with the Trump Presidency. Another of trumps billionaire buddies backs out in the thing one, thing two, next. How your clothes smell can say at lot about you. Thats why new downy protect and refresh conditions fibers to lock out odors. So clothing odors dont do the talking for you. Lock out odors with new downy protect and refresh. Thing 1 denied if theres one guy donald trump really liked to talk about on the campaign trail, it was carl ikan. I want people negotiating my deals, not hacks. Carl icahn. I have carl icahn. I will call the executors or have carl icahn do it. Trump was so excited to have carl icahn that during the transition in december, trump named him to be the special adviser on regulatory matters. We have an update on trump and carl icahn. Its time for the biggest sale of the year with the new sleep number 360 smart bed. It senses and automatically adjusts on both sides. The new 360 smart bed is part of our biggest sale of the year where all beds are on sale. And right now save 50 on the labor Day Limited Edition bed. As organizations and Business Leaders cut ties in droves this week following Donald Trumps approach to White Supremacists. Today, with President Trumps blessing, i cease to act on regulatory reform. He posted the letter he sent trump, claiming he was resigning for any he writes, i chose to end this arrangement with your blessing because i do fot want partisan bickering to cloud your administration. Is timing is notable given the timing of the events. I had no duties whatsoever. I never had a formal position with your administration nor a policymaking role. I sincerely hope the limited insights i have shared have been helpful to you. Carl icahn wants you to know he barely had a relationship with them before. That has been severed today. Just around this time last week, images of a whos who of hate Groups Holding tiki torches showed up online. They were in charlottesville, virginia that turned deadly when an attendee drove a car into a group of protesters, killing 32yearold Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. After botching the response, the president appeared to try a script. That lasted until the next day when he was in the lobby of trump tower and defended the people who rallied in charlottesville. I have condemned neonazis. I have condemned many groups. Not all of those people were neonazis, believe me. You had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group excuse me, excuse me, i saw the same pictures you did. Today, at the end of the week where the president failed to show moral leadership, when steve bannon left the white house and marched back to the socalled platform of the altright and linked him to White Supremacists, we learned donald trump never spoke to the mother of the young woman killed in charlottesville. Saturday, his staffers tried to call Heather Heyers mother, during her daughters funeral. At first, i just missed his calls. The first cal looked like it came during the funeral. I didnt even see that message. There were three more frantic messages from press secretaries throughout the day. Im not talking to the president now, im sorry. After what he said about my child. Its not that i saw somebody elses tweets about him, i saw a clip of him at a conference saying the protesters like miss heyer with the kkk and White Supremacists. Can this president sink any lower . Well take stock of the events of this truly unbelievable week, next. Where is it . Oh, boy, its in charlottesville. Its the winery. I know a lot about charlottesville. Its a great place thats been very badly hurt over the last couple of days. I own one of the largest wineries in the United States. Its in charlottesville. Believe it or not, the president had just been asked a question about whether he had any plans to visit charlottesville in the wake of the attack there and he responded by talking about his winery. Betsy woodrow has been covering the story for the daily beast. On this day when bannon has left and essentially kind of declared war on the white house, if it comes down to a war between bannon and breitbart and trump, who would the base of the Republican Party choose . Well, thats been the question all day, honestly. I mean, if you look at the way drudge came out to try to almost be a peacemaker saying bannon had one heck of a ride, whatever it is that he said, i think theres going to be divisions about trumps style Going Forward and theres going to be a lot of criticisms coming from breitbart that we hadnt seen before. I think theyre mostly still on the same side. That said, i think i think bannon specifically, when he gets the idea in his head that he needs vengeance on some one, when he gets the idea that he needs to get revenge on some one that has wronged him, all of the things that are important stop mattering and what matters most is winning and hes sort of a game of thrones kind of guy, win or die. That sounds exactly like donald trump. And when you see that clip of him talking about his winery instead of talking about the tragedy he turned it right back to himself, i wonder what kind of trump he becomes without bannon. I mean, what tea leaves can you read for us . All we have to do is look at the first few months of his candidacy of president to understand what hes going to be like before bannon, as you guys have highlighted on the show, trump pushed conspiracy theories and demonized people of color and women and criticized his enemies often based on alternate facts, if you will, and in the era after bannon, trump is going to be the same. Its important for viewers to understand that a lot of the narrative of bannon as a puppet master or a darth vader figure or the man behind the curtain was pushed enthusiastically by bannon himself. He spent time on the phone texting with reporters trying to persuade them that he was the power behind trump and the driving force when in fact he wasnt doing a huge amount for the last few weeks. Symbolically he was really important but practically he wasnt a huge player. He didnt have much of a portfolio when he was pushed out, reports indicate that general kelly didnt even know what bannons real job was. For the most part, he was kind of a nonplayer. He was basically a figure head now that hes moving to breitbart, hell be able to weaponize that symbolism. He doesnt pass the smell test. The rant that he went on was something special. Its so goofy and over the top and you see it at breitbart and with trump and its this exaggerated cartoonist chest thumping that many of us are acutely aware of. I wonder what happens functionally if donald trump is himself in his persona but that functionally and policywise the gary cohns of the world prevail and just pushing tax cuts, taking office, trillion dollar infrastructure off the table and no more trade wars with mexico. If he becomes a garden variety republican, what happens to his base then . I think his base will turn on him and a moderate platform, if he starts to come around with democrats on and insert himself in such a chaotic, ridiculous way that he will make it difficult to pass things that might have bipartisan support. Even if he finds some middle ground in talks in the white house, i have a hard time seeing anyone ever wanting to be near him publicly because hes such a train wreck. And betsy, i guess thats kind of what i kind of pictured, too. Ive had this song mr. Lonely in my head all day. You have republicans who cant exactly do a photo op. Even if he went toward them on policy, it doesnt seem that they would come back to him either, right . No. And just not republicans but ceos and Business Leaders that he and the white house were relying on to pass tax reform. Remember, after the failure of the aca repeal, the one thing republicans really have left as a possible win was doing some tax reform packs cage and the white house communication strategy was to spend the month of august getting ceos and corporate icons to try to push their constituencies, to push their employees, their Group Members to try to get tax reform to happen and perplexingly, the president seemed to think that the best way to push tax reform was by kicking off a National Conversation about robert e. Lee. Its extremely baffling. Thats why hes going to have so much trouble getting anything accomplished. Is donald trump a lame duck . He may as well be considered to be a resigned president. I cant imagine him getting anything done. Wow. Quite definitive. That is all in this evening. Catch me saturday and sunday for am joy and as a bonus, ill be back at 7 00 p. M. To host politics of hate. Make sure you tune in for both. As for tonight, you know what tonight steve bannon is out. He walked out of the west ring and right into the breitbart newsroom and declaring he feels jacked up and frees and his hands are back on his weapons and democrats wonder if the nations most prominent nationalist was more dangerous on the inside or out of the side white house. And also tonight while the fallout continues from the charlottesville, the resolving door swings again as the president is now without the core group he came to office with. All of it as the 11th hour on a friday night gets underway now. And live on a friday evening, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 211 of the Trump Administration and the white house is now without the man routinely parodies on snl as the grim reaper. Steve bannon is out. He said he resigned and other sources say he was hout and they say it was a agreement. General john kelly, the white house chief of staff, left the white house and as quickly as you could say alt right, he whats was right back at breitbart and full of action word quotes for the reporters who talked to him. He was greeted at his old shop with the headline, populist hero steven k. Bannon returns to