what may explain the finality in that statement that the president put out earlier about steve bannon is that in this book bannon goes after trump s son and trump s son-in-law, and makes very serious allegations about them. i think that s crossing some kind of a rube ba coicon betwee relationship between the two men that have been remarkable, if you think about it. bannon left the white house under bumpy circumstances. it s not the first time he s criticized the president, the people around him or the president s policies and yet each time bannon has managed to preserve his relationship with the president. and i think in part because physicalsovg philosophic think they re an the same wavelength. the president respected what bannon was telling him for all intents and purposes. in the wake of these revelations it s hard to see how these two repair that breach.
the story in the new york times, michael schmidt. good to see you. what can you tell us about bannon and the subpoena? this was a bit unusual in this investigation. so far every white house official that we ve known that has gone on to meet with mueller has done so in a less formal setting in his office. we ve known of no other subpoenas that have been issued related to folks directly around the president, folks like steve bannon or folks like reince priebus or sean spicer. the thing here is that mueller will probably allow bannon to not appear before the grand jury. he ll probably let that go and will allow bannon to come in and speak with him in his office. what we don t really understand is that why did mueller go to this measure? why did he dial it up on this issue? the thing that s interesting about this is the subpoena was handed down in the days after fire and fury came out. the new book of course about the west wing. that talks about how, you know, quoting steve bannon, t
bannon talking to the new york times back in november about collusion. let s listen. i think the collusion thing is, i said from day one is a joke. i was there. we couldn t collude. we had a tough time colluding between pennsylvania avenue and the rnc. now saying the trump tower meeting is treasonous. what do you make of the book and things steve bannon is quoted as saying? well, i mean, i think it s important to remember the kind of role that steve bannon played for president trump from the very beginning. this guy is an insurgent. he really was, as kristen said earlier, a link to the base, but steve bannon was always a character who was, frankly, going to become a cropper with the people around president trump. it was pretty obvious from the first or second week that things were going to end rancorously between bannon and the people around president trump. i think what s interesting and
the newiest ones in terms of the implications politically for this president and this white house have to do with the russia investigation. you have steve bannon saying things like, they re going to crack don jr. like an egg on national tv. and bannon saying he warned against firing comey saying, this russian story is a third tier story but you fire comey and it will be the biggest story in the world. based on what you re read of the book, the excerptses you ve seen, how worried do you think the white house is and did we get an indication by the fleury of statements? i think what steve bannon stated in a lot of this is really the obvious. first of all, it s quite clear he criticizes the trump people for not notify aring the fbi about this meeting at trump tower. that in itself is pretty incriminating. the fact they didn t do that. but they also didn t notify the fbi after papadopolos learned of the stolen e-mails back in april of 2016.
bannon s plans to promote hardline conservatives. you have to nominate people who can actually win, because winners make policy and losers go home. reporter: and standing by mcconnell, the president said he d talk to bannon. steve is doing what steve thinks is the right thing. some of the people that he may be looking at, i m going to see if we talk him out of that, because frankly, they re great people. reporter: the president took questions for about 40 minutes on a wide range of subjects, including puerto rico. we have massive amounts of water. we have massive amounts of food. but they have to distribute the food and they have to do this, they have to distribute the food to the people of the island. so, what we ve done is, we now actually have military distributing food. something that they really shouldn t have to be doing. reporter: and on the investigation into russian meddling and possible collusion, the president signaled he won t pull the plug on the special prosec