criticizing donald trump but he has found a way to deal with him effectively. what is the key here? i think it s at the respect he showed to trump in paris. you have this military parade. he allows trump to strut his stuff and feel all puffed up. this all works with this president. and i think the world owes a debt to emmanuel macron because he s someone who can speak some sense to the president even as the president is reducing the number of people in the white house who can speak sense to him. that doesn t necessarily mean he is going to be able to get trump to do what makes sense. shinzo abe has a good relationship with trump but japan was still targeted on the steel tariffs and he couldn t get trump to budge on that. i wonder how much it benefits macron and france because if he has alienated other countries is there an opportunity here for france. macron is the leading leader in europe because he has a
stuff and feel all puffed up. this all works with this president. and i think the world owes a debt to emmanuel macron because he s someone who can speak some sense to the president even as the president is reducing the number of people in the white house who can speak sense to him. that doesn t necessarily mean he is going to be able to get trump to do what makes sense. shinzo abe has a good relationship with trump but japan was still targeted on the steel tariffs and he couldn t get trump to budge on that. i wonder how much it benefits macron and france because if he has alienated other countries is there an opportunity here for france. macron is the leading leader in europe because he has a relationship with trump that no one else has. there is no question he is elevating his own stat us and france s status buy being able to get along better with trump than other leaders in europe can. let s talk more about the parade. you talk about the bastille day
to be found. no serious person within that administration is on television. gabe, i also am very curious about mourdock world. in the book they re described as liberals. i don t know if that s true. it is sort of fascinating that the people that own fox news, that world has been a little bit silent as well. yeah. this morning we should point out that mourdock owned new york post had a very tongue in cheek cover making fun of donald trump in his claim yesterday that he is some sort of genius. i think there s clearly sign of wall street journal editorial page, another mourdock organ, has not been friendly to trump. there are cracks in that facade, the sort of base of trump world and mourdock world is fox news. that s the only base of support. outside of that you do see some deviation. we know that in private, this echos my own reporting as well, rupert mourdock thinks trump is a moron. he doesn t have respect for him. he thinks he s a buffoon.
go down this direction, he would have put this out after the first statement from the president just raking him through the coals. yet he did nothing. he was largely silent. there was probably a lot of pushback from steve putting this statement and apology out there. clearly it was a last case, worst case scenario play by steve, realizing his situation is so untenable that he has no allies, no defenders and, again, his own spot at his own platform was in jeopardy that he dpelt the need to have to do this. lastly, kurt, you know, michael wolff said on meet the press that, indeed, it s true that bannon got trump elected in terms of providing him with some sort of ideological framework. do you think that framework is now freestanding is that bannon is no longer necessary for trump? i think one thing we ve seen, trump continues to be trump, whether it s immigration, daca, all kinds of policy initiatives, it wasn t bannon doing that necessarily, trump is who he is
but seen a stunning amount of incoming fire. his financial benefactors, the mercer family, revoked their support and really, you know, bannon has been very isolated. so this morning he issued a statement, three sources confirmed to me he issued it because he genuinely felt bad about the way don jr. was singled out. bannon told people the comments in fire and fury were taken out of context. they were directed at paul manafort, not don jr., and so he decided to cut bait and issue this statement to axios to try to put some distance between him and all of the blowback he has gotten from the trump camp since the publication of the book. and will the comments, i m going to try to quickly find them. the comments use donald jr. s name. it s kind of hard for him to say they were directed at paul manafort. do you know if bannon s people are concerned the things he said about donald trump jr. could get steve bannon called before the mueller investigation? i have not heard that, joy, and ban