trump surrounded by his senior staff, with michael flynn now gown, sean spicer also out, chief of staff reince priebus resigned and most recently chief strategist steve bannon fired. with us, michael warren of the weekly standard, julie pace, the l.a. times jackie combs and michael vendor. another week and another white house staffer calls it quits. the key champion of the president s populous movement. he indicated he didn t know what was going to happen between him and mr. bannon even though sources tell cnn his ouster had been in the works for a number of for two weeks. look, i like mr. bannon. he s a friend of mine. but he came on very late. you know that. i like him. he s a good man. he is not a racist.
opposition and didn t get it. frankly, if we did that, i think most americans would applaud. jackie, to you on that. tom ridge from the bush administration. and a somewhat moderate republican in the house before he joined the bush administration as homeland security adviser. i think this all points to how important tuesday and the rally in arizona is. trump has scheduled this. it has all the hallmarks of another in-your-face performance where he s at odds with both republican senators there, has all but endorsed the opponent of jeff flake. on top of that, he has teased that he may pardon former sheriff joe arpaio, an o hispanics and latinos. whether or not, with this, if
there is one less white supremacist in the white house. but that doesn t change the man sitting behind the resolute desk. jackie, what are they trying to say there? are there more white supremacists in the white house and this idea is this really a reset? leaving that aside, i think they re absolutely right that moving bannon out, i wrote that he was some people were treating him like he was a ventriloquist and trump was his puppet. if there was a week that showed this wasn t true, it was this week with charlottes vilville w we saw his true feelings. one of the things about bannon s departure that is overlooked and the talk of white supremacist when we were talking about north korea, steve bannon was a real voice within the administration for against the hawks, as he perceived t he was really upset when the president just off the cuff said what he did about a
right. julie? democratic activists are pretty energized after this past week. democrats i talked to who are involved in the races for 2018 and the efforts to win back the house are more anxious about this idea of democrats going all in on trump s response to charlottesville. democrats potentially falling into some of the same traps they fell into in 2016 when where they ran mostly on an anti-trump message and the party still feels like it s an economic message that needs to resonate with voters. chuck schumer and other democrats have ruled out an economic blueprint for democrats but it s been completely overshadowed. they still have got some work to do. jackie? i wanted to talk about the helplessness of the republican establishment in sort of dealing with trump. after a week like this, it really underscored that. i talked to a couple, very well known, formally high placed republicans over dinner and the way they described what trump was doing forced me to ask, have
want. joining me now at the national review is robert costa also a contributor to cnbc s kudlow report. the new york times jackie combs and let me start with you. it seems to be the only thing that prevented romney from clear cut victory in that debate last night like a hand down boy he won, were moments like that. the odd moments where he struggled on himself. he was the best debater in making an argument for himself and talking about his economic plan but it s his language, persona, awkwardness that raises a lot of questions about whether he is the conservative favorite and i think santorum has a lot of room, a wide open race. romney was great last night and won on points but hasn t won over the gop. you know what s fascinating with santorum is that last night i felt like okay. you defended yourself factually. those are some unpopular facts though. absolutely. you just think of the independent voters out there if they re watching at all.