obviously a veteran of the reagan and bush administrations, editor at large of the weekly standard and a guy we turn to whenever we can. okay, bill. the comments tonight by bannon to members of the republican establishment who might dream of not being with the trump agenda, devote, no one is safe. we are coming for you. how worried are you about this movement to burn down the house and while they re at it the senate? and then what will it mean to have an r after your name? no. i think there s a real civil war in the republican party as you and i have discussed before. i think people have been under estimating this. they ve tended to interpret the different sides as psycho drama. there s a lot of psycho drama with donald trump is involved. but fundamentally there s a genuine fight for the future of the republican party. trump and bannon have one vision and they are bannon is out recruiting candidates and some of them are spontaneously
candidates to take over the republican party, unquote. does judge roy moore represent the future of the republican party? i certainly hope not! i mean, we have to look at his whole record and a number of the things that he said. but, look, jake, there is a struggle for the soul of the republican party and the soul of the democratic party. we spend a lot of time talking about, you know, all the trouble in the republican party. i have no idea what the democrats are for. it is unbelievable. which is why polls are now beginning to show a support for independent candidacies, more than ever in our history. people are getting fed up with all of this kind of nonsense. and for me, what i m trying to do is struggle for the soul of the republican party, the way that i see it. and i have a right to define it, but i m not going to support people who are dividers, or people who look, i don t want to get into all of the wild accusations that this guy has made. you can talk about them yourself. bu
we love the anthem, and you know, we respect it. and but we also respect the right for people to protest. look, there s so many big issues out there right now. whether it s health care and our ability to stabilize the markets. now we re talking about tax reform and trying to get better economic growth and boost wages for workers. that s where my attention is right now. i m not really spending much time looking at people s tweets. they re just not that important to me. let s turn to the alabama senate race, where luther strange, the republican backed by mitch mcconnell and the incumbent senator was defeated by judge roy moore, a conservative who had the backing of steve bannon, president trump s former chief strategist. following judge moore s victory in the primary, bannon said, quote, the populist, nationalist movement proved in alabama that a candidate with the right ideas and a grassroots organization can win big. now our focus is on recruiting candidates to take over the republ
me for this piece, my focus now after moore s blowout win is recruiting candidates to take over the republican party. yesterday the morning after moore s win, bannon flew from alabama to colorado and essentially started interviewing insurgent candidates for future republican primaries in places like nevada, arizona, mississippi, tennessee, to try and run the same play that he just ran in alabama with roy moore. you know, you wonder, though, if this is going to make the president side with steve bannon a lot more and not listen to his own advisors in the white house, that remain in the white house, even though bannon is out, because they re the ones, josh, who told him go with luther strange, go with luther strange. he did. strange lost. moore won in alabama. and he went to bed that night, quote, embarrassed and pissed according to an official close to the president. so does this mean he trusts
if you were president today would he still be fbi director? that s a really good question. i don t know the answer for that. once i wasn t president i didn t think about it, i didn t analyze it at all. so, i don t really know. last question for you. you have said that you are not running for office ever again. uh-huh. what do you want your public life to be like? obviously you have a career in public service behind you. you have a life as a public intellectual now particularly with the book and approaching this. what do you want in terms of your public life from here on out? rachel, i m not going to leave politics. even though i m not going to be a candidate. i ve started a group which i write about called onward together aimed as supporting the new, young, grass roots groups that have sprung up since the election. there s a really tremendous amount of energy out there. people who are recruiting candidates, training candidates, supporting them who are teaching people about