and the important health care item that was blocked by republicans. plus, another loss for supporters of abortion rights. indiana becomes the first state to pass a near total ban on the procedure since the overturning of roe v. wade. and it was a big weekend for maga world in dallas. we ll have the recap of cpac just ahead. good morning. and welcome to way too early. on this monday, august 8th. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for being with us. senate democrats have done it. after more than a year of negotiations and dead ends, democrats have passed a reconciliation package that includes a bulk of their priorities. the yeas are 50, the nays are 50, the senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative and the bill as amended is passed. no republicans voted in favor of the final bill. it passed with a tie-breaking vote from vice president kamala harris. the bill went through some last-minute changes during an overnight vote-o-rama. that process al
ally of president trump s. this mover came, i think it s a relief to a lot of people. it came after a tremendous amount of pressure on the president. he is isolated at this point. it s been a very difficult week. i think the mover shows kushner s influence. there s been a lot of questions about family first and whether or not anyone could rise above the trump family. right now the answer is no. it also raises a lot of questions about that protectionists agenda. a lot of people saw bannon as the champion of the america first disruptive agenda. he was successful in getting trump to pull out of tpp, pull out of the paris accords. implement a travel ban. nafta is being renegotiated. he was very successful in getting trump. if you follow politics remember that white board surfaced in some pictures on twitter. what happened to the white board. we re going to go through the white board.
right is on tape in washington this week doing a seig heil. maybe he needs to explain how they deverge from the people we re talking about as alt right or white nationalists. talking about it is always a good solution in my opinion. there s talk about steve bannon but he sort of has this wizard of oz like persona that he s behind the black velvet curt curtain. is the answer is people need to hear from him? we rarely hear from steve bannon. he is kind of that behind the scenes figure. lots of people within trump s circle describe him as also providing some kind of security element to donald trump and also really helping support some of his instincts. and so i would find it hard to believe that donald trump would actually oust bannon from his administration. given their closeness, given the impact that trump saw bannon
so this is a time where the sorts of things we have heard president trump talk about just this week, give us another way of looking at steve bannon. the president was quick to point out he had already won all of the necessary primaries to have dispensed with his competitors before bannon came on board. bannon was part of the fall strategy, turning toward working against hillary clinton and the campaign. and so the president wants to retain a sense that his nationalist impulses as you might describe it or his political instincts new as they were back then were his alone and that that did not require bannon on the inside. and at the same time, tuesday we heard him praise bannon at a distance referring to him as mr. bannon. not as steve, not as someone who s been at his elbow for a full year and then saying we ll see what happens. that was such a big tell looking back. in addition to john kelly making it clear through top white house officials that he was doing an assessment of who could
people, you know, who is this guy, what does he think he is? he resented steve bannon the narratives that steve bannon was a central figure in his election victory. he resented the profile that bannon had got. and frankly trump which we ve reported axios on the weekend, trump had been telling people that bannon was a leaker. my understanding is he even told bannon that on one occasion in the sort of offhand way that trump does. it was all the cards were against bannon and frankly by the end it was very clear that steve himself wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and set himself up for the next phase which is a leader of the nationalist populist worldwide and he s partnering with bob mersa. they are planning the next moves in terms of political and media