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
he said that unlike some of his predecessors, he actually calls the families of fallen troops. here s what the president said. the traditional way, if you look at president obama and other presidents, most of them didn t make calls, a lot of them didn t make calls. i like to call when it s appropriate, when i think i m able to do it. they have made the ultimate sacrifice, so, generally, i would say that i like to call. so, jon, tonight, three former president s teams are responding now? reporter: all three of the last three presidents have said that the president went too far in what he said today. an aide to president clinton said that president clinton did place calls to the fallen. a spokesperson for george w. bush said, president bush wrote all the families of the fallen and called or met privately with hundreds, if not thousands. as for president obama, a spokesperson for him said that president obama engaged the families of the fallen and wounded warriors throughout his