night. there s no question that the president and steve bannon had a tight relationship during the stretch run of the campaign, although they knew each other before that. and certainly in the first few months of this administration when bannon was a power player in the west wing. it faded over time, but that relationship did not end. they continued to speak even after bannon was fired or left the white house this summer. and i think you re right about this president. he s staffed differently. aides, you grew frustrated over the summer with his scatter shot approach to the health care reform. the republican health care effort and feel like the president hurt as much as he helped. that when they brief him it s often with he prefers briefings orally rather than with written documents. when it is a written document, that they ve grown to learn to highlight his own name in them, knowing that would draw his attention. i reflect back to a story i was part of during the summer when he was
erratic tweeting by the president, but you also have steve bannon who was the biggest mortal threat to this party essentially imploding. i think this is something that reason under appreciated within the past couple of days here, is that steve bannon is really losing his financial benefit factors and the mersers. that this has been percolateing under the surface and if you think about the threat and the pressure that looks like mitch mcconnell were feeling before the few year within they thought that steve bannon could have some wind at his back, i think, despite everything, all things considered that there are republicans feeling some sense of relief. because, joe, yes, you and i as outside observers, see these things very troubling about the president talking casually, joke about nuclear war on twitter, but in some ways, it s more of the same and in terms of raw politics and the raw political calculation that this party is making about the threat that it
he is completely losing his mind. but, yeah, that seems this morning to be the fact that michael wolff may not have gotten every quote exactly right. but it s the same thing we all have been hearing and politicians on the hill have been hearing for over a year now. gentleman, that i think goes to the heart of this. while on the one hand everybody is anxious and devouring the salacious details in this book. no one is fundamentally surprised. right. i think even the quotes that were attributed to steve bannon i think were things he was saying off the record privately. now wall street journal reports that breitbart s board members are weighing whether to fire bannon after all of those comments and president trump s tweet late last night, he told people to quote watch what happens to michael wafflef, the author of a critical new book and floppy steve. he is referring to his former chief strategist.
he will give you a puff piece. the answer, of course, answered in dramatic fashion yesterday. when we come back, we will be talking to jonathan swan and julie pace about steve bannon s bad day and if there is a way back for the embattled breitbart editor when morning joe returns.
the furthest and tried to distance himself and realign with the president. we heard steve bannon is not the only person endorsing me or i was going to run and run this anti-government establishment before bannon came along. perhaps taking the back seat doesn t solve this problem of people challenging sitting senators in the primary certainly for a mitch mcconnell and his allies, taking bannon out of the picture and perhaps the breitbart audience and breitbart money out of the pick will be a huge benefit going forward. hey, jonathan swan, it s jonathan lemire. we know he took a hit by the presidents. the mercers announced they were withdrawing funding. the idea of breitbart, itself, we know some of the leaders were huddling last night trying to figure out whether they wanted to cut ties with bannon. right. what are you hearing in terms