people that are essentially establishment people. luther strange didn t benefit at all from president trump s endor endorsement. and a trump candidate and non-trump candidate and president trump endorsed the non-trump candidate. he endorsed the wrong candidate and his people knew it it just didn t work. it s different from criticizing jeff flake. criticizing dean heller, and now with the bob corker retirement from tennessee, suddenly there s a plausible third seat for democrats to pick up. and curious. what steve bannon is doing here with the senate map, which was taking a map that seemed unnavigable for the democrats in the majority, is it possible he s opened up multiple paths here? i look at a state like nebraska. you can t go too far in one direction. a state that will snap back. it is. although i don t see the
to stop bannon. and called three incumbent republican senators bannon already name checked offering his support if they receive primary challenges. of course, president trump s support didn t keep an appointed incumbent, senator luther strange from losing to a bannon backed roy moore in alabama last month. joining me to talk about how senate politics is shaping up, charlie cook. heavy friday. thank you p. all right. is his a historical precedence, you sort of have a party in power but having a civil war like this? i m thinking sort of the democrats in the south in the earth 70s, sort of the anything like this? i think this is new and the think to remember is that stephen ban objectives and president trump s objectives are not necessarily the same thing. steve bannon wants to blow up the republican party, wants to drive out the globalists, the
criticizing the president trump. wasn t hesitant criticizing candidate trump. should we read more into this than humor? i think the way to look at this is the massive amount of frustration among republicans on capitol hill. this was a really big, good week for republicans on capitol hill. senate passage of a budget. leading the, paving the way for tax reform. it s a really big deal. this is supposed to be the president s top domestic priority. instead of celebrating that victory, or encouraging republican senators or working on recalcitrant republican senators or getting to work on the next stage of this policy priority, he s in this hopeless, revolting back and forth with the family of a, a slain serviceman and it s awful. nobody could take the high ground on this. i was thinking about it, in another era, a congresswoman simply called the chief of staff, heads up. that call didn t work. or by now we would have found out that the president had already called her again to say,
don t know what else i can t i don t have a good way are describing it, because it s so stomach turning. right. we politicize this. but both bush and obama used the word cruel. i think president bush usualed casual cruelty. i think president obama just used cruelty. that s what this whole thing has felt like. when in history do are have an ex-president having the groubds to talk i know sarah huckabee sanders today said taking them at their word. not about donald trump. let s be real. this was about donald trump. the environment. the environment he s created and the person he is in lead with. when would have have een the last 70, 80 years ex presidents to have the grounds that they should say something like that. but does it matter? i say that because president trump s campaign was running against both bush and obama. ran against bush in the
are absent. we wouldn t deserve to. if you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you re not going to be able to govern them. you won t be able to unite them later. for the record, a spokesperson for president bush says he was not criticizing mr. trump and mccain said he didn t mention president trump because it s the system that s probroke. a little cover to play these down from the ex presidents. our understanding those comments were not directed towards the president and in fact when these two individuals both past presidents have criticized the president they ve done so by name and very rarely do it without being pretty direct as both of them tend to be. so we ll take them at their word that these actions and comments weren t directed towards the president. joined now by nbc news presidential historian michael