that went into this decision, ultimately it was believed this was the best move for the president s agenda and for the administration to move forward. this source essentially acknowledges that steve bannon could be a big distraction accomplished. he made his review, i m told, prior to today. he then made the decision, informed the president, and the president game the philadelphia sign off to essentially say it was time for steve bannon to go. he then tendered his resignation two weeks ago. when is the last time he spoke to president trump? it s not exactly clear. but we know they have not spoken or seen each other for quite some time.
conway took over the campaign and pulled off the impossible. made donald trump president of the united states. and so you had to look what did they do that made this possible? one of the things they did was lift the rock off of hatred and white supremacy and racism and you know, made it possible for the president to do that. exploit it. go ahead. look, one of the hang on one second. gabe scherrman is with me, hold that thought. msnbc media anl liflt. i understand you ve got new reporting on where steve bannon is going now. yes, i ve been talking to friends and allies of bannon and while no decision is official, people close to bannon say he s expected to return to booirt bart news in his former role as the editorial overlord of
influence e vab rate, and i think he will go to war because i know steve ban non. he considers himself a revolutionary. again, we should note that we sat here for the last few fridays, sean spicer, reince priebus, anthony scaramucci, and now steve bannon on a friday. all of these departures, and you can argue some of them yielded more influence in the white house than others, but this guy may have had more of the president than this guy, but at the end of the day none of these departures seem to change the president s message at all. he is the same donald trump, so are we perhaps overstating too much of what this might mean for the president going forward?
knew about it, went to new york this week, earlier this week and met with bob, a reclusive new york hedge fund billionaire who has been a major funder of br t breitbart news and partner of steve bannon s for some time. the mercers have been maejer funding. i understand his next moves will be wrapped entirely with the mercers. he s going there s talk that i haven t confirmed this, my understand sg that he is inclined towards rejoining bri breitbart in some capacity, overseeing capacity. he told friends that breitbart is a killing machine and sees whatever he s going to do next, it s going to be views himself and accurately as one of the leaders in the worldwide nationalist populist movement. he has a funder in bob mercer who has very deep pockets. they are going to do a huge
bannon wants to be very aggressive when it comes to tariffs and a lot of this again comes back to china. the other area that s quite interesting today, having a meeting about afghanistan at camp david. bannon is not in the room. he s been advocating quite a radical approach there. him and eric prince have been advocating a private army sort of paramilitary operations in afghanistan and withdrawing american troops. that idea didn t go anywhere internally. he s been at war on many, many fronts and this was inevitable. stand by for me if you can, jonathan. peter baker, new york times chief white house correspondent joins me now on the phone. thank for your time. it was that interview one of the inviews i should note this week that got a lot of attention in the new york times where steve bannon said among other things