of staff john kelly. a couple of reasons why this was. this has been building for sometime. this is not the first time steve bannon had been rumored to be on the chopping block. the president had fallen out of love with him a while ago, concerned about him being on the cover of time magazine, and sucking up a lot of the oxygen in washington, but i think more critically, chris, the new chief of staff, john kelly, wanted to put in place a much more disciplined power structure in the white house. from what i understand, steve bannon was just not going to survive in that world. as we saw last week, he was granting interviews with journalists and sort of fr freelancing, putting his own agenda out there really in front of the president s. and we understand that was just not going to fly in john kelly s new world. and there could be other heads rolling on the horizon here, chris. so the article where steve
kkk, because you d have to be someone so invested in the idea that there is this toxic thing called the alt-left and they are violent anarchists. so i figured it had bannon written all over him. then to hear, no, it wasn t him. he didn t engineer any of this. that was more surprising than bannon being out to me. you know, it wasn t to me. trump clearly believes in his contention that both sides are equally at fault, that there are two sides to blame for charlottesville. as appalling as that is for a lot of us to hear, it was clear from trump s press conference, especially his second one where he just kind of went awol from his talking points and started basically shouting at the media, that this is what he really believed. that is not the sign of a president who is reading talking points or is trying to spin the media. to me that was clear it was emotional, it was visceral, and it reflected what trump himself
can t make them see the light, make them feel the heat. he is going to go after cnn, we know, and that could be very destructive. if he goes after the conservative establishment and the republican party as he is vowing to do, going after mitch mcconnell, it s going to be much harder for the president to keep his base intact and to round up all the republican votes he is going to need. what is the calculus here needed, what kind of leverage he could get over jared and ivanka and making some enemies in house or now being uncontrollable on the outside? well, that is a good question. i think the calculus actually came down to, do i keep kelly or bannon, it s very clear kelly would not have stayed long if he
for governing, any agenda that supposedly puts the president there. joining us, our senior political analyst david gergen. it is a blessing to have you tonight. thank you, chris, it s a blessing to have you here, thank you. let me engage one curiosity here, the timing just seems too convenient to be a coincidence. we ve heard all of these competing narratives. i am sure you have heard as many or more than i have. but what do you think the timing of this is, what are your suspicions? well, it s obvious they re trying to veer away from the charlottesville story to a new story and get us off the whole question of racial hatred and the division that tuesday was such a disaster for the president. and they do want to change this.
now some major charities are also say no thanks to the trump brand. the american red cross, the american cancer society, the salvation army, they have all decided not to host fund-raisers at mar-a-lago. in a statement the american red cross says the venue had increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for its volunteers, employees and supporters. so let s take this to the panel. ryan, what is the resonance of this? is this people just sprespondin to political zeitgeist? no, this is people and institutions that are outraged and deeply dismayed by the president making a moral ekwifl ans between the kkk and nazis and people that showed up to protest them and the president saying that they were very fine people who marched at a rally organized by the kkk and nazis.