Howard: so unknown in washington. never happens. never happens. at this point right now because of the statement he made to the fire in theory book and in addition frankly to the fact that he has crashed and burned with roy moore and i think both of those things have caused people like the mercer s have been the major funding behind breitbart and steve bannon are distancing themselves and taking away the funding and to put pressure on the breitbart to talk. howard: been in telling the website that he regrets his delay in responding to what he says are inaccurate comments about donald trump junior. rebecca mercer is a billionaire family has bankrolled many of bannon s adventures including breitbart put out a statement saying my family and i have been community with steve in providing financial support for his agenda and that could jeopardize his role as an independent force. yeah, we don t know the context in which the comments were made and a lot of michael s credibility has been called into
He didn t say anything like tha that. steve i think it would ve been better if he had come out. that s why people are having a hard time. and the president rejected it. juan: all of a sudden, apparently wolff did some interviews and apparently people are running away from it. dana: steve bannon is very quotable. says some pretty funny stuff. juan: i think the bigger story here is that now that, the question is bannon out at breitbart? that s still up in the air. secondly, what about rebecca mercer and her dad? they are the big conservative money people who have been bannon all along. they said last week they are done supporting bannon. what does that mean for breitbart, bannon, what does it mean for mitch mcconnell? all of a sudden, it looks like the incumbents bannon plan to
Shep? shepard: john, the plane has clearly landed as you referenced. before it did, there was a white house gaggle there on the plane. hogan gidley, one of the spokespeople came back to address the media. one question was a reaction to mr. bannon s statement. and he said i don t believe there s anyway back for mr. bannon at this point. he s kind of out there on an island, isn t he? might seem difficult as bob corker has proven, lindsey graham and others have proven. you can criticize the president, you can even very curtly criticize the president. if you work with him, you can find your way back. but you criticize the family and things that he said about donald trump jr., that he said he was talking about paul manafort and ivanka trump, there may be no road back from that. certainly when you see people like rebecca mercer, one of his big financial backers distancing herself from steve bannon, you
Sides. so, bannon left this hanging out there for five days. didn t backtrack from what he was saying, no apology. he comes around pretty late. i don t think it s being received warmly in the west wing. i will say that, you know, if bannon had never apologized, his prospects as a political influencer were pretty slim, right? i mean, he s tied to trump now in a way that, without trump, he s kind of a nonentity. and rick tyler, in the midterm elections, without rebecca mercer, without the mercer money funding some kind of challenges against incumbents, the big winner is mitch mcconnell and incumbents with bannon on the outs. i agree. i disagree a little with dave, yes, being attached to trump gives you the in, but if he had breitbart and the money, because we can put a lot of money into different elections and have a huge influence. but without that money, how will you have any influence?
The moment. and it seems to be that the program that bannon has championed for some time, which is a remaining of the grand old party into a much more extreme right wing party along lines of white identity, white nationalism, so on, i think that program has been shaken somewhat by this, by the estrangement by the two. i think we should take some aspects of the book seriously, because many of the things that are revealed it in actually, for people who have been watching the trump administration closely, they re not particularly new revelations. they re kind of more systematic. and i think what bannon is afraid of now, and i suspect people like the mercer, rebecca mercer and so on who have backed president trump as a kind of vehicle for their attempt to remake the republican party, remake the united states, i think they re putting pressure on steve bannon because they are the part owners of breitbart news. and i think that partly explains why he has had to roll back on
Howard: so unknown in washington. never happens. never happens. at this point right now because of the statement he made to the fire in theory book and in addition frankly to the fact that he has crashed and burned with roy moore and i think both of those things have caused people like the mercer s have been the major funding behind breitbart and steve bannon are distancing themselves and taking away the funding and to put pressure on the breitbart to talk. howard: been in telling the website that he regrets his delay in responding to what he says are inaccurate comments about donald trump junior. rebecca mercer is a billionaire family has bankrolled many of bannon s adventures including breitbart put out a statement saying my family and i have been community with steve in providing financial support for his agenda and that could jeopardize his role as an independent force. yeah, we don t know the context in which the comments were made and a lot of michael s credibility has been called into
Tower remark was aimed at paul manafort and not don jr. that i find laughable giving the details and specific quotes he had around donald trump jr. but you know, when i looked at his statement today, all i could think of was two words, rebecca mercer. and i think he thought he was more important than he was. he had the time magazine cover, the vanity fair profile, and he thought he was more important, and there was, you know, questionable the extent to which he can still be effective without trump. assuming he and trump don t reconcile, and i do think that s questionable. but he would be unquestionably be uneffective if he didn t have a billionaire backer. i certainly think that the unprecedented as it s been reported statement by rebecca mercer cutting ties with him, i think, i m sure was alarming for him. and gave him pause. gave him a catalyst. absolutely. michael, you worked for speaker boehner. i want to ask you about a part
Trumpism. will this statement mend things a bit or is this too little too late? it s really yet to be seen. remember that we first saw these excerpts on wednesday and this apology for a delayed response is coming five days later. steve bannon seeming to extend an olive branch there saying that he was willing to work as an ally of the president yet again. however, because we ve seen so many attacks not only from the president but also other surrogates and because, as cnn has confirmed, the president himself has been calling friends and allies telling them that they either stand with him or they stand with steve bannon, and you also had steve bannon s biggest financial backer, rebecca mercer, making comments this week distancing herself from the head of breitbart news, it draws into question the intent here. steve bannon clearly trying to make amends saying that his comments calling that june 2016 meeting at trump tower unpatriotic and treasonous, that those comments were directed at paul manafort and not donald
Him or steve bannon. beyond that woey had rebecca mercer, bannon s biggest backer making comments distancing herself from the head of breitbart news. he feels his influence waning and tries to make amenities. one final note we should point out in the statement, steve bannon doesn t address the more explosive comments he makes, specifically about the president s son in law, jarrett kushner and money laundering being involved. thank you. this as the white house continues the assault on steve bannon. steven miller staunchly defending the president in an interview with cnn s jake tapper which did become quite conte contentio contentious. president trump and the white house had been calling it a pitch hunt approximate a nothing
That. josh? steve bannon s political future obviously unclear. but so is the future of breitbart news, the right-wing website that had an outsized effect on republican politics even before trump came along. my sources tell me we may be headed to a power struggle because rebecca mercer, the billionaire investor wanted bannon out but doesn t have enough equity to force him out on her own. bannon very much wants to stay and fight. the problem is he gave up his own equity when he went into the white house. he doesn t have control of it either. it s not impossible to think that the president would weigh in on the issue as a way of further punishing his ex-strategist who he has branded sloppy steve bannon. it s hard to imagine breitbart without steve bannon. we ll see what happens with that. mk? as we saw in virginia this week, a republican won a house seat by his name being drawn out of a bowl. democracy. that determined the balance of power in the virginia house, which will stay with republicans just barely. republicans looking forward are