♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: welcome to the program. we begin with two big stories, the departure of steve bannon from the white house and the terrorist attack in barcelona. we start with a look at "the cbs evening news" report. >> the white house press secretary sarah sanders said john kelly and steve bannon mutually agreed on his exit. sources tell us the president had grown frustrated by bannon's rising profile in recent -- and recent publications describing him as the mastermind behind mr. trump's campaign.

the president's irritation was clear during tuesday's explosive press conference. president trump: mr. bannon came on very late. you know that. i went through 17 senators and governors and i won all the primaries. mr. bannon came on much later than that. of ther: bannon was one first white house staff members hired, and all right with a nationalist agenda, playing a key role in the controversial travel ban. shortly after inauguration, he described himself as part of a new political order. >> if you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. every day, it is going to be a fight. reporter: his prior work at breitbart news made him a lightning rod for criticism. president trump: it will be a great wall. reporter: on breitbart radio in 2015, bannon interviewed mr. trump about immigration and described himself as having more hardline views. >> we are the know nothing bulgarians. reporter: bannon was unafraid to feud with other white house

officials, particularly the president's son-in-law, jared kushner, gary cohn, and h.r. mcmaster. seemed toweek, bannon undermine trump administration foreign policy when he said in an interview that there is no military solution to north korea. reporter: more arrests were made today to jeers from onlookers. in all, four suspects have been detained following the twin vehicle attacks. one on a busy barcelona street, the second 75 miles south in the beach town. this police document reveals the young faces of those believed to be behind these attacks and on the run. one is just 17 years old. sources tell cbs news the terrorists were planning a larger attack, possibly a vehicle bomb using gas canisters, all being constructed in a house just down the street. the house exploded wednesday. it was leveled. the explosions were so strong this neighbor showed us how it

broke the glass in her window. spanish police theorize after the explosives prematurely ignited, the terrorists went to plan b. the next day, a van was driven down the tourist-backed road in barcelona, swerving to hit as many people as possible. eight hours later, terrorists in another car rammed into more pedestrians. one woman died in the attack. >> it was just going up and down the street ranting and raving. ,reporter: he was in a nearby bar and took this cell phone video, when he saw one of the five terrorists taunting officers. >> it was like watching one of them horror films. reporter: a waiter near the scene told us he saw terrorists wearing what looked like explosive belts. the suicide vests were fake but did manage to instill fear. charlie: we continue with ashley

parker of "the washington post." >> early on, bannon faced criticism when here. on "time" magazine. the worst thing you can do if you are a white house staffer. he participated in the book "the devil's bargain." the president was unhappy about that. he felt that bannon was taking too much credit for his own electoral victory. charlie: and mike allen. >> as you know, this president does not like to be outshone. this president does not like other people crowding his spotlight. the book that came out last month from bloomberg businessweek's josh green, a great book, on the cover shown steve bannon and president trump as equals. and charlie, we know the president saw that book and he did not like it. charlie: turning to the attack in barcelona, we talk to fran townsend. >> if all you need is to grab an everyday item like a car or knife and launch an attack,

walk into a restaurant like we saw in london, and start stabbing people, or you can take a car on london bridge, or nice, or in barcelona and mow down civilians, it is very difficult to stop. you rely on intelligence to try to catch the person. it is hard when somebody has picked up a weapon. charlie: and for an understanding of steve bannon and his relationship to president trump, we talked with joshua green. his book is "the devil's bargain." >> he really is a propagandist at heart. he is very good at messaging, stoking the worries and fears of the electorate. and galvanizing a certain kind of dispossessed voter who has not felt like they had a place in american politics for the last 10 or 20 years. that is a real talent.

i think that helped get donald trump elected. but you need an entirely different set of skills when you wind up in the white house. charlie: the departure of steve bannon and the terrorist attack in spain when we continue. ♪ charlie: steve bannon, the controversial chief strategist for president trump, is leaving the white house. that announcement came this afternoon in a statement from sarah huckabee sanders. sanders characterized his departure as a mutual decision made between bannon and the president's chief of staff, general john kelly. some have suggested general kelly has had him in his sites ghts since entering the white house a month ago. it has also been reported president trump had soured on his chief strategist. bannon is the fourth top advisor to the president to leave the administration and the last month. -- in the last month. joining me from washington,

ashley parker, who is a white house reporter for the "washington post" and has been reporting on this story. was he pushed or did he jump? ashley: i think he was definitely pushed, but i will say he is somewhat comfortable with that. i don't think this would have been his choice. but in the past several days, he had sort of resigned himself to any fate he met. he was pushed, but pushed into a potentially very soft landing pad. charlie: what is the soft landing? ashley: one option we are hearing that is very likely is he will go back to breitbart news, the conservative website that he was the chairman of before. he will go there and be this pirate captain he was. but perhaps even more invigorated, waging war, not necessarily against the president, but around a lot of the people surrounding the president in the west wing. he derides these people as

democrats, globalists. and the president if he thinks the president is not keeping his campaign promises on issues important to him like trade and immigration. he has very deep-pocketed beneficiaries in the form of the mercers. there is a chance there might be a new media venture with them. charlie: who are the mercers? ashley: they are wealthy republican donors, a father and daughter. they have funded a lot of bannon's activities in the past. they are close to the president. they are the ones who during the , campaign, they helped push bannon on trump to bring him in. they are sort of his patrons and seem likely to support them in future endeavors. charlie: what is the risk for the president? ashley: the risk is twofold. the risk for the president is you have bannon on the outside being this feisty pirate captain , now sort of attacking the white house from the outside. he will be more reluctant to attack the president, but

attacking people around the president, attacking parts of the president's agenda if he does not think it goes far enough is a possible problem for the president specifically. and a problem for some of the west wing aides who pushed him out, we know the president, no one is ever actually out. the president may be under general kelly's tutelage now, but at some point, the president and bannon will start talking on the phone. the president will be calling him late at night and bannon will still have the president's ear, but now the unencumbered by west wing politics and white house bureaucracy and feel even more emboldened to push the president's more nationalist, populist impulses. charlie: let's review why he might have been pushed by general kelly. president and general kelly were not happy about leaks. that is one thing. he seemed to shoulder some of the blame for the leaks.

number two, there was this conflict he had with h.r. mcmaster. breitbart had been aggressive in terms of h.r. mcmaster. number three, the fallout from charlottesville might have engulfed him in some way. are there other factors that might have led to his departure? ashley: absolutely. one factor is that even though this was a general kelly move and a sign of him asserting his power and the power he really does have in the west wing now to bring order, is nothing happens in the white house the -- if the president doesn't sign off on it. the president had grown increasingly frustrated with bannon because he thought bannon's ego was getting too big and that bannon seemed to be taking outsized credit for what the president viewed as his own accomplishments. early on, bannon faced some trouble with the president when he appeared on the cover of "time" magazine. that was the worst thing you can

do if you are a white house staffer. then he participated in this book by josh green, "the devil's bargain." the president was unhappy about that. he felt bannon was taking too much credit for his electoral victory. this is a president who understands media and images just about better than anybody. bothered that really him was the cover image where him and his strategists were sharing billing in equal measure. charlie: some people called bannon the president or alternative president. ashley: and that as well. remember, this was earlier, but there was a series of "saturday night live" skits that had bannon playing as president, with the president playing at a tory desk. it drove the president crazy. charlie: how does steve bannon feel about the president? what do we know about how he feels about the president that has not been expressed publicly?

ashley: that is a very good question. i think he saw the president and white house as a vehicle for him achieving his own nationalist, populist goals he had been pushing for quite some time outside of the white house. i think he saw the president as an imperfect vehicle for that. and he understood the president is someone who can often be swayed by the person he spoke to last or by competing factions and impulses, which is one of the reasons why bannon was at war with colleagues in the west wing who he felt represented a contrary point. the democratic or globalist worldview. he also recognized in the president something of a kindred spirit. there's a sense that trump has no ideological core, but there are a few issues the president has been consistent on, not just in his campaign, but dating back decades. those are some of the same issues bannon has championed.

most notably trade, immigration, and a wariness of sending young men and women overseas to fight in wars. charlie: could the president have won the presidency without steve bannon? ashley: that's also a good question. i'm hesitant to answer one way or another. but i will say even people have turned on steve bannon have said he is a wartime consigliere. he has great populist impulses. he understands politics. he understands the president 's base. he understands how to manage the president. he was the person who helped right the ship during tough moments, including the "access hollywood" video during the campaign. no matter where you end up on the question, he certainly played a big stabilizing role. charlie: what made a significant

part of the departure was the interview he did with the "american prospect," magazine? ashley: it certainly didn't help. my understanding was general kelly came with no preconceived notions. he had no personal animus against steve bannon and he approached it by doing an overview of everyone's portfolio and role, including asking a lot of questions about steve bannon. one of the things general kelly was brought in to do was not manage the president but create order within the west wing, to manage the staff, to put processes in place. that means nobody speaking outside of their lane. nobody going rogue in an interview where they attack their west wing colleagues. this was a classic example of steve bannon doing something the new chief of staff had explicitly forbid staff from doing. i would also remind you this is exactly what anthony scaramucci did that got him fired by general kelly.

obviously the language was more , colorful but it was the same behavior. charlie: can you say this was a victory for those people like a, gary cohn h.r. mcmaster, people who had had fights at one time or another with him? ashley: absolutely you can 100% , say that. jared kushner had been one of the people who turned on bannon very early and lost the initial fight to push him out. the president was not ready to do it then. there are a lot of people who dislike steve bannon, either because he deliberately waged war against them in the media, someone like jared kushner or h.r. mcmaster, or other people who thought he was a distracting presence in the west wing. that was another thing that hurt him. at the end of the day, he did not have a ton of allies. when the new chief of staff came in and started asking questions about him, he did not have as many defenders as he might have needed.

charlie: the ultimate question is whether this will help or hurt the president with his base. that seems to be where he is going in moments of crisis. the president is always laserlike focused on his base, even in moments where you think it might make sense for him to move to the middle or rally the nation to come together. he does go back to his base. it is an interesting question. i don't know how many people in his base will desert him simply because steve bannon is gone, in the same way i'm skeptical of how many people vote for a politician because they got the endorsement of someone else. 'swill say it -- if bannon absence allows the president to be drawn further to the left or the middle or to abandon some of his campaign promises, i certainly think that will hurt him with his base and be magnified, because he will now

have steve bannon on the outside mobilizing his media operation against anything he considers going squishy on his campaign promises. charlie: ashley parker of the "washington post." back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: this week, the continuing drama of the trump administration. steve bannon is out as the president's chief political advisor.

the administration was pulled off topic by the fallout from charlottesville. president trump's comments put him at odds with many americans. including top military and business leaders, as well as fellow members of the republican party. joining me in washington with more on this is mike allen, the s, and theof axio editor of the "axios" newsletter. tell me about steve bannon. what is the latest we know about his survival? mike: he's not surviving. the president has decided he will go the highest profile firing from the white house. steve bannon is telling colleagues he resigned on august 7, but to be effective a week later. that would coincide with the one-year anniversary of him coming into the trump campaign. charlie, we are told that the offenses for steve bannon, the reason he ran afoul one,e president, were,

leaking -- which is ironic in this white house. charlie, you know how much everyone leaks, including the president. but the president believed steve bannon was leaking on west wing colleagues, perhaps including his son-in-law jared kushner. that was one thing the president has been telling people around the west wing. the second thing and probably the tipping point was, as you know, this president does not like to be outshone. this president does not like other people crowding his spotlight. the book that came out last month from josh green, the great book, inside this white house on , the cover showing steve bannon and president trump as equals. we know the president saw that book and did not like it. one of the reasons steve bannon got in the doghouse before was when he was on the cover of "time" magazine as the second

most powerful man in the world. a dangerous thing to be called around president trump. charlie: i would add to that his conflict with h.r. mcmaster. mike: that's right. that's part of the week. there have been a barrage of negative stories about the president's national security adviser, h.r. mcmaster. the president the other day came out and spoke in public about his national security adviser saying he supported him despite these stories appearing, notably on breitbart news, which is where steve bannon was the boss before he went into the campaign. of course, he was a suspect in those leaks. more broadly in this campaign against the national security adviser. it was an ominous sign for the america first wing, the nationalist wing of the white house, when at his press conference the other day president trump said we will see what happens with mr. bannon. charlie: what is the political

fallout of this? who will be pleased by this departure and who will be upset? mike: the people who will be upset are the people who are the trump first/america first people the people who were , officials and architects of that coalition, the very unusual trump coalition that gave him the surprise victory, very focused on rust belt, working-class americans. the america first idea, the hard line on immigration. all of that was bannon's side of the house. others in the white house will point out the president was talking about those ideas before steve bannon came into the white house. it was steve bannon who realized you could not win with that coalition, figured out the math, and the states where that could work.

that takes nothing away from what president trump did, but he just does not want to give credit on that. over these seven months, you and i have debated the question that in this white house, how much method is there to the madness? how much of a plan is there behind what has been done? until now to the degree there has been a plan, a lot of it was steve bannon. now that changes rapidly. as we look ahead to labor day, congress returning the day after labor day, this is a real chance for a reset by the president. his new chief of staff, general john kelly, a retired four-star marine who has been trying to impose marine discipline on the white house, trying to get it so the oval office is no longer a rolling craps game, that there is more discipline in what the president sees, what he is told, who sees him, what goes on in the white house, the phone calls to him. general kelly has been trying to build guardrails around all of

that. there is one thing missing from that plan. the viewers know what it is. the president of the united states is missing from that plan. there is no indication after three weeks of general kelly in the white house that the president is going to be fenced in by him. all we have to do is look at the tweets this week going after republicans. more going after republican senators then going after democrats. more tweets defending confederate memorials at a time when that is not going to be a healing message. the president taking a press conference that was supposed to be about infrastructure, a part of his plan that has a prayer of getting democratic support, and instead using that to reignite the argument about both sides in the charlottesville, virginia, tragedy. and the president introducing the term "alt-left."

as if that is a counterpart to the hard wing alt-right. general kelly may have a system in place. now he has steve bannon's head on a platter. he is one of the people most happy about this. steve bannon is the person who was the most likely to color outside the lines of the new system, but there is no indication yet he has the president buying into that program. charlie: let me talk about the president's support today in america. everyone talks about his base. how large is the base? is there some erosion of the base at all? his own popularity ratings are in the 30's. the low 30's. he seems to be dependent on maintaining his support within the base. he fires one of the principal people, if he was fired rather than resigned, that was the link to his base. mike: that is right. that is what steve bannon has had to hold over him.

as i spoke to white house officials in recent days about the decision that was one of the , factors. part of the bannon survival plan was he did hold the heartbeat of that trump base. and the flipside is he is the one person who could do real harm on the outside. he could go back to breitbart news and go after this white house. the reporting by jonathan swann indicates that is not the case. i would look for steve bannon to be supportive of the president on the outside, perhaps even working on his midterm strategy for 2018, his reelection strategy for 2020. to get there, the president decided to make this radical change. charlie: have you seen any diminution in leaking from the white house? mike: of course not, charlie. you know that. [laughter] the leaks come from everywhere, including the president, who talks to his longtime friends and we hearhey yap,

what they are talking about. we have extremely accurate leaks. this will do nothing to change that. general kelly has tried to clamp down on the machinery at the white house. but there are plenty of people who still have motive to talk to reporters. they want to reflect their worldview. there are plenty of people there who feel insecure about their own position who will continue to talk about that. i guarantee you, there are plan of places to go, and we will still have plenty of good information about what is going on. i mentioned this opportunity for a reset. charlie, this is a big moment for the president. will he take this reset? he has not taken any of the ones in the past. after he became officially the nominee, he could have behaved more like an establishment republican or more like you would expect a nominee to behave.

after he won the election, he might have decided as president-elect to change his style. after the inauguration he might , have decided to change his style. but no but the next day, he is , at the c.i.a. in front of the stars honoring lost c.i.a. agents talking about reelection victory. none of the past three cents have taken. we are in 210-some days. will he take the new chance after labor day to focus on tax reform, which is supposed to be message one? and will he adapt a little to the system general kelly is imposing? charlie: if general mattis, the secretary of defense, decides to go, someone like that, that will be the beginning of more difficult times for the president. mike: charlie, perfectly put. a couple reasons. onee is a real fear that person told me, one top cabinet

member goes, there could be a run on the bank. a mass exit is, if one person decides to go. several of the officials you mentioned, including the secretary of haveose are people we referred to as the committee to people making personal sacrifices because they think it is important to be there at this moment and will be there for the country. if members of the committee to say the country, people who thought they needed to be there to be sure the country stays within the lane it needs to be right, this are administration will look very , the people the

president will desperately need on the hill and other colleagues in the west wing. this is a decision the president has to make. president is not like to be bullied. when you have nancy pelosi out there calling for him to be you someat could give security. this is something the president will give general kelly. general kelly wanted steve bannon to go, and the president went along with that to show some respect and by him some time on some changes he does not want to make. for thisthank you conversation. we will be right back. stay with us. ♪ europe,terror attack in 14 died and 100 injured in a pair of attacks thursday in

barcelona and one other city. the attacks are part of a larger trend where terrorists hope to heavy casualties by driving vehicles into crowds of pedestrians. my guess is a contributor to cbs news. what is the significance of this? this is just one in a series of attacks. the best known that started the trend in the europe was on the promenade and there have been more than half a dozen over the past year. they intended was something quite different. explosion andgas what they were planning to do was to put these gas canisters

in the truck to create a car bomb. that was in all. miles south of barcelona where there is this next car ramming and five of the terrorists are killed, so this is a larger cell, better coordinated, but has all the hallmarks of one of these bigger more spectacular attacks. took credit.t isis they were able to do that because they understood the attacks. investigators are looking to see if they can establish for contacts within spain and outside of spain. west point has studied this, the spanish have arrested 178 islam

extremists. 40% are from morocco, so this is a problem the spanish authorities have been a aware of and working against for some time. this is the individual who rented the car, and then there is his brother, who they are still looking for. they believe the brother is the driver of the car comes to the manhunt continues. this is a security operation that is ongoing. charlie: when we think about isis, and as they are fighting in raqqa, having already lost mosul, that what we will witness is these kind of attacks in europe and perhaps in the united states. guest: that's right. look at what we had seen in

other areas and paris. we have always worried that the fires in those areas would bleed out and go into western europe. spain is particularly vulnerable to those extremists coming in from north africa. there is a pipeline with a cross from north africa, morocco, and from the malley-mauritania extremists fight their. many pass through spain. we have a group that is imposing a threat. charlie: when they capture a terrorist like this and began interrogation, when are they able to lead to other activities, either because the search where they live or they realize the game is up? guest: there is a number of ways they get this information. pieces of paper and information on the person.

their cell phones, computers, social media. all of those connections provide a web to investigators who leverage those in terms of an interrogation. we have to be suspicious that perhaps one of the ways the spanish authorities were able to get to the cell, 80 miles south, was because of all the information they gathered, and perhaps the cooperation really did get people alive in these operations. they have four in custody that can provide lead information. charlie: did they have any indication that an attack like this was coming? guest: not clear. there were some reports that cia and other authorities may have had general warnings. there is no indication of a specific warning. it may be that other intelligence services had had some indications that a plot may be afoot. we have seen those warnings before, particularly in the summer. where there aren't tourists and people traveling, we know that al qaeda wants to target these sorts of areas. it is possible they had some indication. charlie: because of security on airplanes had become much

tougher, so they turned to something that is much more difficult to detect and prevent. guest: if all you need is to grab every day item, a car, a knife, and walk into a restaurant, and start having or you can take a car on london bridge or a nice, or in barcelona, and mow down civilians, it is very difficult to stop. you rely on the person, but it is hard when somebody has picked up the weapons. charlie: why has the united states -- how have they been successful in avoiding significant attacks like this in our cities and in our concert halls? guest: it is interesting, charlie. there is no doubt in my mind

that charlottesville was domestic terrorism. if you are prepared to label barcelona where a nongovernment actor targets a civilian population for political aim -- we ought to be willing to confront the fact that when a white supremacist or neo-nazi does the exact same thing, that is terrorism, too. mostly in the context of the united states. when you have these sorts of protest, you give a permit to one group, and the counter group wants another permit. the police take the cautions to keep them separate, at put barricades between them, to prevent that sort of violence. authorities intro to are going to look back at the things they could have or should have done to prevent it. charlie: do most people in your field say it is surprising that we have not had an attack in the united states directed by people overseas? guest: yes, i think we are surprised may have not been successful. some of that is attributed to the men and women who work every day to prevent it. charlie: successful detection and successful intelligence. guest: that's right. we have invested billions of dollars to improve our collection and detection. it is a tribute to the relationship between the fed and

the state and local. oftentimes, state and local elected nypd get the first indication that something is wrong, and then working with the fed, they can detect and prevent it. charlie: what might change in the future? are there more things that law-enforcement people can do to prevent this from happening? i have always heard that the primary weapon you have is intelligence, forewarning. guest: that is exactly right. i remember when the french put these barricades around the eiffel tower. everyone said, why are they doing this? barcelona reminds us why. we are going to see more and more vehicular barricades in an attempt to make this like we did with airports, make it more difficult while we rely on intelligence to try and prevent it. charlie: there is also apparent

here and in other instances a terrorist cell. what is that and how does it function? guest: when we think about a cell, it is a group of people, more than one. we have heard a lot about lone wolves, the individuals who see something on the internet and are inspired to act independent of the group, but when we talk about a cell, it is typically a group of people who have discussed, planned, coordinated, gathered materials, like get gas canisters, tried to rent a big truck. they rented two smaller trucks. a cell has the characteristic of the planning and operation, coordination of an operation that a lone wolf does not, and it allows them to inflict more damage, more harm, and they are more lethal. charlie: was the boston marathon a small cell or a lone wolf? guest: a small cell. you had two brothers who worked

in concert. that is right. charlie: in terms of the support they are getting, has that dried up as they have lost the caliphate in terms of isis? are they less able to raise the kind of financing that they wanted to? less able to recruit as they wanted to? or is that still a factor they can depend on? guest: i think it has become more demand for them, but as it has become more difficult -- if the successeshave in the iraq, syria theater to they point to things like barcelona. they will go out on some media and do it that way. they will use bitcoin. they adapt their methods around authorities or they can continue to do those kinds of things. charlie: thank you for coming. it is great to see you. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪ ♪

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♪ charlie: steve bannon is one of the most divisive figures in american politics. with bluegraduate collar roots, steve bannon was the driving force behind breitbart when donald trump pointed him to head his campaign in august 2016. he is credited with helping guide president trump to victory. our guest tells the story in his

new book, called "devil's bargain." i am pleased to have josh green at this table. welcome. this is a new review which basically i just saw in which it says it is a testament to your a adroit intertwining of steve bannon's with the donald trump's that we are not certain which of the two figures has sold the bigger part of himself to the other. in the broader sense, they are co-authors of our tabloid conservatives. joshua: exactly right. the point of the book was to go back and answer the question that everybody still wants to know about donald trump. how is it that he managed to get elected, and all of us in the media and washington did not see it coming? i did not see it coming, but i had covered annan, bright part, and the populist uprising, and i spoke to stephen bannon for a story i was doing, and looking

back, it all came into focus, and how the whole story of these two men are interwoven. in this humongous upset. charlie: tell us the story. joshua: they met in 2010. bannon has this wild background. he was born to a blue-collar democratic navy family in richmond, virginia. spent four years in the navy, went to harvard business school, moved on to goldman sachs, and eventually went out to hollywood and opened a boutique investment bank, financing and getting cutting hollywood deals. like so many people, on the money side, he wanted to go over the creative side, and he had this deep, almost sublimated conservatism he had not really shown at harvard or goldman sachs, but once he started making movies, he gave full flower to that. he made a venerating documentary about ronald reagan that brought him into the orbit of a group of los angeles conservatives led by

andrew breitbart, the late conservative publisher and provocateur. steve bannon became infatuated with breitbart is a figure, his ability and power to shape stories and what kind of news was covered. i think the thing that bannon admired most about breitbart was that he was apprenticed with matt drudge and seemed to have an ability to see stories and shape them in the mainstream media. bannon, who is enamored by the fascist propaganda film makers of the 1930's and 1940's, was consumed with this idea if "i could learn these skills, harness this power that andrew breitbart has, i could shape the world in a direction that will advance my political goals. charlie: which then was?

joshua: his political goals have boys been the same, to push for a kind of hard right populist nationalism that is very much distinct from ordinary orthodox movement conservatism. bannon's critique of that kind of conservatism essentially is that it is globalist -- his great pejorative phrase -- that it serves a global financial class that is more interested in making money and erasing national borders, tearing down cultural identities, then it is in serving the man of ordinary working-class blue-collar people that steve bannon thinks is the backbone of the country, and ought to be at the center of our politics. and bannon's prescription for how to do that is essentially to tear down the global free-trade system, to close america's borders, to deport people who are here illegally, and to curb

illegal immigration as a way of privileging american citizens and reasserting a cultural identity. charlie: is this different from arguedt buchanan in the 1980's? joshua: i talked about this one year ago. i asked him, isn't he really your intellectual forbear? he said "yes and no." yes, he caught into the power of to this kind of power, this kind of populism, and that buchanan, like steve bannon, is a deeply traditional catholic, but he said that the difference is that buchanan is not enough of a zionist. that is where he was wrong. i have a big zionist, and therefore, we really do not see eye-to-eye. charlie: when does donald trump come into the picture? joshua: trump comes into

bannon's picture in 2010. they met through a longtime anti-clinton activist named david bossie, central to the bill clinton's scandals and investigations in the 1990's. he was formerly chief investigator of the oversight committee, who were the ones who pursued bill clinton more aggressively than any other republicans in congress. bannon new boss see from the conservative fringes. bossie had been pulled into donald trump's orbit by steve wynn. trump at the time was getting serious about running for politics, and these are the guys he surrounded himself with. charlie: but steve wynn and donald trump weren't close? joshua: not originally. they sued each other. wynn wanted to move into atlantic city. they all hired detectives and they sued each other. there was all kinds of skulduggery, but in the end, they settled because there was a better deal for each of them.

as soon as they sold, they became friends. after they became friends, he bossie was at a fundraiser, a hospital fundraiser with steve. he said he is a big deal in republican politics and probably have heard of him because right at that time bossie's group citizens united had just won a supreme court case, so his stock was trading at a high. trump was very impressed with that, because trump is always impressed with status, and he brought bossie into his orbit. bossie started going to trump him on politics. one day, he said to his friends the bannon and said "i want to introduce you to somebody." and he introduced him to donald trump. charlie: what kind of introduction did they have to each other? joshua: they immediately clicked. and the reason they immediately

clicked is because bannon, like trump, is a deal guy. he is one who knows money and wall street, but also somebody who has worked in entertainment and cares about it and speaks the lingo. full ofis a guy for of politic l political ideas. we did not realize this at the time, but trump was getting serious about running for president. goose the ratings, but he really wanted to be president. charlie: was he looking for a path to the presidency? joshua: he was. charlie: he was a democrat, he was a republican, he was everything. joshua: what he wanted to do was get to a position of power. i told the story of president trump's fitful political career, when he first started talking about this and going on cnn and telling himself as a presidential candidate. the strain that runs through all of donald trump's political

evolutions, he does have populist impulses, free trade, about how america is getting ripped off by wiley foreign competitors. in the 1980's, it was japan. now, it is china. i think he recognized in bannon, someone who shared his political outlook, but had a very fully meshed politics that mashe comfortably with trump's on. the one element that i think steve bannon added to donald trump's political persona was to convince him of the power of the illegal immigration as a political weapon to wield in a republican primary. a based a base and take away from the establishment republicans who really weren't serving the needs and desires of their own voters. charlie: by using language that

was more strident and go into a position further right than they were. joshua: exactly. and bannon in 2006 had produced a documentary called "border wars," where he went down to the u.s.-mexico border and had a visceral sense for the emotion s that illegal immigration stirs up, and just the anger and anxieties. i think bannon's dark talent is recognizing and exploiting the kind of thing, and that is something that he injected into trump's political persona. and trump, being the intuitive politician that he is, starting testing out this material at rallies. he started talking about the wall. he could see that he was getting a reaction from these conservative, grass-roots voters. he kept going with it. it was not immigration that got him started on this path. it was obama.

charlie: so he decided then to run in 2016. stone, his long-time adviser said the moment he knew trump was going to run, he calls him up on new year's day, 2013, roger stone calls trump. trump tells them, "i just went and trademarked the phrase "make america great again." he said he knew at that moment that trump was really going to go ahead. i covered what unfolded over the next 3-4 months in the book. you can see that just over the course of those few months, trump morphing from a guy who is talking about birtherism to the guy that is a full-fledged anti-immigrant zealot. anti-trade, anti-immigrant. this is around the time that he came up with a border wall. his staff came up with a border wall. this is when donald trump morphed into donald trump. to,lie: jobs, and budgeting

it was always sort of, you know, self interests first. joshua: but it was also playing on the resentments of the very people whose support he was trying to win. this was stephen bannon's greatest inside. charlie: they were resentful of the establishment. joshua: not just the establishment, yes, the establishment, but also of everybody, of the immigrants who were coming in. they thought they were getting benefits that rightfully belonged to them. these immigrants were displacing them in american culture. that political leaders were more intent on coddling and serving these foreigners than they were on their own citizens. viscerally,stood and trump did to, the power that could have as a political issue. beginning in the spring of 2013, that is when trump flipped the switch and turn it on. charlie: devils bargain, josh green.

subtitled, steve bannon, donald trump, and the storming of the presidency. thank you for coming. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

♪ emma: i am emma chandra and you're watching "bloomberg technology." let's start with a check of your first word news. the search for 10 missing sailors lost after the uss john mccain collided with an oil tanker near singapore continues. it is the second collision involving a u.s. warship in the pacific region in two months. the navy has ordered a wide ranging investigation. the "washington post" reports the secret service only has enough funds to protect the trump family until the end of september. that is after a "usa today" report said they hit caps meant to last until the end of the year. the poster says that if the