♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: steve bannon is executive chairman of breitbart news. until recently, he was chief strategist at the white house for president trump. during the campaign, he became the ceo of the trump campaign. he grew up in richmond, virginia, went to virginia tech, and georgetown and, harvard business school. he went to work for goldman sachs and became a filmmaker. last week, i went to washington to speak with steve bannon about politics, economic nationalism, president trump, and other issues facing the country. we recorded the conversation at his home, which is also the office for breitbart news.

two segments of that conversation appeared on "60 minutes," last night. here is an excerpt. steve: donald trump is a fighter. great counterpuncher. great counterpuncher. he's a fighter. i will be his wing man outside. our purpose is to support donald trump. charlie: and destroy his enemies? steve: to make sure his enemies know there's no free shot. after the charlottesville situation, i told john kelly, i was the only guy that tried to defend him. i said he's talking about taking something to a higher level. where does this all go? where does it end? does it end in taking down the washington monument? charlie: i will tell you where many people think it should have gone. it should have gone in terms of denouncing, specifically from the very beginning, neo-nazis and white supremacists, and people of that political view. it should have gone there

because those were people that americans in world war ii went to fight against. he should have instantly denounced them. and you didn't at first instinct. in fact, you seemed to be doubling down in terms of a moral equivalency. steve: what he's trying to say is that people who support the monuments, if people support that, that is the first amendment. but talking about neo-nazis, and the neo-confederacy and the klan -- and by the way there is no , room in american society for that. my problem, and i told general kelly this, when you side with a man, you side with him. i was proud to defend president trump in the media. charlie: no exceptions in terms of siding with someone? steve: you can tell him to do it a better way but if you are , going to break, then resign. the stuff leaked out that week by certain members of the white house i thought was unacceptable. if you find it unacceptable, you

should resign. charlie: who are you talking about? steve: i'm talking about gary cohn and some other people. if you don't like what he's doing and don't agree, you have an obligation to resign. charlie: so good cohn it should have resigned? steve: absolutely. charlie: were you upset with him? steve: i was of the opinion you should condemn both the racists and the neo-nazis. because they are getting a free ride off of donald trump. it is a small group, a vicious group, they add no value. all they do is show up in the mainstream and left-wing media makes them up as some huge part of donald trump's coalition. charlie: david duke -- steve: david duke shows up for every media opportunity because -- it is irrelevant. charlie: the media does not make david duke say what he says. they applauded with the president did, that is what david duke did. refutedhe president has

what david duke stands for. charlie: everybody who listens, talks about one of the great issues in american life today, which is the plight of the middle class, they also believe there is, on your part and the president's part, not enough appreciation for some of the values also that made america great. and you don't appreciate that. and you don't appreciate the diversity, you don't appreciate the respect for civil rights. steve: i was raised in a desegregated neighborhood. the north side side of richmond was predominantly black. i went to an integrated school, a catholic school. i served in the military. i don't need to be lectured by a bunch of limousine liberals from the upper east side of new york and the hamptons. about any of this. my lived experience is that. charlie: tonight, a longer

version of the conversation with steve bannon for the hour. when did you first know about, and come to, personally know donald trump? steve: it was 2010. a guy from citizens united -- i made a number of documentary films with a guy named dave. that was after the financial crisis 2009. the film was focused on the tea party and the revolt. he called me up. i was making a film for him. he asked me if i wanted to come to new york to meet donald trump. i said not particularly, have too much to do. i said, why? he said, he was thinking of running for president. i said, are you kidding me? so i said, fine, i will go up. he said i would like to be able , to talk about this populist movement. i would like you to be prepared to talk about the populist movement, economic nationalism in the tea party movement. i said, fine. i prepared notes and dave gave a very detailed presentation. i realized it was in the famous

25th floor conference room. given that president trump is not a guy who likes to sit through long meetings, i think dave and i were there for a couple of hours at least. dave went through it very difficult presentation of how you run for president how you , think about the primary process and general election. i chipped in, had a segment on the tea party movement. i had a section on the populist revolt. charlie: what was your impression? steve: impression was, i had never been in the presence of a guy that had this kind of charisma. he was incredibly charismatic. he had an intuitive feel. we talked about china. i bet you have to time i was talking about nationalism he really understood china. he clearly had been talking about it for 20 or 30 years. very much like lou dobbs and donald trump, those are the guys i remember talking about china in the 1990's. he had a deep understanding of that. he had a deep understanding

about the tea party movement. he followed it very closely. one of the things about trump, he understands how to name things in a very deep way. he studied young. his third book -- you could tell because i kept saying populist. he kept saying popularist. i tried to correct him. he said, no, it is popularist. we agreed to disagree, but i could see what his thinking was. i laughed and thought, there's no way he's running for president in 2012, but if he is a very serious guy. if he ever tries to do it, i thought you would be serious. he did write a book. one of the things he recommended, if you want to do this, you should get a policy book out there. he wrote a book in 2011, and i think the subtitle was "make america great again." i think it was called, "time to

get tough." it is not one of the most famous of the trump books, but it lays out what he ran on. the title was "make america great again"? steve: i think the title was "time to get tough," and the subtitle was "make america great again." if people look at the book, it came out in 2011. he had a deep understanding of his thoughts on trade and his thoughts on america in the world, his thoughts on taxes. in 2010, i did not think he could run for president anytime soon. charlie: you thought he had possibilities? steve: absolutely. dave bossi and others in the cpac would invite him to these gatherings. i think the first one was maybe 2011 at cpac. breitbart at the time, i was also doing a radio show in los

angeles. i started watching him. normally when i see politicians, i sit in the back or the side to watch the crowd. how the response is. most of the time, i have heard the speeches before. i noticed something on trump. he did not speak like a politician. he talked in a vernacular that people could relate to. i noticed people would lean into his speeches. i've seen that on sarah palin. they have a connection. they have a visceral connection with working-class people. they have a visceral connection with the middle class that goes beyond politics. is guy.i think this i think this will be a serious guy. charlie: in fact, you called him the best orator you have seen since william jennings bryan. steve: most political strategists i do not pay much attention to. i don't have attention to the

guys on tv because they have fallen -- i came out of business -- harvard business school, one of the failings was the proctor and gamble marketing. they marketed candidates like products. t you conceal theells in -- you can see all the tells in that. you can't say certain words. it gets so dry that there's no substance. i think one of the things the internet has given us is a search for authenticity. trump, i'm telling you, and i can't believe the media missed it -- if you look at the campaign, these speeches the , crowds, were barn burners. each one had a different policy perspective. the speeches are the plan for the trump plan. it shows you how people yearn for this, still. his oratory is very powerful. he's the greatest speech maker in modern political history. i think there's only been one, william jennings bryan, who is also a populist. you cannot do 3, 4, 5 of these

rallies today and come in fresh. and galvanize an audience. the entire campaign was not really modern and the fact that we did not do a lot of tv. we took the modern approach of data mining and targeted it, coupled with an old-fashioned, let's get this guy in front of a big crowd. but the oratory is spellbinding. but i think he is a spellbinding speaker. the audience is engaged. how many people wait eight, 10, 12 hours in line? we used to do a thing at the end , people would be there once you 24 hours. got inside, particularly you got seated, or people would be in the mosh pit, people wait for hours. people would stand for 3, 4, 5 hours. we said, we got something. one thing i said during the campaign we wanted to make sure , we tracked hillary clinton very closely. i noticed that not only were her

speeches terrible, there was no theme they were not galvanizing. , we noticed she went to these colleges, you can tell because are from the other democratic schools around town, they are there because they are little democrats. there was no rallying cry. his was the exact opposite. i think the speeches were clearly touching people -- shaw said only connect. he was connecting hard. charlie: the thing i noticed is he has a conversation with the audience. steve: it is call and response a lot of times. they know after a while where the call is. you know, lock her up, drain the swamp, cnn sucks. charlie: you agree with all those points? [laughter] steve: absolutely. i think they were all key. charlie: including lock her up? steve: well, i don't know why people had had meetings with other countries, but i thought there was more than enough. i was head of the group with peter switzer, a great author.

it was about crony capitalism. we took two and a half years of his team of investigators to do clinton cache. there was clearly enough there to drill down on. i think there is something for investigations. i'm not want to politicize stuff. charlie: but are you suggesting she should be vulnerable for an indictment? steve: i definitely think there should be further investigations. i think the irani one situation should have a much deeper investigation. the whole clinton global initiative. charlie: the fundraising aspect? steve: they have merchant banking and investment banking. that should be looked at for bill clinton and herself, particularly when she was secretary of state. i'm not saying let's go after her just because she is hillary clinton. one of the tenets of the populist movement, and one of the things we put in speeches about her, what i told president trump at the time, the campaign should be simple.

she is the standardbearer for a corrupt and incompetent status quo. you are the agent of change. you are the agent of change obama didn't deliver. we always have her as a foil. she is status quo. you are the agent of change. you are going to win this thing. the math was there. 2/3 wrong track, right track. i think 77% of the american people said the country was in decline. particularly economic decline. all the underlying substrate of the american electorate wanted change. if you force her to defend the status quo, force her to this permanent political class that has a grip, regardless of party affiliation has a grip on , the nation, if you make her a tribune of that and do compare and contrast, you will win. charlie: isn't it sad we are getting to a point in which people are calling for the other side to be put in jail and be indicted? steve: you don't want to

politicize this. charlie: but that's exactly what we are doing. steve: no, no, look at president trump. one of the things i continue to say, you talk about a repudiation or notification of an election. look at president trump. not only do you have a special prosecutor in the justice department and a couple grand jury's, but you have on capitol hill, with republican leadership, three separate committees. two in the senate and one in the house. they are investigating him and sending out subpoenas. they have had big breaks already. charlie: in a republican-controlled congress. steve: i know. look at that for a second. if you look at the nullification of this election that's one of , the reasons i left the white house. i think he needs air cover on this. i think if you look at this, the nullification of this election, i don't think it's coming from the left. you have the democratic party, the corporatists, all this, i think they are second or third

tier, which i will get to. but principally, the republican leadership has allowed three committees to be run, clearly by democrats. i see adam schiff on tv all the time. mark warner is running the senate committee. can you imagine -- let's take it in political physics. can you imagine if hillary clinton would have won, and chuck schumer and nancy pelosi were the heads of the senate and house, that you would have three committees investigating president hillary clinton, with republicans running those? of course not. ♪ charlie: at the time that you

met donald trump, impressed by him, impressed by his curiosity, his attention -- was he at that time talking about the birther issue? this is 2010. steve: never brought it up. later, he did approach me, and we talked. not the birther issue, he did approach me about putting up -- i think he later did it -- but myself and donors, if we would be interested in matching a reward if they turned over president obama's college records, they would be a donation of $2 million or $5 million. it never came together. but i think before 2012, he did

a video in his office where he said, i think occidental college would put up the funds. but i've never had any conversation with him at all where we talked about the birther. i think on the campaign, september or october, we had a session where we went to his hotel and said, president obama was born in the u.s. charlie: but that came after a long period of making a big public issue for him. steve: andrew breitbart was very famous for not being a birther site. at the first tea party convention in 2009, or early 2010, where sarah palin kicked it off, the opening night was my film "generation zero." andrew introduced it. he and joe farrar got into a tussle. joe had gotten up and started with the gospel of matthew, went

through all the lineage of jesus, and he said even jesus christ needed a birth certificate. the place went crazy. our site was not worth -- bi rthers. charlie: so that was not an issue or something you believed in. steve: i read the paper and everything in hawaii, it all of the imagination it could happen, but anyway, talking about social security, it was a big issue for a while. my issue was never where he was born, my issue were his policies. i never heard president trump ever mention that one time. charlie: how did you get involved in the campaign? steve: i never spent much personal time with trump. even with cpac, my sister or other people in the company would go up. i did not spend 15 minutes in the interim years with donald trump. he came on my radio show, and

was on the pages of breitbart. if i go back to 2013, i had a meeting with jeff sessions and his young aide, stephen miller. this is after his 2012 defeat. we had a dinner. the rnc was coming out with the autopsy report, which said you had to go to something like gang of eight amnesty, all this, it became the lexicon of the republican party. i read an analysis that talked about how working-class people had not come out and voted for mitt romney, and it would have made a difference. i started doing some analysis about the working-class movement and populist movement, what it can do in a general election. i had a dinner with jeff sessions, kind of an agrarian populist, who was kind of the spiritual head of the mission. -- movement. i said that trade is a big

-- number 100, and immigration is two or three. if we ran a campaign to focus on economic issues of the country and got people to understand how trade is so important, and immigration is inextricably linked to the suppression of the wages for the working-class and pulling down the middle class we , can set this on fire. i said, you will not win the primary or be president, but we can use this as a vehicle to get into the general conversation. and senator sessions said, i agree 100%. i'm not the guy, but i agree. that person will arrive. charlie: and he became an early supporter? steve: intellectually, always. you could tell -- remember, the huge battle in 2013 for immigration, which was really the civil war of the republican party, that gang of eight. in june or july it got voted down in the house. it was really tearing the party apart. the following year, eric cantor,

majority leader, first time in american history, he got defeated by a guy who raised $200,000 on the issue of immigration and trade deals. we could see it would get traction. i was following trump at the time at small forums. you could see trump was starting to talk about these issues, particularly trade with china, nafta, bad deals. i could see the applause. no other republican would talk about it. he would talk about immigration, it lima -- illegal immigration. charlie: he talked about other things, in graphic terms people , coming from mexico were rapists, and -- steve: he was making a policy case. he does not speak like a politician. he speaks in a plain vernacular. here is what i took away from it. it resonated with people like you couldn't believe. no other republicans were talking about this. they had a standard doctrine of free trade, limited government,

and i'm not saying all that is wrong. free trade i don't agree with. it was just not resonating. 2014 into 2015, you can see when trump announced. he was fifth or sixth in the polls when he announced. no one thought he was serious. when he announced, it was galvanizing. the media bit right away on the comments about illegal immigration, and blew it up. it made everyone focus on what he was talking about. charlie: but you were not part of the team by then? steve: no, we were at breitbart. i could tell it was something. we are like a throwback to the newspapers in the 19th century. we have very set beliefs at our media operation. we are populist, economic nationalists. we believe in america first.

we don't believe in foreign intervention that is not in the vital national security interests of the u.s. we had others, huckabee, other populists. ted cruz had a following for a while. even in the first debate we had , a battle with fox news in the first debate when megyn kelly jumped trump with his twitter feed, and whatever, "the apprentice," we could tell fox was trying to run interference with more traditional candidates. whether that was a jeb bush or marco rubio, they were trying to go after trump. charlie: so how did you become the ceo of the campaign? steve: what happened was that after the convention and after hillary clinton's convention, in mid-august, there was an article by maggie haberman on a saturday morning in "the new york times," that talked about how the campaign was in disarray, it was falling apart, he was very

unhappy, etc. i did some checking, i got the paper in the morning, i was reading my coffee, reading the -- drinking my coffee, reading the paper, it looked worse. we were not involved, we were following it. we knew the numbers were looking bad. you had the khan situation, the judge curiel situation. they said, it is 12 to 16 points down it's looking bad. , the republican establishment was looking to say, we are going to cut this guy loose. we have to save the house and the senate. i spoke to a couple of the investors in breitbart, bob and rebekah mercer. as we spoke, we basically said that we knew kellyanne conway very well. she had run the super pac for the mercers for ted cruz.

charlie: and the mercers had been supporting ted cruz. steve: by the way, they had met with jared and ivanka, they said they would put serious money into a super pac, we support him. and i talked to them and said there's no doubt he can win. 100% certainty if he stays on this populist, economic message that got him through the primaries. charlie: the deal was that you could show him how to win as a populist, but the deal is that you would get an opportunity to see a populist agenda enacted from the white house. steve: no, it was never a -- it was really, you are a populist, economic nationalist, you have these beliefs. they are donald trump's beliefs. charlie: you did not have to convince him -- steve: no, if you go back to the primary, they are all coming up. he talks about it all the time. in fact in the acceptance speech

at the convention, you see a very powerful i call it the , wittenberg cathedral speech. the speech was looked at as being artless. i thought it was the opposite. i thought it was a jackhammer. charlie: because he had all the points you wanted? steve: it was powerful. charlie: immigration, trade -- steve: the basic core, and it was relentless. charlie: attacking the establishment. steve: attacking them. i was watching cnn afterwards, they said the worst acceptance speech, did not show unity, did not have uplifting rhetoric. then they went to the panel, and the panel was 70% that they loved it. it really got to us, he said what he would do. when trump says he is his own strategist, he is. he's a guy that knows the world. it's very simple. it was just to make sure we took away all the other nonsense away from the campaign. we just focused on his core message, which by the way, something he has talked about

for 30 or 40 years. it is the core of his being. all we had to do was set up a system to basically compare and contrast himself with hillary clinton. she is the standardbearer of the corrupt and incompetent status quo. i'm the agent of change. i the agent of change you am thought you had got in obama, but did not. charlie: what did you -- what did he expect from you and what did you expect from him? steve: i think he just expected to be the candidate he could be. charlie: did you see him as the guy who could give a voice to the economic nationalists? steve: absolutely. we saw that in the beginning. breitbart started to be called trumbart. we finally saw an individual in the political arena that could articulate and touch the american working class within this for not killer and get a response. charlie: did you bring him certain constituency he wouldn't have reached? steve: in the primaries, no

doubt. he had a guy that worked for him a number of years. he had a facebook controversy in the summer of 2016. sam numberg had been close to us for a long time. the breitbart audience at the time were nationalists, -- people looking for ways to characterize you look at breitbart. steve: we put up 250 to 400 pieces of material a day. i have sites in london, they take a handful of satirical headlines. let's talk about the one they renegade jew,tol, jewishs by a prominent

writer david horowitz and , calling bill kristol a renegade jew, by saying he didn't support israel enough. we are the most pro-israel site in the country is breitbart. the one that has the protection of young, jewish kids on campus is breitbart. the one that has done more articles on the plight of the jews of europe is breitbart. when they say anti-semitic -- by the way, i am given a speech to the zionist organization in the fall. and being introduced by ambassador from israel, the reason why i haven't never defended myself against this or breitbart is when the left is in the cul-de-sac of identity politics, we are winning. charlie: you believe if somebody is talking about racial identity rather than economic issues, they lose. steve: 100%.

the mainstream media and left said trump's down 16, the clinton campaign knows it's over for him, he knows it is over for him, he brought in the bomb thrower. bannon is going to wreak havoc on enemies on the way down. it is all going to be vengeance and what you saw was the exact opposite, a highly disciplined focused campaign , going where we had to go every day with a message of populist nationalism. charlie: in the west -- steve: industrial midwest. later, hillary clinton, who had been with her fatcats in the hamptons in silicon valley raising money, comes up to give her first speech since i was announced. i go to the room we had with the tv's all over with my young team. jason miller and others, on every tv.

she comes out and she goes it is breitbart, bannon, white supremacist, alt-right speech. i told the crowd, we got her. she is done. we are 15 points down. she has reconfirmed to me she has no earthly idea what she is doing. idea whereearthly this country is. charlie: how do you measure your contribution to this campaign? steve: it was a group effort. jared kushner was really my partner. priebus,way, reince katie walsh sean spicer, we were , pulling together. we had a fabulous team. from day one, we have a 100% chance of winning this. to tell the guys at

breitbart before i left napoleon , told his marshals one time, when you set out to take the enemy, take it. charlie: what is it about you and fascination with military tt breitbart before i left napoleon biography and military leaders? steve: i come from norfolk, virginia. it was a navy town, and richmond coming from the south it is imbued with history, the revolution in civil war, the great contributions from world war ii. it was just the thing as i was kid. i went to military prep school. charlie: but you're beyond that, when you look at your library, there is a lot of books about military, biography, the library about someone and norm u.s.-led enormouslyone curious about history. steve: if you want to make an impact in the world you have to understand the institutions and history. what you find when you study it

is everyone who became great over time or beloved over time had insurmountable obstacles in front of them. that is what i picked up from history, and also the cycles -- as the bible says there will be times of unity and disruption. in those the cycles of history -- i think the study of history allows you to see that. one of the advantages i think i have is from an early age i started reading serious history. my mother got serious history books for me. it is amazing, but even in wall street or washington, people do not have a deep understanding of history. particularly the flows and rhythm of history. charlie: does donald trump? steve: donald trump has an intuitive sense of people in moments. people say is donald trump , smart? not only is he smart he went to , wharton and i want to harvard. side and on the poet

he is more on the math side. he has something very unique about smarts, and that is applied intelligence in situations of immense pressure. he always says i don't joke. he is a money player. i have seen him in situations where the pressure is on and he has i to think through a situation and deliver. ♪ charlie: let me bring you to

billy bush, how did that analysis apply to billy bush?

take us inside the dilemma he faced. steve: we first got the tape on a friday afternoon from "the washington post," and i came to the same conclusion, look, this is locker room talk. bus or ino guys on a a dressing room years ago. this is not the guy people know. we dismissed it out of hand because it was over the top. without they reaction would be so over-the-top from the mainstream media and the left, so that night we did a little video to explain the situation and the next day what happened in the morning, a number of people started to drop off the campaign. they said they would not support donald trump. charlie: governor christie? steve: that came later. we had a meeting at trump tower, reince came. reince is a fantastic guy, but i think at that time was representing donors and where the republican party was.

he was upset. trump went around they room and asked the percentages of winning -- reince said drop out now or lose by the biggest politicalin american history. trump said, that is a great way to start the conversation. we went around the room. i could tell from the incoming of politicians and those that were there is for them to be so overwhelmingly stunned and polil history. shocked by how the media goes at it. i said, it is 100% probability of winning. charlie: you seemed to do that every point in the campaign, when he was in trouble asking , him to double down in terms of appealing to his base. steve: appealing to the working class people, absolutely.

it was a winner. that's the only time he ever got upset, he said come on, that's not 100%. i said it is absolutely 100%. i told them, they do not care. charlie: they don't care about talking about women that way? steve: they don't care about locker room talk when the average american has $400 in their pocket. you have been out in the midwest you have seen your own home , state, north carolina has been apparel,he manufacturing industry. charlie: everybody takes care of that -- everybody cares about that, but if you can't take care of your family, -- they do care about values and respect for women. they do, and it is not just locker room talk. steve: that is locker room talk, the billy bush thing is locker room talk. by the way, we have empirical

evidence to prove this. he got 44% of the female vote, -- charlie: did you have anybody else saying he better get out of the race rather than reince priebus. steve: billy bush was a litmus test. i said it to general kelly there , was a line from the movie "the wild bunch," when you side with a man, you side with him, the good and bad. you can criticize him, but you have to side with them. billy bush showed me who sided with him. it showed who had his back. all he had to do was continue to talk to the american people and we have empirical evidence that i'm correct and you're not. not only did he win, guess the -- he got 44% of the female vote. people didn't care. they knew donald trump was just doing locker room talk with a guy. they dismissed it.

it had no lasting impact on the campaign. yet, if you see the mainstream media that day he was literally , falling into dante's inferno. i realized, two things. number traditional politicians one, will run for the hills. people don't understand something. the mainstream media and the democratic party were not trying to be donald trump, they were trying to destroy him and what he stood for. they went about it in a no holds way they tried to destroy him. , people do not understand the courage that this man has and the will this man has. you know why he ran? he ran for duty for his country. he is a billionaire, he has an incredible wife, family, great business. every star in the world coming to him. probably if you look at material life, the most perfect life you could have, why would you go out

and have that be destroyed? charlie: can i list a thousand billionaires who would do the same thing if they thought they could get and have that be destroyed? thed go for it? steve: it is not just to the presidency, you have to know what you're going to go through when you get it. he knew at the beginning when he came down the escalator, look what happened the next day. they went to destroy him the next day. charlie: are you trying to destroy someone when you simply describe what they have said? steve: they don't describe what he said. charlie: if you run the tape, it is not trying to destroy somebody -- it is simply trying to report. steve: give me a break. go back and look at social media and the twitter accounts of all of the young reporters following trump on the campaign, how they were quarter needing with each other, they were the opposition party. that day on cnn and msnbc, it is not just reporting the

news, that has panel after panel in an onslaught. you know what he did, he was advised -- go on 60 minutes. have your wife and daughter sit on the couch apologize. ,go on tv that night. we were in the room and he said, no. he took the elevator down, there were 10,000 people in the streets. secret service went crazy and when outside and talked to his followers. we went back on the campaign that following -- the sunday night we had the debate in st. louis. the famous debate where we brought the women, the clinton accusers. charlie: that was your deal? steve: 100%. charlie: why? steve: because if you're going to go after donald trump for his words, let's have the clintons actions.inton's those women wanted to confront clinton for a while.

i was prepared to give them the opportunity. we had the trap set and they walked into it only at the last second did the -- charlie: debate organizers. steve: they almost had of fistfight. charlie: between you and whom+ what they had allowed to happen with mark cuban at the other debate. they had promised he would not be in the line of sight cuban , made a big deal to get in trump's head and they put him right down here. i went to them -- rudy said before him, i said, how is this they said we can't control it, we don't have security control. we tried to pull the same thing and i had the women -- the accusers -- sitting in the vip box. bill clinton had to walk right past them on national tv to start the debate. and guess what? they were going to confront them. charlie: what does this say about steve bannon?

steve: he's a good counterpunch -- counterpuncher. i'm a street fighter. if i'm in a fight, i'm going to win. inside the bounds of decency. to allowhin the bounds these accusers to have a shot to confront him? is that outside the bounds? i do not think so. it is something that is needed to be done. the clintons are so high and mighty and the when after -- they had not gone after them and try to destroy donald trump particularly for something , like language. it would've been different. that, we to play like will ratchet up the stakes. they were the ones who did the cuban situation. 'that was a whole thing to get in trumps head. i said oh, mark cuban, i will see you and raise you one. by the way, we rattled her. she was rattled and he was rattled. charlie: didn't she win, by all

the debates? steve: absolutely not. no way. debate? who won the steve: i think it was a draw. st. louis the town hall, we won hands down. we fully dominated the space. her new book says i wish i would have confronted him more. she actually says in her book he , was in her space, she wanted to get there. i think the question and answer was spectacular. we divided the campaign into three sections. the first was from mid-august to the next debate. importantly, only 70 on the generic ballot. at 90, nine out of every 10 registered republicans have to vote for you. i think trump was a because a 70 lot of republicans said he's not republican, he's not my guy. from mid-august to the morning

of the first debate, we closed. that monday morning, i think it was a bloomberg pollster came out and said we were inside the margin of error at up one or two. he had close the entire get. the second part of the campaign was the three weeks of the debate. she was supposed to crush donald trump because she was a policy wonk. charlie: you think it made a difference? steve: irrelevant. i think it was clinton cash and the greed and banality of the clintons. that is what we focus on. you don't need meetings, you had all the information you needed. the comey thing was background noise. we in the campaign didn't focus on it. charlie: americans didn't care about the emails? steve: they didn't care as much as i cared.

you know why the emails are important? they are important for the clinton cash. those emails are the personal emails that show coordination with the speeches and all of the favors. when she went into the secretary of state, who were the people who didn't trust her? obama -- you can say a lot about obama, and i do but he is an , incorruptible guy as far as standard political corruption, cash. the obama guys and john kerry, what did they make her do? they made her have that agreement that before you have bill clinton do anything, going to notify us and have permission. she had to sign a document that said that. that was not the right, that was barack obama and john kerry. after she signed it, she never gave them anything. the 33,000 emails have all of the clinton cash stuff in it. is it essential? no. you can make the case how corrupt they are without them.

charlie: you surprised you won? steve: i said 100%. charlie: wasn't donald trump surprised the day of the election he won? steve: the third phase was a three and a half week sprint to the finish. he could see the momentum picking up. he was an absolute believer. charlie: she believed she had the momentum. steve: that shows you how clueless they were. charlie: they had the momentum until the last time comey came out. steve: complete nonsense. it halted their campaign. steve: you look at the data and these places like youngstown, ohio where you can see the working class base was coming back to us. jake sullivan is the one voice in the campaign -- if you read his book, i see where bannon is putting this guy, look where they're going. who told me that also is mark cuban. he kept saying, -- i kept

telling him, you got to get to western pennsylvania, you have to get obama out there more. go to places where he won big. he said the weekend before hand he knew they were in trouble. he said can you come to pittsburgh, can you open for her? she needs a tough time drawing crowds. she does not excite people, they -- she has no message. he said i knew they were in trouble in pennsylvania. i tell you how much we thought we were going to win. we knew momentum was on our side. roger ailes calls me a week before something like that and it was all this in the press trump is going to lose by 10 points, it is over and this scam -- charlie: roger calls use up -- calls you up and says he's going to lose? steve: no he says can you come to palm beach. this trump tv thing, we ought to kick around alternatives.

i said, what are you talking about? he said were going to put the government together. charlie: he wanted to build a new media empire? steve: yes. charlie: against fox? steve: absolutely. he had one more round in the barrel. roger ailes was incredibly aggressive in thinking about the future. charlie: what did he contribute to the campaign? steve: he had come in given us ideas on the debate prep. he gave us all the stuff -- i think he prepped bush. bush 41. he told us about -- i think he did a great job with candidate trump at the time talking about the difference between town hall

and how to answer domestic issues. but he believed the fox polls, , he thought we would lose by a couple or three points. i said, no way, we are winning this thing. i was not surprised, jared kushner was not surprised. on the evening we got the initial exit polls it was so terrible and awful what we thought -- losing everywhere. even ohio and iowa i thought we did bad, dead even. gerrit is sitting there and calls drudge on the phone. i could hear drudge saying don't believe corporate media, these people are totally incompetent. they don't know what they're doing. charlie: drudge is telling this to jared? steve: don't believe the exit polls. that is when you see the coverage in the media, around 6:00 when the first set of exit polls came back.

everyone was planning for an early night, for this thing to be out at 9:00. she was going to make her big speech, you could see the entire tenor. it reaffirmed that trump was going to lose by a landslide. i never wavered from the 100% but i'm looking at the numbers and jared kushner -- charlie: what was the conversation with donald trump that night? steve: he said, let's see how it turns out, those are early numbers. charlie: donald trump had no doubt on election day that he was winning the election? steve: he may have had some reservations, but i think he felt he left it on the field. people waiting in virginia till 2:00 the morning, they had been there since 8:00, you see the enthusiasm, intensity, the polls tightening. we definitely believed he was going to win. ♪

emma: i'm emma chandra in new york, and you are watching "bloomberg technology." the death toll from irma, was the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the atlantic, continues to grow. at least five people were killed in florida, including a correctional institute sergeant and county deputy who died in a head-on collision. officials say two people are dead in georgia, including a retired court reporter. are dead in south carolina, including a public works employee on his way to help. president trump is expected to visit florida thursday. russia and china supported a scaled down version of sanctions for north korea, but council members came with a warning.