change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. add that premium channel, and watch the show everyone's talking about, tonight. and the bill you need to pay? do it in seconds. because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. go to xfinity.com/myaccount good evening. thanks for joining us tonight. american forces dropping the largest nonnuclear bomb this the arsenal on an isis target in afghanistan. and the president's aide left it unclear whether he directly authorized it. whether he did and whether that's significant are not the only questions. we've had this weapon since the george w. bush administration. it has never been used in combat. so why now? how does this massive bomb actually work? what does the use of it suggest about the situation on the ground in afghanistan nearly 16 years since americans went to

war there? first, barbara starr joins us from 2 pentagon with the latest. what have you learned, barbara? >> good evening. we know this mission had been planned by the u.s. military over the last several weeks. they were looking at a target in eastern afghanistan, remote mountainous area. there was a complex of isis used tunnels and caves. it was so remote they feel that there was no civilians around. they've been trying to go after them for some time now. so the mission was planned. it was executed. they will now do the damage assessment. they will fly over the target. they're going to have to determine there were no civilian casualties. they say they don't think so. still to be determined. they'll have to find fought the bomb worked as planned because they've never used it in combat.

this is a bomb that is so huge, 21,000 plus pounds. it's basically shoved out the back of a cargo plane at a very high altitude. and it detonates over the target. it doesn't penetrate into the ground. people are killed, injured. the targets are destroyed by the concussive air blast of the weapon detonating. and they had never until now found a target they felt they could use it against. anderson? >> and specifically what do we know about the decision making that led to this and any involvement if there was by the president? >> well, we know that the commander in afghanistan had had this weapon in the country for some weeks. we know he had authority to use it. we know that he briefed the mission up and down the chain of command. so when president trump was asked today at the white house whether he authorized it, he was very cryptic about that. he said that he has authorized the military to do, pretty much

paraphrasing him, do whatever is needed. does that mean the military has free rein? no. it does not. it means the president may not have to authorize specifically each mission. he delegates authority. but look, on something this big, i hardly think the pentagon -- pardon me, i hardly think the white house, the national security council wanted the president to find out about it on cable news. >> barbara starr, thanks very much. more now on the bomb used, the target hit and the significance of it all. here to talk about it lieutenant general mark heart llg and spidspie heart l hertling. >> this is a tactical weapon. i can't emphasize that enough. this is not a strategic system. this is something that is used for a specific purpose. i'm going to channel my former role. when you these targets you consult or your have your targeteers cult the joint

emissions manual. it's a book that says if this is what the target looks like, here are the kind of weapon systems you use. the reason we haven't used this bomb since 2003, and there was a predecessor to this, something called the daisy cutter, because this bomb was actually designed in 2003 for an iraq war fight. and then it was eventually used later on in this particular fight because it met all the criteria. open space, tunnels and complexes, exploding devices, the ieds that were used as part of this defensive position. so i think nick mickelson, the commander in afghanistan said boy, i've got this kind of target. what kind of bomb can i hit it with? he probably said that a few weeks ago. his targeteers said let's use a moab. that's what he did. it took a while to do it. it seemed strategic. a lot of people are calling it that. but it's not. it's something the commander of the scene knows. but he did brief his boss and i'm sure folks this the pentagon

knew about it. >> what does it tell you about the target itself? to actually go into i assume these tunnels would be a great danger to anybody who was doing that. to actually have people on the ground in that area. >> certainly. the use of this weapons system was probably as mark described the absolute correct weapons system for this target. the target was obviously very large. it had a large kind of a collection of isis fighters. it was a known location. it was probably actionable intelligence. in other words, if we didn't -- if general nicholson had not acted on it then, it might have been diminishing in terms of the possibility of a good kill, if you will. it was the nexus, it was probably a known historical travel route between afghanistan and pakistan. so the combination of all these factors to include the collateral damage assessment that was done, which was obviously very, very low, it became the right weapons system to use.

if you had gone after this target with conventional forces, first of all, it probably would have taken conventional forces, not simply special operations because of the large size of it, you would have put a lot of soldiers at risk. it would have been a far more complex operation. you would have had casualties as a result of it. this really made a lot of sense to go after this target at this moment. >> and general hertling, if the president didn't know about it in advance, didn't sign off on it, didn't need to sign off on it, is that normal protocol? >> in this case, yeah. it is a tactical weapon. you don't have the president signing off on everything you do in a combat situation, or at least you shouldn't. you should have information flow to his national security adviser. and i'm sure that also happened through the secretary of defense. you know, anderson, i'll reinforce what spider just said. i actually had a target in iraq that we wanted to use a moab on. and when the targeteers said let's do the mems on it, they found out they couldn't because there were too many close local

cities. so we went with more conventional smaller weapons. 2,000 pound bombs. the moab is 21,000 pounds. 2,000 pound bombs, you to use more of them and use more airplanes to deliver them. and that gets dangerous as well. >> dan narcotics it's interesting this comes on the heel of the strike in syria, just a week apart. obviously different conflict, different types of devices. >> that's right. very different in both ways. and very different when it comes to what the president said he would do as a candidate and is doing now as president. when it comes to this particular mission today, the target was isis. we know what he said. probably one of his most famous lines from the campaign that he would bomb the you know what out of isis. well, that's what at least he tried to do today. his pentagon and his military brass tried to do that in afghanistan and pakistan. that's very different from the strikes that we saw late last

week on syria, which is something that he vowed he would never do. and really criticized and went after not just president obama, but then candidate hillary clinton for even being too hawkish, vis-a-vis assad and syria, saying it's not where we belong and so on and so forth. on that it's a complete change. the fact that he aggressively launched strikes after he saw the pictures of the chemical weapons attacks, especially on children. >> peter, when most people think where isis has strongholds, they typically think iraq, not necessarily afghanistan. talk about the presence they have there now. >> i don't think it's hugely significant. but it may grow larger as people leave iraq and syria. it's quite possible they might return to the afghanistan-pakistan region. isis, there are a number of taliban groups that have slapped on the isis patch and proclaimed themselves something they call isis in korasan, which is an

ancient word for the region. they're there but not as significant as the taliban which controls a third of the afghanistan population. they're at the highest point i think we've seen since the fall of the taliban in december 2001. isis is just one of the many jihadi groups in afghanistan right now, including al qaeda. the islamic movement of uzbekistan and many others. so i wouldn't say they're hugely important. the real issue is the fact that the taliban have taken you're in helmand in 2009, anderson. you'll recall the district fought by the marines, the british marines and the american marines with a lot of deaths has now been retaken by the taliban. and that's quite a significant victory. unfortunately one of in the taliban have had in recent months. >> general marks, this is really a reminder to a lot of people who maybe haven't paid attention to afghanistan. and we didn't hear a lot about afghanistan frankly during the presidential campaign that is t war is still very much going on.

and in fact, as peter was just saying, areas that the marines had fought for and bled for, in some cases have been retaken. >> guilty as charged. the united states had an amazing victory early on in the war in afghanistan. and we diverted our attention into iraq. we really as a nation have a capability to prosecute what i would say two separate campaigns within a war. and we simply were moving resources around. and we lost sight of the ball, if you'll allow me that expression. general nicholson is the longest serving commander in country. this is an issue that he has embraced that the united states must get its arms around. the afghanistan military has to increase its professionalism. and we can ill-afford to establish timelines and declare when we're going to depart. we have to do that based on our assessment of the conditions. that's where we are right now. and i think contributing factor with general nicholson was look, this makes the use of this moab

makes perfect sense here, and it relieves some pressure from the afghanistan military. >> i want to thank everybody on the panel. just ahead tonight, the people who helped put the president in the white house, and the extent of their contact with russians. it wasn't just u.s. intelligence that picked up their communications we're learning. new details on that. and later, glenn beck joins us signs the president's chief strategist, steve bannon may be on the outs. uick-start fertilizr and natural super- absorbent mulch grow grass anywhere. guaranteed. this is a scotts yard.

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a new piece of the russia trump picture tonight. communications between trump associates during the campaign and russians, specifically russian officials and others known to u.s. intelligence. this builds on the story that our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto and others broke. it suggests more ears picked up early on signs of contact with moscow. jim sciutto joins us with more. what have you been learning, jim? >> what we're hearing is british intelligence and other european intelligence agencies like u.s. intelligence were picking up conversations between russian officials, other russians known

to western intelligence, and trump associates, advisers to his campaign. it's significant because more than one intelligence agency was documenting these conversations and feeling the need to then share it with u.s. intelligence which gives it some significance there. one thing i should note, this is incidental collection. these agencies were not targeting trump's advisers or campaign. you're aware, anderson, that donald trump accused obama of using british intelligence to spy on him. that's not what happened here. they were targeting russians, russian officials and others. and as they were doing that, they picked up conversations between those russians and people advising the trump campaign. >> so what do you know about comments carter page made earlier today? because carter page has made a lot of sort of ambiguous and sometimes conflicting comments. it seems like today as well. >> absolutely. at best confusing. and at worse, conflicting and potentially troublesome for him.

so when he spoke to our jake tapper yesterday, jake asked him, did you as you were meeting with these russian, did you bring up the idea of easing sanctions, for instance? and keep in mind he was advising the trump campaign. trump identified him as a foreign policy adviser to jake tapper. he said no, that didn't come up in the conversations to abc news this morning when pressed, well, i don't really know for sure. and that is a problem making these public comments without any sort of clarity. and we know that he is being investigated for these meetings because there was a fisa warrant reportedly out on him for some of these meetings. >> there were also comments made by cia director mike pompeo about wikileaks today, which are in stark contrast to what candidate donald trump said on the trail. >> it's pretty remarkable. i know, anderson, there is so much going on right that it's almost hard to keep track of some of this. but remember, donald trump more than once during the campaign praised wikileaks.

famous in october just a month before the election, he said "i love wikileaks." he encouraged russia to hack hillary clinton's e-mails, et cetera. repeatedly via twitter and in his public comments. now the cia director that he appointed in really his first public comments since taking that job comes out and says wikileaks is not just an annoying actor, he said they are a bad nonstate actor that works with russia against u.s. interests. that's a remarkable contrast between what the future president said during the campaign and what the director of the cia is saying now. >> it would be interesting to hear what the president thinks about that. now jim chute thousciutto, than much. join uh paul mudd. steve, in terms of how the intelligence was collected by the british, does it make sense to you that they would have had incidental interception of communications between trump officials -- or trump associates

and russian officials? >> sure, anderson. it's not an uncommon event. the brits and our other allied partners will be trying to monitor what the russians are up to in their own countries. and just like in the united states, in the process of that legal election against an adversarial country like russia, you will get occasionally incidental collection, in this case apparently to jim sciutto's reporting, excellent stuff, against an american. and then the process is of course that due to our cooperation with our allies, that information will be passed usually to the u.s. government, usually do the fbi who of course has the mandate for u.s. persons and american citizens, not cia or fbi. -- or nsa. so this is not an uncommon thing. and i would expect and hope that our allies would be monitoring what the russians are doing and this incidental collection happens on occasion.

>> the brits made the americans aware of this apparently back in 2015. what would have american intelligence agencies have done with the information? >> this is pretty straight forward. i can't wait to watch the fairy tale that is spun by politicians over the next day about some huge conspiracy. let me tell you about what happens here. this is about burden sharing that goes on for decades. huge vouchls tata out there, anderson. the united states collects some streams of data on russians. the brits can collect others. it's not as if the british would have looked at this and let me cherry pick the trump stuff. they simply say you give us your russian stuff, we give you our russian stuff. it's burden sharing. it's been going on for years. once it gets to the american side, the national security agency will look at it and determine if there is intelligence of value in this. and now the fbi has got to be saying yes, there is. if we have an investigation on people who are showing up in these intercepts we want to know. that's what would havehappened here, anderson. >> when sean spicer cited a fox

news report, but it was really a judge andrea napolitano report that used gchq to spy on trump, does in of this information in any way support that claim? >> let me echo what phil was saying. here is what didn't happen, and here is what i would have great difficulty imagining what happened. any administration in the united states reaching out to one of our foreign allies. of course the brits are very, very close to them. but nevertheless it is a foreign government and saying hey, i have a adversary. i'd like you to collect against those americans and pass that information on. that's not going to happen. the stuff that spicer and others might come up with in terms of gchq or other of our allies, some administration of the obama administration went outside the chain of command and asked a foreign intelligence service to spy against an american citizen? i mean, come on.

that's not serious. >> phil, we can't quite get a straight answer out of carter page and whether or not he discussed the easing of u.s. sanctions with the russians when he was there last year. if it doesn't happen, i would think he would be able to say it didn't happen. when you see his comments, what do you think? >> the first thing i think is he ought to send me a check for ten grand because i'm going give him the best advice he has ever gotten. get off the air. let me tell you what happens in this situation, anderson a there are three key parties here. the fbi conducts the investigation. in this case, a counterintelligence investigation on russia and american citizens including apparently carter page crop up. for the fbi to go up what we call go up on a wire, listen to someone's phone and e-mail is a serious invasion of privacy. they walk across the street, pennsylvania avenue to the lawyers at the department of justice who have to say do we believe there is enough legal cause to put together what they call a package, a package to persuade a judge. we should listen to carter

page's phone. party two, the department of justice. party three a federal judge. a federal judge looks at this and says you've got to be kidding me. you want me to go up on a political operative involved in an ongoing american presidential election? this better be darned good. carter page is trying to blow this off. as someone who watched this process, they didn't go up on him unless they had some fire. this is going to go ugly. >> steve, we also learned this week that the fbi had gotten a fisa warrant to monitor carter page as part of this ongoing investigation into collusion with the russia and the trump campaign. page wouldn't say whether the fbi had interviewed him yet. does it make sense they would have? and if so, how would that go? how does that work? >> that was probably about the only thing i think from what i saw that carter page said on the they're he probably got right when he demurred from talking about any ongoing investigation. so i think you got the take phil up on his after and pay that ten grand. to me the whole carter page thing is -- it bears all the

hallmarks of a classical russian espionage operation. they've identified somebody that looks like he could eventually be in a circle of power, perhaps close to a president at some point. they started this process years ago. taking a look at him, seeing if he is the right kind of person to be essentially a spy for russia. that's not to say that he accepted that proposal or that it even went very far. but i can tell you it looks an awful lot like all the russian operations i've seen targeting american citizens who might eventually be in positions of power. >> it's interesting, because carter page one of the things that he says is look, i gave some documents to a guy who later maybe turned out to be a spy. but they were innocuous documents. they were all sort of things anybody could have gotten. isn't that sort of how it begins? >> oh, yeah. the russians are expert at this. you start saying hey, give me something that is not sensitive. give me some lecture that you have given, some newspaper article that you've written, some thought piece. and then of course you establish the idea of yeah, he is passing me some information.

perhaps that information can then become a little more sensitive and a little more sensitive. this is just how the russians play the game. and they're very, very good at it. >> fascinating. steve hall, phil mudd. ahead, jeffrey lord response to and comparing cuts health costs to for the poor to marches dr. king led. es. take phillips' colon health probiotic caps daily with three types of good bacteria. 400 likes? wow! try phillips' colon health. thithis is the new new york.e? think again. we are building new airports all across the state. new roads and bridges. new mass transit. new business friendly environment. new lower taxes. and new university partnerships

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democratic lawmakers make it clear they're ready to play "hardball" over heck. today they plan to tie federal placements to the spending bill that congress must pass to keep the government running beyond april 28th. these are the same payments president trump told "the wall street journal" he may halt to force democrats to negotiate a new health care bill. the payments reduce out of pocket costs for millions of low income americans who get insurance through obamacare. earlier on cnn symone sanders said that president trump is using people, many of them sick, as bargaining chips. jeffrey lord responded by comparing president trump, his actions to martin luther king jr. >> i want to say something here that i know will probably drive

symone crazy. think of president trump as the martin luther king of health care. >> oh, jeffery, jeffery. >> when i was a kid did not want to introduce the civil rights bill because he said it wasn't popular, he didn't have the votes for it, et cetera. dr. king kept putting people in the streets in harm's way to put the pressure on so the bill would be introduced. that's what finally worked. >> jeffery, you do understand that dr. king was marching for civil rights because people that looked like he were being beaten, dogs were being second on them. basic human rights were being withheld from these people merely because of the color of their skin. let's not equate dr. martin luther king jr., humanitarian and nobel piece prize winner to the vagina grabbing president donald trump. >> jeffrey lord and bakari sellers. jeff, i want to give you a chance to explain exactly what you meant by your earlier comments. >> sure. i wasn't comparing president

trump and dr. king, who by the way was my hero when i was a kid. what i was doing was comparing their strategy. dr. king quite specifically, and i knew this when i was talking about this on air this morning was talking about creating a crisis. let me read you the quick sentence here from his letter from a birmingham jail, which i'm well familiar with. quote, nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such attention, attention that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. it seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored, unquote. donald trump isn't taking to the streets. he has the power of the presidency. but clearly, if he withholds payments from insurance companies, which "the wall street journal" said would result in a meltdown, that's a crisis. so he is doing the same thing. creating a crisis to get to a negotiation. that's the point. period.

>> bakari, does that make sense to you? >> no, i don't think it makes sense to me. i think it's an affront to dr. king's legacy. but what this is future emblematic is. donald trump has ushered in a culture of high intellectualism and ignorance. i think the comparison jeffery made is intellectually disingenuous at best. what we've seen him do is pervert one of the greatest piece of literature the letter from the birmingham jail. the fact is donald trump is trying to bring democrats to the table to gut a piece of legislation which has ensured many and saved lives. if he is successful many hospitals will close. dr. king, for example, his end game was to get america to confront its racist past and give black citizens equality under the law. you cannot compare the two or juxtapose the two. and further, i have a sincere problem with this because i think people oftentimes think that in our political discourse, somehow ignorance can be

cavalier. well, my father actually marched with dr. king. and many people were beaten. and many people were killed so i could sit on this set here today. and the fact that someone can make this comparison, even someone who is a friend of mine, shows just how low our political discourse has sunken. >> jeff, the notion that dr. king is creating a crisis. i know you isolate that line from his writing. the crisis it seems to me existed long before dr. king. the crisis was the treatment of black americans, african americans in this country. it wasn't a crisis manufactured by dr. king. >> i totally agree. right, right, exactly. and his letter was of course written in -- as a response to eight clergy men who were protesting as it were his tactics, his strategy. so it was an answer to that because he said he wasn't getting anywhere in response. and this is what had to be done. and i might add on a personal note, my father lost both his

job and later a business because he stood up for black americans when we lived in the south in 1965. so with all due respect, i learn a great deal from that and i feel very passionate about it, because my dad stood up and was there to be counted. so i just think, and again, bakari, my friend bakari is playing the game here on changing the subject. i didn't say that president trump was dr. king. what i said their strategy was the same. that's a different thing. strategy can be about anything. >> jeffery, i'm not playing a game. i'm not using a race card. excuse me. i'm a black american citizen who stands on the shoulders of people like dr. martin luther king jr. and the fact is -- >> i agree. >> and the fact is from february 1, 1960, when the students at north carolina decided they were going to sit in and they started something amazing with the sit-in movement to ella baker and samuel hamlin and all the many heroes and sheros that we lost along the way on this struggle, the fact that you want to compare donald trump, who was

trying to find -- to meet some political promise. >> i didn't do that, bakari. >> to meet some political promise is astounding and even more astoundingly absurd. the fact is this, jeffery. in our political discourse, we have to remove these hitler and nazi comparisons. donald trump is not martin luther king jr. we have taken this to a place where it doesn't need to be. and i hope that you're empathetic enough to see how disrespectful this. >> jeffery, i just don't understand the intellectual idea in the comparison. again, the whole manufacturing a crisis thing. i don't see how they're the same. >> that's because they're not. >> if you cause a major crisis in american society, then the society and those people who are causing the crisis -- >> but dr. king did not cause a crisis. >> go ahead. >> dr. king did not cause a crisis. tom brokaw had an amazing

documentary, wrote "boom: 1968." in 1968 we lost three students on the campus in the massacre. in 1968, april 4th, dr. martin luther king jr. was assassinated. in 1968, we lost robert f. kennedy to assassination. the fact is he did not create a crisis. the crisis was that america did not want to confront its racist past and did not want to cash that promissory note. the fact is dr. martin luther king jr. stood up for that and you cannot whitewash that on national tv because it's offensive. >> bakari, you're making something up. i am not whitewashing it. by the way, i stood in line for six hours to pass robert kennedy's casket and touch the flag. i was 16 years old. i don't know whether you were old enough. i stood up in the south in 1965. my dad most importantly stood up. i'm not going to sit here and let you conflate. i did not say martin luther king and donald trump were the same. i said the strategy.

and anybody can use these strategies. anybody for any reason good, bad or indifferent can cause a major crisis that forces the other side to negotiate. that's all i was saying. and to deliberately misrepresent it is not worthy of you, my friend. >> listen, dr. king died nearly 20 years before i was born. i don't have the audacity to know everything. this argument you're making is fundamentally flawed. in the crisis that you're talking about creating, this is not some game to pass a piece of legislation. these crises that you're talking about creating, it got four little girls blown up in a church. the crisis got assassinated including dr. martin luther king jr. so how dare you utilize their lives and crisis to make political points? >> bakari, again, you are totally misrepresenting me. all i'm saying is dr. king himself said there was a reason to do what he was doing, which was to cause a crisis.

he was quite deliberate about it. quite deliberate and effective. and i was a teenager, and i thought he was right on. totally right on. i supported him 100%. >> to put a button on how intellectually dishonest this and how your perverting his legacy, dr. martin luther king said of all the forms of unequality or injustice, inequality in health is the most shocking and inhumane. so please understand dr. martin luther king and all his contexts. and to bring his name up of on the eve of when we bombed syria, on the eve of when we drop bombs in afghanistan. this man who was a pacifist, this man who fought for peace is beyond the pale, jeffery. and i hope you have empathy so we can understand this. >> bakari, what he was fighting against was a democratic party that was created as a culture of race from supporting slavery and segregation. those were democrats he was fighting against, bakari. those were democrats. >> bakari, i want to give you the final thought, then we got to go. >> for me, anderson, when i saw

jeffery's clip this morning, i was more than disappointed. but i realized this is indicative of where our political discourse has come. you hear it from the president's mouth. you hear it from sean spicer. you hear people even including jeffrey lord rewriting history. and this is so, so fundamentally unjust. this is intellectually dishonest. this is an epidemic of anti-intellectualism. and even more importantly from somebody like jeffery, they need to know it's disrespectful. people died so i could sit here. it's an affront. >> bakari sellers, thank you very much. well, coming up, a week of huge flip-flop for the president. we'll take a look at what is behind them next. americans - 83% try to eat healthy. yet up 90% fall short in getting key nutrients from food alone. let's do more. add one a day women's complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women's in gummies and tablets.

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it's heaven. yeah, muscle heaven. you want to take one for a test drive? (tires squealing, engine revs) the challenger and charger have the most affordable v8 engines in their classes. check them out now during the fast and furious sales event. the fate of the furious. in theaters april 14th. in dealerships now. now get 20% off msrp cash allowance on select 2017 dodge charger models in dealer stock. going to borrow from the late irving crystal about ou how liberals become neo conservatives. to some extent the mugging happens to every president. none until now has entered office until saying so loudly and so often that the job would be essentially easy. in fact, by his own admission, the presidency has been more complicated than president trump imagined. the question is does that reality explain some of his recent 180s on policy?

more now from dana bash. >> reporter: one of donald trump's many memorable lines on the campaign trail was about isis. >> i would bomb the [ bleep ] out of them. i would just bomb those suckers. >> reporter: given that, launching the mother of all bombs against an isis target makes a lot of sense. >> we're very, very proud of our military. >> reporter: under normal circumstances, that consistency, a campaign vow with a high profile follow-through is standard, expected. but not with this president during this week where a slew of his decisions and pronouncements were completely at odds with what he told voters. trump in may 2016. >> nato is obsolete. >> reporter: trump this week. >> i said it was obsolete. it's no longer obsolete. >> reporter: again, trump last may. >> china, which has been ripping us off. the greatest abuser in the history of this country. >> reporter: and trump this week.

>> president xi wants to do the right thing. we had a very good bonding. >> reporter: during his campaign, trump repeatedly slammed federal reserve chair janet yellen. >> she is obviously political. and she is doing what obama wants her to do. >> reporter: this week the president changed his tune, telling the "wall street journal" i like her, i respect her. switching positions is hardly new for donald trump. after all, not long before he ran as an anti-abortion, anti-obamacare republican, he was a supporter of abortion rights and a universal health care system. in an interview early in his campaign, he was unapologetic. do you think the answer is still a single payer system? >> no. i think the answer is going to be we have to knock down the borders and let people compete. >> reporter: that kind of flip-flop with crush most candidates' campaigns. not trump. voters were drawn to him for lots of reasons. but being dogmatic was not one of them. in fact, the president himself

was introspective about it last week as he preserved military targets in that he was once against. >> i like to think of myself as a very flexible person. i don't have to have one specific way. and if the world changes, i go the same way. >> reporter: to be sure, on many of his 180s, from nato to syria, the world has not changed. so the question is what has. sources close to trump tell me there are several ways to answer that. first, the obvious. he is a novice to politics and foreign policy who is getting a high stakes on the job education leading him to change some views. second, he is and always will be a businessman driven to get results. not by ideology. for example, he didn't think nato was serving america's interests. now that he is involved, he believes he can change that third, his inner circle has expanded. and along with it, his world view. new confidantes like defense

secretary james mattis and national security adviser h.r. mcmaster, who both support being tougher on syria and more open to nato have the president's ear. some sources say the president is most influenced by the last person who talked to him. others say that's not quite right. a senior administration official who is with the president pretty much every day tells me that he is swayed by the most compelling argument he hears, regardless of who delivers it or when it's delivered. anderson? >> dan narcotics thanks very much. just ahead, it has been a bumpy week for white house strategist steve bannon who is reportedly on thin ice over his rival jared kushner. could he be on his way out? i'll speak to glenn beck, ahead. improve irrigation techniques. o remote moisture sensors use a reliable network to tell them when and where to water. so that farmers like ray can compete in big ways.

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administration had drama to spare in the west wing. tensions between president trump's son-in-law and jared kushner and steve bannon have gotten so bad that mr. trump told them to work it out or he would. tonight there are a lot of stories that bannon, he put he put that travel ban may be on the way out fueled in part by what the president has been saying in the last 48 hours.

he said i have many that i respect and people i listen to. i'm saying that mr. bannon is a guy who works for me. he's a good guy and i make my own decision. >> there was a quote frul into the in the "the washington post". especially with the reality show president and who is going to be next to be voted off the island, but i think that -- still he's influencing from a distance. i think that bannon was instrumental in a few thingsthality didn't go well for the president, and the president likes to win. also i mean i don't know anybody

who would bet against the son-in-law winning in the end. what's disturbing here are a couple of things. when you bring a guy in who was supposedly on the outside and gave breitbart to the campaign, when he leaves what's this danger to -- and danger in two ways. is he on the outside but still kind of in? so is he influencing from a distance or is he angry and turned that poplessire against the president? with what he's done just this week with syria, north korea, even dropping the moab today russia, the export/import bank, those things were very big with the far right and the popless movement that was angry.

you don't -- you don't inflict a wound on thel. they're now thinking who is this guy? do they feel betrayed? we can worry about that little circle, but really the most disturbing thing that bannon was a part of was this idea that we're going to put sanctions on the biggest currency manipulator in the history of the world. that's what the president said, china. and the reason he said that and it connected with a lot of people. not me, but a lot of people. donald trump was their last hope in the race. how do they feel today when the president reverses all of this policy, and that's where they put their stock that i'm going to get a -- my job is coming back or i'm going to get a better job. he's just abandoned a lot of

people. >> he's abandoned people but also things he stood by and said very loudly on the campaign trail. nato is obsolete, now it's not obsolete. even though nothing really has changed with nato. it's just the president has changed. but he doesn't even acknowledge he's changed. i keep thinking about the other republican candidates who were against hymn in the primary who had policy positions and who were sort of be presidential and standby positions. and donald trump, you know, very effective obviously, but was able to basically just take some very extreme positions and kind of make fun of the others. but now has adopted some of the same positions he ran against and effectively won against. >> this is so far -- i mean i can't speak for tomorrow, but today so far it's not my worst

nightmare. my worst nightmare is the president would turn to steve bannon, and he would go down this populous burn it to the ground ideology. the good news is he's not going that way, but the next question is where is he going? is he going left? is he going -- he's not going conservative, and who is he going to have left in the end? who's going to believe him? this is why i warn my audience and america that he doesn't have a core. he goes for the win, and that can be dangerous if things start to fall economically or in the world. tonight at least it looks the president is on the verge of beginning to look like another republican who said stuff, didn't mean it, and turned into reince priebus or paul ryan.

and that's not good. but i remembered, anderson, what president bush said to me. i was in the oval office the day that candidate obama said he would just flyover the borders in pakistan and if he had to would bomb pack stn. and i remember at the time pack stn was an ally for us, and i remember thinking oh, my gosh, you don't bomb an ally. he pointed to his oval desk, and he said don't worry whoever occupies that seat behind that desk, man or woman, will quickly find out that they're hands are tied, they'll end up doing almost exactly what i have done. >> that's interesting. >> that looks like that's almost true. >> it's the same thing with barack obama obviously talking about closing down gitmo.

he got lectured by the china and north korea relations. >> good to talk to you, actually. >> all right, i'll talk to you later thanks. coming up on 360 latest attacks in syria. the u.s. dropping its first most powerful nonnuclear bomb. nd mi'. and it also only has 2% almonds, which looks like this. what's the other 98%? get real, get naturally nutritious real milk.

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