>> another firefight in the republican civil war. i'm robert costa. g.o.p. senators turn on the president. and the president turns to taxes. tonight, on "washington week." >> we have actually great unity in the republican party. >> the president brushes off stinging criticism from two conservative senators, bob corker and jeff flake. >> i don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard, to debase his country in a way that he does, but he does. >> it is dangerous to a democracy. such behavior does not project strength. it instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. >> as most rank and file republicans steered clear of the rebellion, the president took to twitter to dismiss his fellow g.o.p. leaders, writing they had zero chance of being elected.

and the president's former chief strategist, steve bannon, ratcheted up his plan to defeat all anti-trump republicans. >> right now it's a season of war against a g.o.p. establishment. >> as fault lines widen, the stage is set for a rewrite of the u.s. tax code. >> 212. the motion is adopted. >> but can anything get done on capitol hill if the republican party is fractured? we'll get answers and analysis from peter baker of the new york times, nancy cordes of cbs news, julie pace of the associated press, and ed o'keefe of the washington post. >> celebrating 50 years, this is "washington week." funding is provided by... ♪[music] >> their leadership is instinctive. they understand the challenges of today and research the technologies of tomorrow.

some call them veterans. we call them part of our team. >> additional funding is provided by newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own food products to charity and nourishing the common good. the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! >> once again, live from washington, moderator robert costa. >> good evening. this was an extraordinary week in washington. two republican senators publicly condemned the president, the

leader of their party. it was deliberate, stinging, and revealed the deeply fractured republican party. arizona's jeff flake delivered his scolding in an emotional speech from the senate floor. calling president trump's conduct a danger to democracy. flake didn't stop there. he went on to say mr. trump was indecent, reckless, undignified. hours earlier, tennessee senator bob corker, who is retiring, sounded the alarm on the president's rhetoric, saying, quote, the president has great difficulty with the truth. president trump was on capitol hill tuesday for a lunch with senators. and he brushed off those verbal assaults in a series of tweets. the sharpest aimed at corker, who he called incompetent and a lightweight. flake and corker are considered traditional conservatives, not moderates. that i have a relatively strong pro-trump voting record and considered, for the most part, part of the g.o.p. establishment. all of this republican chaos, what does it reveal about the

party and president trump? >> well, it reveals what we've known from the beginning, which this is a hostile takeover. it's not a republican president. it's a president who has taken over the republican party and trying to fit it into his mold. and in some ways, jeff flake made it easier for him this week by leaving the fight. by saying he's not going to run for re-election. he cleared the way for a more trumpian candidate who might in fact take that seat in arizona. so the real question, at the end of the week, is yes, there's this tumult, this great divide, a schism, but is it actually working in president trump's favor in the short term? >> we saw senator flake speak out, senator corker, but they were not for the most part echoed by other republicans. why is that? >> it was fascinating. flake issued this very passionate call to arms and basically the party mutinied. they said, no thanks. he arguing if you don't speak out against the president, you're complicit. you're aiding and abetting

essentially. and there was mostly silence from republicans if not a defense of the president. you had a parade of them on television the next day saying, you know, he's working really hard to get things done. then you had the president himself pointing out multiple times that he got a standing ovation from republicans on capitol hill. so it's possible that over time, you will see a few more come over to jeff flake's side. but at this point, most of them aren't willing to do so. >> ed, when you're talking to republican senators, are you hearing the same kind of grumblings privately from them? you're hearing that? >> a little bit, yeah. we've heard it mees of the year -- most of the year. and frankly, early on, flake was one of them, privately expressing these concerns. he's now doing it, of course, as publicly as he can. the problem, and the reason we saw the silence, in talking to one republican strategist yesterday who had reviewed the arizona polling numbers specifically that had been done by various groups, he said, look, at this point, support for trump is like what support for

tarp was a few years ago or where you are on gun control. it is a bedrock conservative principle. if you can't find a way to tolerate him and work with him on something, you're in real trouble. look at what's happened to jeff jeff. and go back to the alabama senate primary. started out well. but as soon as his opponents ran footage of him criticizing trump as a candidate, his numbers plunge. they said anyone else who attempts to go against the president is probably going to face the same problem in their state, no matter where it was. >> can the g.o.p. survive the trump presidency? maybe it's a different kind of g.o.p. emerging, traditional conservatives threing and a new -- fleeing and a new kind of republican taking hold. >> i talk to a lot of republicans who consider themselves conservatives, who consider themselves out of this traditional mainstream republican mold. and one thing i heard over and

over again was this frustration that someone like jeff flake, who, yes, probably was going to lose that primary, wasn't staying in and fighting. if you really care about the direction of this party, if you really believe that the republican party's future is where its past has been, not where donald trump wants to take it, that you should stay in. you should give voters a choice. what we've seen is the opposite, people like corker and flake stepping aside. there is a real fear that if these republicans don't at least stay in and give voters at least the option, then trump will complete this hostile takeover. >> navigating all this, you're watching these senators up close. nancy, you had this fascinating exchange with senate majority leader mitch mcconnell this week about the attacks happening on the president. here's what he had to say. >> at what point do you have an obligation as a leader of this party to weigh in on these very serious criticisms of the president? >> what i have an obligation to

do is to try to achieve the greatest cohesion i can among 52 republicans, to try to achieve for the american people the agenda that we set out to achieve. and tax reform is what we are about. if there's anything that unifies republicans, it's tax reform. >> it's important to note that that question and answer happened before senator flake made his speech. but he's saying tax reform and the whole republican agenda is really the thread that's holding this whole party together. >> right. and he went on to say that we now have a president, at long last, who will sign tax reform legislation if we put it on our desk. and so he couldn't have been any clearer, that it is not in his policy interest to go against this president right now, regardless of how he feels and whether he wants to. he's in it for tax reform. he's in it for health care, if they ever get there. you know, he just doesn't see it as a strategic advantage at this point. and no, flake hadn't spoken yet,

but corker had and george w. bush had and john mccain had. so it is getting more and more difficult for leaders in this party, who get asked these questions every week, to avoid weighing in when members of their own party are saying that the leader of the party, ultimate leader, the president, is dangerous to democracy. how do you ignore that? >> peter, you wrote a story this week about general kelly, the white house chief of stanley cu. in the white house, there doesn't seem to be a lot of alarm about these breaks in the ranks. general kelly seems to share a lot of the president's view on the party and what needs to happen. >> one of the things we learned about general kelly is he's actually much more aligned with the president than people had assumed. i think there was this idea that he was the straight-shooting general who wasn't particularly ideally, who -- ideological who might impose order and some of that is obviously the case. he has put in a much more disciplined obligation,

certainly down. i don't know about up. we saw that he actually shared a lot of the president's both ideological views, on immigration and traditional values, and he shares the president's willingness to mix it up. he attacked the democratic congresswoman who was attacking the president, something that most chiefs of staff probably wouldn't do themselves. but there's not a lot of panic in the white house about bob corker or jeff flake. for one thing, the president likes to mix it up with people. these with two people he doesn't mind mixing up with. from his point of view, he scared them out. i scared them out, because they weren't for me. they couldn't get elected as a dog catcher. so his narrative, rightly or wrongly, is a good thing, because it's going to make the republican party stronger. >> what do you make of senator paul from kentucky and senator graham from south carolina, they're playing golf with president trump, as all this drama is happening. they're building a relationship with president trump. so where is the disconnect here between these two? >> i think those two

specifically are trying. they're trying perhaps for their own interests and on behalf of their colleagues to spend time with the president, to get to know him better, to try to explain things to him and to hear him out. and undoubtedly, we're coming back an sharing those observations with their colleagues. they're also two of the best golfers, at least in the republican congress. that's why they're out there. the president is a good golfer, but rand paul especially is a good one. when the president asks you to play golf, what are you supposed to say, right? >> the thing about this whole week, it wasn't just about senator flake versus president trump, senator corker versus president trump. there's another battlefield. chief strategist steve bannon called these two requirements a monumental victory for the trump movement. bannon is out there and he's declared war, vowing to push out all problematic republicans in next term's elections. he's also called himself the president's wing man. the question is, julie, is he

really acting on the behalf of the president, or is he trying to build a movement that's almost separate from president trump? >> it's a fascinating question. i think that bannon sees himself as pushing the true interests and hopes and dreams of the president, even if, on paper, he'll end up with races heading into next year where they're actually supporting different candidates. he really is actually pitching himself that way. i've talked to folks who are working on some of the races that we expect to have, you know, inner party fights in mississippi, for example, and it's fascinating. they say voters look to bannon and actually see him as someone who is expressing the trump interests, even if trump has picked the other candidate. we saw that in alabama. a lot of voters i talked to said they believed that trump was really with roy moore, even though he went down there and held a rally for luther strange. that is just so incredible that voters could have drawn this distinction between who trump actually maybe backing on

paper -- mayb may be backing onr and who he actually wants in the senate. >> can leader mcconnell push back? >> he's trying, but it's a delicate dance, because he's trying to avoid criticizing the president. yet he has signaled that he is going to push back against his former chief strategist. he said last week -- he's dealt with this before. it's just that, you know, in the past, it was the tea party backing these candidates instead of steve bannon backing these candidates. >> what's the difference between those two things, the bannon movement and the two party movement? >> well, there are a lot of similarities. but in general, it's candidates to the right, some very conservative republicans who are already in the senate, and what's different this time around is it's candidates who are willing to pledge total allegiance to president trump. we talked to charlie dent, who is a republican from pennsylvania, a moderate this week, who is retiring. and he said the litmus test in his party has changed. it's no longer purity versus

pragmatism. he said the new litmus test is a loyalty test. are you loyal to president trump? are you loyal to one person? he said that is a trend in his party that makes him uncomfortable and part of the reason he's retiring. >> and senator flake was making a similar argument this week. one thing, you're going to see bannon engage in mississippi, probably in nebraska or wyoming, maybe utah -- he's already conferring there. he has weighed in on the arizona race. but i would not allow -- we shouldn't think that flake's decision to go was fueled by bannon. that specific race is quite separate from what bannon is now trying to do everywhere else, because flake was having problems even a year ago. republicans out there remember that he voted for president obama's supreme court justices, that he worked on immigration reform with democrats, that he's for global trade deals, was morr opening up diplomatic

relationships with cuba. very different from these others. >> i think the strategic ambiguity of whether it's him or bannon is a good thing. whether he intended it to be or not, i don't know. the idea that we really don't know whether he's for him or not allows him to have a card to play. now, he called several of the incumbents after his meeting and said, i'm for you, i'm gonna be with you. i don't know if any senator would trust that, from day to day, his feelings tend to switch. but it's not a bad thing for him, as he sees it, to have bannon out there, whipping the party into shape. then he can be the good cop, saying i'm for you. don't worry. now that you voted for me on tax cuts. it's awkward, though, because you do need every single one of these votes for this upcoming decision. >> remember when he went down to campaign for luther strange, he got on stage and said maybe i made a mistake and i'll campaign for roy moore if he wins. that's quite a risk to take, if you're someone like roger wicker

and you invite him to campaign for you in mississippi. >> where are the democrats? i spoke to bob casey of pennsylvania this week and he said amid all this, on the republican side, he's still wary about working with president trump on taxes. democrats are worried they're not going to necessarily see gains from this republican civil war and they're not ready to work with trump. >> they're holding for him on health care. and immigration and the issues over daca will be a fight to come. remarkable unity, because they both from a policy and political perspective. but you talk to party leaders -- i was in las vegas last week talking to state party chairs. they are very concerned that the base will rest on its laurels, will fall back on the yeah, but we're not trump or we're not that crazy republican that's running, and they have to focus on a positive why you need to vote for us message as opposed to just don't vote for them. they're struggling with that, but i think they're beginning to realize more and more, the more

you focus on bread and butter issues, while the republicans are fighting amongst themselves, the better chance they'll have. >> but you've got to break through, and that's the challenge when you've got this very raucous civil war going on. how do you break through that? yes, they love the fact that steve bannon is fighting with mitch mcconnell. they think they have a shot now, even in a red state like arizona, to pick up a seat, because kelly ward, they think, who is right now the leading republican, is beatable. even mitch mcconnell kind of went through a list last week of all these tea party candidates in 2010 who should have, you know -- who were in seats that they could have won, folks like o'donnell, i am not a witch, and he said, you know what all these people have in common? they're all in private life and a democrat is in the senate. he said that's what's going to happen to us if some of these fringe candidates end up picking off our incumbents. >> so as we're watching all this

acrimony inside the republican party, we have to pay attention to the policy that they hope is going to unite this people and keep it together. and house republicans did come together at the end of this week to pass their budget for next year, which long story short, clears the way for tax reform procedurally. but this debate over how to rewrite the tax code and not increase the deficit is certainly creating divisions among republicans. lawmakers from high-tech states like new york and new jersey are opposed to eliminating the federal tax deductions for state and local taxes. there's also growing bipartisan opposition to a plan to cap pretax contributions to 401(k), retirement accounts. the specifics of this plan, the g.o.p. plan, are being closely guarded until next week. but we do know lawmakers would have to find over $1 trillion in savings to offset the revenue-losing effects of these tax cuts. cutting taxes has always been a unifying issue for republicans.

but it has not been this year, has it? >> no. this vote is a warning sign for what may come in the next few weeks. the goal in the house is to get tax reform done by thanksgiving. even if it does, you've got to keep an eye on the whip count. you had 20 republicans, including several from upstate new york and new jersey, vote against it. i'm from albany. i remember property taxes are too high. the state tax is too high. if you're a republican incumbent voting for a budget that would in essence raise taxes on your constituents, you should start looking for a new line of work, because it's intolerable. that's why they voted against it. if that doesn't change, in the agreement, if there isn't some change in that decision to exempt it, they probably won't vote for it again, because -- >> so this is very fragile? >> absolutely it is. it won't be as big an issue in the senate, but it definitely is in the house. >> when you look at some of these estimates, you're talking about taxes could go up 9,000,

12,000. how do you go back as a city and house member and say i voted for a tax plan that caused you to pay that much more money? it completely wipes away what republicans see as the political benefit of actually passing taxes which is to give them at least one thing to head home with that is tangible that they did. >> assuming they get rid of that, that is the only thing they have to argue that this is really tempo as opposed to tax -- tax reform as opposed to cuts. that may be a perfectly fine goal, but it's not rewriting the code to make it fairer or more balanced, to, you know, cut off loopholes or cut off unnecessary tax benefits, raise some of the money that will be expended by the tax cuts that they do plan. and in fact, you see more and more -- they're dumping the tax reform language for the tax cut. >> president trump is telling people in private, call it a tax cut. people don't want to deal with speaker ryan's tax reform.

president trump's fingerprints are all over this process, some argue for better and for worse. on the 401(k)'s, republicans are thinking about lowering the threshold. now the white house is negotiating with the republicans to raise the cap for 401(k)'s. it tells us that maybe president trump is involved but he also could rock the boat. >> he's involved but he could say he's for one thing one day, get blowback for it, and then change his mind the next day. the problem is that he himself has nixed some big ideas that they've had for ways to raise revenue. before that, it was the border adjustment tax. remember, this was speaker ryan's big idea to tax imports. and the president said no to that as well. to your point, peter, if they can't come up with any ways to raise revenue, whether it's the 401(k)'s or the state and local taxes, what they're gonna have to do is settle for a smaller package of tax cuts, because you have fiscal conservatives like

bob corker who are going to say, i'm not gonna vote for $5 trillion worth of tax cuts. i might support a smaller package of tax cuts but you're gonna have to really radically scale back your ambitions. >> so if they can't get the deficit hawks like corker, what about the democrats? senator o'donnell -- he's up in a state president trump won. [laughter] >> they would have by now. we checked, with all the moderate democrats, whether it was joe mansion, joe donnelly in indiana, all of them say, if you're gonna bust the deficit, if you're not legitimately lowering middle class taxes, don't count me in. and there have been attempts by the vice president, the president, the majority leader. so far, nothing. look, i've been told by democratic aides, our bosses would love to find a way to work on this, if anything because it would make life as a senator more interesting. but there's absolutely no room for them to do it right now. >> you saw the white house go

after -- democrats don't see political incentive. i think this does speak to the white house's ability to get people on both sides on board. trump has not proven to be particularly good at getting democrats to work with him, even though he has relationships with some of them. in terms of working with republicans, he's so inconsistent in his messaging. one thing i think is really important to know about the behind-the-scenes negotiations is trump's advisors are not particularly effective when they go up to capitol hill, people like cohn, mnuchin, the treasury secretary. lawmakers don't feel like these people are negotiating partners for them. they come in with pretty heavy-handed messages. you see republicans say, okay, we're gonna humor you for a while but they don't see them as negotiating parties. >> peter, you're a student of history. how important is this tax plan for president trump? >> well, i think it is important, for all the reasons we've said. it is a unifying thing, a very

big fractiousness within his party. it's hard to go into next year without something to call a victory. yes, it's true it took president obama a long time to get his health care bill through, and he had to go into his second year. by that point, he already had a pretty big stimulus package. president trump is going to end this year, if this doesn't happen, without anything major legislatively to cite. he's going to talk about -- it's not really legislation. it's confirmation.that's fine, y not changing the system, and that's what he came to do, to change the system. >> and that is why, to that point, you will see the senate spend most of the next few weeks just confirming judges, because they know that is one way to bolster the president's legacy and republican legacy as well. >> but judges may not be enough, even for leader mcconnell. >> right. there's only so long that they can talk about neil gorsuch. in 2018, you can't be saying

from the white house podium, we got neil gorsuch. >> but they're gonna try, though. ha ha! >> we're gonna have to leave it there, my friends. what a week again in washington. thanks, everybody, for being here. nancy, ed, peter, julie. great conversation. if you want to hear more from this panel, check out our washington week extra, where we'll talk about the release of the j.f.k. files and how women on capitol hill are showing their solidarity with victims of sexual harassment. find that at pbs.org/washingtonweek. i'm robert costa. have a great weekend! ♪[music] ♪[music]

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"vicious" was made possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. ♪ ...is it so ♪ ♪ don't wanna let you go ♪ no, i never can say ♪ goodbye, boy ♪ whoo, no, no ♪ i never can say goodbye ♪ no, no, no, no, no, no ♪ ♪ doo-doo doo-doop-doo-doop ♪ oh, my god! oh, how dreadful! poor clive. at least he didn't suffer. oh, he did. oh, my. that much? oh, well, i prefer to remember him as i last saw him. being fed apple sauce by a jamaican woman. well, it's a reminder,