zpritsds for this week, thank you for being here with us, goonts from nbc news headquarters here in new york. bannon banished. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm steve kornacki if for chris matthews. after serving for seven months as the president's top white house strategist, steve bannon is out tonight. the white house says bannon and chief of staff john kelly quote mutually agree today would be his final day. action axios says steve was made aware he was going to be asked to leave...he was given the opportunity to do it on his own

terms. bannon is the latest in a series of top advisers to leave the administration after short tenure in the white house. first michael flynn, he was fired for misleading officials about the nature of his contact with russian, then it was press secretary sean spicer. he jumped ship when the president made the decision to hire anthony scaramucci. then reince priebus was forced out after a turf war with scaramucci, who, of course, was soon fired, himself. but the departure today of trump's top strategist could have long-term ramification, especially now with the other big news steve bannon is already back at breitbart news the headline late tonight reads this, populist hero steve k bannon returns home. he could make a strong allie or a very dangerous foe for this white house. a bannon friend says breitbart

is ramping up for war against trump, it's now a democrat white house the source says, axios says they told me they would go term mo nuclear against globalists that bannon and his friends believe are moving the administration. he pushed back and told bloomberg, quote, if there's any confusion out there let me clear it up. i'm leaving the white house and going to war for trump against his opponents, on capitol hill, in the media and in corporate america. in a report today, late tonight the weekly standard says, bannon told them, quote, the trump presidency we fought for, and won, over. we still have a huge movement. we will make something of this trump presidency. but that presidency is over. it will be something else. joining me now is nbc news' halle jackson from the trump national golf club in bridgewater, new jersey,

jonathan swann, we mentioned him a minute ago, he's a national reporter at axios, they published an explosive interview with bannon earlier this week. thanks to all of you for being here. halle, i think everybody right now is trying to interpret the nature of this departure. we know he's back, ban isn't at breitbart news being greeted as sort of a conquering hero there. >> yeah. >> there are reports now it is war between bannon and this white house, you have bannon saying it's war for trump but against the establishment. this war he is talking about. what is it going to look like? >> he wants to fight. help wants a battle and there will be, likely, this war -- i think when you say ago ens the white house, steve, we have as to be specific as to what you are talking about. i think will you see steve bannon fighting for the nationalist agenda he believes he helped put into place and shape when trump then as a candidate a year and a day ago

brought steve bannon on board, he's kind of kin tread spirit. there was some patico on campaign policy. i remember that time in the campaign, it was this fire let at then candidate trump, he was already pushing his policies for example on immigration and trade. that exploded at the time. let me talk about the departure. multiple forces, i know jonathan has been working on this for days as well has been telling nbc, bannon was telling certain people he believed he would survive this, at the same time was talking to john kelly about resigning, this was two weeks ago, we are told it was set to happen earlier in the week. that got delayed because of the violent that happened in charlesvilcharles charlottesville. the question is not what he does with breitbart, also what happens with the far right conservatives who backed bannon?

there weren't many, one was steve king. i spoke with him in a phone call up from tanzania. he was extremely concerned. he called eight purge of conservatives from the west wing, language you might see echoed for example on breitbart. he says as he believes he disparagely referred to him as the northeasterner. he has a concern about trump promising the border wall. this might put pressure on kellyanne conway, who he cited as the lathe last remaining conservative. >> talk about explosive standards, bannon tonight said this i feel jacked up, now i'm free. i got my hands back on my weapons, someone said it's bannon the barbarian, i am definitely going to crush the opposition. there is no doubt i built a blank machine at breitbart, i'm about to go back know whack i know and we are about to rev that machine up and rev it up,

we will do. jonathan swann, you have been on the id reporting this thing. >> that kind of message that steve bannon is delivering, i got some -- it sounds like he is saying, at least to me, i got some information, i got some material i dpleend in the white house i will maybe take and share with the public f. are you donald trump, how is donald trump reacting to this? >> i haven't we heard from the president today, but i know that he's been venting about steve bannon a lot recently. he's been telling people bannon is a leaker. he has been saying, who does the guy think he is? one of the thing that upsets, angered is a better word. trump was this book by josh green, can bloomberg reporter, which a lot of people close to trump saw as a vanity biography for steve ban. trump resented the notion that bannon was taking credit for his election victory. so trump has been incredibly

irritated with steesh bannon. i can just imagine him reading this piece in "weekly standard" saying the trump presidency is over. it's almost laboratory test designed to enrage donald trump. if you were going to craft a it would look a lot like that. >> your earlier interview with steve bannon, he didn't know, maybe he did. this was in the "american prospect" bannon openly contradicted the president and chald members of the administration, despite trump's off the touk u talk, bannon said there is no military solution here, they got us. he said they're wheting themselves, he says i fight every day against gary cohn, despite reports he tendered his resignation august 7th effective today. you sa i the conversation ended with bannon inviting me to the white house after labor by a to continue the discussion. so that's an interesting detail

here t. word we are getting is there was some talk of an imminent bannon resition i ig nation or department cure. you are talking to him after that apparently happened. he is talking to you about hey, come see me in the white house. how do you interpret that now in light of today's events? >> well, i intrpt it either that he was dill lugsal or proceeding on two track, track one is he is going to have to leave. track two is he is going to stay and pursue his trade agenda and he's looking for allies. now, it was not sound judgment on his part to think that getting bob cutler of the "american prospect" as an allie on trade would somehow increase his credibility at the trump white house. so my picture of bannen in that interview was a guy who was reckless, a guy who was at risk of making really poor judgments, but then after denying for 24 hours that he meant this to be on the record, he then spoke to

the "daily mail" of all places and said, no, actually, this was deliberate. he did this deliberately to divert the attention for media in charlottesville. here's my take away, bannon always had a plan b. and the plan b was to go back to breitbart and he was going to be at the white house as long as that was useful to his agenda. and i do think this escalation of pressure from wall street bart could very well backfire in terms of trump's response. trump does not like to be pushed around. whether you lover him or hate him, this is a guy that doesn't like to be upstaged. he doesn't like to be pushed around. he could just as well decide this alliance with the far, far, far right the neo-nazis, the economic nationalists, you know, it served him for a while, but if bannon is going to leave and if breitbart is going to kick him around, he might make his

peace with establishment far right republicans. >> well, jonathan, we're talk sock much about what this might look like on the outside, if there is a war of words or something here between trump, between the white house and steve bannon and breitbart, what about on the inside, have you this new chief of staff presumably, he's happy to have brannon out of the way, this going to change anything at a practical level inside the white house or not? >> i think it will, yeah. because really the factions have been eroded. there really aren't, now that bannon is gone and presumably my understanding is his staff will go as well. not that that is very consequential. but there aren't really factions area. you got jared, ivanka, who a basically aligned with the national security team and the generals. i gles to the extent you have a conservative influence, it's really in the vice president's office and the legislative

affairs, led by mark short is fairly conservative. so i do think will you have conservative voices, but it's a different type of conservative. i wouldn't describe bannon as a conservative. he was arguing to hire marginal tax rights on the wealthy, economic war with china, family protectionist trade policies, total withdrawal from afghanistan and contractors in a paramilitary operation. so that whole voice disappears, it only resides now in the figure of donald trump. i guess steven miller as well who is the remaining nationalist at the top level of the west wing. but i will say steven miller is a very good -- he works within the system, and he's become very close to jared and others. so he's not the disruptive force that steve bannon was. >> halle, i'm trying to figure this out, too, you got some provocative words tonight from bannon. as jonathan says maybe these are

words that can provoke drunk, on the other hand you have bannon saying i don't want to fight trump, i want to fight the people fighting trump. it's what the conservatives said, we want reagan to be reagan. we don't want his advisers pushing him off his course. what kind of pull possibly would a guy like bannon have with the trump base, if there is some kind of public battle between trump and bannon. >> does trump bring an army or do they say forget we're with trump? >> i this i the white house answer to that question is no right. i will tell you one person we posed that question to, listen, it's not steve bannon who is donald trump's bachlts it's donald trump who leads his own base, bannon can leave and rile up folks on the outside, ultimately the president is the president. people voted and went in to press for donald trump, not steve bannon.

ultimately, when you talk to folks close to breitbart, there is a sense they can push some of this nationalist agenda john than laid out. jonathan is right, while there are people that possess that ideology in the white house, it's not that faction you think of. i think back to that picture you showed of the advisers sitting in the oval office with president trump, reince priebus, mike flynn, sean spicer, now steve bannon, all of them gone. it's so different than seven months ago. i would say moving forward, when you look at to your question, where is the pull, where is the push? it is donald trump who is the face of this i will say, too, what you might see, i look to his comments earlier in this week at that press conference at the lobby of trump tower, where he said this phrase, i have we heard repeated back to my by folks close to bannon, which was, we will see what happens with mr. bannon, it's marginalizing paul manafort's

role, trump said steve bannon came on late and go inthe process of distancing himself from somebody who was very close to the president. just like paul manafort was a campaign chair, steve bannon was sort of right there with the president in the trenches for a long time. >> you mentioned this, too, i'm curious about this, too, bannon's fingerprints, they seem to be on a lot with donald trump'sed a machine strax, with his campaign, including, though, a few areas where donald trump departed from traditional republican or to docks. i think areas where it may help make him popular in those michigan, pennsylvania, rust belt states he picked up, i'm talking infrastructure spending, a different form of tax cuts, the idea of targeting it down the stail scale, not so much toward the rich, going against traditional republican or to do though dox /* /- orthodox. what was going on behind the scenes there? >> i think that trump believed a

lot of these things and campaigning on them. bannon joined fairly late. i will say few look at the presidency so far, trump withdrew from paris, i don't think it was bannon, i think donald trump wanted to instinctively withdraw from the paris china accord. he is saying i want tariffs. this is in terms of the trade conflicts with china. so bannon was really somebody who donald trump instinctively believed a bunch of things, so did steve bannon. bannon would tell him. you are doing the right thing,ic him ompblt reenforce him. now he is been, one fewer voice is doing that. to your earlier point about what breitbart is going to do, my expectation, i know quite a few people and steve bannon pretty well. my expectation is they are not going to attack donald trump. they are going to present it as an administration in the white house captured by the

quote/unquote west wing democrats. they are going to present a picture to the country and portray it as the globalists taking over our movement and donald trump sort of a victim of. that that's what i expect to be the way they drive this narrative. i don't know that for a fact. but based on my conversations today. these people are fired up to take on bannon just mentioned the media, the corporation and the capitol hill. he didn't mention the people inside the white house he's going to fight. i'm telling you right now, he will take on gary cohn, jared kushner. they are going to war against all those people inside the white house. >> i know, reading the "weekly standard," he says it will be a jail break of moderates on capitol hill the republican establishment, aiming his scorn at that. i'm curious, if that is the direction, what jonathan is describing, if that is the direction, do you think that has any effect? >> well, i would revise what

jonathan said if one respect. breitbart has to keep its lines straight. you can't both be kicking the president and then having bannon saying i'm going to defend the president. i would bet my reputation on the premise that even though bannon is gone from the white house, he is going to have a lot of back channel conversations with trump. he will be less accountable than he was. general kelly can't control him if he could control him before. trump is famous for having conversations in the middle of the night with old friends. so bannon now has it both ways. he has influence both as an insider friendly with trump and as an outsider. if he's chairman of breitbart and breitbart is kicking the president and he's also trying to have an inside relationship with the president. you can only go so far down that road before trump starts fooil feeling he is flimflam. so i certainly don't think this

strengthens the president. i think it strengthens bannon in some respects. i think breitbart my discover it doesn't have quite as much influence that it thinks it has, some small percentage of the electorate that moves to breitbart. by any means, a majority of the elect terror rate, trump is going to have to figure out how to play this game. is he going to throw in with the neo-nazis, the white nationalists, is he going to try to mend fences? that will be interesting to see how this plays out. >> bannon is interviewed tonight. he says trump will push towards the establishment of the republican party. we will see if that's the direction this goes, jonathan cutler, howie swann, great insight tonight and coming up, steve bannon kicking off a week that couldn't have gone much worse for president trump.

he is under siege from key republican leaders, who are questioning his competition, stability and moral authority. that's ahead, plus, fire, steve bannon won't fix much of what is wrong, we will speak to a long-time trump watcher and how they might fit into a larger pattern and jeb bush famously promised donald trump would be a chaos president. with so much upheaval and so little to show for it legislatively. and fine tale "hardball" roundtable will be here with three things you might not know tonight. this is "hardball." where the action is.

well, it's clear there has been friction between steve bannon and trump. trump feels his strategist seeks too much credit for his election win. >> that blanking steve bannon,

taking credit for my election, trump recently told a confidante reporting there from buzz feed t. president was reportedly irritated when "time" featured him. he introduced him as a guy that works for me. he down played his role in the campaign, telling the new york post, you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until very late. i'm my own strategist. we'll be right back. these days families want to be connected 24/7.

that's why at comcast we're continuing to make our services more reliable than ever.

like technology that can update itself. an advanced fiber-network infrustructure. new, more reliable equipment for your home. and a new culture built around customer service. it all adds up to our most reliable network ever. one that keeps you connected to what matters most. welcome back to "hardball" it's day two of the presidency with the firing of steve bannon, seems to have capped off what could be the worst week yet for political politically. we said the before. his department cure comes on the heels of trump's controversial comments on charlottesville, which left the president increasingly isolated within leaders of his own party.

>> that sentiment is shared by his friend and confident newt gingrich. >> i think he's in a position right now where he is much more isolated than he realizes. on the hymn, he has far more people willing to sit to one side and fought help him right now. i think he needs to recognize that he's taken a food first step with bringing in general kelly, but he needs to think about what has not worked and you don't get down to a 35% range of approval and have people in your own party shooting at you and conclude everything has gone fine. >> and today in a stinging review, mitt romney called on trump to apologize for his comments on charlesville writing on facebook quote the president must take remedial action in the extreme. he should atres the american people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize, speak forfully and unequivocally that racists are to blame for the murder and

violence in charlesville. he reached further isolation, this time from his political base. for more i am joined by the right turn progress, ms nbc analyst and contributing writer for "the daily beast." eli, let me pick up a point, i'm curious what you make of it, hey, steve bannon is leaving the white house, he's going back to breitbart, he's talking about launching a war against some of the people around the president. is that necessarily meaning his days having a line of communication with donald trump, giving him advice, talking strategy with him, could that endorse still? >> oh, yeah, we seen that with people trump ejected from trump world, cory lewandowski being the most obvious person who has a direct line and the president enjoys personally. steve bannon and the president had a close relationship during

the campaign. not sure if it's as close in large part it's perpetuated by josh green that bannon was the mastermind, the president wants the credit for this that's why he was so pre disposed to let steve bannon go, again the issue you are talking about here, steve bannon may leave the white house, but that story is being conflated with the other 64 that makes this if not the worst week of the presidency, one of them. that's fact that the president bungled the response to charl charlottesville, so badly, even as he is casting this figure out of the white house, the president remains, he believes a lot of the things steve bannon has been criticized for as it pertains to white nationalism, economic nationalism. the american first campaign, that's deeplyen grained in this president. so i think that's a reason why it's likely these two will

continue to have conversations as this presidency goes forward. >> jennifer, you got bannon out there tonight saying he sounds like trump will become a moderate or establishment guys, all these disparageing words for the republican party establishment. he says trump now will be forced to go with what he called the sterm here a standard republican version of taxes, meaning weighted towards the highest earners, nothing where trump at one point talked about maybe raising rates on the highest earners, cutting them on the lower end of the scale, saying the whole idea of infrom straur u structure is off the table. do you buy that? is there an establishment emergeing from this,? is there an administration that can accomplish things legislatively that could epersonal from in? >> strump a dry vessel. they're completely flexible depending on the moment. so really what we're going to have i think is a three or a four corner war.

will you have the breitbart people lay nook jared and ivanka and gary cohn and indirectly the president. because you can't insult the proposals they put out without if some instances insulting the president. you can have the business community, which is already running from him. eforget that two business councils abandoned him. you then have members of congress about to get either primary or shot at by the breitbart people as they go into a tough mid-term election 2018. are they going to be putting up candidates or pummeling for jeff blake and dean heller, two of the most vulnerable republicans? then you have people inside the administration to try desperately get something done so trump has some claim to accomplish something and the congressional republicans can run on something in 2018. then you got things like the debt ceiling and the bucket

coming up next month. are they going to go without a financial crisis? it's not clear to me they will be able to. >> those sort of for lack of a better term, the establishment forces that jennifer is describing there i think is particularly perturbed with what the president had to say this week about charlottes wville. do you think this is a political offering, he se offering up a sacrifice and hit the restart to allow them to say he responded in some way to the criticism, he got the nationalist guy out of the administration? >> i think some people will buy that line certainly, i think there will be a number of republicans that respond by saying, now this person in his ear all day represents white nationalism advertised his website as the home of the quote alt right. it's gone. so you know, never mind the fact that steven miller is there, never mind that sebastian and

katherine gork rer stier are st there. i think they'd be fooling themselves if they believed that. as jennifer noted, there are a number of crises up ahead t. president sui nikkeily unqualified to confront them and, frankly, what you have seen now with the handling of charlottesville is a president nobody should want to touch. those were his words, those weren't steve bannon's words. >> you had the new chief of staff, john kelly, a military mane p man, maybe he will establish order, get things under control there. in terms of people looking for his appointment as chief of staff to do that, does today's development with steve bannon say anything in that regard? >> i think it says john kelly is empowered in the administration downward. the big question everybody raises can he manage up the can he reign in the self-destructed impulses of a president who always has tv, conspiracy theories lodged in his brain and

has his phone and twitter at an arm's length away. so that is the problem and challenge for john kelly. i think that is one of the things that's going to sort of consume his day and a day out at the white house. the other thing that may enflame steve bannon and breitbart, that this the a white house increasingly run by generals. you got kelly, mcmaster, mattis. those people will be driving national security policy. they met today in afghanistan. >> that is another thing that perturbs steve bannon and people that ran on a new isolationism on this america first platform. they don't like the idea of a more hawkish policy being run by establishment figures. so that will be another point of contention. >> when he thinks about that phone, kelly, he will be wondering if steve bannon is calling. we will see. thanks to all of you for joining us. up next, how did president trump's explosive remarks on

charlottesville fit with what he said and done over the years? we will be talking to a pan tracking trump for decades, he says the latest comments this week are a part of the pattern. this is "hardball" where the action is.

hello, here's what's happening, it's been a night of several police shootings. in kissimmee, florida, one is dead, another gravely wounded after they were shot in an area known for drug activity.

three suspects are in custody t. fourth is being sought nmplts jacksonville, florida, two were wound at a home before the suspects were shot and killed. near pittsburgh, a shootout left two state troopers wounded and a robbery suspect dead. now we'll take you back to "hardball "hardball." >> i am the least anti-semitic person that you have ever seen if your entire life. number two, racism, the least racist person. >> welcome back to "hardball" president trump says he's the least racist person. his words and actions this past week suggest to many a different story. a recent "new york times" report looks at trump's personal history with race. how does it square we are responsibility to the charlottesville tragedy, i am joined with david k. jonson, author of "the making of donald

trump" the maker of d.c., that report. thank you for taking a few minutes. people saw donald trump give this impromptu press conference on charlottesville, seemed to contradict what he said a day before a. lot of people said where did that come from? you are somebody going back decades covering him. where did it come from? >> it came from the heart, to the extent he has one, of donald trump t. earlier statement, which he read off a teleprompter was like a hostage video. you saw the real donald come out in the second meeting. donald lives in this world where he says i'm the least racist person you've ever meet, steve, i'm the youngest person you ever had on this show, donald has in his entire life been involved in discrimination, he and his father were sued 44 years ago for discrimination in housing. new jersey casino regulators found he discriminated against blacks, women and asians and

he's made all sort of awful racist statements, including the stuff he said this week, which was full of vial racism. >> are his attitudes, this is a guy in his early 70s, 71-years-old, other an outer borough guy from new york city, queens, people think of queens, you go back to the famous television character, archie bunker, is that the world that people remember, that trump came of age in? >> even worse than that, his father, remember, was arrested in 1927 when there was a pitched battle between about a thousand kkk or some of them in hoods and 1 humidity or so new york police. trump makes a deal out of the fact he wasn't prosecuted, he was only arrested. but he comes by this through family experience. >> trump flirted for a run for president as the reform

candidate, that was ross perot's candidacy, he described pat connone as a neonazi, sheer part of the explanation why he jumped out of that race. >> what do you see as the biggest party with the reform party right now? >> well, you got david duke just joined, a bigot, a racist, a problem, this is not who you want in your party. >> here's the thing i'm a little confused by, if you go back to 1999 and 2000, donald trump essentially ran for president he dropped out in early 2000. he did all the things a candidate would do. one of his major platform items, he was running against pat buchanan and he was you calling pat buchanon a racist, a hitler lover, an anti-smite. everything you said about the other day it sounded like a hostage video when he paid his initial statement about charlottesville, it didn't sound like a hostage video when he was saying those things about pat buchanon, what was the donald

trump we were hearing and seeing then. it sound like it was genuinely coming from deep inside? >> donald has no principles. there is no moral course to this man. he will say and do whatever gets what he thinks is if his interest at the moment. donald at heart is a con artist. he's conned banks in lending his money and said later i knew i wouldn't have to pay them back. he conned people in small businesses working for him and refusing to pay them. he spent his whole life coning people. if it turned out tomorrow it would be good for donald's career to go to a mosque, you'd see him to that. he does whatever will advance his interest. he's not a strategic thinker, steve. he doesn't think ahead two, three, five steps. when he embraces the wahabi faction of the muslim religion.

he doesn't think what that means to others in the muslim world, particularly qatar, where we have our military base in the middle east. all of that is because he doesn't know anything. he has these instinct from which he operates. >> it's a fascinating topic. we have to cut it short, it's one i want to find a way to explore in the future donald trump from 2000 the guy we showed you, to today or 2010 or so, what changed in terms of his instinct for what was in his best interest, this transactional, i'm curious about what happened from 2000 to 2010 to get him to the guy that becomes a birther. >> the country moved to the right, steve. that's the big right. he saw opportunity and donald went after that opportunity. >> all right. there it is, david k. johnson, thank you for taking a few minutes. up next, we have seen one major departure after another in the white house administration, will the white house door finally stop evolving now that

steve bannon is gone.

after donald trump's presidency is looking less and less like a finely tuned machine, we are only steven e seven months in, almost all of the senior staffers have left the white house. today's departure of steve bannon marks an end of the constant upheave am in the white house. philip bump, a political reporter for the washington post, the executive director of the new york stay democratic party, susan voice of the republican party, let's start with you. obviously there is a soap opera clouding this story. bannon is a significant physical for a lot of reasons. there is a symbolic role in the rise of trumpism and there has been speculation. so it is a big story. in terms of what we will be talking about a week from now, a month from now, is this a moment we would look back and say

something changed in the trump white house and administration or are we going to be talking about the same kind of stories? >> no the president is not going to change that would require the mayhem to calm down in the white house. that's not going to happen. steve bannon is a story, it will probably be a story down the road when he attacks the president or people within the white house. until the president decides that he really wants to have a real agenda and move forward, the more he wants to go off the cuff the more chaos he will create. >> philip you got bannon in an interview saying or predicting, i don't know, taunting trump saying he is going to go establishment now. will you get an establishment republican agenda on taxes, he is saying a typical republican tax program. is that right? do you think something will emerge of the tax plan we would have gotten from president cruz, from president rubio? is that going to happen? >> i think what we should keep in mind, donald trump came to the presidency the campaign with

no previous plans, he was produced of the policy he had promised andy enacted as president. you know the white house ownership over it. clearly they didn't, donald trump, he's a policy guy, he's never been a policy guy. i have to sort of laugh when i say target of course, trump is not a policy guys, it's not who he s. therefore, whatever agenda, if he ends up signing, no matter who sw him it will be an agenda put in front of many. >> how this looks to the outside, to the public, there was all this attention to donald trump the comments about charlottesville, bannon has been a lightning rod, especially this week. does this look to the public, hey, donald trump is getting rid of the guy who was sort of linked to all this charlottesville stuff? >> i think that is the mauj want to project, you have this new

guy, let's get rid of the guy who could be blamed, i go back to even well before that, the racial an mus donald trump projected throughout the course of his career, the birtherrism while obama was president. bannon wasn't in his life i'm aware of at that time. so that was donald trump speaking. it perhaps enshrined the all the right when bannon was brought into the white house. so hess departure i don't think changes anything. >> there is one thing it does affect, though, as a republican, seeing senator corker take donald trump to task yesterday, i think that could have been a breaking point where republicans really would have stood up to the president and said, we're not financial to take this and create their own agenda and rally against him. but this now with bannon leaving, i think it gives a lot of excuses to a lot of republicans to say, oh, well,

look, we are going to give him a reset. >> to calm down? >> and i actually think that's just so unfortunate, because the people in the party the leadership was starting to see -- >> the first thing of mitt romney, it's old news, he comes out with a ballisticering statement, mitt romney said the same things in the campaign last year. >> a quick break here. that's right. get that one in there for your party t. roundtable is staying with us. did bannon help president trump get elected by preying on the anxiety of voters? does it get better now steve bannon is out? this is "hardball" where the action is.

you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. every d every day it is going to be a fight. >> that was steve bannon warning it is going to be a fight against the op zpligs. he has been credited as being the architect behind the president's policy, including the ang zbliexieties of his bas. it does not look like the president will abandon that strategy. that's ahead. this is "hardball."

today president trump used the terror attacks in spain to promote his travel ban and to attack the courts. he fweeted this radical islamic

terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary. the court must give us back our protective rights. have to be tough. we are back here with our roundtable. phillip, susan, and bazel. there are other events in the world besides steve bannon, but let's talk more about steve bannon. this is an interesting phil thing that i have been noticing in some of the reporting tonight. apparently steve bannon is getting under donald trump's skin because of the perception that steve bannon played a critical, strategic role in the rise of donald trump, and this really did truly bother donald trump to the point -- >> we have seen this before. if someone has a reported role in donald trump's rise, and donald trump wants to be -- this is the guy in the republican convention who said i'm the one guy alone who can fix it. i think he still tries with the exception of when he is blaming everything on mitch mcconnell. he still tries to put that forward as being everything that is good is because of me. everything that is bad is because of someone else.

>> for somebody perspectively who might be asked to join this administration, somebody with a credible, solid resume, you look at not just bannon, but you look at the entire roster over the last eight months. what do you take away from that? >> not only that, but you also take away the amount of people that have left, about the people within that he has attacked, and that would have me most concerned going into this white house. you know that this president will never fully have your back. why would you go in for that and did your job that you risk your reputation on? >> that's a possibility. now there's a public feud between bannon and trump. >> there are those folks in the white house that may be the focus of his attacks, do they run to donald trump for cover and does donald trump actually give them the cover that they're looking for? >> not unless it's good for him. is this a phone?

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sniefrmgt we are back with the "hardball" roundtable. tell me something i don't know. >> this blows my mind. it's only been 101 days since james comey was fired. seems like 1,000. >> susan. >> there's a free speech rally in boston tomorrow. they were expecting 1,000 people. they are now expecting over 3,000. boston police have 500 people -- 500 cops on board. it could be a very explosive situation. >> all right. >> supreme court may decide to take up janice versus afscme. does an individual who is covered by union benefits have to pay union dues even if they choose not to be a member, and the union is actually fighting on their behalf? if the supreme court decides against the union, it actually could weaken them by lessening

their membership, and it affects big states like new york and california. >> were you offering some non-trump news there? >> i was. i was. >> there's a novelty in this day and age. thanks to all of you for joining us. that is "hardball" for now. thank you for being with us. the rachel maddow show starts right now. >> in middle school there's a thing called model u.n. it's an educational thing. they do it for college kids, kids in high school, kids in middle school. it's a cool idea. you get assigned to represent a country, and then as the delegate for that country, you learn about diplomacy and international relations and the workings of international institutions by you acting out your assigned country's best interests along with all the other kids that are assigned to be all the other countries in this mock