Bannon Declares War On Republican Establishment; Tillerson Won't Say If He Called Trump A Moron
STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: This is not my way, this is our war. And it all didn't start it, they establishment started it. But I will tell you one thing, you all are going to finish it.</s>ANDERSON: Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon there rallying U.S. President Donald Trump's conservative faith at an event against the Republican establishment. His message is clear, either you're with the president's agenda or you need to go. And is -- in his words, "Nobody can run and hide on this one." Bannon praised later to advance his opt-out agenda, the president's move to dismantle Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal which we have been discussing this hour. CNN Political Analyst and Washington Post Columnist Josh Rogin joining me now from Washington. And Josh, can you explain what Steve Bannon, Trump's former and I repeat, former chief strategist is playing up here and this hope of his influence behind the seats.</s>JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Now --</s>ANDERSON: Right. I'm going to get to you, Josh, in just a moment. We've also had a reported rift of course between Mr. Trump and his secretary of state under all hinges on whether or not America's top diplomat called his boss a moron. Rex Tillerson appeared on CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" a short time ago and again, refused to deny the claim despite repeated prods by my colleague Jake Tapper. Have a listen.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Did you call him a moron?</s>REX TILLERSON, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: Jake, as I indicated earlier when I was asked about that, I'm not going to deal with that kind of petty stuff. I mean, this is a town that seems to relish in gossip, rumor, and innuendo. And they feed on it.</s>TAPPER: But here's the thing. Either you didn't say it in which case there are whole bunch of administration officials telling the press and telling the president that you did and that's a serious problem or you did say it. Can you please clear it up?</s>TILLERSON: As I said, Jake, I'm not playing. These are the games of Washington.</s>ANDERSON: Right. So what is going on in Washington? Let's get Josh up. I think he can hear me now. Look, let's start with Tillerson and then get back to Steve Bannon's comments --</s>ROGIN: Sure.</s>ANDERSON: -- as he goes after the Republican establishment as he rallies this. Pretty quiet hardline conservative faces. Start though with Tillerson. What did you make what he -- what he said to Jake there? Jake pushing him on this saving rift between the two of them, him and Trump. Does it exist?</s>ROGIN: Yes. The rift exists and it's definitely something that Tillerson doesn't want to talk about but what Tillerson said to Jake Tapper was interesting because he admitted that even if he didn't call Trump a moron, that means that the rest of the people in the administration saying that he called Trump a moron are intentionally trying to knife him to the press, and that's also true. So we've got this situation where part of is that the president and the Secretary of State are not getting along. And part of it is that there are many, many people throughout the administration who want to see Rex Tillerson go and they're leaking about him, some of it is true, some of it is not true and that -- both of those situations put him in a very precarious position and he doesn't really have a way out of it. So he's trying to be a good soldier here and he's trying to, you know, put forward the -- in the Rand Paul seat that the president can get behind, he's trying to work on North Korea despite the president undermining hi publicly on Twitter, et cetera.</s>ANDERSON: Uh-hmm.</s>ROGIN: And he's trying to play his role and he's getting it from all sides, he's getting it from the president, he's getting it from the White House staff and he's getting it from the press. He's in a really tough spot.</s>ANDERSON: Well, believe me. The announcement by Trump on Friday about Iran may have been playing to his conservative base. It's gone down like a led balloon to many people internationally</s>ROGIN: I think that's the key question. I'm sure that Steve Bannon has some influence. I'm sure he's done as much as Steve Bannon would have you believe, right? The question is whether or not he is more influenced now that he's left the White House than he did before when he was inside the White House. And what we can see is that he's doing the same thing. He's leading attack on the GOP establishment, he's trying to promote candidates and officials and ideas and policies that go against what the establishment led by people like Mitch McConnell want. And he's got money and he's got support and he's building infrastructure and he's got his media out, the Breitbart, to promote all of that that can't be discounted, it's a real thing, it's going to have an impact on a number of races especially Senate races in 2018. You know, we won't know whether or not it's going to be decisive until 2018 elections come around. In the past we've seen that these kinds of challenges usually don't work, the establishment actually has the ability to fight back. They have their own donors, they have their own infrastructure but this is a new environment because we've got a president who comes from that anti-establishment wing. We got the most anti-GOP establishment, GOP president ever and President Trump. So, if you combine that, plus with what Steve Bannon is doing, that's a real threat that the establishment GOP has to take very, very seriously.</s>ANDERSON: A week ago Steve Bannon reportedly -- thinks that Trump has just a 30 percent chance of finishing out this term. Now he says, he's not only going to finish his term but that he will be reelected in a landslide in 2020. Briefly, can you just explain what's changed?</s>ROGIN: Yes. What's changed is that Steve Bannon doesn't want people to think that he thinks that Trump is going to get ousted by his own cabinet. So overcorrecting and he's trying to change the media narrative. I mean, the bottom line is that Steve Bannon thinks that Trump is under attack by his own cabinet members, by the GOP, by the media, and he thinks that if he survives that attack then he'll win reelection. I happen to think he will survive that attack whether he'll win reelection time when we feel.</s>ANDERSON: Always good to speak to you, sir. Thank you. Tillerson also threw his support behind President Trump's unusual way -- and let's get back -- Rex Tillerson, I'm talking about him, unusual way of doing things to achieve his agenda. He tells Jake Tapper that even the president's often controversial tweets serve a purpose. Listen to what he said.</s>TILLERSON: I see him often. Speak to him nearly every day. I'm in the Oval Office a number of hours every week. We have -- we have a very open exchange of views on policy, at the end of the day, he makes decisions. I go out and do the best I could to execute those decisions successfully. And he understands it all times what we are trying to achieve to fully implement his foreign policy. And he understands at all times what we are trying to achieve to implement his foreign policy. He has assembled a very, I think, unconventional team, he himself is an unconventional president. He's assembled an unconventional cabinet, I'm an unconventional secretary of state. But that's because he does not accept the status quo with many threats that we're confronting in the world today and he is going to take forcing action and often times the tweets or decisions he takes are intended to cause this forcing action to get off of the status quo to force people to take action and move to a different place. So whether it's the decision on the Iranian agreement that was announced, to force action to address this defective agreement where there's decisions on forcing North Korea to move to a different place of engagement, all of those are steps the president is taking to force action. He is not going to accept the status quo. The American people elected him to change the status quo. And that's what he's doing.</s>ANDERSON: Rex Tillerson explaining some of Donald Trump's thinking to my colleague Jake Tapper. Next, we're back in Austria for you taking a closer look at what today's vote in subsequent swing to the political right means for that country and for the continent.