Nevada Politics Today: Trump’s actions on NKorea, Bannon, Heller

President Donald Trump is “popping off” on Twitter about nuclear war with North Korea. The U.S. will send its athletes to compete in the Winter Olympics. The verbal war between Trump and Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon is virtually unprecedented.

That’s all according to Debra J. Saunders, White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She shared her firsthand knowledge of the Donald Trump administration during a Nevada Politics Today interview.

“It looks like the President is just popping off,” said Saunders. She was referring to Trump’s tweet to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un bragging about the “bigger and more powerful” nuclear button sitting on his desk. “He’s done it before. He’ll do it again.

“Trump seems to think that being diplomatic didn’t really help, so he’s not going to be. We’ll see what happens.”

Saunders does believe that U.S. athletes will compete in the Winter Olympics, which South Korea will host in February. That’s not the only foreign policy front on which Trump is engaged.

“In the case of Iran, the White House really sees Trump differentiating himself from Barack Obama,” said Sanders. “President Obama tried to reach out to Iran and shunted aside Egypt, held Egypt to higher standards than Iran.

“Trump’s flipped that. He’s friendly with Egypt and the Saudis. He sees himself building an anti-Iran coalition in the Middle East, and this is one of the ways he’s done it, is by really putting the heat on Tehran.”

Things remain heated on the domestic front. On Wednesday, Trump issued a statement saying Bannon had lost his mind after Bannon trashed the president’s family in comments for Michael Wolff’s upcoming book on the White House.

“I just came from the briefing there (at the White House) and you can just imagine what that is like,” said Saunders. “There are excerpts from this book by Michael Wolff that are just devastating for this presidency.

“The White House put out two statements, before the press briefing about it. In one, the president said that after he fired Bannon, Bannon ‘lost his mind.’ Let’s face it. When do you see that? Usually in politics, the president fires his staffer and everyone acts like they’re all really chummy.”

One relationship that has improved is the one between Trump and Sen. Dean Heller.

“He (Heller) did get the Jeff Flake treatment early on,” said Saunders, referring to Trump’s frequent attacks on the Arizona Republican. “He decided that he was going to work with Trump.

“Dean Heller is in this for the longer game and he’s trying to work with Trump.”