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Comey Uneasy About Dinner; Trump Admits Inaccuracy; Trump In Tweet Storm; Inaccurate Answers on Comey Firing; White House Press Briefing. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired May 12, 2017 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: The source I spoke to said it was absolutely untrue, that he did not go to this Trump dinner asking to keep his job.

And here is what James Clapper had to say about the meeting, the former head of the DNI. He actually spoke to former Director Comey on the day of that dinner. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDE CLIP)

JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: It was the 27th of January and the FBI, Jim, hosted a wonderful farewell ceremony for me which I'll never forget.

And Jim and I spoke briefly before the ceremony and he mentioned that he had been invited to the White House to have dinner with the president. And that he was uneasy with that because of even compromising even the optics, the appearance of independence, not only of him but of the FBI.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And our sources tell us that during that dinner President Trump asked him for a loyalty oath. And we're told, through our sources, that he would not agree to that but he agreed to an honesty oath.

And I'm told by my source that Director -- former Directory Comey knew it was possible that he could be fired by the president, considering the fact that he didn't agree to the loyalty oath, considering the fact that he publicly went against the president on his wiretap claim and all the fallout over that.

But he didn't expect it when it happened, Wolf. The source I spoke to said that former Director Comey thought at least the president would call him or there would be some sort of phone call giving him a heads- up this would be coming. Not that he would find out on T.V., on the news that he had been fired.

Also, I want to add this. The source I spoke with said it is unlikely that Comey -- former Director Comey will testify next week in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. As you know, an invitation had been extended to him. And as of this morning, Comey had not responded to that request -- Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: It's a fascinating and very significant new development. Pamela, stand by.

Jeff, many on this network, on other networks, they've already used the word, Nixonian, to describe the Comey firing. Are we now being led to believe that, like President Nixon, President Trump is taping White House conversations?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, that's a good question. We will add that question to the list of questions that have been raised this week and not answered, quite frankly, by this White House.

But the president did suggest this morning that the conversations may have been recorded, as you heard Pamela reporting right there. She said, you know, that the former director has nothing to worry about. He says he has nothing to worry about.

We do not know if they were actually recorded. There were -- you know, it would not be the first time that the president has tweeted something that was not exactly on point or accurate. So, we will, of course, be asking Sean Spicer about that today.

But, Wolf, it does raise the question, if it was recorded, was it during the dinner? Was it during one of their phone calls? We simply don't know. But the historical parallels, as they have been throughout the week, certainly go back to that Nixonian moment, as you said, Wolf.

BLITZER: It certainly does. And it's a pretty, pretty shocking development.

Jeff, the president also, in those tweets and he had a bunch of them this morning, he addressed the inconsistencies in the White House accounts of the Comey firing. One tweet saying this and we'll but put it up on the screen, as a very active president with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates -- it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy. That's one tweet.

Here's another one. Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy. So, how is the White House going to explain the contradictions and could they really do away with what is about to unfold within the next few minutes, press briefings?

ZELENY: Wolf, that's a good question. I mean, it's unlikely that they would do away with press briefings because it is a way, of course, to get out the White House's message and to answer some of these questions.

But it also, sort of, raises the point that we've known for a very long time. The president, Donald Trump, himself, often likes to be the messenger himself. He sometimes places mistakes that he likes to clean up. He sometimes likes to clean up other people's mistakes. But he, of course, is driving this hour by hour, moment by moment, and the staff in this White House is following him, you know, often trying to develop a rationale to what actually has happened here.

But in terms of the accuracy point there. The reality here is, Wolf, that the communications directors and others here in this White House were not aware of this much in advance of when it happened this week, actually. So, they were trying to develop this on the fly. He, of course, gave a completely different rationale in his NBC News interview.

So, it is difficult -- they are finding their jobs difficult. When we hear the president talking about the morale at the FBI, Wolf, I can tell you, there are people in this building who work for this president. Their morale is fairly low after this week as well. They believe they've been thrown under the bus. And so, Sean Spicer, of course, is back at the podium today to answer some of those questions.

[13:05:00] Never (ph) mind in all of this, there's been very little talk of the president's legislative agenda, his Afghanistan decision or anything else. We have not seen him, barely at all this week, Wolf. There have been no public events on his schedule.

This is a president who's very much agitated, irritated, I'm told. So, they're trying to turn a corner here but so many questions before that can happen -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, and the president tweets it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy. That is pretty stunning. A pretty stunning tweet as well.

Stand by, Jeff. Pamela, I want you to stand by as well.

I want to bring in our panel as we await the start of the Sean Spicer briefing. With us, Gloria Borger, she's our Chief Political Analyst; David Chalian, our CNN Political Director; Laura Coates, our CNN Legal Analyst, she's a former federal prosecutor; and John Kirby, he's our CNN Military and Diplomatic Analyst, former spokesman at the State Department and the Pentagon.

Laura, it sounds like a threat that the president tweeted directly to the former FBI director. And people are already raising concerns about obstruction of justice, witness tampering. It's a very serious development.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is and his statement is quite ominous. It presumes a couple of things, though, before it can get quite to the criminal description or definition of a threat. He says he better not do this, in case thinking about leaking.

Well, that suggests that Comey's statements would be directly contradictory to what Trump has already said about that conversation. And the better not part, colloquial sense, of course, is very threatening. But, legally, it hasn't yet risen to the level of an actual -- a crime But, in terms of obstruction. Listen, we know that Congress wants to hear from James Comey, even at a private citizen. His testimony will be before an official proceeding. Therefore, your statement to threaten somebody to withhold information from an actual hearing could be witness tampering or certainly intimidation, if not a criminal threat.

BLITZER: Yes, and we heard Pamela Brown's reporting. He has nothing to hide, Comey. If his dinner or his phone conversations with the president were taped, that's fine with Comey because he believes he just did what he was supposed to do.

COATES: So, I -- and think of how different this has been with respect to Sally Yates' testimony and James Comey. They were very, very eager to have -- fine, let her talk. It doesn't matter to us.

It's pulled her and told her the opposite to what's happening with Comey which leads you to believe that they are trying to be proactive in trying to undermine that particular testimony in the way they were not with Sally Yates.

That, again, swings that pendulum more in favor of obstruction and intimidation. But the bar is still quite high.

BLITZER: David, another tweet from the president this morning. When James Clapper, himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt says there is no collusion, when does it end?

Now, Clapper was just on MSNBC and he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAPPER: Though it's not surprising or out of -- or abnormal that I would not have known about the investigation, or, even more importantly, the content of that investigation. So, I don't know if there was collusion or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He's not in the loop, he's basically saying. So, don't draw any conclusions from what I'm saying.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right. The president and his team are relying on a six-month old now, perhaps, comment or I'm not exactly sure when Clapper made that comment.

But the whole point is, what Clapper was saying is, I haven't seen anything in my daily work that shows any evidence of collusion to this point. He stopped seeing anything on January 20th, that's first of all. So, we are months beyond that.

And, second of all, he didn't know what the FBI was seeing which is where the actual investigation is going on. So, the fact that the president has relied on this talking point that has now been debunked time and time again by Clapper, himself, is a level of absurdity that gets added to this week because the president seems to think Clapper completely vindicates him. And I think he proved today he doesn't.

BLITZER: Yes, I'm looking at these tweets, Gloria, from 7:51 a.m. He started tweeting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven tweets. By 9:20 a.m., he's tweeted seven times already and each one of these tweets raises all sorts of questions.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's defensive and it's anti-media, and it's anti-Comey, and it's the -- about the Russian investigation, and the fake media working overtime.

And, you know, I mean, you understand what's going through Trump mind when you -- when you read these things. He feels backed up against the wall, it's very clear to me. He wants to be vindicated on Russia. He expected people to applaud his firing of James Comey, perhaps. And he's getting the opposite reaction.

And so, what you're seeing here, I think, in reporting on Donald Trump's business history is the kind of bullying tactics that he used when he was a businessman. And when people would disagree with him, he would bully them and bully them and bully them. But he ran a private company, The Trump Organization.

[13:10:04] Now, he runs the government of the United States and it doesn't work that way. And so, he is attacking every pillar of government that we have that we hold dear, actually. And I think that that is in -- I think that that is a real problem when you are the chief executive of the United States and attacking his own -- his own government.

BLITZER: You're a retired admiral for the U.S. Navy. Did you spent a lot time as the Pentagon spokesman, John, the State Department spokesman? Did you ever have a boss who suggested, you know, don't believe, necessarily, everything they're saying. Because they're at the podium, they don't have perfect accuracy.

JOHN KIRBY, CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: And not any bosses that I ever worked for would ever put me in that position.

Look, you have -- in this case, you have an upstream problem and a downstream problem. The upstream problem is that the communication staff, the press secretaries, they can't get inside his head. They can't get to him before they go to the podium. They aren't -- they don't have access to the -- to the proper context, not that the context, itself, is all that value to begin with.

And your downstream problem is when they go to the podium, because they're uninformed, they're not able to be completely transparent and honest and accountable for what they're saying up there.

So, it's a -- it's a -- it's a complete mess, from a communications perspective, the whole way this stuff is being handled.

BLITZER: The problem, really, was that none of the communications people apparently knew in advance that the president was about to fire the FBI director.

KIRBY: Right.

BLITZER: They didn't have a game plan. They thought, you know what? This would be, sort of, not such a big story.

KIRBY: In the 11 years that I was a spokesman for Patrick McMullan (ph), eleven years, I can count on one hand the number of times when a reporter came and asked me, what does that -- the admiral think about X, Y, Z where I had to actually go back to him and say, hey, sir, where's your head on this? Because he made sure I was in the room. Before he made decisions, I was in the room, listening, counseling, advising part of that process.

I don't get the sense that any of the communications people here are in the room. And certainly nobody's inside his head.

BORGER: Well, who is in the room? Not his lawyers, obviously.

COATES: Right. The lawyers would have told him, listen, I know that we've all talked about this narrative that they've brought forward. It actually helped him in a criminal investigation to have -- for obstruction of justice, to have somebody who gave a benign cover for why you would have terminated James Comey. Somebody who could say, here is a reason that's not politically motivated. You've got Rod Rosenstein that provided that particular cover.

Now, what he did instead was say, no, no, no, I'm not going with that route. I'm going to go the route that actually focuses more on Russia, focuses more on the second paragraph of my letter, and disregard what I'm sure what have been a stage (ph) legal counsel. Forget just communications, to say stop speaking about an issue. It opens you up to exposure.

BORGER: But also, I you're the press people and you go to the president and you ask that question, and he said, well, it was -- you know, maybe he said it was Rosenstein. I mean, we don't know whether the press people can go to the president and believe what he's telling you.

KIRBY: Yes, even if they get the access, it's really not clear that they're getting an honest take from him.

BORGER: This president clearly has a --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: -- to a lot of people on his staff.

KIRBY: Yes, yes. That's right. And I think -- I think Sean's got his hands full today. I mean -- I mean, he's got -- going to have a lot to answer for. Not only the threatening tweets, but the debacle that has been this entire rollout of the Comey firing.

BLITZER: Yes. I'm -- he's going to be showing up, we're told, momentarily, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer. We'll go to that briefing as soon as it begins. He'll open, as he always does, with some announcements, some statements, then he'll take reporters' questions and we'll listen very, very carefully. The first official White House reaction to these series of tweets from the president this morning.

The president admitting that his aides gave him some conflicting and wrong answers about the firing, gave all of us some wrong answers about the firing of the former FBI Director James Comey. And now, he's threatening to punish the press because of it in an early morning Twitter storm, as we've been pointing out.

The president wrote this, among other things. As a very active president with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy. Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings, the president tweets, and hand out written response for the sake of accuracy.

The problem for the president, once again, however, is that his aides didn't just make inaccurate statements from the podium, instead their story unraveled over a series of three days of dozens of varying statements.

CNN's Tom Foreman is here to break it all down for us. Tom, help us understand how we got to this point, as we awake the press briefing?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, if you look at a variety of categories, members of the press -- president's communications' team have contradicted each other. They contradicted themselves. They contradicted the president. And he's contradicted them. That's the problem.

Look at this. Who made the decision to fire James Comey? Donald Trump says, I was going to fire Comey. It's my decision. Listen to him in this sound bite.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[13:15:00] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was going to fire Comey. My decision. He made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey. Knowing there was no good time to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: That's the president saying himself it was his decision, end of it, full stop. What we're being told by his staff, we're being told, no, no, no, he accepted the recommendation of the deputy attorney general. It was completely pushed off to someone else. And yet we have the president saying something quite, quite different.

What about the question of lost confidence? Here's one of the things we've heard from the administration. All sorts of people who are tied to the White House. The president, the Department of Justice and the rank and file of the FBI lost confidence in Comey. Listen again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey. The DOJ lost confidence in Director Comey. Bipartisan members of Congress made it clear that they had lost confidence in Director Comey. And, most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.

KELLYANNE CONAWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: The FBI director had lost the public confidence, the confidence of Republicans and Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Up until the inauguration, President Trump, the president- elect at that time, was saying positive things about James Comey, talking about how good he was. Sure, there were some people in Congress who don't like him, but a lot of those were Democrats who didn't like what he did to Hillary Clinton. And, in the end, this is what really matters. For all of that, we have the now acting director of the FBI, McCabe, saying, look, "Director Comey enjoyed broad support with the FBI."

And on and on and on this goes, Wolf, category after category, what we're seeing is that they're - all the things that the White House communications team should be doing, which is making sure the president's message is clear and clean and consistent are failing on all three of those time and again. That is the problem. It does not seem to be how we're interpreting it because we're simply reporting what people are saying. They are simply saying different things day to day, and hour to hour, contradictory things.

Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's a serious problem.

Tom Foreman, a good report. Thanks very much.

Let's bring back the panel.

You know, Gloria, the press secretary, Sean Spicer, he's clearly in a very awkward position right now.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he is, because the credibility of the White House press operation and the president himself is at stake here. And if there is no credibility from that podium - and you can talk about this better than I can - if there is no credibility from that podium, Wolf, how are the people in this country to believe the administration when they're talking about, God forbid, a terrorist attack or they're talking about anything else of a substantial nature. And so when the president tweets that it's hard to be accurate, that's not acceptable. That's wrong. It's unacceptable. And it's not an excuse because you're busy. Every White House, so far as I can tell, is very busy, but not too busy to present the truth to the American people. And that's what we're talking about.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: And this is of a substantial nature. I understand it's not a terrorist attack.

BORGER: Yes. Yes.

CHALIAN: But this - I - there is the crisis of credibility on communications. That's one problem. But it's compounding a larger problem here.

Wolf, just very quickly. This is what we learned this week - this week. The president of the United States fired the FBI director who was overseeing the organization looking into his campaign ties with Russia. He did so after Comey had inquired about additional resources for this investigation and it had ramped up. He told NBC News that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he was considering firing the FBI director.

The story changed at the White House after Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, expressed that he was unhappy with the way that the story was originally being told and didn't want to work in that kind of environment. And we learned that in the same conversation - a single conversation with Jim Comey there was a conversation about Jim Comey's future as to whether or not he'd be heading the agency going forward. In addition, a request for a loyalty pledge and a discussion about whether or not Donald Trump was under investigation. And that was three weeks after Jim Comey had briefed President-elect Trump up in New York about this dossier that was out there. That - we learned all of that this week. That is the underlying problem here and the credibility issue compounds it.

BORGER: And it's an open book.

BLITZER: John.

BORGER: I mean we know that time -

JOHN KIRBY, CNN MILITARY & DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: I mean in order for there to be a crisis, at least back in my military time, that means that the event still has to be going on. I mean I think - I think - I think the credibility's gone. And I'm really sorry to say that because I didn't ever want to get to that point. But I don't think there's a crisis to credibility. I think it's shot. And I don't know how they ever get it back.

I mean, look, as a spokesman, there were lots of times I had to walk something back and I hated doing that, that I said at the podium because I was incorrect or wrong. Nobody expects 100 percent perfect accuracy. But everybody, not just the media in that room, but everybody watching that briefing has a right to expect honesty and integrity and the best effort to provide as much context about what's going on as possible. And that's gone. I just haven't seen that happen.

[13:20:15] BORGER: You know, and it's difficult. And it's difficult. And this is what Congress is - it has to do, because now Congress, it's their job to get answers to a lot of these question and to set out a more detailed timeline than David just set out and to find out what everyone was thinking when and what was happening with Comey and did the president really try and extract a loyalty from his supposedly independent FBI director. I mean, you know, the balance of power matters. That's the brilliance of this - of this country. And if you are expecting your independent FBI director to pay (INAUDIBLE) to you personally, that's wrong, and Congress needs to start looking at that.

BLITZER: Laura, as we await Sean Spicer, let's look at this timeline and we'll put it up on the screen very quickly. On January 20th Donald Trump assumed the office of the president. Four days later, on the 24th, Michael Flynn is interviewed by the FBI. Two days after that, the White House is told that Flynn has been interviewed and that he's lying about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. And we've now learned from a source close to Comey that sometime during this first week, Trump invited Comey to have dinner one-on-one with him and asked him for his loyalty, which Comey refused to do. He said he would be honest, not necessarily loyal to the president, loyal to Constitution. So what do you make of that timeline?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It makes me really want to know what story Flynn was wanting to tell under immunity, because that gives the context I really need as a prosecutor to say, why did you want the head of the FBI to possibly be on your side? If you didn't really know that the Russian investigation was going on, if you believe that somebody who was going to be one of your right hand men was going to start - possibly be a target, what did you need assurances for with respect to what specific point.

And so when you think about the other elephant in this room, though, Wolf, it's that, where is the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, because he certainly was vocal and inserted himself into the firing decision. And the one person you do not want to be trying to parse words is the head of the Justice Department. We've routinely prosecuted people for far less severe crimes, for far less misuse and misstatements and it was a routine matter. So I want to understand from the Department of Justice head, the same way we're asking questions about obstruction, whether Trump was trying to stop or impede the investigation into Russia, what was the motivation of Jeff Sessions? He so far has not been able to provide that context. And, of course, I know he said he is recused on aspects of Russia and aspects of the campaign, but he did enter this new thing that said, really, I didn't say I couldn't question the credibility of my chief investigator. I couldn't question that he would be somebody I could trust. Was that the same conversation that Trump tried to get assurances of, of, can I trust you? Was it a wink and a nod, an elbow bump here and there? That's what he needs to know to get the full context.

BLITZER: And he himself was involved in the firing.

COATES: Absolutely.

BLITZER: So he did recommend the - offer a recommendation to the president on the firing of Comey, which the president now says was directly involved -

COATES: Right.

BLITZER: Directly involved the Russia thing, or whatever he called it in that NBC - and the aides are walking in right now into the White House Press Briefing Room. So is Sean Spicer. Let's listen.

SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Wow, we've got a full house today.

Good afternoon. It's good to be back with you. Apparently I was a little missed.

We're one week out from the president's first foreign trip, so I wanted to make sure as we prepare for that trip that I bring up general - our national security adviser General McMaster to give you a preview of what the team has been doing to prepare for the president's trip. Our goal is to kind of start that process now and then next week bring the general back and give you a more detailed update as to what the president is going to be doing in each of the areas and some of the highlights from the trip. We'll obviously - obviously additionally have background briefings for you as well to give the team that's going to be traveling from the press corps some logistical updates.

So without further ado, General McMaster.

QUESTION: Will you take questions afterward, Sean?

SPICER: Yes, Jeff, I will be glad to take your question. In fact, if you'd like, you get to go first today.

GEN. H.R. MCMASTER, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: OK, thank you, Sean.

Good afternoon and Happy Mother's Day weekend, everybody.

As you all know, in exactly one week, the president will embark on his first trip abroad since taking office. Today I'd like to explain the president's objectives for his visits to the Middle East and to Europe and also preview a bit of the schedule.

The trip has three core purposes. First, to reaffirm America's global leadership. Second, to continue building key relationships with world leaders. And third, to broadcast a message of unity to America's friends and to the faithful of the three - of three of the world's greatest religions. The president prioritizes building strong relationships, as you see here, every day with world leaders as a way to strengthen our alliances and he's been successful. You can see that in his diplomacy with a range of leaders from Prime Minister May to President Xi. President Trump understands that America first does not mean America alone. To the contrary, prioritizing American interests means strengthening alliances and partnerships that help us extend our influence and improve the security of the American people.

[13:25:50] This trip is truly historic. No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths all on one trip. And what President Trump is seeking is to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress, and prosperity. He will bring a message of tolerance and of hope to billions, including to millions of Americans who profess these faiths. The president will focus on what unites us.

The president's trip will begin in Saudi Arabia, home to the two holiest sites in Islam. He will encourage our Arab and Muslim partners to take bold, new steps to promote peace and to confront those from ISIS to al Qaeda to Iran to the Assad regime who perpetuate chaos and violence that has inflicted to much suffering throughout the Muslim world and beyond. He will lead the first steps toward a stronger, more capable and more robust security partnership with our Gulf, Arab and Muslim partners, and he will develop a strong, respectful message that the United States and the entire civilized word expects our Muslim allies to take a strong stand against radical Islamist ideology, an ideology that uses a perverted interpretation of religion to justify crimes against all humanity. He will call for Muslim leaders to promote a peaceful vision of Islam.

The president will then travel to Israel. With President Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu, he will reaffirm America's unshakeable bond to the Jewish state. With President Abbas, he will express his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians. And to leaders and peoples alike across the entire trip demonstrate his hopes for just and lasting peace.

In Rome, the president will be honored to accept an audience with Pope Francis. He looks forward to paying his respects and to discussing religious freedom, ways to combat religious persecution, human trafficking and cooperating on humanitarian missions across the globe.

He will also pay his respects to the Italian people by meeting with President Mattarella, the head of state and one of America's most important treaty allies and trading partners. You also see again Prime Minister Gentiloni, who is hosting the G-7 conference in Sicily.

From Rome, the president will continue to Brussels for the NATO leader's meeting. There he will reaffirm America's commitment to the alliance, while stressing the need for members to pay their fair share, to shoulder responsibility, to share burdens and for the institution to continue on the path of strengthening the alliance.

President Trump will end his trip in Sicily for the G-7 meeting in Taormina, where he will promote American economic leadership and he'll also address unfair trade practices. He will remind our friends and partners that we are eager to explore further ways, to address threats to our mutual security, from North Korea to Afghanistan to the broader Middle East. Before leaving, the president will visit Naval Air Station Sigonella, where he will thank our wonderful and courageous service men and women, allied personnel and family members for their sacrifices to keep us safe. And across the trip he will meet our diplomats, the staff in our embassies who represent us so well across the world.

Lastly, just a few words on how this all came together.

[13:29:53] The impetus for this trip came from the president himself and he has been fully engaged from the beginning, setting objectives, overseeing the planning. The president is receiving regular briefings from his cabinet and from our senior staff here on the national security side and on the economic side as well.

Most of the leaders the president will meet on this trip, as you know, he's already met in person, or certainly by phone.