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Trump Retweets; Steve Bannon At White House; CEOs Resign; Justice Department Demands Website Information; Campaign Aide Offered to Set Up Russian Meeting; Mueller Looking into Collusion. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired August 15, 2017 - 13:00   ET

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


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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, 8:00 p.m. in Moscow. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

Up first, President Trump now facing even more fallout over his response to the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Within the past hour, another business executive, Scott Paul, President of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, resigned saying it is the right thing to do. Three others, including the CEOs of Merck Pharmaceutical, Intel and Under Armour all previously stepped down in protest.

Earlier, the president tweeted this, quote, "For every CEO that drops out of the manufacturing council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. Jobs." Close quote.

The president is back at Trump Tower in New York City now. This is the first time he's been there since he took office on January 20th and protestors were there last night to greet him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD: (INAUDIBLE.) No KKK. No (INAUDIBLE) USA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: This came hours after the president condemned the hate groups involved in the Charlottesville demonstrations by name but was not happy about the response to his comments. Tweeting this, quote, "made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realized once again that the, hash tag, fake news media, will never be satisfied. Truly bad people.

Let's go to our Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny. He's inside the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City right now. I take it, Jeff, the president will be speaking there later today. But how significant are these latest resignations from the president's Manufacturing Council?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I think it's fairly significant. I mean, the president likes nothing more than to be surrounded by business leaders, CEOs, other corporate titans. He has them into the White House very often.

And to have the fourth member of his Manufacturers' Advisory Council saying that they simply don't want to be associated with him or the White House is significant.

I'm told the White House was working behind the scenes earlier this morning to try and prevent any other departures.

Now, some CEOs have issues statements of support, saying they want to work with the president. Others have not commented at all. But having the fourth resignation, Wolf, is certainly something that the White House would not like to see.

Despite the president's assertion online on social media, saying that he can find other people that want to be involved in this. His focus is on jobs. This does sting because it's a repudiation indeed of what the president is trying to do.

And it's a sign, Wolf. These are all coming -- three of these resignations have come after those remarks yesterday in the White House news, trying to clean all of this up.

BLITZER: The president was active on Twitter once again this morning, Jeff. But let's talk about another one of his --

ZELENY: Right.

BLITZER: -- tweets. Did he undercut his own message? It was a strong statement he delivered in Charlottes -- on Charlottesville yesterday by retweeting a right-wing conspiracy theorist?

ZELENY: Wolf, he certainly was at odds with his words yesterday. I mean, when he was speaking in the White House, it was certainly a presidential moment. He was calling for national unity. He called out, you know, the white supremacist groups, the Ku Klux Klans, others, as repugnant.

Well, then hours later, he was essentially endorsing the view of a leading conspiracy theorist. His name is Jack Posobiec. And he is one of the people who's been involved in the, you know, spreading of conspiracies and other things on line. The pizzagate situation during the campaign last year and other things.

And, Wolf, the -- by associating him with those conspiracy theories, it was certainly at odds with what the White House was trying to do, was trying to move on beyond this.

But, Wolf, it goes to show, when the president is speaking on teleprompter, he was certainly locked on a message of reconciliation. When he was on Twitter, certainly much different.

BLITZER: Yes. Certainly is. All right, Jeff, thanks very much. Jeff Zeleny, inside Trump Tower in New York City, is standing by. In a little while from now, we're going to hear, supposedly, from the president in that lobby. We'll have coverage of that right here on CNN.

In the meantime, let's get some perspective on these late-breaking developments. So, we have CNN Political Analyst David Drucker. He's with us. He's a Senior Congressional Correspondent for "The Washington Examiner." Our CNN Political Reporter and Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza. And CNN Politics Senior Writer Juana Summers.

So, Juana, you wrote an important piece on CNN Politics in which you said what the president didn't say in his statement was also significant. Tell us about that.

JUANA SUMMERS, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER: So, in the piece, I talk about what the president did say which was to decry racism as evil and to say that he does not stand behind the bigotry and hate and violence that we saw in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

[13:05:01] But something really critical that this president didn't say is that he does not want the support of members of the KKK, neo- Nazis or white supremacists who back him. These are groups that have been emboldened since President Trump was elected in November.

And we know that's not just allegorically. It's because they've said so to us and reporters, listen to what David Duke, the former KKK leader and Louisiana politician said. He said, this is why we voted for Donald Trump.

He says he wants to make America great again. But those are the goals we're working to. So, I think that using the moral authority of this office and speaking forthright to the American people, he had an opportunity to say, I don't want these people behind me.

If these are values you espouse, they have no place in my White House, no place in my campaign. And he didn't do that.

And I think that a lot of people expected more from him. This is a president who -- for whom everything is personal. He speaks very forthrightly at campaign rallies and at events.

And that passion, and that interview and that personal connection and the pushing away of those values just did not seem to exist in the statement that gave on Monday.

BLITZER: But, Chris, he could fix that pretty quickly. He could tweet something along those lines. Or when he comes out in an hour or two, whenever he's coming out over thee at Trump Tower in New York City, he could say what Juana's saying. She would've liked to have heard.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER, EDITER-AT-LARGE: Yes. And to Juana's point, the problem here is the ambiguity. But both in -- the Saturday statement more obviously ambiguous, the on many sides thing that clearly is not borne out by the facts.

But on Monday, too, not a clear disassociation of if you say you support me, I do not want your support. Which is important to say because otherwise this will be taken -- we already know is being taken as something -- I hate to say to say this, something of a success for these folks. They got a lot of publicity. They're planning more of these rallies, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, he could do it, Wolf. And he could do it easily. You know, he always brags about how many Twitter followers he has, 34 or 35 million. He has sent out three tweets. I haven't looked since I've been on the air. But three tweets about -- two yesterday about the Merck CEO and then today, obviously, the one that you showed about these grand standers who had quit.

He has sent out, by my count, zero tweets about Charlottesville. I always think that tweets matter because it speaks to what he really cares about. What he's really thinking.

We've seen time and time again in this administration, the administration tries to do one thing and Donald Trump says something that either somewhat or totally contradicts. This is who he is. His Twitter feed. It is the most obvious natural representation of himself.

The fact that we have zero on that and three on CEOs resigning from a Manufacturing Council essentially saying, losers, we'll get more of you. I think it is telling.

BLITZER: It is telling, David, what he tweets and then what he retweets or shares others' thoughts and sends them. The others may have, you know, 100, or 200 or 500 followers. He has 35 million followers on Twitter. What he shares with his followers, that's significant as well.

DAVID DRUCKER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's what he values, right? So, what Donald Trump talks about on Twitter versus the occasional teleprompter moment, there's a difference there.

He values his Twitter communications. He has talked about how they're not going to take my social media away from me.

And so, I think that the trouble that Trump is running into here is he's being judged against the standard that he's set. When he has something critical to say about somebody, nothing, no matter who they are, where in the world they're located, stops him from going on Twitter and being very specific in his critique or his condemnation.

And so, that's why it was so glaring here in that it took him a while to do this. And then, when he finally did it, he responded a couple hours later calling the media as the bad people for not being satisfied with his response.

And the point is that whether or not he has a point there. A lot of his voters, and a lot of voters in general, may believe that we're being a little bit tough on him. He finally came out and said what needed to be said.

But it goes to how Trump chooses to operate. I'd say one more thing and it gets to what Juana wrote about. In talking to Republicans yesterday, and I was talking to John Fredericks who hosts a radio show in southern Virginia. He is a top Trump ally in Virginia and was a big supporter of his.

I was asking him, look, how do Republicans need to handle this? Where you have some Republicans, especially in a governor and senator -- Senate race in Virginia, they're going to -- that have had some different opinions on what happened in Charlottesville.

And he said, look, I don't care if it costs us voters. Republicans need to be unequivocal in saying these people are not welcome. We specifically don't want their support. And even though he wasn't telling me that's what he wants the president to do, that's clearly -- the message was, that's what the president and every Republican leader needs to do, is specifically tell these kooks to get lost.

CILLIZZA: And I think just very quickly. I think what's -- Dave touches on this. What's difficult is if you're a Republican elected official, let's say. And you look at Donald Trump, more than willing, on repeated occasions, to call his own attorney general. More than willing, on repeated occasions, to call out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Not willing to call out white supremacy, neo-Nazism and hate groups?

[13:10:00] BLITZER: Why is that, Juana? Why do you think that is?

SUMMERS: Asking me to try to read Donald Trump's mind is probably a really horrible idea. But I do think that it shows just where his values are as Dave and Chris put it. These are not things that are at top of mind for him.

Some of the ways in which he uses Twitter, frankly, are to lash out at what he sees or a political opponent. Doing some of the higher things, using the moral authority of the office.

Donald Trump has not shown himself to be a president who has that same natural communicator role in those big moments of crisis and of concern in this country where there's a number of the past presidents have on both sides of the aisle have done, particularly in his use of digital communications.

DRUCKER: His inclination here was to treat this as a law and order issue. I mean, he was talking about restoring order and talking about all violence. And I'm with you. I don't want to shrink the guy because I don't -- I don't know what's going on in his head.

But I think that he either understands and doesn't care or doesn't understand that one of the roles that Americans of all stripes tend to expect from a president is the role of pastor, or the role of moral leader beyond political leader.

It's something that he didn't choose to embrace during the campaign, except in a few moments and he hasn't chosen, really, to embrace as president.

BLITZER: Chris, what's happening with this chief strategist, Steve Bannon?

CILLIZZA: I mean, in any other White House, I would say, well, this is extraordinary. He's, sort of, being allowed to twist in the wind. But I -- but I feel like twisting in the wind is, sort of, the rule rather than the exception here.

I mean, we've had a number of people do this. Reince Priebus was twisting in the wind for quite some time before he was let go. Jeff Sessions is still in the job but is twisting in the wind.

Look, I think Steve Bannon is getting it from a lot of sides. We heard the Rupert Murdoch, Anthony Scaramucci on the Colbert report, said he'd be gone if I had anything to do with it. And, obviously, he doesn't have all that much to do with it.

But don't think that Donald Trump doesn't pay attention. When Anthony Scaramucci who, yes, he had to get rid of in the White House, but has been his friend for a very long time. When Anthony Scaramucci communicates via the media about Steve Bannon, Donald Trump pays attention.

So, Steve -- we've gone through -- my only caveat -- normally, I would say, get -- if you look at these tea leaves, you would suggest Steve Bannon is not long for this job. But he may not be, Wolf.

But we've gone through this once before with Bannon, where it was he was fighting with Jared Kushner and Trump stepped in and said, figure this out. And we all thought, well, you never win a fight with the family. And he, kind of, laid low and survived. I don't know how many times you can do that.

In the normal White House, the answer is zero to one. I don't know what it is in this White House. But if you were Steve Bannon, you can't be sleeping all that well in the evening, at this point.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens. There could be developments. Who knows.

Everybody, stick around. David Drucker, Chris Cillizza, Juana Summers, thanks very much.

Coming up, why the Justice Department here in Washington now wants detailed information on more than a million people who visited a Web site organizing protests against President Trump on inauguration day.

Also, J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy." He's standing by live. You see him right here. He's in our studio. He'll explain what he calls the troubling truth behind the rise of what's called the alt- right movement and the white Supremacists.

We'll be right back.

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[13:17:05] BLITZER: The Department of Justice here in Washington is now requesting detailed information on more than a million visitors to a website that was used to organize protests against President Trump back on Inauguration Day, January 20th.

Let's go to our justice reporter, Laura Jarrett. She's following this story for us.

Laura, what kind of information is the Justice Department seeking and why?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Wolf, federal authorities are aggressively pursuing all records related to this website that was used to organize protests against President Trump back in January. And this is just the latest part of a court battle. And it all stems from a search warrant that federal prosecutors obtained back in July as part of their investigation into rioting charges here in D.C.

But now the company that hosted the website is pushing back against federal authorities as they continue to pursue their investigation. And the company is saying, this request is just unreasonable, it's over-broad and it would effectively mean that the company would have to provide over 1.3 million IP addresses for anyone who visited the site. Something it calls a clear abuse of government authority.

Now, it's not clear whether the Justice Department lawyers will stand by the breadth of this request. They could try to narrow it in some way or say that the company got it wrong. Their interpretation is just wrong. But Dreamhost, the company, says that by going after people who just merely visited the website, that raises real First Amendment concerns and the information could be used to identify those who opposed the current administration politically.

The U.S. attorney's office here in D.C. declined to comment to me this morning, but a federal judge is expected to take up the case this Friday, Wolf.

BLITZER: And the argument against the order would be a real invasion of the privacy of all of those 1.3 potential million folks out there.

All right, Laura, thanks very much. We're going to watch this case very, very closely. The ramifications very significant.

We're also learning today that a former Trump campaign volunteer offered multiple times to set up meetings between campaign officials and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, last March.

I want to bringing in our senior congressional reporter Manu Raju, who's been looking into this for us.

So what do we know about the campaign person who made this offer, Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yes, this is George Papadopoulos, who is actually a foreign policy adviser, a campaign volunteer. And we're told from a source familiar with the matter that in March 2016 he sent a letter to several members, top members of the Trump campaign, with the subject line reading this, Wolf, "meeting with Russian leadership including Putin." Now, Papadopoulos, according to "The Washington Post," tried at least

six times to try to get meetings with the top Trump officials and Russian officials during the course of the campaign. Now we understand that actually this was rejected by the Trump campaign. A number of officials raised concerns about having such a meeting, including Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, the former campaign chairman, who, of course, is now subject of this investigation as well.

[13:20:09] They believed -- Manafort believed that this would not look good for President Trump. They did not want to have this meeting. And so these requests, these efforts by George Papadopoulos did not move forward.

Papadopoulos has not responded to CNN's request for comment. Did not respond to "The Washington Post." It's unclear exactly why he tried to seek these meetings. But we do know from intelligence officials that the Russians were trying to figure out entry points into the Trump campaign. This, presumably, could be one of them.

Now, Wolf, this came also three months before that Trump Tower meeting in which Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, did attend with Russian operatives who had promised dirt to Donald Trump Jr. about the Clinton campaign. So there were other campaign contacts as well that committees on Capitol Hill are now going through, including roughly 20,000 e-mails detailing some contacts, as well as discussion of Russian issues that the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking as well.

As well as, Wolf, the Senate Judiciary Committee now calling on Jared Kushner, the White House, to give more information about Jared Kushner's security clearance form. They believe they have not gotten a response that they want about how he got this security clearance approved, through the process, without initially listing some of his foreign contacts.

So, Wolf, all this comes as investigators behind the scenes are going through a mountain of documents and trying to piece all of this information together, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser, also his son-in-law.

Manu, thank you very much. Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill.

Let's bring in our panel to discuss these late breaking developments. Jim Sciutto is our chief national security correspondent and James Gagliano is a CNN law enforcement analyst, a former FBI supervising agent.

What does this tell you about these efforts to establish some link between the campaign and high levels of the Russian government, including potentially Putin?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, remember, Trump administration, campaign, and now administration officials, their denials have been categorical for months that there were any meetings, one, or any discussions of meetings with the Russians. That denial has already been belied by the fact that Donald Trump Jr. met in Trump Tower with Russians promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton. We have that.

This shows that there was further communication or suggestion of meetings. What's interesting about this is, as Manu noted there, is that this was rejected. At least this offer, which came before the meeting that did take place in Trump Tower arranged by the Agalaras (ph) -

BLITZER: This was an offer in March of 2016.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BLITZER: And the meeting actually tack place in June in Trump Tower.

SCIUTTO: And to be clear, this offer was to meet with the most senior Russian government officials, including Vladimir Putin. Whether this gentleman had the power to set that kind of a meeting up, we don't know.

But it should be noted, they turned out -- Manafort and others turned down this offer. But later, of course, they did accept an offer in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Russians promising that damaging information.

BLITZER: You know, James, we know that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, former FBI director himself, he's looking into these allegations - and they are, right now, only allegations - of what's called collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALAYST: Wolf, I think where this took a turn, for those who are attempting to suspend disbelief and say, a lot of smoke, but we just haven't seen any burning embers. When you go to the point of being able to get probable cause that gives you a search warrant which is different, very different, from getting a subpoena from a grand jury, you have now indicated that there was some type of probable cause indicative of a crime. And where they went to search, Paul Manafort's house, something involved potentially in that crime was there. I think that's where things turned for a lot of people because for the special prosecutor who has immense powers, for him to go that route when he was already in negotiations with the Manafort camp about having those documents turned over, that says to me that they were concerned that some of those documents might be destroyed.

BLITZER: I want to get your quick reaction to Laura Jarrett's reporting that the Justice Department has been seeking the identities of all the individuals who went to this website organizing protests against President Trump on Inauguration Day. What do you think? \

SCIUTTO: Well, it raises a question, what is the reason for that? Holding a protest against an American president in America, under the First Amendment, there's nothing wrong with that. Why would the Department of Justice, under Trump, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, why would it consider that acceptable? Do they have evidence that crimes were committed or violence at some of these marches? It doesn't appear at this point, and that's why you have such a strong pushback from the group involved.

It raises that question. What's the driving force behind this? And is there evidence of a crime? Or is there an ulterior motive? Is it about finding the personal data of hundreds of thousands of people who oppose the president?

BLITZER: That would be inappropriate if that were the motivation.

But you're a former FBI agent. What do you think?

GIGLIANO: Wolf, it's hard to say. I know that the president tweeted this morning again that, well, we've had this information for, you know, two or three years now. At least since 2004. And, yes, we know and we understand that groups like the Russians and the Chinese and Iran and North Korea are constantly trying to disrupt or electoral process. From what we know thus far, nothing in the actual machinations, the mechanisms and the machines have been altered. The spread of the disinformation is where we believe they were really trying to make a point of influencing the election. There's no doubt about that.

[13:25:23] BLITZER: Yes, we'll see what that - what the courts decide. It's a very sensitive and important issue.

James Gagliano, thanks very much. Jim Sciutto, thanks to you as well.

Coming up, we have new 911 recordings right now detailing the troubled past of the man suspected of driving a car through a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, killing one woman, injuring 19 others. We'll have a live report from the scene. We'll be right back.

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[13:29:57] BLITZER: All right, this just coming in to CNN. We're getting some new details about the suspect in the Charlottesville, Virginia, attack. James Fields Jr. has a history of run-ins with the police. Records obtained by CNN show his own mother called 911 nine times between