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Harvey Upgraded to Hurricane; President Privately Clashes with Lawmakers over Russia; Trump Tweets Meme of Himself; Active Shooter Situation. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 24, 2017 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: -- 8:00 p.m. in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

Divisions may be deepening between President Donald Trump and top Republican leaders in Congress.

And as with many of the issues so dear to the president, he went to Twitter once again to air his grievances earlier today tweeting this. I have -- I requested that Mitch M. and Paul R., Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, tie the debt ceiling legislation into the popular V.A., Veterans Affairs, Bill which just passed for easy approval. They didn't do it

So, now, we have a big deal with Dems holding them up as usual on debt ceiling approval. Could have been so easy. Now a mess.

The president also followed up that tweet with this one. The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that after hearing repeal and replace for seven years, he failed. That should have never happened.

Let's bring in our Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta and our Senior Congressional Reporter Manu Raju.

Jim, the president not letting up at all on the Republican leader in the Senate, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Is there a strategy here?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, there's no strategy Wolf. And, once again, you have an example of the president cutting off at the knees his own press office.

Remember, it was yesterday evening, during "THE SITUATION ROOM" where we were talking about the White House issuing this statement, saying that the president and Mitch McConnell remain united on all of these issues.

And then, we wake up this morning and the president is tweeting at Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. And complaining about the fact that his health care bill could not make it out of the Senate.

Now, I just talked to a congressional aide, a top one, just in the last several minutes who was really, sort of, lashing out, lashing back at this White House, at this president, over these attacks, saying that he is attacking our leaders, quote, "while we're selling his agenda."

And this aide also noted, Wolf, that the White House has said, in the last couple weeks at this August recess, that the president was going to be selling the tax reform agenda that Paul Ryan has been talking about, that others in the Republican leadership have been talking about.

And according to this aide, "we haven't seen anything," quote, unquote, coming from this president, in terms of selling that tax reform agenda but lots of attacks on fake news, according to this leadership aide.

And so, there is frustration, I think some growing frustration. Manu Raju will have a better handle on it than I will up on Capitol Hill.

But, Wolf, when the Hill is complaining to White House correspondents, they're not happy over there. And, of course, we have to remind viewers, this is not the Democratic Party complaining about the president here. This is the president's own party -- Wolf.

BLITZER: It's a fair point. Manu, the tweets from the president make it sound like he's just upset with leader McConnell over the debt ceiling, health care. But you're learning they may -- that may not necessarily be the total case. Tell viewers what you've learned.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yes, that's right. In fact, what I'm told by sources with direct knowledge of that August 9th phone call that happened between Mitch McConnell and President Trump, the president, really, was more angry about the issue of Russia. Those investigations that are happening on Capitol Hill.

There are two investigations that are happening, both in the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee, and on Mitch McConnell's chamber.

And the president made it clear, he was not happy about what was happening on those investigations, including one that in the Judiciary Committee where they want to talk to the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.

But in addition to that, Wolf, the president also was concerned with the passage of that Russia Sanctions Bill that overwhelmingly passed Congress. That President Trump signed into law reluctantly. And that that's one reason why the president really lashed out at the majority leader and actually with a profanity-laced tirade.

Now, they have not spoken since that point, Wolf. But McConnell, I'm told, really does not want to ratchet things up. Behind the scenes and publicly, he's saying much about President Trump.

Today, a public did not answer questions from reporters, did not bring up the president during a public speech in Kentucky. Wants to get back to that agenda that Jim was talking about that they have to do in September. Does not think that this fight is helping his party but the president, himself, is taking a separate tactic going after Mitch McConnell. BLITZER: And, Manu, there's a new wrinkle in that entire Russia investigation. Tell us about that.

RAJU: Yes, that's right. In fact, a new e-mail was turned up by congressional investigators from 20,000 or so pages of documents that were given by the Trump campaign over to multiple committees on Capitol Hill.

Now, this new e-mail came from Rick Dearborn, who is now the president's deputy chief of staff. But last June, June 2016, he sent an e-mail to other officials, saying that someone from West Virginia wanted to have a meeting with the Trump campaign, and Vladimir Putin.

Now, this person from West Virginia was not identified in the e-mail, but Dearborn was passing along information that they wanted to set up this meeting between Putin and the campaign.

Now, Dearborn, I'm told, was -- appeared skeptical of having such a meeting in the e-mail, but we really don't know what happened afterwards, because Dearborn did not respond to our request for comments.

[13:05:08] White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, I was -- I asked her about this as well. She said that we're not going to comment on potentially leaked documents.

But I can tell you, Wolf, investigators have a lot of questions about this. They want to know what exactly happened here and whether or not this fits a pattern of Russians trying to find entry points into the Trump campaign, to find willing partners, maybe even unwitting partners, as part of their efforts to discredit Hillary Clinton.

So, it's unclear what happened here but just part of the investigation going forward -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Lots going on. All right, Manu Raju, Jim Acosta, guys, thanks very much.

The list of Republicans being rebuked publicly by the president continues to grow and much of that anger seems to stem from the congressional investigations into Russia, the increased sanctions on rush, approved nearly unanimously in votes in the House and Senate.

Joining us now from Salt Lake City is Utah Republican Congressman Chris Stewart. He's a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

REP. CHRIS STEWART (R), UTAH, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good to be with you.

BLITZER: All right. So, you're on this key committee, investigating Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election. You voted, obviously, like almost all of your colleagues, for the additional sanctions against Russia.

Are you worried that the president or other White House aides could soon be targeting you and some of your other colleagues on the committee who are taking this investigation very seriously?

STEWART: Yes, well, we do take it very seriously. And we've been doing it for a long time now, Wolf. We started the investigation last September, but I don't worry at all about being a target. I'm just a little, old congressman from Utah, right? I'm not going to rise to that level, I don't think.

And I think most of us feel we're just going to do the work. We're going to keep our heads down. We're going to ask the questions. We're going to look at the documents. And we'll report back to the American people.

And, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time. And it's worth noting, there is no evidence, at this point, of actual collusion between the campaign officials and Russian officials.

As Manu was talking, there's evidence clearly Russia wanted to have some of these meetings, they wanted to, you know, as you said, get entry into the campaign, as they have in other campaigns and not just in this election but previous elections. Not surprising at all.

But so far as we know, those meetings didn't take place. They were generally rebuffed.

You know, again, we'll keep asking the questions and I look forward to reporting to the American people. It's just fair to the president, fair to the -- to the people to let everyone know as much as we can.

BLITZER: Yes. So, what's your reaction to the president's clear anger at several key Republican leaders in the Senate? The majority leader, Mitch McConnell, for example, Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee.

What's -- when you hear this kind of criticism by the Republican president of these Republican leaders, you worry. Obviously, you're deeply worried about the Republican agenda. Are you worried it could be derailed because of all of this feuding that's going on among the Republicans?

STEWART: Yes, I don't worry about it will be derailed. But it clearly makes it harder. I think part of leadership, and certainly part of politics, is making friends instead of making enemies. And bringing people into your -- into your embrace and into your tent, rather than pushing people back.

And I think sometimes the president reacts emotionally and we know that. And that's just -- it's one of the things that endeared him, frankly, to a lot of voters is he is very honest and very blunt sometimes.

I don't think there's a schism. I think there's some frustration, that was described earlier as being, you know, a great chasm that's developed between the leadership in the House and Senate and the president. I don't believe that at all.

And I think Mr. McConnell and Paul Ryan made that very clear. I do think there's some frustration probably on both sides. The president's clearly very frustrated by health care reform failing. He was a little bit, as was I, by the way, and a number of other Republicans, that in these negotiations, we know we're going to have to pass the debt ceiling limit.

We know that's a controversial thing for a lot of conservatives and others. Without some type of reform or some type of -- where we can say, look what we did. Look what we did to help the American people that's tied to that.

We may have lost that opportunity but maybe not, Wolf. I mean, we haven't passed this legislation yet. We haven't even addressed it. We've still got all of September. And I'm hopeful, like the president apparently, that we can attach something to that piece of legislation. That we can go back and say, once again, we've tried to help the American people.

BLITZER: We're going to -- we're going -- we've got to end the interview, unfortunately, Congressman. We're getting some breaking news coming in. Let me thank you. We'll have you back.

Police now are working in what's being described as an active shooter situation in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston police just tweeting this. King -- between Calhoun and Morris block, to motorist and pedestrian traffic. Active shooter in 400 block of King. People -- they're urging people to avoid the area.

[13:10:01] Let's go to our CNN Law Enforcement Analyst, former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes. It's -- we're just getting this information in. It's very, very sketchy right now. Tom, I don't know if you've been briefed or you're getting more information. But what do you think?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST (via telephone): I'm not. I think, right now, Wolf, we need to, you know, wait and see how much of a search they have. What's going on. What type of neighborhood.

Are they -- are they locking down? You know, asking people to, you know, shelter in place? At this point, we just don't know. And we haven't heard exactly what the basis was for the report of an active shooter.

So, we need to, you know, kind of stand by and hear what more we learn of this.

BLITZER: The information we're getting from Sarah Cobb, who's the owner of a nearby store called MOSA Boutique. Sarah is saying this. The restaurant is called Virginia's saying the streets are full of SWAT and police and people heavily armed. They are blocking off the whole block.

When I heard sirens, she said, I looked out my window and saw officers with guns drawn pointed towards Virginia's. That's the name of the restaurant on King Street.

I heard police talking to a woman who was a witness to the shooting. Police are evacuating nearby business. I see a hair salon that was just evacuated.

So, that gives us a little bit more information on the intense reaction from SWAT and local police, Tom.

FUENTES: Well, certainly. It would raise the possibility that you either have a barricaded subject in one of those establishments or you actually have hostages being held.

You know, if it's a restaurant, or another store. This is the middle of the day. It's lunchtime. You know, so you would have patrons in a number of those businesses up and down that street.

And so, that would be the concern of the police right now that they may have a report already of hostages. But that's what the worry would be.

BLITZER: So, if there are hostages, what's the standard operating procedure? What do the police do in a situation like this? Let's say there's a hostage or two inside that restaurant.

FUENTES: Well, a number of things. One, try to identify who is the person in there? Is there any way to establish communication with the person? How many people, if any, are being held inside as hostages? What's the situation? Has anyone been shot or hurt or stabbed, at this point? And to making -- just containing the situation, and have their tactical SWAT teams ready to respond.

But, in the meantime, try and establish negotiations with either the one or more persons that are inside holding hostages.

BLITZER: Yes. Clearly, as we can see from these live pictures coming in from Charleston, South Carolina, lots of police on the scene. And an active shooter situation. That is what police are describing this as, involving a restaurant, right, in a popular part of Charleston, South Carolina.

We're getting a little bit more information. Not a whole lot more, Tom. But this is something, unfortunately, we've grown accustomed to over the years. And police are trained to deal with a situation like this. We don't know what, if any, of the motive involved in this active shooter situation is.

FUENTES: No, we don't, at this point. And so, the main thing for the -- for the police is to establish the perimeter. Don't let anyone into that area that doesn't belong to try to, you know, maintain safety of the public.

But, really, try to identify exactly what's the situation. When it gets reported as an active shooter, did someone called in and say they saw someone with a gun? Or someone with a gun actually shot the gun at somebody or wounded somebody? So, that's the --

BLITZER: Unfortunately, I think we've just lost Tom Fuentes. But we're going to stay on top of this story.

Once again, an active shooting situation unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina right now.

We'll take a quick break, resume our coverage right after this.

[13:14:10]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Once again we're following the breaking news. Disturbing development. Police are working what's being described as an active shooter situation in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. We're monitoring all of the late-breaking developments. We're going to bring you much more on this as soon as we get more information. Stand by for that.

Other news we're following, important news, Tropical Storm Harvey is now a hurricane barreling towards Texas. The National Hurricane Center is now predicting will strengthen to a category three hurricane before landfall.

Let's go to our meteorologist Chad Myers at the CNN Severe Weather Center.

Chad, when will it hit and what kind of damage could this hurricane do?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, we've been looking at models all morning, Wolf, and I'm thinking sometime after midnight Friday night. So maybe 36 to 42 hours from now, the center of the eyewall crossing somewhere very close to Mustang Island, which his real close to Corpus Christi.

Let me give it to you right now. The wind speeds are now 80 miles an hour. There's a hurricane hunter airplane flying back and forth through this thing looking for wind. It now found a wind speed over 80 miles per hour.

Now it's forecast to be 115. So this is still growing. But understand this morning, when we walked in the building, Wolf, it was 45 miles per hour and now it's 80. And it still has 36 hours to grow. This could be a devastating event for all of Texas. From Brownsville, to Corpus, to Victoria, to San Antonio and Austin with flooding and, again, flooding all the way to Houston, and maybe even Lake Charles because the storm, as it comes onshore, Wolf, tomorrow, tomorrow night, it will stop and it will rain like Hurricane Agnes did in 1927. It flooded all of upstate New York, the entire Susquehanna River Valley because Agnes didn't move. And that's what we're looking at here, another storm that just won't move.

[13:20:03] Storm surge, absolutely. Corpus Christi, Mustang Island, North Padre, six to ten-foot surge and then waves on top of that. They are filling in the barriers. I've been to North Padre. I love North Padre. And there's a way to get from North Padre Island. You drive through the dune, because they've moved the dune away, and you can drive on the beach. They are filling that dune in to stop the storm surge from getting any farther inland because this storm is rapidly intensifying. And I'll tell you what, 115 may be a small estimate compared to what we've seen today.

BLITZER: Yes, it's -- you know, it's amazing what we're about to remember. The 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina happened just right around now. You and I remember covering Katrina at the time. That was a very different type of hurricane, right?

MYERS: It was because Katrina had a CAT 5 with it for a long time in the Gulf of Mexico. So there was a lot of water. That was a 30-foot storm surge in some spots. Twenty-two feet storm surge in Bay St. Louis itself.

This doesn't have the water under it yet, because it hasn't been in the Gulf of Mexico that long. It's just developing now. If this sits out here for 30 more hours, it will get that type of surge and those surge numbers may go up. Eight to 10 may be a conservative number. We'll have to keep watching it.

BLITZER: Yes. All right, well let's hope for the best.

All right, Chad, we're stay in very close touch with you. Chad Myers reporting.

Let's get back to some important political developments we're following right now.

On top of his public clashes with several GOP lawmakers, we're now learning that President Trump is also privately clashing with them over Russia. Sources tell CNN President Trump and the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got into a shouting match during a phone call roughly two weeks ago. They haven't spoken since. The president accusing the Republican leader, the majority leader, of not doing enough to protect him from the Russia probes.

He also fumed, we're told, over the bipartisan deal that ties his hands on new Russia sanctions. It was passed nearly unanimously in the House and the Senate. The president reluctantly signed it into law.

According to Politico, President Trump also confronted Senator Bob Corker about that sanctions bill. The president reportedly argued it was unconstitutional and would damage his presidency.

We've also now confirmed the president reached out to Senator Thom Tillis as well. He asked Tillis why he was working on separate legislation that would protect the special counsel, Robert Mueller. That conversation, however, is said to have been cordial.

With us to discuss this and more, White House reporter for "The Washington Post," David Nakamura, our CNN political director David Chalian, and correspondent for "Bloomberg Politics," Jennifer Epstein.

David Chalian, all these clashes, public and private, with Republicans, one theme seems to be underling so many of them -- the Russia probe.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. Clearly the president is consumed by this. I don't blame him. If I was under investigation from a special counsel, I think I'd be pretty consumed with it also and it would weigh on my mind a lot. So it's understandable.

What he seems incapable of doing, though, is sort of, as his aides talked about many months ago when this got going, was to try to dual track things and wall the investigation off from the business of the White House and trying to pursue the agenda. Donald Trump doesn't seem capable of doing that kind of walling offs from these conversations.

The other thing that is curious here is, why is the president's attitude to these senators, you didn't protect me, or, what are you doing with that bill that is ensuring I can't fire Mueller? Instead of, you can imagine in an alternate universe a president might say, hey, Majority Leader McConnell, can you make sure this goes quickly and fairly and comes to a conclusion because I know I did nothing wrong and I want to be fully vindicated and move on with my agenda. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is, why aren't you protecting me from this? How did you let this get to this moment? I think that's a different level of concern that he has than simply, let's get it done quickly and fairly.

BLITZER: And Politico, as I mentioned, David, reporting that the president actually called Senator Tillis, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, on August 7th and asked him, why are you co-sponsoring this legislation to protect the Special Counsel Robert Mueller? Clearly, the president -- this was on the president's mind, although three days later, he was asked about Mueller and he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I haven't given it any thought. I mean, I've been reading about it from you people. You say, oh, I'm going to dismiss him. No, I'm not dismissing anybody. I mean I want them to get on with the task. But I also want the Senate and the House to come out with their findings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So here's the question, if he hasn't been given it any thought at all, why did he raise it with Senator Tillis?

DAVID NAKAMURA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST: Because he has been giving it thought. And, you know, this is a time period where Congress and the president were supposed to be on vacation, maybe getting away from some of this. But he's not just sort of obsessed with this in the way that David talked about, where it's sort of personal and it's about protecting himself, but this is an area where it has gotten him into trouble, we know, by calling some of the people in charge of the investigation and trying to influence the investigation. And to sort of try to influence legislation is slightly different. But the president can, you know, maybe make some missteps if he's continuing to call people in back channels and influence them.

[13:25:21] BLITZER: Because potentially you're hovering towards that obstruction of justice charge --

NAKAMURA: Absolutely.

BLITZER: Which some people are taking a very close look at right now.

You know, and I want you, Jennifer, to weigh in as well because by all accounts the president was deeply upset that the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate, the respective Republican chairman of the intelligence committees, the judiciary committees, they got deeply involved in this Russia probe. He's not very happy about that. That's what he complained to Mitch McConnell about.

JENNIFER EPSTEIN, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "BLOOMBERG NEWS": Right. You know, he is clearly not happy that they're kind of doing their jobs. You know, if you talk to Democrats on The Hill and throughout Washington, they say that the Republicans aren't doing enough on this and not being aggressive enough. And I think what you're seeing is, you know, the Republicans, for the most part, are trying to do an honest job. They're trying -- you know, you see Thom Tillis saying, you know, if he fires Mueller, we're going to respond with this legislation to block that.

You know, those kinds of things are efforts by Republicans to kind of stand up to the president. But it does seem like this president doesn't think that anything less than full loyalty to him, as we've discussed in lots of different ways before, is an acceptable position for Republicans.

BLITZER: If this feud that he has now with Mitch McConnell and the speaker, Paul Ryan, to a certain degree as well continues, I suspect the Republican senators, and the Republican members of the House, more than likely most of them will side with their leader in the House and the Senate as opposed to the president of the United States?

CHALIAN: Certainly on the Senate side. I don't know -- Paul Ryan, there may be some House Freedom Caucus members that might side with Trump over Ryan on certain things. That's a little bit more of a tricky conference in terms of the politics between Trump and the establishment leadership.

Republicans will -- but, yes, there is no doubt. This is what is so perplexing to me about this. Both Mitch McConnell and President Trump actually need the relationship to work because there -- it is -- they both need some victories here. We look at the polls and we see that Republicans are more eager to blame the members of Congress in their party for the stasis in Washington than they are to blame the president. And so while the president clearly needs a big legislative victory, so, too, does Mitch McConnell and his members want to get some progress on the board to go back home and sell as we head into an election year next year.

So it really is incumbent upon both of them to really try to fix this. It's in their own political interests.

BLITZER: He tweeted this morning, the president, the only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that after hearing repeal and replace for seven years, he failed. That should have never have happened.

But that wasn't exactly accurate because he's got several other problems with Mitch McConnell right now as well. NAKAMURA: Absolutely. Again, once again, the White House is talking out of both sides. Just yesterday Sarah Sanders, press secretary, issued a statement saying the president didn't have -- had a good relationship with Mitch McConnell. He comes out again on Twitter and attacks him. And, you know, I think that leading into a very busy month of September where you don't -- you do not just have legislative initiatives the White House would like to get off the ground, but also critical things like a new spending bill and a raising of the debt ceiling. These two sides definitely do not seem to be working on the same page.

CHALIAN: And just think about that for a second, Wolf. I mean a White House statement about the relationship between the president and the Senate majority leader and trying to say -- I mean that in and of itself indicates the problem at hand, right?

NAKAMURA: Right.

CHALIAN: You don't see that kind of a statement.

NAKAMURA: Totally unprecedented.

CHALIAN: Yes.

BLITZER: You know, Jennifer, I assume you saw this retweet from the president this morning, and it's getting a lot of buzz out there. We'll put it up on the screen. He retweeted what was seen as the best eclipse ever. This is a couple days after the total solar eclipse that all of us were covering just the other day. But you see the president slowly eclipsing his immediate predecessor, President Obama.

And it's getting a lot -- I mean why would the current president, you know, sort of undermine and ridicule his immediate predecessor? A lot of people are wondering, has that ever happened before where a president really goes after his immediate predecessor in a way like this?

EPSTEIN: It's a pretty unusual thing to do something as kind of as petty as a retweet. You certainly see on policy issues, you saw President Obama, you know, criticize George W. Bush, but not kind of just on personal and power.

You note in this -- in this analogy, President Trump is the moon, not the sun, which is, you know, the thing around which the whole universe revolves. So it's actually kind of a strange thing, if you think about it that way. You know, maybe it's like -- it's a reminder that STEM education is important.

BLITZER: It's a weird retweet, isn't it?

CHALIAN: It's very weird. I hadn't thought about that. But it's also true that I guess the next frame would be the Trump image moving on, right, and Obama re-emerging to follow to its logical conclusion.

[13:30:03] NAKAMURA: You mean 2020?

BLITZER: We'll continue to watch all of these tweets.

All right, guys, thanks very much, Jennifer, David and David. Two Davids.

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