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Trump: Tremendous Progress Decimating ISIS; Trump Gives Mixed Messages on DACA; Mixed Messages from Trump & Republicans on Tax Plan; Trump: "Fake Dossier" is Made Up; Nikki Haley Warns South Sudan Aid at Risk if Violence Grows. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 25, 2017 - 13:30   ET

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


[13:30:00] GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: -- campaign to interfere in our election has been verified by the entire intelligence community. And the president himself is still singing the same old song about that in contradiction to the intelligence community.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: He says the whole Russia investigation is a hoax. It's a Democratic excuse why they lost the election.

He was very, very positive in saying that the U.S. is making tremendous strides, decimating ISIS in the Middle East. And if they take up positions in Africa or elsewhere, he says, we'll meet them. He says we're going to win.

That's why he's given the U.S. military, David, authority to get the job done, whatever it takes.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. He has boasted in the past few days changing some of the rules of engagement have helped the military on the ground and those we're backing in Iraq to defeat ISIS. This was a strategy that predates his administration. He certainly contributed to the positive aspects of it. But it goes back to the Obama administration, as well.

You know, you look at all of this, and you have a president who feels actually vindicated today.

BORGER: Right.

GREGORY: Feels vindicated because here you have not only information that implicates Democrats and not just digging up dirt on him fine, that's politics. But getting it to a point where the intelligence community felt it was serious enough that they worried that Trump could be blackmailed and had to brief him on this, and presumably some elements in the intelligence community leaked this stuff out to the press. And he's able to wave that around and say, see, I told you. Meanwhile, there's a substantive investigation going on by Mueller and his team. And we'll see what happens to that.

This GOP unity, the truth is that Jeff Flake, Bob Corker have megaphones. They could hurt his agenda a bit. But they're going to be gone. He's still standing.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: It's his party.

GREGORY: It's his party.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: That's what he said.

BLITZER: The other news I heard the president, several news nuggets there, but on the DACA issue, the DREAMers, the president says we're looking at it, and says we need something this return, something "very substantial," his words, including the wall.

HENDERSON: Yes.

BLITZER: That's in contrast to what, the dinner that he had with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, where they said they would work out an arrangement allowing these 700,000 or 800,000 undocumented DREAMers, they were kids when their parents came here to the United States illegally, but they would be allowed to stay.

And the president agreed during that dinner, as you remember, Nia, that the wall would be down the road. The wall would not be part of an arrangement allowing the DREAMers to stay.

HENDERSON: And almost immediately, his story changed. It was partly because of what he was hearing from conservatives. They felt like he was giving away the store to Chuck and Nancy on the DACA deal. They had essentially won the Democrats. So that's why you hear him talking about the wall. From time to time, he does talk about the wall, talks about the wall in terms of that's the only way that some sort of DACA deal will happen. Democrats have said there is going to be no deal in terms of including a wall. Even Republicans border state Republicans, governors as well as folks in the House and Senate aren't too keen on a wall either because it's so expensive. We'll see.

What was so clear, to David's point, the president felt really good today. He was relishing those exchanges with those reporters. It felt like he could have stayed there for 15 more minutes in front of reporters. He shook one reporter's hand, who he felt got the story right, the coverage of the GOP meeting on the Hill yesterday. He, of course, said it was a great meeting. He talked about Corker. He talked about Flake. He also said that he felt like they would ultimately support his agenda that they would vote for tax reform. Said he felt like he could get some Democrats there. As we were watching, has a president who does talk to the president much more so than --

(CROSSTALK)

GREGORY: And he loves the press.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: When he's having a good moment, he loves the press.

GREGORY: Yes, but I've never seen anybody like this. First of all, we've covered the White House. I've never been around a president who will sit there 15 minutes and take questions and interact like that. This president, who talks about the fake news and says things that are not true and seeks to delegitimize the press, which is absolutely wrong, the truth is he loves it. It's a game. People need to see that. This is a game in his mind. He loves waking up in the morning and having a villain to beat up on. That's the news media. I've never seen a president who uses the media in this way.

BORGER: The press is his oxygen.

GREGORY: Yes.

BORGER: And he has always been that way. Going back to the days when he posed as his own press secretary to reporters because nobody can represent his political point of view better than he can. So that's what he's doing out there. Today, I think he was feeling pretty good about the news that the Democrats paid money for the dossier. He was kind of teasing people: I think I know who the Republican is who paid for it. But stay tuned. We'll do the big reveal at some point. And so he felt pretty good. I also think though when he said the press makes me more uncivil than I really am, that was his sort of way of saying to the people I'm really a nice guy.

[13:35:12] BLITZER: What he said was --

BORGER: And my tweets don't matter.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: And he's really smart and went to an ivy league school.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Gloria, you did a lot of reporting on Donald Trump.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: You did an excellent documentary on Donald Trump during the campaign going back, looking over his whole life. Once again, when is he said I think the press makes me more uncivil than I am, I went to an ivy league school. I'm very intelligent. They create a very different image of Donald Trump than the real person then he said, when I'm attacked, I'm going to counterpunch and fight back.

BORGER: So there's the first part of that statement and there's the second part of that statement. Because when is you meet Donald Trump one-on-one, he's very charming. And everyone will tell you that. When he counterpunches, he's not so charming. I would argue that it's not always a counterpunch. Very often it's an attack as opposed to a counter punch. That's part of Donald Trump, as well, and you cannot pay no attention to that, as Jeff Flake told us in his speech yesterday. But he came out there today to say to us, yes, what these guys said I get it. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's my party.

BLITZER: Hold on for a moment. I want to point out when he was recalling the conversation he had with the widow of La David Johnson, he said, I have one of the great memories of all times.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: He remembered it precisely.

Stand by. Everyone stand by for a moment.

We have a lot more to unpack. We're going to be watching the breaking news, including a possible concession on 4001Ks in the tax push. A lot more on the dossier, the very controversial, salacious dossier. Joining us next one of Robert Mueller's former advisers will weigh in.

Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:40:59] BLITZER: Welcome back. We just heard the president answer questions from reporters on the South Lawn of the White House for about 15 minutes. Went through a lot of important issues.

Gloria -- I want to get back to the panel -- one thing that the president seemed to send mixed messages on his proposed tax cuts. He says 401Ks, the retirement plans for the middle class, very important. Doesn't want to touch it. Then, a reporter said Kevin Brady does want to touch it. He says maybe we'll touch it, maybe we won't touch it.

(LAUGHTER)

He's sending conflicting signals. He said maybe for negotiating purposes we can say that, but he doesn't want to touch it.

BORGER: This is the problem that Republicans have. They want to get some indication what he will touch and what he won't touch. And what the parameters are here. What's nonnegotiable, what's negotiable. The problem with the president he's not a policy person. And he just wants to win. And so whatever will get him to the finish line is what he wants. However, there are Republicans who don't, who, do want to touch the 401K, Republicans very worried about the deficit issues. And Bob Corker is one of them. And I think you know, there's a lot of push and pull that goes on here. It seems to me that the president is not the best one to negotiate in public over this because every time he does it, he gives Republicans heartburn who are trying to get a united Republican Party which the president, of course, says they have. But they really don't, even on this.

BLITZER: On other issues, he says we're not going to touch entitlement spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. There's a bunch of conservative Republicans who think they should because that eats up so much of the federal expenditures every year. So he's sending these signals that, yes, we're going to have major, major tax cuts, but a lot of Republicans are worried that the deficit, the national debt will skyrocket.

GREGORY: Right. This has been a mantra from conservatives worrying about a debt crisis that's going to befall the United States. So to balloon the deficit which they are saying can be overcome by growth, this is a standard argument made by conservative tins. Here you have a president driving tax policy and the agenda more than Capitol Hill with an original template of what he wanted to see done. So he's driving the process but not really in the weeds. He's making it complicated. One of the things we can take away from the past few days, the differences with the president from Flake and Corker are not as much ideological as they are character as they are about temperament, and you know, vulgarity and all the rest. He is still in control of this Republican Party if you look at the leadership, they're still with him. It's going to be interesting to see with these twos figures in Congress whether more speak up.

BLITZER: Adam Entous is with us, our CNN contributor, staff writer for "The Washington Post."

Adam, I want you to stand by. You and your team at "The Washington Post" broke the news, a major article on the dossier. We're going to discuss that. We're going to discuss what the president just said about it. We'll resume all of this right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:48:31] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I think it's very sad what they've done with this fake dossier. It was made up and I understand they paid a tremendous amount of money. And Hillary Clinton always denied it. The Democrats always denied it. And now only because it's going to come out in-court case they said, yes, they did it, admitted it and they're embarrassed by it. I think it's a disgrace. It's a very sad -- it's a very sad commentary on politics in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: President Trump reacting to "The Washington Post" story revealing and confirming for the first time that the dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, although earlier, an earlier version was paid by unnamed Republicans.

Adam Entous is a CNN contributor, part of the team that broke the story in "The Washington Post."

Why is this so significant?

ADAM ENTOUS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It confirms for the Republicans and Trump that his enemy in the campaign, Hillary Clinton, was, through a cutout, through a law firm, funding the research that ended up in the dossier. I think it's important to keep in mind that the research was not producing a dossier. This was a British intelligence, former British intelligence officer who was putting together a series of reports based on his contacts in Russia that then were provided to this company in Washington, Fusion GPS. Fusion would then provide it to the law firm. The firm would then share details with the campaign, and I assume with people in the DNC, although I'm not clear if that occurred. We don't really have full detail yet as far as the chain of custody goes. You know, did the reports actually go to -- do Chris Steele's reports actually go to people close to Hillary Clinton? As far as we can tell, that doesn't appear to be the case.

[13:50:20] BLITZER: Because the president he's obviously very angry about this. Thinks this is a major, major development. We had reported on CNN months ago that Democrats were paying for the dossier. We didn't say it was the Hillary Clinton campaign or DNC. You, for the first time, have confirmed that. But the president is also suggesting he thinks he knows who the Republican was, who originally started to pay for this so-called opposition research.

ENTOUS: Right. So keep in mind, Fusion GPS, this company, is hired initially by a Republican client who -- during the Republican primaries. At the time Russia wasn't their focus. They didn't know what to focus on. There was a group of reporters doing their research. So initially, they were looking at Trump's business activities and that's what focused them on Russia, after the Democrats come in and bankroll the continued research, after the Republican, whoever that person is, stops funding the efforts. After that, that's when Chris tell, the former is hired by Fusion GPS continued the research. The end product is the so-called dossier, which is published online by "Buzzfeed" in January.

BLITZER: Michael Zeldin is with us, our CNN legal analyst, former special assistant, at one point, Robert Mueller, now the special counsel.

Based on everything we know, so far, Michael, is it your assumption that perhaps some laws were violated?

MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: No, I don't think there were any laws that were violated. I think what we have has, that's just been described, opposition research performed by Fusion GPS hired by the Perkins Law Firm, and that's standard blocking and tackling stuff. If you wanted to see a juxta position of what may be lawful versus unlawful, you look at this affirmative research performed by the Clinton campaign versus the Donald Trump June 9th meeting, which was a solicitation of Donald Trump Jr by foreign nationals, Russians, to provide information which is prohibited by law, because they are foreign nationals. So two different things here.

What was reported on is interesting from a political standpoint, but is irrelevant from a legal standpoint.

And the bottom line from Mueller standpoint, Wolf, he has to make a determination whether the contents of the dossier are in fact true, irrespective who paid for it. It doesn't matter to Mueller whether the Clinton/DNC people paid for it or a Republican paid for it. What he wants to decide is whether this British intelligence officers' reports which say that there was a relationship between the Trumps and the Kremlin for years back has merit. And if it has merit, how does that relate to the question of his counterintelligence mandate, which is, was there interference with our election in the illegal way.

BLITZER: Adam, there was some talk that the FBI was going to pick up the tab at some point as well. They were that interested in the substance of the dossier.

ENTOUS: Yes. What happened was they were going to do that, then the "Wall Street Journal" revealed who he was. After that happened, it was --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Who the British spy was?

ENTOUS: Right. I think it's important to keep in mind here that I think CNN broke the story that some of the meetings that are described in the dossier were verified when the intelligence officials went through intercepts, past intercepts. They were able to see those moments or references to those same moments, which is how they were table to corroborate some of what's in the dossier, not all of it. And certainly, the most salacious stuff has not been verified and may never be verified. But I think it's important to keep in mind the overall arch of the assessment of Chris Steele is in keeping with U.S. intelligence community's assessment, which was the Russians intervened to help Trump and there's series of relationships that were interesting, we are not sure what they mean, but certainly interesting.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: And let's not forget the president, even as recently as a few minutes ago, said the whole Russia investigation is a hoax.

BORGER: Right. And don't forget, to pull the thread a little more, was that it was Comey who drew the short straw and had to inform the president of the dossier and that was one of the things that set the president off about Comey early on.

[13:54:54] BLITZER: Everybody stand by.

There's other important news coming in as well. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is getting a firsthand look at the impact of South Sudan's brutal civil war. She's the first cabinet- level official in the Trump administration to go to Sub-Saharan Africa. She's in the middle of a three-nation trip, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republican of Congo and South Sudan.

Elise Labott is joining us now from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Elise, Haley visited refugee camps. She filled those -- she got a lot done, apparently. But update our viewers. You are traveling with her right now. Update our viewers on the latest.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. Today, we visited South Sudan, Juba, where Ambassador Haley met with the president there. And this was a tough meeting. Yesterday, Ambassador Haley visited a refugee camp on the border of South Sudan in Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands of refugees. She heard horrific stories from women, how their children were killed, how their husbands were killed, how they were raped. That got her going. She was going to give a tough message to the president here about the brutal civil war and the horrific -- some people are calling them crimes against humanity. But she was really fired up after the horrific things that she witnessed yesterday in those refugee camps.

So she told me she met with the president here. It was a tough, very honest meeting. That the U.S., if you remember, Wolf, in 2011, helped give birth to this nation, the youngest nation in the world. It was voted for independence in 2011. The U.S. has given billions of dollars since then, has supported the government. Meanwhile, he has presided over a lot of this violence. And she's saying to him, listen, you need to cut it off. You need to let aid workers --

BLITZER: Just lost, unfortunately, our connection with Elise. We'll check back with her. But you get the gist of the latest developments in Africa.

We'll continue to follow all the breaking news. Very candid comments from President Trump, you just heard, weighing in moments ago on his call to the family of Sergeant La David Johnson, his feud with Republican Senators, his bragging about own intelligence and memory and education.

And much more right after a quick break.

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