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Trump Welcomes Freed Prisoners; Trump's Meeting with Kim; Pentagon Releases Niger Mission Report; McCain Rejects Haspel. Aired 12n-12:30p ET

Aired May 10, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: THIS HOUR. It's been a busy day, as always.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate.

And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thanks for sharing your day with us.

President Trump welcomes home three Americans and thanks Kim Jong-un for releasing them. Now the hard stuff, hoping this goodwill continues at the big summit next month when North Korea's nukes are on the table.

Plus, send Michael Cohen money and he'll share his insights on his boss, the president. It's swampy for sure, but is it illegal?

And, the president still hasn't told Robert Mueller whether he will sit down for an interview, but the vice president says it's time now for the special counsel to call it a day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I think is that it's been about a year since this investigation began. Our administration's provided over a million documents. We fully cooperated in it. And in the interest of the country, I think it's time to wrap it up. And I would very respectfully encourage the special counsel and his team to bring their work to completion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Back to that in a moment. But we begin today with a celebration here in Washington and a date and time now for a summit with history- altering states. Three Americans held prisoner by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un are home now. Before sunrise, look here at the tarmac, Joint Base Andrews, the president meeting a plane carrying the newly freed prisoners, Tony Kim, Kim Hak-song, and Kim Dong-chul. The president called their return a special night. And indeed it was a blessing for them.

But now comes the hard part. President Trump says Singapore will be the stage for the summit with Kim Jong-un. That -- leaders now set to meet on June 12. The president will try to convince Kim to forfeit his nuclear ambitions. Now, the odds are long, but the president, early today, saying he and Kim starting off on a new footing. He sees, if not a partner, than a realist looking for a way out of isolation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think this is a wonderful thing that he released the folks early. That was a big thing. Very important to me.

I really think he wants to do something and bring their country into the real world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: With us today to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Hirschfeld Davis with "The New York Times," the former State Department and Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby, "Politico's" Eliana Johnson, and CNN's Abby Phillip.

Admiral, I'm going to call on you first because of your experience here. I saw you shaking your head a little bit as the president there saying this is a big thing. I assume you mean North Korea never should have taken these people prisoner, therefore is there a risk or is it -- assuming the president also believes, and is it -- you know, he's just trying to say, all right, let's keep this good will going?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.), CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: Yes, look, so my -- the reason I was shaking my head is, one, you know, we did seem to forget last night that Kim's a dictator, a brutal guy, starving his people and he is responsible for their detention.

Number two, the president said, you know, he released them early. Don't buy that. This was all part of the confidence building kabuki dance that you go in through to a summit. So we'll see where it goes.

And I think it's really important for the American people, although this is great news for the families and I'm not trying to diminish that, that it doesn't mean this summit will be successful. There is an awful lot of diplomatic hard work ahead and I think there are legitimate concerns about the president's impulsiveness when he sits down at that table.

KING: Right. And so the president's language does come into play here. I want to -- before we continue the conversation -- play just a little bit more of the president last night. He called Kim Jong-un honorable. Now, he means in the context of the recent conversations. But, when the president of the United States calls a dictator who starves his own people, who launches missiles over other countries, that's -- it strikes people as stark here. A little bit more of the president's language at 2:00 a.m. this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want to thank Kim Jong-un, who really was excellent to these three incredible people. We very much appreciate that he allowed them to go before the meeting. It was sort of understood that we'd be able to get these three terrific people during the meeting and bring them home after the meeting. And he was nice in letting them go before the meeting. I mean, frankly, we didn't think this was going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And again, you know, there are a lot -- a lot of people criticizing the president. Kim Jong-un was really excellent, really was excellent to these people, though he imprisoned those people. He imprisoned those people.

Again, the president's talking there, I -- you know, to give the president a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, in the context of excellent to let them go, and the president's thinking, I'm going to be sitting across from the table with this guy in Singapore in a month. Let's try to stay on a good plain. But --

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, I mean, this is a president who sees things in very black and white terms, right? Either you're a short, fat little rocket man, which is what he's called him before, or you're excellent and honorable and a great person who I can sit down with and have a meeting. And I think that's kind of what we heard. There's not a lot of nuance in the way that he talks.

But I think you're right. I mean clearly right now the play is that he thinks that he has sort of cracked the code of Kim Jong-un. We heard the vice president say a little bit of that on TV this morning. He thinks that, you know, President Trump understands Kim and that he has gotten him to this place because of his shrewdness. I think that very much remains to be seen.

[12:05:07] But that is the perspective that they're coming from at the White House, is the president thinks he's figured this guy out. If you show him respect, if you talk positively about him, he's more likely to get you -- give you what you want. But as John alluded to earlier, we've seen this play before and that hasn't panned out in the past. So the big challenge now is to put that into some sort of results and we'll see --

KING: And what about the flip side? Some conservatives quietly on Capitol Hill whisper. If you talk to Japanese diplomats, they sometimes whisper. They're worried Kim has figured out how to play Trump. Figured out the opposite. That here's a goodwill gesture, quote/unquote, three guys who were taken hostage and imprisoned by a dictator. Oh, you can have your people back now. How is that a gift? That's -- you know, if you take that perspective. And, you know, now we get our big meeting. Now Kim -- Kim gets what he wants, legitimacy on the world stage by being in the same room as the president of the United States.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And you heard the president also talking about this idea of a relationship being the central part of this whole exercise that we're going through with North Korea. The president thinks it's about personal relationships, about -- as Julie said, saying nice things about Kim and vice versa. But it's possible that Kim is playing a different game altogether and is giving Trump the kind of win that he wants on the public stage, bringing these prisoners back, something that the North Koreans would smartly know would help President Trump domestically at a moment when he's embattled on a lot of other fronts.

And, you know, President Trump often treats other leaders like he wants to be treated himself. But in -- as with North Korea and as with the case is with Russia, often they have deeper concerns, deeper, more strategic concerns that the president doesn't always take into consideration at the very beginning, and that's why the seasoned diplomats are looking at this situation and they're saying, hold on, we're not quite there yet, and we shouldn't be as, you know, optimistic about this as the president seems to be because there's still a lot of road to go. And, frankly, the biggest part, the hardest part, is the denuclearization. We're not even close to getting there yet.

KING: Not even close. But we are close. June 12th in Singapore. The president of the United States, for the first time in history, is going to sit across the table from the North Korea leader. And so we are going to have this, for the next few weeks, who's playing whom, or who's on first and who's sort of leading -- you know, who's leading in the pre-summit propaganda and positioning war. What matters most is the two leaders sitting across the table, as we sit at this table today, and what is the White House plan going into that? And there -- what is their debate? There are some people, even in the Trump administration, who says that president so much wants a win. Does he understand how to define a real win?

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": Yes, I think there is a lot of concern, particularly given the president's rhetoric about Kim going into this that, you know, he tells people what they want to hear in these meetings. And though he's had some bad phone calls with world leaders, he doesn't really have bad meetings. His meeting with Merkel was testy, but he does tend to tell people what they want to hear.

But I think you have to say that from a timing perspective, the release of the prisoners, the announcement that Mike Pompeo was on his way to North Korea, as President Trump announced that he was junking the Iran deal, worked out really well for the Trump administration. There was so much pushback in the 48 hours before the announcement about the Iran deal that there was no way the president was going to be able to work with North Korea. If he jumped the Iran deal, that this was going to undermine negotiations.

I do think that it was a win for the White House to be able to show that they were getting -- making -- able to make progress on North Korea even as they cast aside the JCPOA.

KING: And we will hear from these three Americans who are thankfully, blessedly back home. Whatever you think of the president, this is a good thing. This is a good thing for Secretary Pompeo. It's a victory for President Trump. And just to remind you here, we will hear their stories. We don't know

exactly what happened to them while they were in captivity. But listen here. This is Kenneth Bae, who was once a North Korea prisoner, explaining what life is like when Kim Jong-un throws you in prison.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNETH BAE, FORMER NORTH KOREAN DETAINEE: Well, I have to work from 8:00 in the morning from 6:00 in the evening six days a week, outside, doing the farming work, carrying rocks, digging the ground.

The nutrition that I'm -- that I was eating was not enough. Sometimes it was just a bowl of rice and a little big of soup and a couple vegetable. Within three months, I lost more than 40 pounds, and then I was malnutrition -- because I was then -- I was sent to the hospital for malnutrition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I mean two immediate takeaways listening to that powerful account of what it's like, and Kenneth Bae was held for two years. Number one, we should all be thankful that these other three Americans are now home. So they're not being subjected to that.

Number two, to your point, it does tell you what Kim Jong-un does to people he captures, let alone to starving his own people, to keep the regime in place. And it tells you about the, you know, the bad actor you're dealing with. It doesn't mean you shouldn't go to the summit. It doesn't mean you want to try. Of course you want to try. But it tells you about who's across the table.

KIRBY: Absolutely. I mean this is a brutal dictator and this is a regime that is focused on two things and has been for decades. One, its own survival. And, two, some sort of normalization with the United States because they believe, a, that gives them the respect on the world stage and would lead to a reduction in economic sanctions, which are hurting his economy.

[12:10:13] So he's going into this prepared. He's going to know what he wants to get out of it. I've spoken to some Korean experts in the last couple of weeks. They tell me that the one thing you can count on from Pyongyang is they will be ready and they will have a game plan.

And to some degree, John, we're playing to Kim Jong-un's songbook here. This whole kabuki dance to where we've gotten so far, you can't minimize the effect and the impact that he has had on creating it.

PHILLIP: But this is also something we've seen from the president in a lot of other arenas. He believes that sometimes you have to put aside those concerns, whether it's about human rights or about Kim Jong- un's, you know, brutality toward his own people and to prisoners and to others in order to have a conversation, to get in the room, to develop a relationship, to pull North Korea back from the brink. This will be the ultimate test of that.

You know, but this is the -- this is as far as we can get with President Trump in terms of a doctrine toward these dictator types on the world stage. He has always been willing to say, if -- what I want to do is get in the room with you, get to the table with you. I'm willing to put aside, to look the other way with some of this other stuff. And I think that's what we're seeing here.

KIRBY: And that's fine. And that's fine. But it -- this is a tougher nut to crack. And you've got to go in with a set of reasonable expectations. I fear he's overpromising.

JOHNSON: I don't disagree with you, but I think it -- I do think it's somewhat ironic that the Trump administration is getting a host of criticism from Democrats and liberals who typically favor sitting down with adversaries --

KING: Right.

JOHNSON: Trying to understand them. And the -- from Obama administration officials who sat down with Iran, wanted to understand where they were coming from, North Korea already has a nuclear weapon. But they did reach an agreement that they were very proud of. And now, you know, are very critical at Trump for junking that.

KING: I --

DAVIS: Well, and he's treating this case very differently than he's treated other regimes like this. President Trump has really denounced Iran. He's denounced what President Obama did with Cuba, which is the same thing that Abby was describing where you put aside the past and you say, OK, I'm willing to talk about the here and now. He's willing to do that here. He wasn't in other instances.

KING: He sees a chance here to make history and to have a big, personal stake in it, which we should applaud the effort. We'll keep an eye on the specifics.

We've got to stop this conversation for this just breaking news just into CNN.

The Pentagon is now releasing its final report on that attack in Niger that killed four Americans. That was last October, remember. The Pentagon says a series of individual and institutional failures led to the deaths of these four American heroes. You see them right there. The report also includes this detail, saying, two junior officers falsified a document to get approval for a mission to kill or capture an ISIS leader, which means the mission was never approved by the proper chain of command.

Admiral, before I let you go, what does that tell you?

KIRBY: A very damaging report. And I hope it leads to some significant changes in the way the mission in Niger is conducted, as well as just overall in terms of training equipped missions and how we're putting forces in the field and the kind of command and control that we're giving them.

There has been some criticism about Jim Mattis in terms of delegating too much authority down the chain. I don't know that this is the case here. But it is something that they should be looking at because higher level headquarters' oversight's important, particularly for dangerous missions like this.

KING: And the accountability important for those still in the field --

KIRBY: Absolutely.

KING: And for the families of those four heroes who died last October. We'll continue to follow the Pentagon briefing still underway across the river.

Up next for us here, though, the president's choice for CIA director making some progress on Capitol Hill, but he has one new, very prominent opponent. Can John McCain stop the confirmation of Gina Haspel?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back.

[12:17:46] KING: Welcome back.

Today, some important progress but also a significant complication for the president's pick to lead the CIA. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he's a yes vote on Gina Haspel, but his friend, Senator John McCain, is urging colleagues to reject her because Senator McCain says Haspel's answer to this question is disqualifying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMILA HARRIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Do you believe the previous interrogation techniques are immoral? I'm not asking do you believe they were legal. I'm asking, do you believe they were immoral.

GINA HASPEL, CIA DIRECTOR NOMINEE: Senator, I believe that CIA did extraordinary work --

HARRIS: Just a yes or no.

HASPEL: To prevent another attack on this country given the legal tools that we were authorized to use.

HARRIS: Please answer yes or no. Do you believe in hindsight that those techniques were immoral?

HASPEL: Senator, what I believe sitting here today is that I support the higher moral standard we have decided to hold ourselves to.

HARRIS: Will you please answer the question?

HASPEL: Senator, I think I've answered the question.

HARRIS: No, you've not.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Let's start with CNN's Phil Mattingly, live up on Capitol Hill.

Phil, the number two Senate Republican, John Cornyn, says he believes she will be confirmed with a bipartisan vote, but you know the math up there and how narrow it is in the Senate. Does Senator McCain's statement shifted the dynamic at all?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, I don't think it's reversed the dynamic, but it's certainly froze it, for at least a period of time. And the reason why, I think everybody knows why. I've spoken to several senators this morning, a lot of Republican aides that basically said, look, nobody speaks with more authority on this issue, somebody who was in prison from 1967 to 1973, still has visible, physical basically problems -- I think you just watch Senator John McCain walk around -- based on the torture that he was subjected to while he was in Hanoi.

You talk to senators right now who are on the fence. People like Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican and close friend of McCain's, who was just speaking to McCain last week in Sedona. You talk to people like Senator Doug Jones, a moderate Democrat from Alabama, and they say the voice statement, what Senator McCain has to say, carries weight, is important.

That being said, you mentioned Senator John Cornyn. I've been talking to Republican aides since the statement came out. They are still confident that the votes will actually be there. You take a look at the dynamics, which are somewhat similar to what you saw. With now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, you have a lot of red state Democrats who want to come on board. Already Senator Joe Manchin is a yes vote. The expectation is Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator Joe Donnelly, a couple others, maybe Senator Doug Jones, and perhaps even the top Democrat on the committee, Senator Mark Warner, may all come aboard eventually.

[12:20:11] But, look, everybody kind of stops and reads the statement when Senator John McCain speaks on this issue. Obviously he was a major opponent to the Bush administration when these policies were in place in the early part of the 2000s. He remains a major opponent. I will note, you pointed out, Senator Lindsey Graham coming out as a yes vote. That was important. Republicans were keeping a close eye on him to see what kind of impact, if any, that statement would have on final vote totals.

KING: Phil Mattingly up on The Hill. Phil, appreciate your help there. Keep in touch as it math changes.

Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast" joins the conversation.

Senator McCain is a powerful voice, and this is going to sound a little bit crass, but he's not here. Will that make a difference in terms of personally talking to your colleagues? I say that in the context of the Obamacare vote when we saw him down on the floor. He was talking to people. It was very close at the end. He gave that infamous thumbs down. Does it make a difference? He has moral stature without a doubt on this question because of his personal experience. He doesn't have -- you see, Lindsey Graham's a yes, Susan Collins' a yes. Those are two people closely aligned with John McCain.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY BEAST": Right. I -- maybe, but I have a hard time believing that Lindsey Graham has not spoken to John McCain about his decision. The two are very close. You can't imagine that he wouldn't make that decision in a vacuum. I'm sure -- I'm sure they talked it over.

You know, Gina Haspel had a lot of goodwill on The Hill. The fact that Dianne Feinstein said she's not going to vote for her is quite notable because she went into that before -- I mean she has a race in California. She's being pushed to the left. But the fact that the lines are a little differently -- are falling a little differently than we've seen in previous nominations for these top security positions.

PHILLIP: And I think it's perhaps less that John McCain is not physically here and more that John McCain's sort of era of Republican politics and politics in general seems to be kind of waning. I think his colleagues respect him and respect what he has to say, but understand that they are in a different political environment. They are going to be running again.

And I also think that even for some Democrats, the ones who are leaning toward voting for Gina Haspel, there's in some ways a sense of relief that she is coming from the agency itself. In so many instances, this administration has nominated people to lead agencies who want to destroy the agency that they are leading. And I think that there is a perception that while she has some problems in her background, she is ultimately someone who probably has the support of the building and is better than some of the other people that the Trump administration has put forward for other agencies, like EPA and CFPB. I mean this is a different kind of nomination. She's a careerist.

KING: And just to the point, to the careerist point, even a lot of Democrats privately agree with you completely that someone who's a -- a, it just shows you can start at the bottom and work your way up to the top. B, Democrats don't have a lot of trust for the more political people in the Trump cabinet. That's just the "D" and the "R" and the divide that is Washington and they say here's an institutionalist.

Roy Blunt trying to help Gina Haspel out by saying this to "The Washington Post," we shouldn't be talking about what happened 17 years ago, we should be talking about what's going to happen 17 weeks or 17 days from now.

I get that. It's one chapter. But this is a pretty big chapter in the history of the CIA.

JOHNSON: Well, I -- I think --

KING: I mean this is not -- this is not running a red light 17 years ago, this is a world stopping, defining debate about American values.

JOHNSON: But I think what you're not hearing members of Congress talk about for an obvious reason is that that debate extended into the halls of Congress.

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: Right.

JOHNSON: Congressional leaders were briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA was using and I don't recall those leaders, after being briefed, talking about it to the news media, resigning in protest, making hay about it. They made hay about it when those techniques became public and it became a public issue.

And I think what's happened is that we -- much as I dislike the term, had a national conversation and a national reckoning a few years removed from 9/11 and decided that as a country we weren't going to do this anymore. But this is a conversation that congressional leaders were involved with and didn't do much about at the time.

KING: And a key architect of the policies at the time and a key supporter at the time, granting an interview to Fox Business this morning, the former vice president, Dick Cheney, he has not changed his mind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs. I'd have them active and ready to go. And I'd go back and study them and learn.

The agency is in a difficult position. Congress has acted and they have changed the law and the agency has to and will operate by that statute.

But, you know, there are a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks in the terrorism business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KUCINICH: You know, I think -- if I could just interject. Going back to what John McCain objected to when he talked about her statement, whether her -- an answer that he said was disqualifying, I think that goes to your point, that if this should happen again and there is a conversation behind the scenes about torture that she personally would come forward and say, I'm not doing this again. It's her legalese answer.

[12:25:16] And you heard that from a lot of Democrats on The Hill yesterday that that answer was particularly disturbing in order to, you know, stop maybe some -- what now are seen as wrong-headed policies from going forward.

DAVIS: Well, and the reason we're having this conversation is because what you just heard Dick Cheney say is very much what Donald Trump has articulated. Articulated on the campaign trail and has articulated in the months since, that he believes torture does work. And I -- while I do think that Kamala Harris, in her line of questioning in that question of morality gave people who do not want to vote for Gina Haspel a reason to say, I can't do this in good conscience.

I also think that she helped herself during that hearing by going right up to that line, albeit in a legalistic way, and saying, we are not going back to this. I would not support going back to this. The CIA should not be doing this. And that's a pretty absolute statement. It's very different from what Dick Cheney has said.

KING: Right. She said the law doesn't allow it. I don't believe we have the experience and the training to do it, so we won't do it.

DAVIS: We won't do it.

KING: She didn't say, it's immoral, and so that's -- depending -- welcome to Washington. People will pick -- a lot of this will be whether you're --

JOHNSON: I don't think she thinks -- she essentially said, I was a career person following what the law was at the time, and I don't think she thinks what she did wasn't moral.

KING: Right, that's an excellent point there.

Up next for us, the president's personal lawyer and fixer also apparently quite the pitch man. Welcome to the swamp. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)