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Trump Wants Border Security; Trump Meets with Republicans; Trump's A.G. Pick Controversy; House Intel Releases Stone's Transcript. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 20, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:23] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

Breaking news on several fronts.

Choosing time. The president is meeting with House Republicans right now and consider withdrawing his support for a plan to avoid a partial government shutdown. He had promised to sign it, but faces a revolt now from conservatives who are warning the president, he better not cave at what is likely his last chance to get funding for his promised border wall.

Plus, the acting attorney general gets a green light to oversee the Mueller probe. This as we learn the president's choice to take the AG job full time wrote a memo questioning the special counsel's right to pursue obstruction of justice questions.

And the wall isn't the president's only big fight with his own party. Republicans say his decision to pull U.S. troops from the fight against ISIS in Syria is dangerous. And they say that Russia thinks it is a good idea proves it is a horrible idea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): As far as ISIS is concerned, I agree more or less with the president of the U.S. We -- and I have spoken about this before, have really achieved substantial changes with regard to the militants in Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We begin with the chaos right here in Washington this hour. The president about to meet with House Republicans at the White House. His choice, keep the government open and lose his last, best chance at funding his border wall and anger conservatives, or shut the government down, partially, and fight it out over the holiday.

What we know right now, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, was to speak to reporters this morning. Instead he got a call during a private meeting of House Republicans, so he delayed a scheduled news conference. The reason, the president tweeting he was promised a wall. Then a White House official telling CNN, the president might reverse himself and not sign what's called a continuing resolution, a temporary funding plan. The president now, his press secretary says, quote, at this moment the president does not want to go further without border security. Again, that after assuring the Republican leadership in Congress he was prepared to go forward without more money for border security.

At the meeting with the president this hour, we are told Speaker Paul Ryan, the incoming majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, his deputy, Steve Scalise, and the Freedom Caucus members, including Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. As of now, there is no vote scheduled in the House. The Senate passed this plan yesterday. The question is, does that plan survive or are they back at the starting block.

Kaitlan Collins is at the White House.

Kaitlan, sources tell you the president has decided, maybe not. Maybe I won't sign this.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And he's making that pretty clear on his Twitter feed. And that is why those House Republicans scrambled and they are over here having that emerge last minute lunch with President Trump right now because they realize this deal to keep the government open is now hanging by a thread after we've seen this conservative revolt over there being no money for the border wall funding in this bill.

And now President Trump is growing increasingly sensitive to that criticism that he's backing off his signature campaign promise to build a border wall because most people in Washington realize this could be the last chance for him to get any more for that border wall now that Democrats are going to be taking over the House in January.

Now, John, right now inside the West Wing, aides are saying that they are having flashbacks to last March when the president threw a fit over signing that omnibus spending bill, something that he very clearly did not want to sign. And after he did sign it, he came out in front of cameras and said, I will never sign a bill like this again. Sources tell me that the president is fuming this morning that he's in a similar mood to what that was last March and now they will not guarantee that the president is going to sign this bill. And through that statement that Sarah Sanders, that you just read, makes pretty clear that they do not know what's going to happen.

And, John, if anyone tells you that they do know what's going to happen, they're wrong.

KING: That's a good way to put it.

Kaitlan Collins, as the meeting unfolds in the hour ahead, please come back as we learn more information.

Again, the president about to sit down with key House Republicans to try to sort out, do they try to change the spending bill? Do they add more money? Then the Senate would have to come back.

Tracking this on that end of the Capitol, where there's a lot of confusion, CNN's Manu Raju, live on Capitol Hill.

So, Manu, do we -- any indication of what will happen in this meeting and then what happens on The Hill?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Republican leaders are going to go to the White House to lay out a number of options that they could take this afternoon, starting this afternoon, including adding to this bill to keep the government open, funding for the president's border wall, potently up to $5 billion, as well as disaster relief money that could pull some other -- some voter -- support.

Now, these options were discussed, I'm told by a source, that -- in a meeting with Paul Ryan and top Republican leaders just moments ago. They're debating doing this in some part, John, to show that it does not have the votes to pass both chambers of Congress. It's possible the $5 billion could pass barely out of the House, but has no chance in the Senate.

[12:05:11] And at that point, then what? The question is, do they go back to plan a, which was to pass a bill to keep the government open up until February 8th and punt that wall fight until then.

Now, the -- all these things are going to be discussed just -- right now in this closed door meeting with the president. So how the president reacts and whether or not he digs in and says he will not sign a clean bill could affect how the Republicans decide to go forward. But no doubt the president's decision this morning, throwing the Capitol into a tailspin. Speaker Paul Ryan had told members at the beginning of the meeting -- a meeting this morning, it appeared that the president was going to sign this bill, the funding bill to keep the government open. But then he took a phone call from the president. He scrapped a meeting -- a press conference afterwards and went into this meeting with Republican leaders. And now they're headed to the White House. So a lot of uncertainty as we head into that deadline tomorrow to avoid a shutdown, John.

KING: Uncertainty is an understatement.

Manu, keep in touch again throughout the how as you get more up on The Hill.

With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, Eliana Johnson with "Politico," Michael Shear of "The New York Times," Paul Kane with "The Washington Post," and Tarini Parti with "BuzzFeed News."

We have seen this movie before. We have a deadline tomorrow. They all thought they had a deal. And the president pulls back after blowback from his conservative base saying, a, how dare you, you promised you wouldn't cave, he's promised that several times before, but you keep promising you're not going to cave, that eventually you're going to draw the line and so is the president now going to say, go back to the drawing board, I want my border wall funding, which he won't get, I don't think, the math isn't there, or will he just have a rage session and then blink? ELIANA JOHNSON, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "POLITICO": This is deja vu all over again, but I would argue that it's worse because the president's supporters are not just angry about a potential cave on the border wall, they're upset about his support for criminal justice reform, which they see as a betrayal, and his hawkish supporters are enraged about his surprise announcement that troops are pulling out of Syria. So they're --

KING: And some Second Amendment supporters are mad about bump stocks.

JOHNSON: Yes.

KING: The president's taking it.

JOHNSON: There are --

KING: There's a lot of incoming right now.

JOHNSON: They're upset on multiple fronts. And this has created a maelstrom for the president that really has him flailing for a solution. And many of his supporters are urging him to change course on multiple fronts. Right now I don't think we have any idea what will happen. I think many people are urging him to sign a continuing resolution where he could kick this fight into the new year and then blame congressional Democrats who House -- will take the majority in the House for blocking his border wall. Right now there aren't even 218 Republicans in the House, compounding the difficulties for him even further.

KING: And, look, after every midterm president -- every midterm election, when a president gets shellacked, they have a soul searching moment. That's -- that is not -- that is not different. Every president goes through that. What is different is how public this one is. This president sat in the Oval Office, what, eight days ago, and said, I will proudly shut down the government over border security. Then he apparently blinked and now he's -- is he going back?

PAUL KANE, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": He doesn't know which way to go. He took full ownership of a potential shutdown, which is like rule number one of government shutdowns is you never are the one who admits you're to blame. And his support on The Hill just kind of collapsed. They said, he, buddy, you're -- you lost all your leverage. And so then he said, all right, well, geez, OK, I guess we'll have to pass this.

TARINI PARTI, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "BUZZFEED NEWS": I think what we're seeing right now is the president desperate for any sort of win in this package. And we've seen him sort of phrase things differently. He's been talking about the wall, of course, but then he's also saying border security more broadly. And then now he's talking about steel slats. So if he gets any sort of money for steel slats, you know, he doesn't need, I don't think, the $5 billion at this point for the wall to call it a win. So he's sort of moving the goal post here a little bit.

KING: But this is supposed to be, and we're at the two year mark, so maybe we should just throw this away, but this is supposed to be the art of the deal president. For the last 10 days, the House and the Senate Republican leadership have been begging him, tell us what you need. Before we have a vote, please tell us your bottom line so that we don't go through exactly what we're going through right now. And the president said nothing. They passed a bill with the assumption and the words from White House officials he would sign it. And then today he says, never mind.

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, but, see, this is what has happened for the entire two years is that this president doesn't negotiate in the normal way. What influences the president is not sort of back room negotiates with congressional leaders. What influences this president is what is on Fox News. And we were told back in March, when this happened before, that one of the things that his allies had realized that they'd failed to do enough was to get people on Fox News, Republicans on Fox News, who could advocate before -- you know, for the deal that he -- that he was threatening to veto. They failed again. I mean --

KANE: He was on Fox -- "Fox and Friends" this --

SHEAR: Who was on Fox News?

KANE: This morning, Mark Meadows.

SHEAR: Mark Meadows, the people who are opposed to it. And so they -- this whole thing happened all over again. The very venue that could have, you know bolstered Trump to sign this was instead doing the opposite. And that's the only thing that matters.

[12:10:03] KING: And so he's getting it from everywhere. Two members at this meeting -- and, again, part of this is the dysfunction within the House Republican conference. It's not just the president. We saw this when John Boehner, gone. Paul Ryan, leaving. You have the Freedom -- the leadership says, Mr. President, please sign the bill. Freedom Caucus members, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows among them, are there to tell the president, Mr. President, this is your last chance. The Democrats will take the House in January. If you want a wall, get it now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R), FREEDOM CAUCUS CO-FOUNDER: You've got to be kidding me. Really? I mean February 8th, when Nancy Pelosi is speaker, do we really -- I'm supposed to believe, we're supposed to believe that we're then going to build the border security wall and keep our promise from the 2016 campaign? No way!

REP. MARK MEADOWS (R), FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: Mr. President, we're going to back you up. If you veto this bill, we'll be there. But more importantly, the American people will be there. They'll be there to support you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The last part was an open question if you look at the polling. Most people blame Trump. Some blame both sides. But the idea that is the president now -- and, you know, the -- Paul,

you wonder The Hill every day, the Freedom Caucus has been a thorn in the side of the leadership forever.

But to the Fox News echo chamber, before you jump in, there's Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows on the floor of the House there, but they've also been on television. Ann Coulter, it's not just Fox, it's out -- it's Breitbart --

SHEAR: And Rush Limbaugh.

KING: It's Rush Limbaugh.

SHEAR: Right.

KING: It's talk radio. Ann Coulter, it's now crystal clear that one of two things is true, either Trump never intend to build the wall and he was scamming voters all along, or he has no idea how to get it done and zero interest in finding out. He was the only one talking sense. Unfortunately, that's all he does, talk. He's not interested in doing anything that would require the tiniest bit of effort.

And, according to some Twitter monitors, the president stopped following Ann Coulter on Twitter yesterday when he essentially went out and said -- and, again, you can say this is just one person. She's a provocateur. She's out there to get attention. However, when you've lost the popular vote, you're getting incoming on Syria, incoming on guns, incoming on this, that and the other thing, This president cannot afford to further shrink his base. And this passionate part of his base is saying, this is your last chance.

KANE: It is his last chance. Jim Jordan's right, come February -- come January 3rd, Nancy Pelosi is going to be in charge and she'll have all the leverage. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows will really disappear as important figures other than just as friends of the president who have his ear. So, to that regard, they have to do something now, but they don't have the votes, John. And to jump off a cliff with no parachute and nobody knows if there's water at the bottom of the cliff, they could be setting themselves up into digging an even deeper hole than a president who only got 46 percent of the vote last time around.

PARTI: I think it's also interesting to see how some of these allies of the president are approaching the issue. Ann Coulter is sort of in a different category, but people like Mark Meadows and others on Fox are also -- are not being too critical of Trump. They're saying he's caving, but they're also shifting blame on Republicans, on the Washington establishment. They're also saying maybe he's getting bad advice. So they're giving him sort of some cover with the base if he needs it, while not being too critical of the president to make him angry.

KING: Right.

And the president, in his tweets today, saying, if you don't give this to me now, I won't give you infrastructure, I won't give Democrats anything in the new Congress. OK. It's a bad -- he's -- his leverage is, shall we say, in short supply at the moment. But we're going to watch this meeting. Stay with us throughout the hour. We'll watch this meeting playing out at the White House. We'll watch and see if lawmakers come out and talk after about what the president says.

As we go to break, a quick note, some innovative ways some of the president's supporters trying to give him a way around here. An Iraqi War veteran has now raised, get this, more than $4.7 million using a crowd funding site on GoFundMe. He says if everybody who voted for Trump donates $80, the GoFundMe page could reach $5 billion. Entrepreneurial spirit. I don't know if it will work, but, why not.

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[12:17:57] KING: Welcome back.

New information today about the Russia special counsel's current and potential future bosses. A source telling CNN, the president's acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, now has a green light to oversee the Russia investigation. Whether department's ethics officers would see it that way was a question because before he joined the Trump administration, Whitaker was harshly critical of Robert Mueller's broad mandate and said the special counsel could be hamstrung by choking off funding. Since becoming AG, it's important to note, however, there's no evidence, no public evidence, he's done anything to slow Mueller down. At a press conference today, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, suggested his role regarding the probe could soon change, but he also added, everything about the investigation so far, he says, has been closely watched and above board.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Can you tell us what sense Mr. Whitaker has come here, what your role has been in overseeing the Mueller investigation?

ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: We'll have more for you on that later today. In terms of my role, as we've described previously, we've continued to manage the investigation, as we have in the past. And it's being handled appropriately. Whether its Bob Mueller or Rod Rosenstein or Matt Whitaker or Bill Barr, that investigation's going to be handled appropriately by the Department of Justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's Rosenstein's view.

Also today, new evidence suggesting William Barr, the man President Trump want to permanently head the Justice Department, also had big questions about Mueller's scope and powers. Barr sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department and in it he says Mueller should not be permitted to demand to interrogate the president on obstruction questions.

CNN's Evan Perez and our legal analyst Michael Zeldin join the conversation.

Michael, let me start with you in the sense of unsolicited memo to the Justice Department from Bill Barr that, on the one hand, says, I've got some serious questions about what Mueller can and cannot do. And then, on the other hand, does go on to say, but, if the president actually suborns perjury, damages evidence. So is it, some Democrats are saying, ah-hah, Chuck Schumer today saying for example disqualifies him, is it that cut and dry or is it a little bit of either or?

MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think it's not disqualifying, actually. I think he wrote this memo June 8th this year, well before he was, you know, even contemplated as an attorney general candidate. He is saying now, this is my legal position on a statue the Supreme Court has never interpreted, where there is great legal debate among constitutional scholars about whether or not you can obstruct justice by doing something you have the constitutional right to do. So I think he's writing a friend of the court sort of brief to them saying, here's my thinking having been one of you guys before. So I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I don't know that he's right, but I don't think there's anything disqualifying of it.

[12:20:33] KING: And I want to come back to Matthew Whitaker getting the green light right now. We weren't sure he was going to ask ethics officers.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

KING: He had not said anything publically to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong, about how he's going about this, his role in the Mueller investigation, which, you know, which , we're all wondering, so then what is happening? He did ask ethics officers and Laura Jarrett reporting earlier, they gave him the green light. What does that mean?

PEREZ: Well, it means that Matthew Whitaker, you know, he already had no intention to recuse himself and it appears that he's received clearance from the ethics officers at the Justice Department to not recuse himself.

But before we say that, I think we should, a, see the memo. We should see whatever memo's been provided to Matthew Whitaker. I think member of Congress have been asking and pressuring him to explain exactly what he plans to do. And so we're going to see, I think, a letter that will go to members of Congress explaining exactly what happened. And then we'll see exactly what the memo that he was provided says. I mean I think a lot of us, you know, have been wondering exactly how this would go because it's -- the conflict that he has is sort of an appearance issue whereby he had opinions before -- before he became read in on what's going on, right? He had these -- he was a pundit on television.

The same thing, frankly, as Bill Barr has. You know, he had no information about the investigation when he made these -- when he wrote this memo and had these opinions. So I think for both of them, once they both get to see what Mueller has, I think perhaps their view will change and then you can say, well, what does this mean for the investigation? KING: And, politically, Democrats say when they take power they're going to call Matthew Whitaker up to the House. The president hasn't actually sent the nomination up to Capitol Hill yet. She says this -- Bill Barr is his choice. Has not actually sent the paperwork up. But so you assume then late January, February, maybe it slips, he gets a confirmation hearing. Questions, obviously. Legitimate questions for anyone to ask, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican. But anything we've seen in the last 24 hours that would suggest either Matthew Whitaker's in trouble during this acting phase, or that they can get Bill Barr -- Chuck Schumer says disqualifying, but --

JOHNSON: I think that's pretty unlikely, though. I -- certainly I -- it will come up in his confirmation hearing. I think the way he answers will matter.

With Whitaker, my view has always been, it matters more whether he takes any action to curtail Mueller. But it seem to me the controversy would -- will be, if he keeps his hands off Mueller, I don't see any huge controversy arising, and he has done that despite a lot of -- a large believe when he went in that he was put there to clip Mueller's wings. He hasn't touched the probe yet, so I don't see much controversy arising from that, particularly given that we know he's a short timer in the job.

KING: Right. I think that's an important point.

PEREZ: And Rod -- and Rod Rosenstein, by the way, is still day to day managing this investigation. So he's the one in -- still in line. I mean that hasn't changed. And so that's why, I think, a lot of people are sort of wait and see on Matt Whitaker.

KING: And to that point, the special counsel has now asked and now the House Intelligence Committee has voted to give him the transcript of Roger Stone's testimony about his contacts -- or alleged contacts or conversations with friends about WikiLeaks. What did you know? Who gave you a head's up? Who did you talk to in the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks getting access to e-mails hacked by Russia from the Democrats and the like. The fact that the special counsel is getting this transcript from the House committee, at a time we know he's been investigating Stone and his associates for months tells you what?

ZELDIN: Either that they are preparing an indictment and that they want this official transcript to make sure that what they're going to charge him with is, in fact, what is in that transcript, or they've resolved that there is nothing there and that they want this as confirmation of that final piece of conclusory evidence. So it really could be either of these things and we just don't know.

PEREZ: There's a third possibility, and that is Mueller is working on his report and perhaps doesn't intend to actually bring charges against Roger Stone, but instead will lay out what he's found in his report. I mean that's still a possibility here.

KING: But they -- Stone says he has not been asked by Mueller to come in and testify.

PEREZ: Right. Which is usually a bad sign.

KING: But a -- but a number -- it's usually a bad sign, you're right. But a number of his associates have been before the grand jury. One of them is actually challenging Mueller's authority in courts. That all the grand jury work has gone into this, could still be a piece of the report?

PEREZ: It could. I mean there is precedent that for the Justice Department, for you to use a grand jury to gather facts for -- for a public corruption investigation, for instance. It's done. It's not the usual way you use grand juries, but it has been done in the past and there is precedent for it.

[12:25:08] So, again, we don't know what Mueller exactly is doing. It may well be that he will look at Roger Stone and says, you know what, he's not worth the trouble. Certainly they were trying to get Jerome Corsi, one of Stone's associates, to plead guilty. And it looks like that blew up. So they may be at the point where they're like, you know, these guys are not worth it. Let's put this in the report and we'll have a public hearing of this.

ZELDIN: And to that exact point, the complicating factor with Stone and WikiLeaks is, what is WikiLeaks? Is it a First Amendment protected news organization --

PEREZ: Right.

ZELDIN: Or is it a non-state hostile intelligence service. Mueller has to figure out, does he want to bring a case where he could lose on First Amendment grounds?

PEREZ: Right.

KING: Interesting point. Again, another crumb from the special counsel. Sometimes it's hard to put them all together, but we'll keep following them.

PEREZ: Yes.

KING: Up next for us here, members of the president's own party say he's making America less safe by choosing to pull U.S. troops from Syria.

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