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Trump Leaves without Deal; Trump Confronts Tests; Trump on Warmbier Case; Jordan Brushes off Accusations. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 28, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:19] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

Day three for Michael Cohen on Capitol Hill. The long-time Trump fixer behind closed doors today after a day-long public hearing in which he called the president a chronic cheat and lawbreaker whose crimes continue in the White House.

Plus, the summit the president promised would be tremendous is instead a giant disappointment. The president fails to win big concessions from Kim Jong-un and he gives the brutal dictator a pass when asked about an American who died just after being released from a North Korean prison.

And there's more to sour the president's mood. The government says economic growth slowed in the final quarter of 2018, as the impact of the Trump tax cuts faded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm about to get on a plane and fly back to a wonderful place called Washington, D.C. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, fellas. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And we begin the hour with that long flight home and the reality check waiting for the president here in what he calls this wonderful place. The deal he wanted, he doesn't have. The investigations he wants to go away, are instead blossoming new leads. The president, this hour, heading back to the United States empty-handed. The summit he said would be tremendous, instead a major disappointment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just left Chairman Kim. We had a really -- I think a very productive time. We thought, and I thought, and Secretary Pompeo felt that it wasn't a good thing to be signing anything.

We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options. And we'll see where that goes. But it was -- it was a very interesting two days. And I think, actually, it was a very productive two days, but sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: No deal with Kim Jong-un, and now shade from his former ambassador to the United Nations. She's not happy the president gave Kim a pass for the brutal treatment of American Otto Warmbier.

And the president arrives home to some impeachment rumblings, rippling from Michael Cohen's five-hour public testimony.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing.

He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing. He said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, I wonder why he didn't just lie about that, too, like he did about everything else?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What the president calls Cohen's lies, Democrats call new reasons to investigate the president, his business and his innermost circles.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is still in Hanoi.

Kaitlan, the president thought this would be a very big week. It's been something very different.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It certainly have been very different. And, John, he wasn't expecting to make that 8,000-mile trip home empty handed, but he is tonight, and there is no third summit on the horizon right now.

Now, John, to give you a sense of just how quickly things unfolded yesterday, the White House had already sent out the lunch menu for President Trump and Kim Jong-un detailing what they were going to be eating. That's a lunch that didn't happen and neither did that joint signing ceremony that some aides wondered why the White House had put on the schedule in the first place because, of course, things are fluid when you're negotiating with the North Korean dictator, and that's something that never came to fruition because of what the president said was a demand from Kim Jong-un that they lift all sanctions immediately.

Now, aides had warned the president beforehand that in the talks leading up to this summit here in Hanoi, John, that the North Koreans had been pretty stubborn about wanting to get those sanctions lifted. But the president was under the impression that he could come here, he could convince Kim Jong-un otherwise, make some kind of concessions with them other than that. But when they got in the room, Kim Jong-un made sure that he still wanted to get those sanctions lifted, and that's why ultimately the president is walking away from this. As he said, he feels that's a better deal for him.

Now, some aides are actually privately sighing some relieved right now because they thought that there was a concern that the president could get in the room with Kim Jong-un and potentially make some major concessions that they were worried about. So they actually feel pretty good, John, about where things have ended. But whether or not the president feels that way is another question.

KING: It's another big question.

Kaitlan Collins live in Hanoi. Appreciate the reporting throughout the summit.

With me here in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson, Michael Shear with "The New York Times," Carl Hulse also with "The Times," and Seung Min Kim of "The Washington Post."

The president wanted pageantry. He wanted a deal. He's coming home and it's an interesting moment in the sense that he doesn't have a big deliverable to say, I told you so, the power of my personality would get North Korea to do something it has been unwilling to do for a generation. Failed there. Then he comes home to a climate here where Democrats are showing their muscle with investigations. And if Michael Cohen is to be believed, the Southern District of New York is digging deeper and deeper into the president's family and company.

[12:05:10] MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I mean, look, there's two things that this is -- that this sort of is striking about. One is that the president has invested, since the beginning of his presidency, when it comes to foreign leaders, he's invested everything in personal relationships as opposed to the interest of countries that usually dictate the kinds of policies that a president pursues, sort of with allies he did things that broke with the usual kinds of interests that connect the United States to its allies because he didn't have good relationships with their leaders, and he invested everything in the relationships with these sort of dictators around the world.

And this is what -- what you find is at the end of the day, the relationship isn't everything. That there really are interests that are competing in North Korea and in the United States, and that undermines it. And, you know, then when he comes back to the United States, you know, you realize that he -- that he can't just will -- there are certain things that you just can't will reality to be what you want it to be.

And, in both of these cases, whether it's trying to sort of -- through the force of your, you know, personality and charisma decide that the relationship between the United States and North Korea is going to be different than it's been for decades, or whether it's coming back to Washington and realizing that the situations about these investigations is actually going on and you just can't stop it. KING: And the relationship did not get him a deal with Kim, number

one. But there's a relationship. Does the value -- the president putting the value in the relationship, does it warp his thinking sometimes in the sense that this is the president talking about, is Kim Jong-un responsible for what happened to Otto Warmbier? Young American imprisoned in North Korea, held for a long time, released only when the North Koreans realized his health was failing precipitously, dies shortly thereafter. Kim Jong-un is a dictator. He runs the show, meaning he runs everything in North Korea. The president says this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't believe that he would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen.

He felt very badly. But he knew the case very well, but he knew it later.

He tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I will take him at his word. That's shocking, an American president, not in North Korea, but overseas, essentially saying, I accept the words of the dictator. How shocking is it? This is Nikki Haley, loyal U.N. ambassador for President Donald J. Trump, who left the administration not that long ago, tweeting last hour, Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime. Our hearts are with the Warmbier family for their strength and courage. We will never forget Otto.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes.

KING: That's a rare -- that's a rare slap back.

HENDERSON: Yes. And she's echoing something that Donald Trump himself said at the State of the Union. I don't think it was last year. Maybe it was the year before. The Warmbier family was there. He basically said, our thoughts and prayers are with you, and talked about the North Korean dictatorship sending Otto Warmbier to these -- to a prison. And we know what North Korean prisons are like.

Donald Trump basically thinks that Kim Jong-un is like him in the sense that Kim Jong-un will respond to flattery. So there he is, basically, saying all sorts of nice things about this North Korean dictator and thinking that he's going to change his mind, thinking that he's going to relinquish something that his country has worked decades to achieve, these nuclear weapons, which obviously keep the regime in place, keep him on the world stage. And if you're Donald Trump, you think that somehow, you know, these love letters that they sent back and forth will change the calculus, but obviously he's learning that's not the case. SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": And it's a

pattern that you've seen from this president several times now. I mean not just with the North Korean dictator, but also with Putin himself, the Russian president, Mohammed bin Salman, in these -- in these similar circumstances. And I was looking back at what the president had said about Otto Warmbier.

I mean, back in 2017, he also called this the responsibility of a brutal regime. And I think that why he's doing this is unclear. I was talking with Senator Lindsey Graham this morning about this and why he might just take him -- take Kim Jong-un at his word. Graham thinks it might be kind of a negotiating tactic to kind of leave him space for future talks. But, regardless, this is something that Republicans will have to address when we speak to him later today.

KING: It's a slap in the face to an American family who lost their son.

KIM: Yes.

KING: That's what it is from the president of the United States.

Let's talk about the climate. He's come back home. The president says he watched some, as much as he could, of the Michael Cohen testimony. I suspect on that flight home he's going to get caught up, not only on the testimony, but on the media coverage of it. Media coverage which says the Democrats are going to call more witnesses and investigate more things. If Michael Cohen is to be believed, the Southern District of New York not only is investigating things we know about, like the Trump Organization, the Trump inauguration, but something else Michael Cohen said he was not at liberty to discuss.

Let's listen to a little bit of the questioning here from Democrats. A couple of the key Democrats here who are giving -- you, listen here, you see, number one, the president's in some legal peril. Number two, the Democrats are going to go from the Cohen hearing into seeking additional witnesses and testimony.

[12:10:06] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D), ILLINOIS: Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?

MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: Yes. And, again, those are part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?

COHEN: Yes.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: And where would the committee find more information on this? Do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them? COHEN: Yes. And you'd find it at the Trump Org.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Where do we go from here? In part the Republican praise of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez tells you everything you need to know. Some impressive questioning there, essentially trying to find, where else should we look here? What onion -- what -- how should we peal this onion back?

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": The president, I think, called that a fake hearing. That was a very real hearing.

KING: Yes.

HULSE: I mean that is as real as it gets on Capitol Hill. That was a big moment.

And I think what you're going to see the Democrats now, and I think Nancy Pelosi is already this morning backing away from impeachment, they're going to investigate. They are going to pull these threads on all this. And it's going to go on for a long time.

I still think that the Republicans haven't quite come to grips with the fact that they're in the minority in the House. They were not prepared for that hearing yesterday in any way. And there was a lot that came out. And I think the president is over there and watching this. I think they seemed to be caught off guard by how aggressive Michael Cohen was.

I actually kind of want to give the president props in some way for not making a deal over there, because I think we all anticipated that he was so eager to do something to take attention away from that that -- and I actually was kind of surprised that they backed away.

KING: We'll continue the conversation as we go through the hour.

Up next, did Michael Cohen's testimony put the country on the road to impeachment? It depends who you ask.

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[12:16:00] KING: Michael Cohen back on Capitol Hill today for day three of testimony. The House Intelligence Committee getting its chance to grill the president's former lawyer and fixer behind closed doors. Cohen's public testimony yesterday, if accurate, suggests the feds in New York are very, very busy and that the president faces long-term legal peril. The immediate political fallout here in Washington includes impeachment rumblings. Here's Congressman Carolyn Maloney of New York.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D), NEW YORK: We'll follow the facts where they take us. I think it possibly could lead to impeachment. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, slow down. She says such talk is premature until Congress can dig deeper and until the special counsel completes his work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Would that be an impeachable offense?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: Well, I'm not going into that. I'm not going into that. The -- we have two investigations, a Mueller report that we're all anxiously awaiting, and as was indicated, the one thing you -- I did see widely reported was that the witness said that other issues that he was aware of were under consideration by the Southern District of New York. So let's see what that is.

But, again, impeachment is a divisive issue in our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Not just the words but the body language there. The body language from the speaker saying, just, everybody calm down. That -- the question is, can she convince -- it's a modest number of Democrats so far publically talking about this, but it is something that motivates and animates the Democratic base. Can she keep them in line?

HENDERSON: Yes, I mean that's -- that's the big question because you saw in that hearing the face of this new Congress, and they are very raucous, very, you know, in your face, and a lot of those -- at least a few of them, have talked about impeachment. So we'll see if she's able to tamp down on that.

It does seem like sort of the average Democrats -- I mean if you sort of flash back a year ago, average Democrats, you know, talked about impeachment. This was a dream of the president not ending his -- not serving out his first full term. It feels like those people, sort of average Democrats, have moved on and sort of realize it's sort of a fantasy. But we'll see what Nancy Pelosi's able to do with these -- this new energy in Congress.

HULSE: I think that she has been very clear, and so has Jerry Nadler been very clear --

HENDERSON: Yes.

HULSE: And he's the Judiciary Committee Chairman. And he says, unless we can do something on a bipartisan basis, we're not going to do it. That hearing yesterday was not a bipartisan inquiry.

SHEAR: No.

HULSE: And I think that they -- there's a lot of political benefit to doing these investigations and actually letting the people say we should impeach but without facing the political consequences of impeachment. I think you're going to see this play out in these investigations. I'm writing about this for the paper tomorrow to get a plug in.

SHEAR: I will -- I will tell you, I talked yesterday to a former chairman of the Oversight Committee, Tom Davis, who was a Republican who chaired that committee for a while, who made the point that sometimes these things get away with you -- get away from you and --

KING: Let me read that quote. I have it right here in you -- in your article. You -- we'll read you in the paper tomorrow. We read him -- we read him in the paper today.

Tom Davis, he's a Republican, but here's what he says, the more you do this, it just fires up the base who thinks every day he stays in office it endangers the republic. It's that old thing about be careful what you ask for.

Meaning, if the Democrats keep having these hearings, and they say -- and they have every right to say, Michael Cohen gave them a lot of material to at least pursue. You can decide whether you believe it or not, but he gave them a lot of leads. And so they say they're going to spend several committees. This will take weeks and months. It's their job, they say. But to Tom Davis' point, then the base starts saying, well, what are you going to do with all this?

SHEAR: Right. I mean, you know, there's a -- there's a pressure that builds up, and it's possible, as Carl says, that -- that they can just string that along and get it closer and closer and closer to the election. That's probably better for them than actually pulling the trigger in the end. But -- but you don't always control things that well in politics.

KIM: And you can't discount this as a motivator for the Republican base as well who can look at the Democrats and say they're overreaching against the president with no actual clear evidence since impeachment is kind of inherently a political process. And throughout the Democratic majority so far, especially as they've been clamoring to begin investigations against the president, that's what congressional Republicans have been banking on, that they will overreach and that will, you know, bite back at them politically.

[12:20:14] KING: To that point you heard this from some of the president's allies at CPAC today, and you hear it from Rush Limbaugh, to motive this, saying, look, you've got to stay with the president because the Democrats are trying to impeach him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSH LIMBAUGH, HOST, "THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW": This is such a comedown for the House of Representatives, as led by the Democratic Party. It is pure desperation. And the fact that they are continuing on this objective of impeaching Trump is proof positive to me they expect him to win in 2020 if they don't do something about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The part there about this pure desperation, there was a lot. Michael Cohen said a lot. And even some -- even the smart Democrats say we're not sure if we can believer you, but we're going to follow up on this.

But to that end, if you watched yesterday, what the Republicans did repeatedly is attack Michael Cohen, a convicted felon, a liar, a cheat. He could not be believed. What they did not do was say, the president couldn't have done any of this. The president wouldn't have done any of this.

Jim Jordan, one of those attacking Michael Cohen, faced tough scrutiny on Fox News last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS HOST: What about the substance? I mean the president writing a check to him while president for these payments, these 11 payments, that he says were to pay off Stormy Daniels and the other woman.

REP. JIM JORDAN (R), RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: But he was the personal lawyer for the president and the Trump Organization. I don't think that's unusual. My guess is, there's all kinds of companies, all kinds of individuals who have a similar type of relationship. That's what was brought out today. And, again, where was the new news? There wasn't any new news here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There was new news here. There was new news here. If the president knew when he cut that check, as president, to Michael Cohen, it was part of a scam to go end around campaign finance laws, sorry, Congressman Jordan, that's news. But the fact that they do not want to answer to the specifics, what does that tell you?

HULSE: Yes. I think that that's -- they didn't seem prepared. I -- this is the president and his lawyer --

KING: They didn't seem prepared or they know they can't go there?

HULSE: I don't even know -- but they --

KING: Because you know that -- you know this on Capitol Hill. There are a few people like Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows who will defend the president at all count. Most other Republicans, they're afraid of his 85, 90 percent in their district --

HULSE: But they -- they knew (INAUDIBLE) --

KING: But they don't trust or believe him either. But they -- privately they don't trust or believe him either.

SHEAR: Yes.

HULSE: Right.

But they knew what was coming. And it's -- to sit there, you have to mount some sort of defense to the actual act, right, and they didn't do that. And -- HENDERSON: But neither is the president, really. I mean he's essentially saying that Michael Cohen is a lying liar who lies, right? And that's essentially what the Republicans said over and over again.

HULSE: Except for about collusion.

KIM: On the collusion, yes.

HULSE: He did tell the truth there.

HENDERSON: Right. Yes. Yes.

HULSE: So --

KING: Right, believe him -- believe him here. Don't believe him anywhere else. That's -- the problem with this story is you have a liar testifying about being told to lie by a liar. That's what -- yes.

Up next, the president goes out of his way to defend Kim Jong-un.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: It's strange. And, I don't know, there's something -- something wrong with Putin, Kim Jong-un, in my view, thugs, that the president chooses to believe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:52] KING: President Trump says the lack of a deal does not mean this Hanoi summit is a total failure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We spent pretty much all day with Kim Jong-un, who is -- he's quite a guy and quite a character. And I think our relationship is very strong.

I think we'll end up being very good friends with Chairman Kim and with North Korea.

We like each other. A good relationship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Big questions going forward include whether the White House can keep strong international sanctions in place and whether Kim will keep this promise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He has a certain vision, and it's not exactly our vision, but it's a lot closer than it was a year ago. He's not going to do testing of rockets and nuclear. Not going to do

testing. So, you know, I trust him and I take him at his word. I hope that's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Rear Admiral John Kirby and David Sanger with "The New York Times" join the conversation. They are at the summit site in Hanoi, Vietnam.

David, let me start with you. What's your biggest takeaway here? The president leaves empty-handed. Most analyst would say that's the right thing to do given that Kim was not ready to give more at the table, but now what?

DAVID SANGER, NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, two big takeaways. The first is, the president ran into the risk of doing very personal leader-to-leader kind of negotiations here. Now, the usual way, John, would be, you have your aides put everything together, the leaders step in at the end just to either confirm it or bridge the last divides. But the president was convinced, in this case, that Kim Jong-un was the only one who could really make a decision in North Korea, so he had to go negotiate the whole thing with him. And that's great if it works, but if it doesn't work, if you have a spectacular kind of collapse, as they did today, there's no place to go. And I know they say they want to send their aides back to go do this again, but nobody's going to want to negotiate something that the president of the United States and the chairman of the North Korean communist party do not want to go ahead with. So that's the first takeaway.

The second is that after saying that he would solve this problem, President Trump has just discovered why three -

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