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Trump Reportedly Angry about War Planning in His Administration; U.K. Admits General Was Wrong to Dismiss Iran Threats; Sen. Angus King (I-ME) is Interviewed about Tensions with Iran. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 16, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: -- and a lot of ice, which is why it's a double black diamond.

[07:00:03] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I do like that, but I also like seeing it when they get it through the windmill's arms. It's very hard to get the ball through there.

BERMAN: Yes. Oh, boy.

CAMEROTA: Thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you, "CNN TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, new details on what we know of the intelligence leading to warnings about Iran. NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: President Trump pursuing a backdoor channel to negotiate with Iranian officials.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They do anything, they will suffer greatly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a black box. They won't even acknowledge exactly what they're doing. They clearly have no strategy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The intelligence that we've seen does show a heightened threat throughout the region.

MANU RAJU, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The White House said no, we would not turn over a wide range of documents.

RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: There's nothing lawless about the administration's response.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're saying Congress has no right to investigate abuses of power. And that's just wrong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. And we do begin with new details on the intelligence that is leading the Trump administration to warn of an imminent threat from Iran.

CNN first reported last week that Iranian missiles were being moved onto boats in the Persian Gulf amid skepticism from allies. "The New York Times" reports that U.S. intelligence officials have declassified one image to help make their case.

Now in just hours, top congressional leaders will get their first classified briefing on this.

BERMAN: It's another really interesting side to this, this morning. "The Washington Post" reports that President Trump is angry about what he says is war-like planning that's getting ahead of his own thinking on Iran. The president is denying any in-fighting as national security advisor John Bolton appears to be behind this big push against Iran.

Joining us now is Josh Dawsey, White House reporter for "The Washington Post," who was one on the team of this story this morning.

Josh, I want to read to you from your very own article, as I like to do. "President Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers who he thinks could rush the U.S. into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran's leaders."

So there are two giant headlines there to me. No. 1, frustrated with his own people on Iran.

Let's start there. Who was he frustrated with and for doing what exactly?

JOSH DAWSEY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (via phone): Well, most of the frustration is with John Bolton, his national security adviser who obviously takes a hawkish position on Iran. That's kind of the growing conundrum of this presidency, John.

It's John Bolton, who has been pretty aggressive, who has wanted to be an interventionist at time, who has said, yes, that there has to be total change in Iran. And the president, who -- who his campaign promised was getting out of the costly foreign wars that he thought were deleterious to the United States.

And what we've seen time and time again with Venezuela, with Iran. It's during the Bolton regime that the National Security Council has put forth options that are more aggressive than the president's liking. As they briefed the president, several times in the Oval Office of the Situation Room on Iran in the last few days. The president has said, you know, calm down, basically, on various occasions. That he wants to see if he can make a deal.

You have Bolton, who has deep skepticism towards the president's view that personal chemistry with dictators like just Kim Jong-un is the way to do it. And you have -- you have a situation now that's getting more interesting by the day. BERMAN: Is John Bolton in trouble?

DAWSEY: Well, that's what we were trying to figure out. Several senior officials I talked to and my colleagues talked to, said that the president has been grumbling about him, but it's something he did for months and months and months and other officials before he got rid of them. And the president is prone to complain about most everyone around him. Not everyone. But most everyone around him.

So it doesn't seem that we are at DEF-CON 5 level right now with Bolton, but it does seem to be ramping up.

BERMAN: Yes. The difference here, though, is we're dealing with lives, right? American lives and American military resources being deployed here. So the stakes seem so much higher than perhaps past internal struggles. Is that fair?

DAWSEY: Sure, that's fair. And the president, you know, I think, feeds that, as well. This president for the concerns and criticisms that people have about him, I'll say is not as bellicose as one might think.

Some of his former advisers described to me in Syria in 2017 when they were pushing to send -- to send missiles. Fifty-nine missiles, if you'll remember. The president was kind of the last person on board with it. We've seen time and time again the president tried to pull troops back from Syria, from the Middle East, from even South Korea.

You know, this is a president who does not like the idea of being in these conflicts around the world. And you have John Bolton who obviously thinks that it's needed.

BERMAN: So this -- the last part of that graph that I read you from your own reporting was this. The president wants to speak directly with Iran's leaders, for real, is my question. He wants to speak to either President Rouhani or Ayatollah Khamenei. Is he making a real overture for this to happen?

DAWSEY: He's certainly open to advice, it seems, and is asking his advisers how it could happen. You know, the president sees one of his biggest successes in office, even with the recent set-back as his personal dialogue with Kim Jong-un, who was an official president that no other president would have had, you know, this many communications with this many summits.

The president believes that he personally can fix almost anything. He thinks that his deal-making prowess, you know, others don't see it the same way, obviously. But he thinks that his deal-making prowess is unmatched. And if he could just get on the phone with people, he can convince them of the merits of his argument. So absolutely he wants to talk to him.

BERMAN: Josh Dawsey, thank you so much for your reporting this morning. We should know we had a report from Iran earlier, where Iran's leaders are making it clear they have no interest in talking to President Trump just now. Josh, thank you very much. DAWSEY: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK. Let's bring in Maggie Haberman, "New York Times" White House correspondent and CNN political analyst. Great to have you here, Maggie.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Is it your understanding that national security adviser John Bolton is somehow too hawkish for the president's tastes and may be on thin ice?

HABERMAN: I mean, this has always been an issue and a point of tension between John Bolton and the president. Remember, both of them are people who ran for president. They ran for president on pretty different platforms. So this was never going to be a surprise.

John Bolton was not part of the first round of, you know, presidential draft picks who President Trump appointed for his cabinet or for his top advisers. They've always not been allied on this point. President Trump is very aware of what got him elected, and what got him elected in the Republican primary was his non-hawkish stance, the sort of bring 'em home approach to American conflicts overseas.

I would not read too much into it. And I think that Josh was warning you on that. That the president grumbles about a lot of people.

BERMAN: Sure.

HABERMAN: And he would not be the first U.S. president who was frustrated with intelligence that he was getting from officials when he is seeing things not play out well.

But remember, it's not like this is happening in isolation. Iran is happening after Venezuela, where John Bolton had suggested that Maduro was going to be, you know, able to be toppled. That obviously did not happen. Now you have the president, I think, asking more questions of his advisers than perhaps he had been before, because he is sensing that he is not being shown a full picture.

BERMAN: Yes. I guess the difference here seems to me to be, again, that there are U.S. aircraft carriers going through the Suez Canal to the Gulf and the very real possibility of accidents.

So if the president is really unhappy with the policy being driven by his national security adviser and, to a lesser extent, the secretary of state, why does he let it happen?

HABERMAN: The president is making -- I mean, I think that's the important point. Right? Is we have seen repeatedly over the last two and a half years that sort of aspects of behavior from advisers gets ahead of what the president either wants or is aware of, you know, or is completely clued into.

And then the president puts out a warning himself that this is actually not where I am. And I think you're seeing that now. I think that he felt the need to make it clear publicly that this is not something that he is completely embracing.

CAMEROTA: The president also has spent the better part of two years, I guess, casting aspersions on some in the intel community and, certainly, raising doubts about whether or not they can be trusted. And so now here we are in a moment where we're going to have to rely on the intelligence. We've already obviously seen this horror film before with Iraq. And so where is the president and his message on that?

HABERMAN: I think what he would say, just specific to your point, is the intelligence was not good last time when -- when the U.S. was going to war. Iraq would be the parallel.

So I mean, he always held that up during the campaign as and George Bush was wrong to listen to that. He was led into a war.

It's important to note that there is not harmony between what folks like Bolton and Pompeo are saying and what U.S. allies are saying on what the intelligence is. So I think that when you are looking at what the -- I don't know that this would be an example of the president doubting what is solid and evidentiary right in front of his eyes. I think that there's a complicated portrait being painted.

And I think that, when that happens, he tends to default to his own gut. I think that becomes more problematic, especially with tensions as hot as they are right now.

BERMAN: Where does this fit, do you think, into where the president wants to be headed as we head out of the Mueller report and head into the summer. Is this an area of focus for him or would he rather be talking about other things?

HABERMAN: It's interesting. Because you actually generally see presidents, certainly in a second term and often in the second half of a first term turn more to foreign policy. I think that he is doing that by default. I don't think that is a choice.

I think that he would rather be focused on things that are easier, which is domestic politics and, specifically, the campaign that is emerging on the other side to replace him or to challenge him. Possibly replace him.

But he's also not completely engaged in the campaign yet. I mean, for all of the talk about, yes, he's coming up with nicknames and he's doing this and he's doing that, he's not really that engaged in the travel. He's doing pretty minimal. A lot of aides have told me that he's not seeking to get outside the White House that much.

You know, there's going to be an exception where he is traveling to New York later today. And it's going to be the rare moment we have seen him sleep in his own bed in Trump Tower.

But in general, I think there is something of I wouldn't say malaise, but there is sort of a pre-summer haze setting in. I don't know he knows quite yet what he wants the next year and a half to be about. And I think that is always the question for him. What would you do with the rest of you term? What would you do with

another term. And these are going to be points he's going to have to answer.

CAMEROTA: Well, Jared Kushner is now, I guess, spearheading the new immigration plan.

HABERMAN: Or something.

CAMEROTA: Or something. And the president has long said that he wants to be merit-based. That's his vision for. I mean, this is legal immigration we're talking about. So he wants it to be merit- based. And it sounds like that's one of the headlines of this. So will we see that getting any traction?

HABERMAN: This plan, you know, respectfully is done on arrival. I mean, the Republican senators have made clear this is not their plan. Lindsey Graham, who is about as much of a cheerleader of this administration in these days, as you can get made very clear that that plan, the White House plan, the Kushner plan is not meant to become law. That a plan that Graham is working on, is much likelier to become law.

You raised a key point, which is that it focuses on -- on changes to legal immigration. What it doesn't do is reduce the numbers, which immigration restrictionists have been focused on.

Supporters of a different immigration platform have wanted it to address DACA and unresolved issues over the last couple of years. It doesn't do that either.

So this is basically a plan that is designed to satisfy no one. And I'll be curious when he talks about it today, aides had been talking about trying to do a big announcement with a lot of people getting in, business leaders and so forth. That fell apart.

So you know the thing where the president, when he reads a speech sometimes, it's as if he's reading it for the first time and he's kind of talking back to the speech? I will be curious to see how he handles this particular plan.

BERMAN: Stay tuned. Watch him this afternoon as he delivers that speech --

HABERMAN: Exactly.

BERMAN: -- in the Rose Garden. I was curious. You said the president is not directly engaged in the campaign or heavily involved in the campaign. Because I read a really good article in "The New York Times" by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman.

CAMEROTA: Do you work with them?

HABERMAN: Who?

BERMAN: Exactly. About how the president is crafting his message against Joe Biden, in defiance of what some advisors are suggesting.

HABERMAN: But that is actually different than him getting ready to go on the trail and be sort of disciplined and sell a message. That's him watching TV coverage and looking to respond to what he is seeing.

He does believe -- he believes that he basically shaped the narrative around Hillary Clinton in 2016. And to some extent that is true during the general election.

It's not true that he provided her with the paid speeches she took on her own or the email server controversy that she created on her own or the -- you know, the 30 decades [SIC] -- 30 years, three decades in the public eye that added to her numbers being as low as they were.

And so I think that he believes he can do to Joe Biden what he thinks he did to Hillary Clinton. And I think that's a bit of a misread of 2016.

That said, he is right that there is a concern about how to handle Joe Biden. And his own aides share that. They just don't think that, necessarily, Trump should be the weapon deployed against him.

CAMEROTA: But he did shape the narrative. I mean, I would give him credit for shaping the narrative around the primary, around his fellow Republicans.

HABERMAN: No question. But his fellow Republicans could never get the same level of oxygen that he got, except for Jeb Bush, for whom there was not an actual constituency, really, outside of the donor community in the primary. So it's just a very different set-up.

BERMAN: Will you be covering the de Blasio campaign launch?

HABERMAN: I've been tweeting very aggressively all morning. Thank you for asking. I appreciate that.

CAMEROTA: Aggressive tweeting. Where have we heard that before?

BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, great to have you on with us. Thanks so much.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. Now to a CNN exclusive on the escalating tensions with Iran. CNN has learned that the U.K. commander who dismissed U.S. intelligence on Iran got it wrong. Now the Brits are looking for a way to correct that record.

Michelle Kosinski is live at the State Department with the exclusive details here. Michelle, what have you learned?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, this caused a stir this week. It seemed to be the top British commander who's part of the coalition against ISIS disagreeing with U.S. intelligence. Listen to what he said this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. CHRIS GHIKA, U.K. MAJOR GENERAL: There's been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: OK. So the question there is if the Brits don't believe it, they're the U.S.'s closest ally. And they were fully briefed by the Americans. Why is that?

Now, though, we're learning from multiple sources and confirmed by a U.S. official that this was a mistake. Not a mistake that he said it, but a mistake in the information. This may have been a problem in how information was conveyed to him.

[07:15:08] So multiple sources are saying the Brits realized this, that the information was inaccurate. That they don't, in fact, disagree with U.S. intelligence. That the U.K. believes there is an increased threat.

And yesterday we did see some defense of this commander from the U.K. defense ministry. It was this very oddly-worded defense, not at all defending what he said but just stating his position. And this is why.

So now we're told behind the scenes there was work being done to craft some other response to this. And this was just simply a mistake.

Also, we are hearing from other sources that multiple governments now believe the attacks against the ships in the Gulf off of the UAE were a sophisticated operation. That these involved mines, it's believed. Similar to limpet mines that were used during World War II. These are small mines that are attached to the hulls of ships, possibly magnetically. And it is believed that they were placed either by people in small boats that could evade detection or by divers.

Back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK. That's one thing that lawmakers would really like to get answers to. Michelle, thank you very much.

So they are demanding answers today from the Trump administration. What exactly is the threat from Iran? So we'll hear from a senator on the Intelligence Committee, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:32] CAMEROTA: In just hours, the Trump administration will brief top lawmakers in a classified setting on the intelligence that they say shows missiles being moved onto boats in the Persian Gulf.

Joining us now to help us understand all of this is Independent Senator Angus King who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee.

Good morning, Senator. SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: I believe you are the first lawmaker that we have spoken to, and we have spoken to many, who actually has reviewed some of the intelligence this week. Did you see some of the intelligence that this tension is based on?

KING: Yes. Yes, I had an opportunity to review not a briefing but review the paper version on Tuesday afternoon. So I have had a chance to -- I don't think I've seen everything if there is no reporting on images. I have had a look, yes.

CAMEROTA: Can you characterize it for us or at least tell us if it explains how we have gotten to the point of heightened tension with Iran.

KING: Well, you asked two questions there. And they're two important questions, and they're very different.

The first is, can I characterize it? I can -- can't reveal what I have seen in a classified setting. I can report that you have seen a lot of public reporting about heightened Iranian activity in the region, particularly Iraq. That's accurate. That's what the administration is saying publicly.

The question, though, is what does it mean? And there are two issues that are really worrying me. One is who's provoking whom? In other words, we know that Iran is taking actions. We're taking actions. We declared their IRGC as a terrorist organization. That has ramifications for them.

We've ratcheted up the sanctions substantially. We've moved major military assets to the Middle East. Are they reacting because they are concerned about what we're doing, or are we reacting because we're concerned what they're doing.

And that raises my second concern, which is miscalculation. "The Guns of August," one of the great books ever written about the origin of World War II. Nobody really knew how it started. And it started small and it escalated. And that's what worries me.

Because you've got, for example, the Shia militia in Iraq, which are not fully under control of the Iraqi government, or at all. They're partially affiliated with Iran. But are they really under control?

Let's say a group of people from the Shia militia attack Americans. Is that an Iranian attack? Or is that something that could trigger an escalation by us versus Iran, and then suddenly, we're on the ladder. That's what's worrying me. And that's why I think the president is absolutely right according to the reporting that we've heard this morning, to slow this thing down and express a little restraint on some of his advisers who seem to be getting us into a position where something pretty awful could happen.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean, we don't have to go all the way back to World War II. I mean, we all remember the faulty intel that led to the belief about WMD and the Iraq war.

KING: I don't -- I don't think there's faulty intel here, necessarily. I think the intel may be accurate. But the unanswered question, again, is are they reacting to our assertions of actions in the Middle East? Or are we reacting to them? And that's -- that's an unanswered question for me.

CAMEROTA: Well, that's a really good question. Why would the U.S. be provoking Iran?

KING: Well, you know, you start with the fact that Iran is a malign actor in the Middle East. There's no doubt about that. Supporting terrorists, they've -- they've killed Americans in Lebanon and other places. They're -- they're not good guys at all.

And the president is trying to put pressure on them. And that's one of the questions, is what's the strategy here? What's the end game? What's the pressure for?

If the pressure is to elicit further concessions in the nuclear field or control on ballistic missiles, OK. If the pressure is regime change in Tehran, which John Bolton as recently as two years ago said was his goal, then that may be unattainable. And that's where we get into this escalation.

And I think it's a very, very volatile, dangerous situation. I am gravely concerned. Again, because of the possibility of miscalculation, misunderstanding, misreading of some event; and all of a sudden you're on a ladder of escalation that could be very, very dangerous for this country and for the Middle East.

[07:25:05] CAMEROTA: John Bolton has been pushing for regime change for years. I mean, we can go back to interviews here on CNN from 2006, 2007. Do you have faith in him as national security adviser?

KING: Well, it's not up to me. The president appoints his own national security adviser.

But there's no question that -- that John Bolton has an agenda. I mean, as recently as 2015, he was telling Iranian exiles we're going to be celebrating in the streets of Tehran in 2019. And here we are.

So I do -- I have some deep concerns. And I think what the reporting is, and we're all, you know, reading the tea leaves, but the reporting is the president is concerned that perhaps in New England we'd say Bolton is out over his skis. And he's pushing in a direction that the president doesn't necessarily want to go. And I think that's a good idea.

I think Mike Pompeo is also very aggressive when it comes to Iran.

And by the way, Iran is not Iraq. It's a big country. It's twice, two or three times as big. Much bigger economy. This is not one of these things where it would be a three-day series of airstrikes. That's -- this is -- and it's also very difficult logistically for us to get troops there, heaven forbid. So this is a very different situation than Iraq.

But the concern is we're going to misinterpret something or they'll misinterpret something, and all of a sudden we're off into a very difficult conflict for us.

CAMEROTA: While we have you, one more topic. Don Jr., the president's son, has agreed to come before your committee, Senate Intel. What do you hope to get out of him this time?

KING: Well, I think the real question is to try to square his previous testimony with some of the testimony that we've received subsequently about the Trump Tower meeting and several other topics. I mean, that's the -- that's the basic purpose.

And frankly, this may be an opportunity for him to clarify some of the things that he said before, rather than leave these -- these conflicts.

Again, Alisyn, we're not prosecutors; we're not looking for crimes. We're looking for what happened. And we're looking for how do we prevent it from happening again?

So we're trying to get to the basic facts of what went on. And we're not talking about was this a conspiracy that you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt? We're trying to understand the overall picture of what the Russians did, how they did it and, most importantly, how we can prevent it from happening again in 2020 and beyond.

CAMEROTA: Senator Angus King, thank you very much for being on NEW DAY.

KING: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: A top lawyer at the FBI when the Russia investigation began is pushing back on the attorney general's investigation and the president's conspiracy theories. You'll hear from him next.

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