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CNN Obtains Tape of Trump Talking Classified Documents; Trump Valet Walt Nauta to Face Arraignment on Charges He Helped Hide Classified Documents; Putin Speaks to Security Forces After Russia Drops Charges Wagner Mercenaries for Rebellion. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 27, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We now have the crucial evidence that is at the center of the special counsel's criminal prosecution of Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: See, as president, I could have declassified it. Now, I can't.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: This is why tapes are gold to prosecutors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It bolsters the government's claim under the Espionage Act.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One interesting quote that's not included in the indictment, is that the former president said, these are those papers.

TRUMP: You probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I believe you.

TRUMP: It's incredible, right?

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There is no other American that knowingly does something like this that gets away with it. The president can't be any different.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Russian president speaking out three days after the armed rebellion led by his former ally.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a weakened Russian president and a very angry one indeed.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: We made clear that we were not involved. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Russian officials say they are dropping charges against the Wagner Group for armed insurrection.

CHANCE: Also, Putin tried to get back some of the authority that he's certainly lost over the past couple of days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're beginning to see the fissures at the highest moment of tension in Putin's regime.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. We are so glad you're with us. And if you went to bed at 8:00 last night and not 8:05, like I did, you missed something pretty big, and that is a CNN exclusive.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: A CNN exclusive, it is the audiotape. It is what we reported, CNN reported first several weeks ago, the transcript. Now, there's the audio. And now you know the basis in why prosecutors appear to feel very confident about their case against former president. We'll play that and more.

HARLOW: To hear it is really everything. Former President Trump on tape, in his own words, bragging about holding military secrets he did not declassify as president. That's what he says.

This recording was made at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey golf club in 2021. Hear the moment Trump appears to indicate that he was holding a Pentagon document containing plans for an attack on Iran. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: These are bad sick people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was your coup, you know, against you. That --

TRUMP: Well, it started right at the --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like when Milley is talking about, oh, you were going to try to do a coup. No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trying to overthrow your election.

TRUMP: Well, with Milley, let me see that, I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran.

Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this, this is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow.

TRUMP: We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me. This was him. All sorts of stuff, pages long, look. Wait a minute, let's see here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my gosh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential, secret --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: This is secret information. But look, look at this. You attack, and --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hillary would print that out all the time, you know, her private email.

TRUMP: She's send it, no, she she'd send it to Anthony Weiner.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: The pervert.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please print.

TRUMP: By the way, isn't that incredible?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, he wanted to attack Iran and what. These are the papers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You did.

TRUMP: This was done by the military and given to me. I think we can probably, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know, well, we'll have to see. Yes, we'll have to try to -- figure out --

TRUMP: Declassify it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: See as president I could have declassified it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Now we have a problem.

TRUMP: Isn't that interesting?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: It's so cool. I mean, it's so -- look, her and I, and you probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. I believe you.

TRUMP: It's incredible, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, they met a war they didn't want.

TRUMP: Hey, bring some Cokes in, please.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[07:05:00]

MATTINGLY: Now, the audio you just listened to is crucial evidence in federal prosecutors' case against Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified information after he left the White House. Federal prosecutors have charged the former president with putting national security secrets at risk.

Overnight, Trump responded, writing on Truth Social, quote, the deranged special prosecutor, Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ and FBI, illegally leaked and, quote, spun, unquote, a tape transcript of me, which is actually an exoneration rather than what they would have you to believe.

CNN Political Correspondent Sara Murray is live in Washington, D.C. Sara, when you listen to this, when you talk to lawyers and sources, how damning do they feel like this audio is?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think one of the things that's striking is that we heard from folks, and we were reporting this story out before we had ever heard the audio tape, that it will be clear to you when you finally do hear the audio, why this is such a boon for prosecutors, why this is so damning for Donald Trump. And I think when you listen to that audio, I mean, you hear him saying things like, I'll show you an example. These are the papers. And then there's this sort of rustling sound, again, where he appears to be referring to this document about a potential attack on Iran.

And he's in this meeting, we know, with autobiographers who are working on a Mark Meadows autobiography with two staffers, none of whom have clearance. And he also acknowledges that this is not a declassified document and that he no longer has the power, because he is no longer the president of the United States to declassify it.

And he's sort of callous in how he's discussing this. Everyone's laughing. He's talking about, bring me some Cokes in. At one point, a staffer says, now you have a problem when he's talking about how this is not a declassified document. And so there's this very sort of jokey tone around passing around or shuffling potentially some of the nation's top secrets.

HARLOW: Do we know where these documents are? I mean, I know it seems like a really simple question, but they did, a private company did a search of Bedminster, right, and says they didn't find anything. The FBI didn't oversee that search. That's not odd. They wouldn't. But I think the question is now, do they have the document? If they don't, are they going to search Bedminster?

MURRAY: Yes. I mean, it's a simple question without a simple answer at this point, Poppy. It would be pretty late in the game to be doing another search given the fact that this has been charged. We know that the Trump team was subpoenaed for this document. They weren't able to produce it. But what we don't know is if prosecutors may already have this from the boxes that were returned to the archives from an earlier search. We just don't know that at this point.

But we do know, look, that there's other corroborating evidence prosecutors may have been able to get. We know they talked to Mark Milley. We know they talked to at least one of the other participants in the meeting. It's probably likely they talked to more participants in the meeting. And we know that there's a description, a rough description of this document that shows up in Mark Meadows' book. So, the prosecutors are going to be looking to piece together all of that evidence.

But let's just take a listen to how Donald Trump is trying to spin this document on Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn't have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: So, Trump wants to say it's newspapers, magazines and articles. Obviously, we're going to wait and see what other evidence comes out as this case proceeds, Poppy.

MATTINGLY: Murray, can I ask you this kind of bizarre, oh, this other thing. One of the president's closest advisers and aides is actually going to be arraigned today on charges that he helped the former president hide classified documents. What are we actually expecting?

MURRAY: Well, it's sort of like a redo. When we saw them all in court in Florida, Walt Nauta did not have the appropriate Florida counsel at that point, so he could not be proud properly arraigned. So, we are expecting him, Donald Trump's body man, to show up again in court for his proper arraignment. We believe he's going to enter a plea of not guilty. It should be a pretty quick hearing.

It's an important move for the case, though. You need all of these defendants entered so that they can actually set a schedule that all of these attorneys can agree to and we can figure out how this is going to proceed. Again, Walt Nauta, a key player who allegedly helped Donald Trump move these boxes around and has been charged essentially with misleading investigators, guys.

HARLOW: Sara Murray, thanks very much. Certainly a big day ahead and a lot of discussion will be about that tape. Let's bring in our experts, CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, CNN Senior Political Commentator Adam Kinzinger, CNN Senior Political Analyst and Anchor John Avlon and CNN Political Commentator at Margaret Hoover. Good morning, everyone. It's so nice to have you at the table.

MATTINGLY: You don't take your kids to like a jungle gym on a weekend when it's raining and you can't hear anything at all because they're all just constantly screaming and laughing and having fun? That was literally these guys for like the ten minutes before we got on air as we were trying to do television. So, bring that energy to this.

HARLOW: And then I said, isn't it loud in here? This is like the party who were known. We're so glad you guys are here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Let me begin with just legally, Elie. It's one thing to hear it, but for your case, you were a federal prosecutor, does this help you so much that you can hear it?

[07:10:01]

HONIG: So, back when I was a prosecutor, smart defense lawyers, on the first day of the arrest, the first thing they would say to me is, is this a tapes case? Do you have tapes? Sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't. And if you did, they would go, how bad is it? If I was asked that here, I would say, yes, and really, really bad. I mean, we just saw Donald Trump's statement. He says, this is exonerating. I mean, I tried to read this and listen to it with a skeptical ear. How would I approach this as a defense lawyer? And, honestly, I got nothing. I don't know how he --

HARLOW: You got nothing, Elie?

HONIG: On the defense side, I don't know, other than trying to exclude it from evidence altogether, which is not going to work. I don't know how you spin this other than --

HARLOW: Well, what if they can't find the document?

HONIG: Exactly. Other than, well, we don't know folks in the jury whether this is a real document or not. But even if that's the case, it shows his intent. He knows this is sensitive materials, and he's sharing it with the world.

KINZINGER: And I think the reaction in that crowd or of whoever's onlookers or adorers that was sitting there with him, and I know exactly what that looks like, they're all sitting around smiling, like reaffirming everything he says, and he's just, look at me.

Anyway, the reaction of when he goes basically look at this and you hear that, wow, right?

HARLOW: Yes.

KINZINGER: Again, the first time I ever saw classified information actually was in the military, and it kind of takes your breath away, not because there's anything specific, but you're just like, I am looking at the secrets of the United States of America. So, I think that reaction in there, and I'm sure these people have testified or they're looking to get them to testify, that reaction is going to be like not just a newspaper article. It's something big with a lot of red that says top secret.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You also think about how hearing it matters to voters and to average citizens, right, because, obviously, the jury and the court is the primary audience here.

But I think about friends of ours in Iowa who are self-identified Republican primary caucus goers, and they're not going to be able to defend it either. I mean, there is now -- there's only whataboutism. There's only, look over there. There is only -- I mean, that is really the only defense the tried and true Trump defenders under any situation can generate.

And it's important for the public and for the political process to just hear him say it. It resonates more.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND ANCHOR: Especially compared to his lies to Brett Baier, his lies and all the other explanations, and then the really desperate lie he puts out on True Social, which you read, which is, this actually exonerates me. That's the, I got nothing, so we're doing total reality distortion field, knowing that a significant portion of his base will buy it.

HONIG: And that's a key point, by the way, as well. This completely undermines all of the publicly stated defenses. I declassified it. Magically, I thought about it. I mean, here, he says precisely the opposite. This is before he knew that it was going to potentially result in a criminal case. He says, could have declassified it when I was office, but I didn't. But he doesn't say this. But, by the way, let me show you what's in it anyway. I can't think of a way to defend that.

MATTINGLY: Elie, can I ask you, a colleague of ours pointed out that in our original story about the transcript, which was kind of the first kind of crack in this, it ended up in the indictment as well, now we have the audio tape, our colleague -- our great colleagues, Katelyn Polantz, Katelyn Collins, Paul Reid, Jeremy Herb's story last night, doing great work.

But they noted in the story, Meadows; autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting during which Trump, quote, recalls a four-page report typed up by Mark Milley himself that contained the general's own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. That is a very specific citation to some degree, which seems to align with this. Whether or not prosecutors have the document, there seems to be corroboration in the autobiography itself. Do you assume that everybody who is in that meeting has been interviewed has given their side of what happened?

HONIG: Absolutely. I mean, there are witnesses. Let's remember, prosecutors are not going to just play this tape into a void. What you're going to do is, first of all, you're going to talk to everyone in that room, the two biographers of Mark Meadows, the assistant, if you can get the assistant to talk, the person at the end, whoever he says, go get a Coke, I'd want to figure out who that is. Could it be Walt Nauta? We don't know. But if so, that's really important to know. And you're going to have someone on the stand narrating it. That's how you actually get the tape in evidence. You call a person who was there. Were you here for this conversation? Yes. Does this tape accurately portray what you heard? Yes.

So, you're going to have someone who's going to be able to describe, really importantly, the physical movements. What did he show you? What were you able to see? What did it say on that document? That's really important, and they're going to have human beings to flesh that out.

KINZINGER: And I think what's really important and actually was a really good move in the what do you guys call the speaking indictment, I guess, is the citations of Donald Trump's own words about classified information. Because people forgot the whole lock her up chant, because of classified stuff. His whole campaign was about classified stuff. To put that there, and you can do it -- I guess, you can probably do it in trial, too, and just, hey, that's important because it shows the hypocrisy.

HARLOW: Move to strengthen the laws on classified information, which is just so sort of mind blowing in this moment.

HOOVER: Well, it's a sign of something who absolutely doesn't believe that they will ever be held accountable for anything, or maybe hasn't ever been held accountable for anything.

[07:15:03]

And this may be just be the very first time.

And, by the way, to your point about the narrative of Trump's own words about classified documents, you better believe there are independent expenditures in those three primary states right now running Trump's own words about lock her up and classified documents targeting to self-identified GOP early primary voters.

AVLON: Yes. And CNN's most recent polled showed a certain softening in Trump support, softening being the operative verb, when the indictments came out. So, this just adds more evidence, more field of that plot (ph).

HARLOW: Well to your point among independents, what was so interesting about that, that most independents think that the indictment is just and have even said that the majority of independents think that it's basis for him not --

AVLON: It's all independents. But 26 percent of Republicans in that poll said he should drop out of the race on the basis of the indictment alone.

MATTINGLY: Yes. The big question, tell me how you win the general. I'll look at your primary numbers and grant you them. Tell me how you win the general. It's a big question. We'll talk politics later in the show. Guys, stick with us, we definitely have a lot more on this.

But we also have more on what happened over the weekend in Russia. Just moments ago, President Putin spoke in Moscow and praised his forces for, quote, stopping a civil war during that rebellion in Russia. What comes next?

And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unveiling a hard line border security policy largely mirroring his rival, former President Donald Trump's. How DeSantis' plan may be even more aggressive, that's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

HARLOW: Major development into Moscow this morning, Vladimir Putin making a live appearance moments ago to thank security forces who defended Moscow against the mercenary rebellion over the weekend. The speech comes right after Putin's regime announced it would be dropping charges against the Wagner mercenary group for the mutiny.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT: You defended the Constitution, the lives, the security and the freedom of our citizens. You saved our homeland from being shaken up. In actual fact, you stopped a civil war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: We still don't know where the Wagner mercenary group's leader is. We've not seen Yevgeny Prigozhin since Saturday, when he abruptly stopped his march on Moscow and supposedly struck a deal to go into exile in Belarus.

This morning, the Kremlin is refusing to share any details about that agreement, and Putin's spokesman says he's unaware of where Prigozhin is either.

Putin is giving the Wagner mercenaries a choice, join the Russian military, go home, or go to Belarus. The Russian Defense Ministry says the fighters are preparing to turn over their heavy equipment to Russian troops.

Let's go to Fred Pleitgen, our senior international correspondent, who joins us this morning. What stood out to you from what we just heard from Putin?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, I think it's remarkable that Vladimir Putin went out and gave that speech in the first place. I think one of the things that we can discern from that is he's sort of trying to calm down the situation and show actually that he is still in charge of things.

I thought what's really interesting about that speech is that there was no criticism or any sort of critique, gets to the reaction from the security forces when that Wagner convoy was rolling towards Moscow. Because, of course, yesterday, Poppy, we heard from Yevgreny Prigozhin himself, we haven't seen him, but we've heard from him, saying -- justifying himself and saying that if he had wanted to, he could have rolled all the way to Moscow.

He said that people who were there on the side of the roads were cheering the Wagner mercenaries on. He said they were able to block air bases and military bases along the way. Now, here's Vladimir Putin coming out and praising the Russian security forces.

I think that's one of the things that he's trying to show that he's in charge, that he's in control. But also the other thing that I think is really important for him right now is to show that there is still unity within Russia, that everybody is on the same page. Yevgeny Prigozhin is out of the way now. However, they still want to make sure that these Wagner fighters will remain part of the Russian security forces.

And one of the things that we heard last night from Vladimir Putin, I think, was also very important as well, a very late night address where he said, look, they could have stopped this rebellion, but it would have led to bloodshed, Russian on Russian bloodshed, and that's why they did things the way that they did. Whether or not that is fully true is obviously something that we don't know. But it's certainly what Vladimir Putin is trying to portray at this point in time.

The big winner in all of this seems to be Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian strong man. We heard from him earlier today as well. He, of course, brokered that agreement with Yevgeny Prigozhin to make him back off there. He was saying that it was painful for him to watch that situation.

But I think one of the other things, Poppy, that also shows just how dramatic that situation was and how concerned the leaders there were about the situation, he also said that he had put the forces of Belarus onto combat readiness. So, that shows that they were extremely concerned about the situation, Poppy.

HARLOW: It really does. Fred Pleitgen, thank you for that analysis and reporting.

MATTINGLY: And here with us now to discuss CNN Global Affairs Analyst and Senior Managing Editor for the Military Times Kim Dozier, Bloomberg Editor and Foreign Affairs Columnist Bobby Ghosh and CNN National Security Analyst and former CIA Chief of Russia Operations Steve Hall.

Steve, I want to start with you. What exactly is President Putin thanking his armed forces for doing over the course of the weekend?

STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: You know, this is really less about what he's saying. It's more about damage control and who he's saying it to and why. So, first of all, this is sort of a failure of Dictatorship 101. You shouldn't have to be doing damage control to fear the dictator. You're not concerned about what people are saying on the streets. You have no political opposition. So, when he's speaking to the security forces, this is a message to his local population, the domestic Russian audience, that, hey, everything is okay.

The thing is that six months ago, he never would have had to have done that. He wouldn't have cared about what the Russian population thought because he's got the ability to repress them very easily. When he saw how quickly the Wagner troops were able to cut through whatever security forces were there, he's now much more concerned about what the Russian population thinks about with him, let alone other power centers in Moscow. So, it's a real serious situation for him.

HARLOW: I think, to that exact point, Kim, it was so interesting when Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic said to us last hour, based on the little resistance, if any, that Wagner faced over the weekend, we got a very rare lens into the real Russia because state media is so government controlled, because there is no reliable polling. This was a real lens. Do you agree?

KIM DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Absolutely. Prigozhin managed to create a popular following. He's the everyman of Russia at the frontlines speaking for them. Some people within Russia are hearing from their troops at the frontlines that they're not getting enough supplies, that they don't have enough air cover, et cetera. And Prigozhin gave voice to all of that.

And the lack of resistance was a message to Putin that we've got to tear this guy down. And you're starting to see that some of Moscow's mouthpieces have started going on radio, T.V., talking about Prigozhin's past as a criminal, how he ended up spending 13 years in jail because he choked a woman. And one of these mouthpieces said, that's all you need to know about Prigozhin. They're going to start laying out his crimes so that the public sees him as a criminal, not as a challenger to Putin's power.

MATTINGLY: Bobby, you hit on something last hour that Steve talked about yesterday, which is, Prigozhin is not the threat necessarily for Putin. It's the people around him, his close inner circle that are watching and keying on everything that's happening right now.

To that extent, the idea has always been that Putin has done a kind of masterful job of never allowing any of those people to have a clear runway or to be kind of the next man or woman up. How do you think they're watching what transpired over the weekend? And do you think we will see signs that people are starting to position themselves?

BOBBY GHOSH, EDITOR AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: Well, this is true of dictatorships throughout history, all over the world, the clique around the dictator is looking out. Every man in that clique, and it's almost always men looking out for themselves and looking to see if there's any sign of weakness in the boss. And that's true in Moscow, just as it's been true anywhere else around the world. Whether or not one of them will step forward to present themselves as an alternative, that will depend on their calculations about whether it's safe to do so, whether it's safe, whether they feel that the military is fully behind the czar in this case.

For the moment, I don't think anybody will dare raise their head. But they will have taken note of the fact that one of their member, Prigozhin, came close. And as far as we can tell as yet, there's been no consequences for Prigozhin except for being sent off to Belarus.

Belarus is not Siberia. He's not been sent off to a gulag, not yet. He's just been sent off to Belarus.

MATTINGLY: It's also not very safe.

GHOSH: Yes, especially if you're in a hotel with a high floor and near a window. But if Prigozhin is allowed -- and this is very important for Putin. If Prigozhin is allowed to get away with this, then all the people in his immediate circle, a thought goes off in their head saying, well, maybe. And that's the last thing any dictator wants. The dictator wants to know that the people around him are absolutely behind him without any daggers in their hands.

DOZIER: I think that's why we're hearing that charges have been dropped against anyone who's part of Wagner that took part in the insurrection, but they've left it foggy, sketchy about what will happen with Prigozhin in terms of prosecution.

And they've also given everyone within Wagner until this weekend a deadline to make a choice, go to Belarus with Prigozhin, sign a military contract, or go home. So, by this weekend, Prigozhin is going to know if his fighters stayed loyal to him or if they've seen the writing on the wall and chosen the Russian state.

GHOSH: And if you're Lukashenko, you know, you're looking good right now because you've been given the credit for having negotiated this deal, but suddenly you face the prospect of thousands of these absolute cutthroats being sent off to your country. They become your responsibility. I wouldn't want to be in that position.

MATTINGLY: Or the countries neighboring them all of a sudden, which I think some of the opposition leaders were saying.

All right, I'm going to get yelled at, Steve. But real quick, before we go, what are you watching in the next day or two or four ahead that we should all key on?

HALL: Yes, I agree with Bobby. You really have to see what is going to happen to the inner circle here. Is anybody going to make a move, because there's nothing but damage control going on. It's looking very bad to the Russian population. Putin is in a weak position. If he goes a little further, every day he survives is a better day for him. So, we'll see if he gets out of this.

MATTINGLY: Yes, that's certainly something to watch. Control room. I'm sorry. I wanted Steve's perspective. Steve Hall, Bobby Ghosh, Kim Dozier, thanks, guys, I appreciate it.

Well, Florida Governor. Ron DeSantis unveiling an immigration plan that aims to end birthright citizenship, something protected under the Constitution. We'll get the latest on the 2024 race.

[07:30:00]

HARLOW: Also, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney issuing a warning to stop, as she says, these are her words, electing idiots. That's ahead.