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Trump Ready to Replace McMaster; White House Staff Shake Ups; Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization; Races Change in Democratic Favor. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 16, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

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

The president and his chief of staff reportedly make peace, but more White House changes are brewing and the national security adviser said to be on his way out.

Plus, the special counsel hits close to home. Subpoenas for Trump Organizational records dealing with Russia and more.

And the 2018 election map is changing. The odds of Democrats taking back the House are on the rise.

We begin today with a nonstop casting call that is the Trump presidency and its impact on both policy and politics. By all accounts, the president is done with his national security adviser, now calling friends to discuss possible replacements. New reporting today suggests the chief of staff, John Kelly, is safe, for now. President Trump told advisers Tuesday, John Kelly, quote, 100 percent safe. Still, friends and advisers who have spoken with the president in recent days describe him as full of swagger and eager to make other big changes.

Now, depending on the day or the hour, others said to be on the bubble include the attorney general and the secretaries of Housing and Veterans Affairs. Remember, it took months for the president to actually fire Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Presidential rants often do not translate into immediate presidential actions, but they do lead to instant anxiety. Remember, there's a potential U.S.-North Korea summit in the works, South Korean diplomats now nervously asking this question around town, might H.R. McMaster be replaced with a man who recently made the case for a first strike on North Korea?

Anxiety is an understatement for the mood among Republicans. The GOP, you remember, was rebuked at the polls against just this week. Top strategist see a midterm debacle brewing. White House chaos is a big source of the suburban voter revolt, but GOP leaders say the president waves off their concerns and insists he knows best.

Let's get straight to the White House and bring in CNN's Jeff Zeleny.

Jeff, a lot of buzz this morning about a fire Friday. How does it feel -- here we are in the lunch hour? JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, as we

approach noon here, at least in the East at the White House, the level of anxiety and apprehension certainly is palpable. People still do not know who will be in their positions coming up. But I -- there is a sense here from top officials in the West Wing telling other aides to focus on your work, try and ignore the rampant rumors of firings.

They say that they do not expect anything today. Again, all of this could change with the simple action of a tweet. The president controls the timing here. That's what a senior White House official told me earlier today and stressed it again, the president controls the timing here. And by all accounts, he's very much enjoying this speculation, as he does try and, you know, change his cabinet, change his advisers somewhat.

We do believe that the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is among the next big departures here. Is that going to be today, tomorrow, next week, next month? We do not know that. But there is not a sense that there is anything imminent in the next hours coming to be.

Now, John, we have stood here on Fridays before not aware of what was coming by the end of the day, so, of course, this could change. But again, as you said, focusing on the governing here, that meeting with the South Korea happened only a week ago. What is going on behind the scenes. H.R. McMaster a key part of that.

But, John, as we look forward to the weekend here, go into that, the staff could be just the same on Monday morning or the president could decide to change it. But all is calm here and sunny so far here at the White House, John.

KING: I hope they let you sneak in a lunch break.

Jeff Zeleny for us live at the White House.

Jeff, thank you.

With me here in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Karoun Demirjian of "The Washington Post," Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast," and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson.

We sometimes laugh and we sometimes smile about these things because the chaos is constant, but I can't imagine what it's like to be, whether you're a senior official or a worker bee in the Trump White House, and this is your daily environment. Constant questions, constant uncertainty and a boss, the president of the United States, who seems to revel in undermining and humiliating the people who work for him.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely true. And that's very real. Staffers from the bottom to the top are all dealing with this in different ways. There's -- one, a lot of folks being walked out of the White House for all kinds of different issues, whether it's security clearance problems or other things that are unknown, and then there's also the uncertainty from the president himself with where -- what direction does he want to take his administration? People are losing their allies, their bosses, their connections day to day and they don't know where anybody stands. So it's uncertain and that's very real. But that's the way Trump likes it.

What's interesting is that everybody kind of knew that going into this administration. All of these people knew that's the way Trump was. But the problem is, this has really taken it into overdrive because the president, as Jeff just pointed out, seems confident, he seems strident, and he doesn't want to listen to people who say, put the brakes on this, for all kinds of other reasons. He wants to do exactly what he wants.

[12:05:04] KING: Right, a very important point. Again, friends and -- outside advisers I've spoken to say the president has swagger as he talks about this. He's not apprehensive about it. He's not saying it's a bad thing. And that scares Republicans on Capitol Hill because they think all this chaos is hurting them.

Let's try to separate the fact from the fiction or the fact -- the unknown from the unknown if you will. By all accounts, H.R. McMaster is done. The president is out of favor with his national security adviser. This one seems very much like the Tillerson track. We've known for weeks, if not months, the president and H.R. McMaster, General McMaster, don't have a great relationship. They're just different kinds of people. It took months for the president to get there on Tillerson. By all accounts he will get there on McMaster.

The question is, apparently he's been calling around on some of the options -- one of them is John Bolton, who served in the George W. Bush administration, who the South Koreans are petrified -- sorry, Mr. Bolton -- petrified might get the job because of his views about North Korea. Others are more mainstream candidates. Former General Keith Kellogg, Stephen Biegun, who served at the National Security Council staff earlier.

Do we have any idea where the president's going to go here?

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I mean I think the president is trying to keep us guessing for a while and certainly, you know, he kind of is rolling out what he may have wanted to do when he first came into office but listened a little bit to his advisers about, you know, how maybe he shouldn't in the first year of his presidency.

I think that what you're -- what you typically see, though, from the president is that even when there are reports of this is what's going to happen, he'll say, no, it's not, and go in a different direction to keep everybody guessing for a while until he actually then sometimes ends up doing exactly what we reported that he would do, you know, several weeks or months before. So this is yet another one of those push and pull, keep everybody on their toes until he figures out exactly what it's going to be.

And the weird thing about some of these names is that, yes, Bolton's name was kicking around for a very long time, but you put Bolton in with the, you know, the first time you're actually sitting down with the talks with the North Korean leader and these things don't really match up in one policy. So it's very confusing by itself.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: And with Kelly either. Yes, and he doesn't really get along with Kelly either. I mean he wrote an op-ed in August of 2017 basically saying he couldn't get access to the president because of the staffing changes. The staffing changes were Reince Priebus was out and John Kelly was in.

I mean this feels like some kind of combination of "Days of Our Lives," "The Young and the Restless," and "Another World." And if you are on the inside -- I mean I have had people who work in and around kind of the cabinet officials asking me what I'm hearing about what might happen to their boss. They are nervous that they might wake up -- that the cabinet official might wake up and see something on Twitter about their fate. And so this sense of unease and constant disruption, it might be great and fun for the president. It's certainly not good for the people living in it and it's certainly not good for the implementation of policy.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY BEAST": Well, and Bolton is a name that we keep hearing over and over again, in part because the president likes him on television. But you said "Another World." Bolton's foreign policy views are completely a departure from what the president campaigned on and what he has said is America first in this non-interventionist. Bolton is the absolute opposite. He's a hawk. And so that dynamic is very interesting. And you wonder how that would square if he does end up in the White House.

KING: And so you hear this morning Michael Bender of "The Wall Street Journal," a frequent visitor here on INSIDE POLITICS, the first to write word this morning, CNN's Jim Acosta, I think, has confirmed a lot of this reporting, that, you know, the president and Chief of Staff Kelly had a meeting last night. There's been a lot of tension between the two of them. A lot of talk that Kelly might be on his way out, too.

Today the message is, 100 percent safe, Kelly is staying. The shelf life of that, we can all sit here and debate. But, on the one hand you say, OK, good, that's stability. The White House chief of staff is staying. That will bring some calm. On the other hand, every time that word has come out in the past, then those who don't want General Kelly to stay start their own campaigns, both with the president and in the media saying he's the problem, not the solution.

PHILLIP: And here's what this also confirms. It confirms that the president and John Kelly are having issues that they need to work out at some point. And that they keep having these face to faces. That's one of the things that we hear about Kelly is that he and Trump, they can kind of duke it out on whatever they're disagreeing about.

Now, this was yet another of those cases. That's in contradiction to the White House official line, which is that there's absolutely nothing wrong here. There's nothing going on. John Kelly is perfectly happy. Everything is peachy keen. Clearly there's a problem here with the president and his chief of staff where they are not always on the same page, where they may not always get along, and that Kelly may or may not have been looking for the exits. He's put that on hold for now, but that's a story that we are continue to watch, in part because of this dynamic. He is someone who is having some trouble with the boss who doesn't -- who increasingly doesn't want to listen to him or really anyone else.

KING: And so I want -- a Trump supporter. I'm going to play this sound. A Trump supporter is going to say, oh, whatever. This is Senator Jeff Flake. He's up in New Hampshire today. Yes, he's a vocal critic of the president, so take it with that in context. He's been a critic of the president from the very beginning. But a lot of Republicans express the sentiments you hear, even Trump supporters express the sentiment you hear from Senator Flake. This is talking specifically about General McMaster and the possibility he will leave the White House. What a lot of Republicans worry about is that as the president makes these changes, he's looking for people who say, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir and will not push back and challenge him.

[12:10:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: And I think he's been a stabilizing force in the White House and has, I think, pushed back on, you know, certain things that the president has wanted to do. I think that pushback has been needed and helpful. So I am concerned that whoever replaces him won't provide the same honesty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's always been an element of what I'll call politely the strange dysfunction between the president and his party, where a bunch of people who don't agree with the president, they don't trust the president's instincts, they don't think the president has figured out the governing thing, say, well, he's got General Kelly and General McMaster and General Mattis around him. So there are some adults to keep him on track. It's a horrible thing to say about the president of the United States, but it is said quite frequently.

DEMIRJIAN: Yes, I mean remember when Bob Corker was saying that Tillerson, Kelly and McMaster -- or, who was it, Mattis, were the only people keeping the president from chaos, keeping the country from chaos? And now you're talking about some of those people being gone. Mattis is the only person whose name hasn't really been dragged into this ring of people who've made -- had their tenure cut short. And so you're seeing that worry play out over Capitol Hill.

But the truth is that, look, it matters if the president is trying to put in yes men, but also a lot of the people that he's pulling in my not just be yes men, but may just have a very different world view. Pompeo, Tillerson, not the same person. That has major implications for the next Iran deal deadline coming up on May 12th. Pompeo's a huge hawk on that. He matches up with Trump much more.

Bolton, just by definition, he'd have to change his entire life record on foreign policy to become a yes man to President Trump. And so that's probably not a yes man situation. But, again, sometimes, yes, that seems to be the problem, and sometimes, no, he just seems to keep picking people whose very strongly held ideology just happens to match up more with his and that has implications for these major milestones coming up.

KING: We will see if the calm -- relative calm in the lunch hour Friday carries over through the evening hours of Friday. We'll keep an eye on this one.

All right, up next, the special counsel gets the Trump family -- hits the Trump family business with a subpoena. What is Robert Mueller asking for? And, will it set off the president?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:09] KING: Welcome back.

The Russia special counsel is sending a strong message and crossing the president's red line in doing so. CNN has now confirmed investigators served subpoenas on the Trump organization, demanding records from the president's family business. Now, the scope of that request is right now a mystery. This from "The New York Times" which first reported the news. In the subpoena, delivered in recent weeks, Mr. Mueller ordered the Trump Organization to hand over all documents relate to Russia and other topics he is investigating. The words deserving special attention there are "other topics." Remember, we know the president draws a line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL SCHMIDT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": If Mueller was looking at your finances or your family's finances unrelated to Russia, is that a red line?

HABERMAN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would say yes. Yes, I would say yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: How significant is this? And anyone who's been paying attention, if you don't think that this has something to do with the president's otherwise restless mood, you haven't been paying attention.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean I definitely think it's significant in the sense that it is both a warning shot that they are moving in this direction. They're doing it in a way that is kind of loud, a subpoena instead of just simply asking for the documents. And also that there's a part of the special counsel mandate that deals with other matters that may arise from the course of the investigation. That's the big deal here. And I think if there's a concern on the president's part that Mueller might be going into that territory, this would be the way that he would do it. That even if there, you know, are Russia search terms here, which it seems that "The Times" is reporting that there are, if they find anything else, they would be obligated to pursue it. And that's where you would enter into red line territory. KING: Right. And it's relatively easy for a prosecutor to get a

subpoena from a grand jury. But, to your point, it gives you backup. This is not just some rogue prosecutor saying, I want everything. You went and presented some factual evidence, some predicate evidence, to a grand jury to say, we need to subpoena records because we think this.

Plus, it's Bob Mueller, who has -- everything he does has to be run by the president's deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who quoted this week saying this in "USA Today." Remember, these subpoenas were issued in recent weeks. Rod Rosenstein knows about that when he says this, the special counsel is not an unguided missile. I don't believe there is any justification at this point for terminating the special counsel.

HENDERSON: Yes, which this investigation isn't going anywhere. You -- you, of course, are familiar with the fact that the president has been told that several times from folks in his inner circle, that it's going to wrap up by Thanksgiving, by the end of the year, in 2017. We are well into 2018. This could go on for many more months. And so you understand why the president is so nervous and acting out erratically in some ways because we remember what happened with President Clinton, right, from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky, to impeachment. He, of course, wasn't removed from office.

So, yes, I mean this is nervous making for a president who can talk about red lines all he wants to, but he doesn't get to draw them.

KUCINICH: Right.

DEMIRJIAN: Well, the red line for him could be that he starts taking action, right? I mean he doesn't get to draw them really, but he can start to try to fire his attorney general or try to get rid of his deputy attorney general.

KUCINICH: I was going to say --

DEMIRJIAN: But if he does that, he's going to be in a much worse situation.

HENDERSON: Right. Exactly.

DEMIRJIAN: Because every time he takes an impulsive move like that, things get worse. And the Senate is in no mood to give him a new attorney general because they don't want to be seen as having been culpable or, you know -- you know, aiding in covering this things up. It's too serious. And most of the Republicans on the Senate side are saying, just let its run its course, please. And if you go down the chain, I mean, getting rid of Rosenstein, the -- well, I mean the question would be, who would take his place, right?

HENDERSON: Yes.

DEMIRJIAN: But you need to get rid of one of the people at the top to actually push Mueller out the door. And doing that would put the Congress up in arms. KING: Logic says the president can't do that. You mentioned, you know, Senator Chuck Grassley, Senator Lindsey Graham. Senator Graham, for example, says it would blow up the committee.

DEMIRJIAN: Yes.

KING: A lot of Republicans saying that would be the line for them. They've sort of stayed back and tried to bite their tongues about all this.

But, again, I just want to go back to the point, the president's deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who we know is out of favor with the president, but a career prosecutor who has approved these subpoenas, therefore Bob Mueller came to him and put some level of threshold evidence before him that we have reason to ask for these documents.

[12:20:14] KUCINICH: Right, and I -- the other thing I wanted to mention about the Senate, and the House for that matter, this is a midterm election year. The closer we get to November, the more this could affect the election. So I'm sure Republicans on The Hill are saying don't do this and that's another reason why they're saying we're not going to give you another attorney general if you do this because this -- this could imperil his party as well as his White House.

KING: And you look at some of these issues and some of them are very confusing and some of them involve, shall we say, interesting characters. We want you to listen here this morning. This is Felix Sater. He's a former business partner of the president. He was in Moscow trying to sell this idea of a Trump Tower Moscow. This happened to be just about the time the president was getting ready to run for president. The candidate -- businessman Donald Trump was getting ready to run for president.

Now, Felix Sater was in Moscow. The Trump Organization has said the president's children were there by coincidence at the same time. Felix Sater says, and this is why the special counsel investigation is going to go on for a long time, has to resolve the conflict. Felix Sater says, no.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": The idea that you went to Russia with Trump's children to advance business interests, is that true?

FELIX SATER, RUSSIAN-AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN LINKED TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: That is true.

CUOMO: Because you know that the GC, the general counsel of the Trump Organization says it's not true. Felix was just in Russia at the time that the kids were there. It wasn't coordinated. Is that true?

SATER: The president asked me to be in Russia at the same time as them, to look after them.

CUOMO: The president asked you?

SATER: Yes, sir.

CUOMO: Directly?

SATER: Directly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: One can understand, by that -- that, if you're curious about the proposed Trump Tower, if you're curious about other interaction with Russians around that timeframe, answers like that, contradicting what the Trump Organization has said on the record, make you understand why maybe the special counsel wants documents.

DEMIRJIAN: Right, and which also -- yes, I mean, look, there have been these questions swirling about where is the line between Trump and the Trump family's personal business interests and where does it become actually about the roles that they play that are supposed to be in service to the country? I mean we could boil this all back down to that very original question of, why don't you just associate yourself from all of these things for the term that you're in the White House, which they would not do? And so this is now -- you know, the people who are not bearing the last name Trump is starting to basically say, no, the line that you're giving is not accurate, and, yes, they were actually business deals are made. That opens up questions about financing. That opens up questions about previous iterations of attempts to actually make deals happen with Russia. And this is what happens.

PHILLIP: And just the cast of characters around this whole (INAUDIBLE). Felix Sater, Sam Nunberg, Roger Stone, the list goes on and on. These are people who are all out there.

KING: Don't make Carter Page mad and leave him out.

PHILLIP: Right, Carter Page, floating around in the universe all with their own stories about what happened here. And, frankly, there is, it seems on the president's part, a lack of understanding of how this can really, really go sideways given how all these different people have all their bearing interests and they're all going before the special counsel under subpoena, under oath, and they have to testify so they don't go to jail.

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: So it's going to take a whole. We'll keep an that as well.

A quick break. And then, we began the week knowing the Republicans were in trouble. After an election in Pennsylvania, we end the week knowing with a new map Republicans are in even more trouble.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:29] KING: A significant change in our 2018 midterm outlook today and it is more bad news for the Republicans. CNN today changing its ratings for 17 House races. Every one of these shifts in favor of the Democrats.

Let's walk through them and let's start with why this is happening. It is this. It's not official yet, but the Democrat, Conor Lamb, still leading. No official declaration yet in Pennsylvania 18. President Trump carried this district by 20 points. That the Democrats ran even and a little better is big enough news. It is this, the suburban area of southern Allegheny County, that has Republicans in a panic and has CNN reassessing the map.

Here's where we began the week looking at the House of Representatives. Solid Republican seats, likely Republican seats, leaning Republican seats. You see the 20 toss-ups here. Same on the blue side, Democrat likely, leans and solids.

Now, 17 races change. Watch these numbers. You don't have to follow them all. All the shifts move toward the Democrats.

Here are the new numbers. Fewer solid seats for the Republicans. Fewer lean seats for the Republicans. More toss-ups and better numbers on that side for the Democrats. Again, Democrats are on offense. Republicans are on defense. The Pennsylvania results tell us even more Republican seats now in play. Nancy Pelosi, incredibly happy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: He won. If he hadn't won, you might have a question. He won. He won the race. People -- the "d" next to his name was very significant and that is blue part. He made it a tremendous and great, successful effort to minimize the damage in the red-red counties.

No, I feel pretty confident that we're going to win. We're going to win big. We're going to win a lot of the seats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're going to win. We're going to win big. We're going to win a lot of seats.

It is March. It is March. Democrats have their own internal issues, which we'll get to in a second. But when you see -- it's not just CNN, other organizations, that do the House rankings as well, moving maybe a fewer number of seats, but if you look at the Pennsylvania results, then you go back and look at the map, what districts were like this, where do Democrats have good candidates, everything at the moment, and the things we just talked about, White House chaos, the Russia investigation are parts of it --

DEMIRJIAN: Right.

KING: Everything at the moment is trend away from the Republicans.

KUCINICH: Well, Republicans are completely demoralized at this point. I mean we can't -- we can't -- well, there is a tendency to overplay special elections. This was a seat that Trump won by 20 points and it right now looks like the Democrat won. So they -- that is -- that is internalized. And Democrats, on the other hand, are energized. They're ready to -- I mean they're marching in the streets in addition to marching to the polls. So at -- in March, right now, it really does look good for Democrats.

[12:29:58] HENDERSON: Yes. And Democrats are also saying, listen, if you are a candidate who is highly rated by the NRA and wants to film a commercial where you're shooting a gun, and you want to say you're not backing Nancy Pelosi, then have at it.