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Reaction to Trump's Statement Regarding Russian Interference; Trump Clashes with Intel Chief; Officials Quiet after Summit. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 17, 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] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of the time.

Thanks so much for joining me. "INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate.

And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

President Trump said to be surprised and furious today, unhappy as he hears bipartisan and global outrage over his weak summit performance in Helsinki. The Kremlin is thrilled, emboldened by the president's embrace of vladimir Putin and the fact that not once did Mr. Trump publicly criticize russian election meddling or Russia's global aggression. Much of the criticism is about how the president undermined the United States or undermined the NATO alliance. Some of it, though, more personal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, FORMER CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR: President Trump, I just saw your press conference with President Putin and it was embarrassing. I mean you stood there like a little wet noodle, like a little fan boy. I mean I was asking myself, when are you going to ask him for an autograph or for a selfie or something like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We begin there with the president back here in Washington and the mounting negative summit fallout. The president, again, said to be angry, unconvinced of what is plain to most lawmakers on Capitol Hill, that the commander in chief folded in front of Vladimir Putin and embarrassed himself, his political party and the United States on the global stage.

This is the Republican speaker of the House, about 90 minutes ago, leading the chorus of Republicans saying the president's embrace of Putin and the president's assault on the U.S. intelligence agencies was dead wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: We just conducted a year-long investigation into Russia's interference in our elections. They did interfere in our elections. It's really clear.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R), ILLINOIS: President Trump was wrong yesterday in a major way, and I think it was a very embarrassing press conference. You cannot cut deals with the devil, and you can never trust Russia.

REP. RYAN COSTELLO (R), PENNSYLVANIA: You could say it's embarrassing, but I don't think that that does it sufficient justice. I think it undermines our moral authority.

REP. WILL HURD (R), TEXAS: I've seen the Russian intelligence and, you know, manipulate many people in my career, and I never would have thought the U.S. president would be -- would be one of them.

REP. MIKE TURNER (R), OHIO: How can we ask Poland, Romania, Hungary, to stand up to Russia meddling in their own countries if the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, can't do it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now sources tell CNN the president actually walked off the Helsinki summit stage happy, but his mood quickly soured on Air Force One, spoiled as he began to soak in the fierce criticism, including criticism from normally reliable Republican allies.

Today, the president embracing one of the few GOP voices providing him cover. This tweet this morning, thank you, Rand Paul.

Now, the president, despite enough evidence to fill a football arena, says he sees no reason that Russia would have meddled in the 2016 election. Senator Paul is more of the "who cares" view.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: Any country that can spy, does. And any country that can meddle in foreign elections, does. All countries are doing this. But we have elevated this to a higher degree and we've made this all about the sour grapes of Hillary Clinton losing the election and it's all about partisan politics now. This is truly the Trump derangement syndrome that motivates all of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's Phil Mattingly live for us on Capitol Hill.

Phil, Rand Paul, one voice, but he is an outlier. Listening to the speaker this morning it seemed pretty clear that the Republican leadership trying not to be personal, trying not to get in the president's face, still wants to say, sir, you were wrong.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, no question about it. I think the interesting element here is twofold, John. First, you've seen the public statements and they range from detailed denunciations naming the president to not naming the president but talking about how they back the intelligence community on this, to silence. And I think, obviously, that's indicative of the fact that most Republicans on Capitol Hill, and I can say a large majority of them, are increasingly unsettled by what they saw.

But what I was struck by more over the course of the last 24 hours was what I heard behind the scenes in talking to lawmakers, in talking to senior Republican aides, and that was almost a sense of forlorn acceptance. That this is the reality. That there's nothing really more that Republicans on Capitol Hill think they can do.

If you take a look at the last 15 months, 98-2 they passed an extension sanctions regime. They obviously had a significant increase in defense funding. You have Republican lawmakers, both visiting and talking publically about their support for the Baltic States. So what else is there for them to do? Is their perspective on things given that this is where the president clearly is and he's, according to one senator who told me, he's just ignoring his foreign policy team, who generally is well thought of on Capitol Hill.

Now, the counter to that is you've had Democrats, like Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer saying there are things you can do. You can hold immediate hearings with the national security team that was in Helsinki. You could ratchet up that sanctions regime that was enacted last year. You can do a lot around the Mueller investigation perhaps to try and underscore that Congress is serious about protecting that investigation.

[12:04:58] I think the bottom line here is this will likely go the way of a lot of the controversies we've seen over the last 15 or 16 months. Republicans unnerved. Republicans unhappy. Republicans acknowledging that this diverges strongly ideologically from where they stand on a specific issue. But in terms of will there be anything substantive they do on Capitol Hill, the short answer right now, at least, appears to be, no.

KING: More talking, no acting. We've seen that one before.

Phil Mattingly, excellent point. Appreciate the reporting.

With me here in studio to share their reporting and their insights, Eliana Johnson with "Politico," Carl Hulse of "The New York Times," "Bloomberg's" Sahil Kapur, and Mary Katharine Ham with "The Federalist."

To that point, we'll go inside the administration a bit later. Let's stick with the fallout first in -- particularly in the president's own party.

The president way outside the Republican mainstream. Way outside the Ronald Reagan legacy, if you will, of the Republican Party. Will they just complain? Will they just go home and say, I disagree, don't blame me for what the president did, or is there anything to come of this?

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, I think Phil is right, there are things that you could do. And hearings would be a fairly normal reaction to something like this. But you're also a little over three months from a midterm election that is going to be very important for the Republicans and I think they're looking at this and they say, well, if we lose the House and, you know, maybe even the Senate, we're going to be in real trouble. I just think the politics of the -- they need the Trump base. They're going to stick with him.

I do think this has raised the outrage to an entirely new level, but I don't -- I don't see the kind of action that you would normally anticipate with this kind of -- where the administration is so cleged (ph) from what you would normally consider the party position now.

KING: And one of the big questions is, is something all of our mothers taught us, I assume, which was, you learn from your mistakes in life. Will the president learn? Will the president process this?

I just want to read something. This is from Senator John McCain, home in Arizona, one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump's naivete, egotism and false equivalence and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. That's John McCain. You might call him an elder statesman in the neo conservative or the most hawkish Russia foreign policy -- Republican foreign policy establishment.

Here's Senator Marco Rubio, a younger voice, one of the president's 2016 rivals, say, what?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: What the president said today is not accurate. The intelligence community has assembled probably an unparalleled amount of evidence in regards to the Russian, not just efforts to interfere in 2016, but ongoing efforts to interfere in American society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: How do they -- how do -- he's -- the president is the leader of the Republican Party. How do they answer? Do they just walk away?

SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "BLOOMBERG": It's an unusually fierce level of criticism because this is uncharted waters for Republicans. This is not a decade-old tape, you know, that Trump had that was uncovered. This is not a red/blue culture clash. It's not a populist campaign promise like tariffs, all of which they didn't like but they were able to overlook. This is a matter of patriotism. Are you going to side with American intelligence agencies and are you going to stand up against a sworn enemy, or at least a serious adversary, of the United States?

Now, there is talk among Republicans in the House and the Senate according to our reporting of passing a symbolic resolution to support U.S. intelligence and to rebuke Russia. That kind of reflects the tone of party leaders right now. They want a generalized, you know, statements of support for American intelligence and rebuking Russia and Putin, accepting the fact that they meddled in. But beyond that, I agree with Carl, I doubt it simply given the fact that they need Trump's base to show up to hold on to the House and the Senate, that it will be much further than that. They don't want a confrontation with the president.

KING: And to do more, to call hearings, for example, would then turn the spotlight on the people they actually like and trust, Republicans on Capitol Hill. They like the secretary of state. He's a former House colleague of theirs.

Some of them were skeptical of John Bolton. Some of them might think John Bolton's more hawkish than them, more out there, but they respect him and they're actually grateful to have somebody with his experience around the president of the United States. Is that -- is that the problem for Republicans here that if you -- if you're trying to hold the president accountable, you're actually ending up spanking the people you like?

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": I don't think it's quite that. I think it's this, that President Trump ran against the Republican Party. He didn't -- really didn't run to be the leader of the Republican Party as it existed. The trouble for Republicans now is, as Carl said, three and a half months before an election, the president, who ran against the GOP, needs to be united with that party in advance of the election.

And the other thing -- so I think that, when you see the criticism of John McCain and Marco Rubio, I don't think that troubles this president at all. He looks at those guys and says, I defeated Marco Rubio on the campaign trail and John McCain has been a nemesis of mine from the early days of my campaign. And which one of us is president?

KING: Well, he does think that, no question about it.

But he also -- he's didn't -- he's not just the leader of the Republican Party. He's the president of the United States. And I think in the focus -- we'll get into this more later -- the focus on the election meddling answer has distracted from the bigger question of the president of the United States standing next to the president of Russia and just giving him a pass on everything. Not just Russia election meddling, on everything.

"The Wall Street Journal," the Trump first doctrine, "The Weekly Standard," another conservative publication, a punishable disgrace. Rich Lowry in "The National Review," Trump's Helsinki discord.

[12:10:04] One of the reasons they're upset is you have the president of the United States standing next to the president of Russia. There is nobody in the senior levels of the Trump administration, except for the president, who disputes the overwhelming evidence that Russia meddled in the election. The president doesn't like to talk about it because it somehow, in his mind, de-legitimatizes his victory, so he says things like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have great confident in my intelligence people. But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARY KATHARINE HAM, SENIOR WRITER, "THE FEDERALIST": Look, he's myopic, he's wrong, he's self-absorbed, he's completely incapable of separating anything having to do with Russia from attacks on his electoral victory. Which he has some right to be upset about in some cases. But this is a much bigger picture.

I think the problem for Republicans and the rebukes, I think particularly the strong ones, are good and necessary. The problem for them when it comes to action not words is that in fact the Trump administration's actions on Russia don't line up with the president's words. They have been tough in many cases, giving arms to Ukraine, kicking the consulate out of San Francisco, various indictments and various sanctions. So making up -- like adding to that pile is not necessarily -- it doesn't make up the gap, I guess, is the point. The problem is his rhetoric.

KING: Right.

This is Lindsey Graham, another, again, who's friendly with the president of late, but more of the hawkish voices. I think it was a bad day for the president. I think he can fix it. I think he needs to fix it. We'll see if he fixes it.

Again, to the points well made at the table, the president thinks, a, he's thinks he's better than the Congress. He doesn't think much of having a Congress, to be honest. To some of those voices he ran against or views them as long-time nemesis. So will the president, if he won't be suede by the voices of the speaker of the House, the voices of John McCain, the voices of Marco Rubio, the voices of just about every other Republican in Congress, will he be swayed by the voices on his favorite morning television program "Fox and Friends"?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: And I will say this to the president, when Newt Gingrich, when General Jack Keane, when Matt Schlapp say the president fell short and made our intelligence apparatus look bad, I think it's time to pay attention.

STEVE DOOCY, FOX NEWS HOST: Pretty much everybody and their brother, except Vladimir Putin, knows that there was meddling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Yes, I don't see a future secretary of state on that set.

But the president does tend to listen to them more than he listens to people with dozens of years of experience in, say, the military or foreign policy or politics. Will that matter?

HULSE: Trump derangement syndrome has spread very far evidently in this episode.

I think that could matter. (INAUDIBLE) you know when you starts to (INAUDIBLE) Newt Gingrich, who's been pretty tough on him. But they're -- but what they're saying is, you need to fix this. You need to correct it. Sort of like Charlottesville in that way. And that's -- I kind of anticipate at some point in the next few days that there will be a statement from the president.

KING: But the moment matters more than the cleanup. The moment -- the standing -- the optics -- the optics after Charlottesville, when the whole country is watching standing next to Vladimir Putin when the whole --

HULSE: Yes, it --

JOHNSON: He didn't go so great a job of cleaning up Charlottesville.

KING: Standing next to Vladimir Putin when the whole world is watching.

We'll continue the conversation.

Up next, the president's usual defenders, mostly missing in action after the Helsinki summit.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:17:36] KING: The White House today, well, you might call it duck and cover mode. The president, as we just talked about, under bipartisan fire here in Washington. Key U.S. allies around the world also flabbergasted by what the president said and by what he didn't say yesterday in Helsinki.

But grab the remote, click around, virtual silence. No one in the Trump inner circle or foreign policy team is out defending the president. That's because he didn't follow their Putin summit plan. The White House script did balance tough talk with a desire to improve U.S./Russia relations. But the president ignored it and instead went with the indefensible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said, they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: For a president whose brand with his base is built on strength --

HULSE: Right, well --

KING: Accepting -- accepting the word of a known cheat, thug, liar, criminal, forgive me, sorry, but that's who Vladimir Putin is, over Dan Coats, former Republican senator, your director of national intelligence. Not an Obama holdover. We could go through the other people in the Trump administration. Not a liberal by any means. And by laying it right out there like that. Well, Dan Coats says this, but Vladimir Putin said that.

HULSE: Well, I do think that that is a potential problem going forward for the president, because his base, he's the strong man. This is the person that they admire, the one who's willing to talk tough. And if there's a sense out there that the president was not tough, in this -- and which was pretty much the unanimous opinion except for perhaps the president himself, I mean that could actually hurt him. His whole brand is, I'm the guy who's willing to confront someone. But as it turns out, those are more the E.U. people that he's willing to confront than the -- than the Russians.

KING: And even them usually on Twitter, not to their face.

To this point, I just want to get to this. Dan Coats issued this statement after the president's press conference yesterday. We have been clear in our assessments of Russia meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.

Again, the president's name's not there, but that from the director of national intelligence and a Trump appointee is, boss, you're wrong.

[12:20:04] KAPUR: And this is how you know it's bad because red state Democrat Joe Donnelly, who's been looking for ways to work with the president, looking for reasons to support him, came out rebuked the president on this unusual -- obviously he's from Indiana. Dan Coats also from Indiana. He pointed that out.

I think that the broader -- the method to President Trump's madness, so to speak, I think in his mind is that he is going to these summits, his rhetoric throughout suggests that, you know, he went to NATO, he's taking credit for these countries raising their defense spending. They were kind of doing that before. But, you know, he's saying that it's because of him. On Russia, he said the relationship, it's been bad. It's been fixed now after he met with Putin.

KING: Right.

KAPUR: He did the same thing on North Korea. The nuclear threat is over after my meeting. The reality is not that simple. But I think he's trying to paint this own narrative and hoping that, you know, his allies will --

KING: But can he -- can he -- can he possibly believe it? We are focused, because the answer on election meddling was so, wow, that's what most of the commentary is about, but he also stood there -- Vladimir Putin criticized the U.S. missile defense assets in Europe. That was a perfect opportunity for the president to say, well, they're there because you bully your neighbors and they're there because the NATO alliance is very important. The president gave him a pass. Vladimir Putin stood there and acted like the voice of compassion on

the Syrian refugee issue. Where Vladimir Putin is Assad's co- conspirator in killing, murdering and then creating the Syrian refugee crisis and the president of the United States just stood there.

JOHNSON: You know, just to play devil's advocate, I don't think it was any secret to the Trump base or the people who voted for him that he was sympathetic to some autocrats in the world, in particular the Turkish president or the Russian president. He was clear he would stand up to Iran.

But I think that the president's base well knew he would behave like this. And I think they like the fact that he bullies the E.U. and NATO. He was clear about those things as well. And I think he's showing a perverse form of strength, which is his absolute intransigence to get off this Russia subject. He -- the force of the entire United States' political community is pushing him to say something different and he is completely stubborn.

KING: Some of Director Coats' friends are saying you should resign. Some of the former people who have held those jobs have said you should resign. There are newspaper editorials back home, Jon Huntsman, the ambassador to Russia, should resign.

I just want to show you, Ambassador Jon Huntsman, in the room with the president yesterday. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in the room with the president yesterday. The national security adviser, John Bolton, in the room with the president yesterday. The United Nation's ambassador, Nikki Haley, was not.

Normally, the day after a big summit, that team would be on television this morning promoting the president's success. Or if there was a misstep amid some success, they would be on TV cleaning it up. They are nowhere. Do we read anything into that beyond the fact that they can't support it? Any indication any of them will actually go?

HULSE: I mean -- go ahead.

HAM: Well, they -- they don't want to be in the business of amplifying this and there's not a great way to make an argument for it. So they're stuck.

And then you have the same question that you had earlier about Republicans and bringing forth people who you may still want in the administration to guide this process. These are the people who you may want in the administration to guide this process. And I would argue that maybe their line is the fact that his rhetoric does seem to exist in this weird bubble that is outside of the policies that they are making. And it's very different from the policy they're making. So perhaps that becomes their line in the future, if that policy actually changes, because, in the past, even though we see this outrageous stuff, which I do not advocate -- like the president's powers have words -- words have power regardless. But it doesn't actually affect the policy. It's a very strange place we're in.

JOHNSON: I think they almost don't want to call attention to the fact, say, hey, Mr. President, we've got a parallel policy track over here because he would object to it.

KING: It may not affect the policy in the short term. But if you look at the headlines in Russia, gloating and celebrating.

HAM: Right.

KING: And the headlines across Europe, it does affect trust in the president of the United States, whether his name is Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush. It affects the trust in the institution of the presidency of the United States. And on a big day, God forbid there is a big day, that can matter.

Up next for us here, many voters already thought the president was too soft on Russia. How his Helsinki display could possibly exacerbate that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:35] KING: One big question now is whether the president's Helsinki surrender impacts public opinion and the midterm election climate. Heading into the summit, there were already worries the president was too soft when it comes to Vladimir Putin.

Let's take a look at the numbers. These from a Fox News poll released a little bit earlier in the month. Among all registered voters, a little more than half, 53 percent, said the president's not tough enough when it comes to Vladimir Putin. Republicans tend to give the president a bit more slack. You see 57 percent of Republicans saying the president's handling the Putin relationship just right. Watch that number. Let's see if that changes post-Helsinki. Do Republicans sour on the president's handling of the relationship with Russia? Do they think he's tough enough?

So who would get the better deal from the summit? Remember, this is polling going into the Helsinki meeting. Twenty-four percent in this poll, the Fox News poll, thought President Trump would come out with the better deal from the summit. Thirty-one percent thought Vladimir Putin would get the edge in the summit. You see neither or same, 26 percent don't know, 18 percent. We'll see, again, look at these numbers now, how do people react after the summit, who do they think won? I bet those numbers are pretty convincing.

Here's another number that's important to watch as we go forward and as the Mueller investigation continues. Do you approve of how the Trump administration is handling the Russia meddling investigation? A majority of Americans disapprove, 36 percent approve. Republicans again tend to give the president more slack. Watch these numbers. Do the overall numbers change? Will the Republican numbers change? Yesterday, when given a chance, an open-ended question to criticize President Putin, to call him on the carpet for election meddling or anything else, the president, instead, chose to attack the special counsel.

[12:30:09] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I do feel that we have both made some mistakes.