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Trump Hosts Philippine President At The White House; Trump: "Didn't Know" DOJ Was Reaching Out To Ghislaine Maxwell; Trump Pushes Conspiracies About Obama, Accusing Him Of "Treason"; Trump Launches Into Trade About Obama After Question On Epstein; Fact Checking Trump's Claims About Obama And Russia Investigation; DOJ Says It Reached Out To Ghislaine Maxwell For A Meeting. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 22, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry. I have a question to President Marcos.

BONGBONG MARCOS, PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES: Yes, yes. I'm sorry. What was the question again?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was about whether having U.S. missiles hosted in the Philippines could be considered escalatory by China.

MARCOS: All of the -- what we consider part of the modernization of the Philippine military is really as a response to the circumstances that surround the situation around the South China Sea. And now the, what we used to refer to this Asia Pacific, which we have expanded now to the Indo Pacific.

And if we would certainly like in any kind of military spending, we would wish that that wasn't necessary, but it is. And so that is what we are doing. And as an adjunct to the question about the ammunition production. This is actually the United States is assisting the Philippines in what we call our self-reliance defense program, which is to allow us to be self-reliant and to be able to stand our own two feet, whatever the circumstances that occur in the future.

And that -- and the reason that we have all -- we have encouraged more interaction with the United States is because it is, again, it is necessary, and it is not just with the United States. It is with all our neighboring countries, and even countries as far afield as the Scandinavian countries the E.U. and so, this is an ongoing -- an ongoing process. And again, I will stress the point that we do this because we feel it is necessary.

(CROSSTALK)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Don't forget -- don't forget, just as tantamount to what you're asking. The Philippines were loaded up with ISIS and a lot of terrorists, and they were at very, very dangerous point. And during my administration, we went in, and we wiped them out, working with the Philippines, but we wiped them out. But if we didn't go in, I don't know what would have happened. I don't know who would be -- who would be your president right now, but we spent a lot of time and a lot of talent on going into the Philippines and wiping out terrorists. They had a tremendous problem during my administration, and we cleaned it up, we got them out, and now you really have a good, solid country again.

MARCOS: I believe so. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, I have to follow-up on housing question.

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have no tax on this, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. How important is that we have no tax on home sales capital gains to unleash the housing market?

TRUMP: Well, we're thinking about that, but would also unleash it just by lowering the interest rates. If the Fed would lower the rates, we wouldn't even have to do that. But we are thinking about no tax on capital gains on houses. And I'm very impressed that you asked that question because nobody knew that. How did you find that out? That's right.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: There's a leaker. There's a leaker.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wanted a very interesting world that we know more about, two people at a Coldplay concert just hours after that viral video, then we know of Thomas Crooks, one year after attempting to assassinate you. What is holding back the investigation on Thomas Crooks?

TRUMP: Well, they've reported to me, and they've told me things, and they really say they haven't found anything that was abnormal. I would say this, the secret service was very brave, because they, you know, they were right there, and they jumped on me. They made a mistake. They should have had somebody on that roof, and they should add communication with the local police, who also, I mean they did a very good job, but they made some mistakes.

And we have a whole different group of people now. I don't think any -- look, anything can happen, but I think we have the best people anywhere in the world right now, and I think they've learned. And, you know, they went into him very, you know, in great detail, they gave me the whole thing. And what can I do? They say that. It was just a nut job that was looking to do this.

And I spoke with the FBI, the new FBI. I spoke to the FBI, who was the old FBI. I wouldn't believe the thing they said, because the old FBI under Comey was crooked as hell. He was one of the most crooked. Everybody should read the Horowitz report. Unfortunately, Bill Barr didn't use it, but the Horowitz report, not appointed by me. It was a report on Comey and the FBI. It is one of the worst shots at a human being I think I've ever seen.

In fact, the New York Times did an editorial that was one of the worst editors I've ever seen about anybody that was about Comey. You had to go back and get, and Barr didn't use it because he didn't have the guts to use it or something happened, I don't know. Too bad. He went to Mr. Durham instead of you -- instead of the Durham, all that he uses the Horowitz report.

And I always felt badly for Horowitz, frankly, because he's a Democrat, I guess, he was appointed by a Democrat. But that report has gotten lost, and it shouldn't be lost. You should all go back. It should be mandatory reading. Go back and read the Horowitz report on Comey and his cronies. And you'll see exactly -- we're going to add that to all the stuff that we found. It just confirms it.

[12:05:00]

But what we found is even more so -- now we found absolutely. This isn't like evidence, or that this is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was sedacious, that Obama led, was trying to lead a coup, and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up. And, you know, I get a kick when I hear everyone talks about people. I never even heard of, it was this way.

No, no. It was Obama. He headed it up. And it says so right in the papers, got everything. Got everything. This is the biggest scandal in the history of our country, and it really goes on to even the auto pen, because it all relates to the same thing. It all started, the same sick minds. You have an auto pen, which is a tremendous where we don't have a president, we have an auto pen that signs everything.

I'll bet you sign everything. You don't have auto (inaudible) with everybody. Who doesn't send. You're the president of a country, but -- but it's all that whole thing, leading right up to the -- to the end of it is the auto pen. And the auto pen was used by people, and Biden knew nothing about it. Biden knew nothing about it. They were signing documents that he knew nothing about.

As an example, they released the unselect committee of liability. The unselect committee spent two years grilling everybody, and then they destroyed all the evidence. You know why? Because the evidence made them guilty. And he gave them all a pardon, the Cheney, all that, all the scum that was on the unselect committee, crying Adam Kinzinger and Democrats, and he gave them a pardon. Do you have something else? Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more thing on Adam Schiff. Director Fauci reports that Adam Schiff claims he lived in a one-bedroom apartment. How does a family of four? You're a developer, very successful developer. How does a family of four live in a one-bedroom apartment?

TRUMP: No. It looks like Adam Schiff really did a bad thing. They have them. Now, let's see what happens. It's not up to me. It's not up to -- I stay out of it purposely, but it's mortgage loan fraud. It's a big deal. He defrauded banks and insurance companies in the federal government, but it's very simple. It's mortgage loan fraud.

And you're right, that's a lot of people to live in a one-bedroom apartment, right? But he put it down. But he has a lot of other things far worse than that. So, no, Adam Schiff, they have him 100 percent on mortgage fraud. Now, if there's anybody else in this room except you, you would have no problem, but anybody else in this room, you'd have a problem. I'd have a problem. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, they're looking here yesterday in the Harvard case, would you allow Harvard to get their federal dollars back as a part of any agreement with the administration?

TRUMP: No. I'm not given -- Harvard's been given $7 billion. Can you believe it? 7 billion and we want money to go to all universities, not Harvard. Harvard got more than anybody else. They have $52 billion. They get huge tax incentives and tax breaks on that $52 billion but they have 52 billion, and they got 7 billion over a short period of time.

And we have a very hostile judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, a very, very hostile judge who knows exactly right from wrong, but you know, we don't -- we expect to win it on appeal. She hasn't given a decision yet, but she's very hostile, and she's been -- she was put by Barack Hussein Obama.

And generally speaking, anybody that does that it's going to -- we're going to have problems with. So, we don't expect to have -- we won the case yesterday. Anybody that was there that was a neutral would say we easily won the case. But a lot of the case and a big part of it's going to be how much money Harvard gets in the future. That's not part of the case, and they're not going to get very much.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- real times all negotiating about the reciprocal tariff. How far are we?

TRUMP: With whom?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: From the Philippines?

TRUMP: Philippines, oh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Are you from the Philippines?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, sir. I'm from the Philippines. How far it would be from achieving --

TRUMP: Well, it's tough. He's a very tough negotiator. So far, we're not there because he's -- he's negotiating too tough. In fact, I used to like him better than I do now. He's too tough. But we'll probably agree to something. But he is -- he's a strong negotiator. He loves your country.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why don't you call even the Philippines, sir?

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You talked a lot about the severe consequences that those who were involved in the Russia hoax must face your view, sir. What are the next steps now that these documents are out there and Tulsi Gabbard --

[12:10:00]

TRUMP: Well, the Justice Department would have to act. And we have a very competent, very good, very loyal to our country, person in Pam Bondi, very respected, and she -- it's going to be her decision.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Follow up to that, sir. Kristi Noem was in New York City visiting an off duty CBP officer who was allegedly shot this weekend by an illegal alien who came into the country during the previous administration.

TRUMP: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your message to any local leaders who continue to push sanctuary city policies after this nearly tragic incident?

TRUMP: So, the only thing I don't understand, because you like to understand things that we're all smart people and all. But why would they allow 21 million people into our country, unvetted, unchecked. You don't allow it. You wouldn't allow people in. He's tough. No, the country's run properly.

Biden and his group of thugs. And I don't think it was Biden. I think it was the people that surrounded that beautiful resolute desk right behind you. They allowed 21 million people, probably much more than that. And many of them came from jails and gangs and drug dealers and mental institutions, insane asylums, many of them are very sick. 21 million, probably 25 million, probably even more than that and we're getting them out. Many were murderers, as I said. They killed people. Many killed more than one person. Stone Cold murders.

I don't understand why they would have allowed that. There's only two reasons, the vote, they want voters. That's one reason. I don't think they would have done it for that because they cheat. You know, they're so good at cheating, they don't need that. But the vote, and the second reason is they hate our country. I think they hate our country. I actually do. And it's the biggest problem.

I mean, much of our time is spent with, you know, we have the strong -- strongest border anywhere in the world now, maybe even stronger than your border, if you can believe it. We have no people came in last month, zero, which is pretty amazing. I'm not even sure I can believe that, but liberals are the ones that do that calculation. So -- but we had no people come in. A year ago, we had hundreds of thousands of people come in, hundreds of thousands of people, and they floated, and it wasn't for the election. It would have been millions of people came in last year. So, millions of people prior to election time. They allowed millions and millions of people to come into our -- I mean, you saw it. They opened the gates. If you took an Alabama, LSU football game that holds 128,000 people. I was there, 128,000 people, and I like them, and they liked me.

But if you took that and doubled it, that's what used to flow into our country on a daily basis. It's not even believable. And we're getting them out and we're starting with the worst ones. And we had a man shot yesterday, a police officer whose great gentleman shot right here in the throat, probably won't be able to speak again. But he was brave, and he shot the other guy, and they ended up getting him.

And you saw the scene where his friend took him to a hospital and dumped him down on the sidewalk. The whole thing was -- the whole thing was crazy. But why would anybody do to our country what these Democrats have done, and honestly, we can never forget it. We can never forget it. What they have done, the damage that they've done to America is very, very sad. Thank you very much, everybody.

(CROSSTALK)

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: All right, welcome Inside Politics. I'm Manu Raju in for Dana Bash. You've been listening to President Trump, answer questions in the White House, alongside the Philippine president, who's in Washington to negotiate a trade deal. But the biggest headline out of the Oval Office involved the Jeffrey Epstein saga that has been dominating Washington for weeks.

The president was asked about the Justice Department's request to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's close friend and the sole living person convicted in the case. He said, quote, that sounds appropriate. But then quickly shifted to talking about former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Russia investigation.

I want to get right to CNN's Kristen Holmes, who is live for us at the White House. So, Kristen, the president really dove into a bunch of conspiracies. He accused Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of committing crimes and really tried to avoid the Epstein's scandal at all costs.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Manu. And the president and the White House find themselves in a situation that they aren't often in, which is they can't change the subject. One of the things that President Trump is good at is being on the offensive.

[12:15:00]

But when it comes to being on the defensive, trying to shift narratives. We saw this once during the campaign, particularly right after Joe Biden dropped out of the race, he cannot get away from this story. And so, you're seeing him throwing everything at the wall to try and change the subject there. But he was asked about this meeting between the Department of Justice that Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, put out on X earlier today, saying that the two of them -- excuse me, that the Department of Justice would be interested in meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. Any information that anyone has, the FBI and the DOJ want to hear it. He was asked specifically about that and brush it off. Here's his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Yeah. I don't know about it, but I think it's something that would be sounds appropriate to do, yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you have any concern that your deputy attorney general is your former attorney who would be conducting the interview?

TRUMP: No, I have no concern. He's very -- he's a very talented person. He's very smart. I didn't know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt. The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama, absolutely cold, Tulsi Gabbard.

What they did to this country in 2016, starting in 2016 but going up all the way, going up to 2020 of the election. They tried to rig the election, and they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, I think we're going to get to a fact check on your show later about those exact comments. But you can see there, President Trump trying to shift the narrative, and it's not the first time he's tried to do so in the last couple of days. And just on this meeting, one thing to keep in mind is that even with this sit down between the DOJ and Maxwell, potentially looming. We heard Todd Blanche saying, he imagined it was going to be soon. It is not appealing to that many of Trump's face.

They are asking a lot of questions, including Laura Loomer, the far- right activist who has really been on top of this story. She spoke to Alayna Treene earlier today and essentially asked the question. Why didn't they ask to meet with her before the memo was released on 4th of July weekend when they essentially said the case would be closed? Seems like this should have already taken place. Is the DOJ basically saying they have never met with Ghislaine Maxwell.

The reason why this is so critical is that Laura is -- yes, she might be a different sect of MAGA, but she speaks for a large group, and a group that is growing larger. These calls to be more transparent when it comes to Epstein, and to release more information, it doesn't seem, at least at this point, that this is going away anytime soon, Manu.

RAJU: All right. Kristen Holmes live for us at the White House. Thank you so much. I'm joined in the room by a terrific group of reporters, CNN's Isaac Dovere, Seung Min Kim of The Associated Press, Burgess Everett of Semafor, and Olivia Beavers of The Wall Street Journal. Good to see you all.

OK. Seung Min, you covered the White House. What do we make of the fact that the president, someone who can so assume a lot of media to say the very, very least, is on Truth Social through all sorts of all night long. He knows the Epstein saga is dominating Washington. And then this morning, his Justice Department makes a pretty big move. They asked, for to have some talks with Ghislaine Maxwell, who is the former girlfriend, a companion of Jeffrey Epstein. He says he knows nothing about it.

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP: Right, right. The media consumer in chief, well, he really has no other option than just tried to pivot the conversation. But the problem for President Trump right now is that the conversation is not going away. You have -- and we'll talk about this a little later, but you have the House of Representatives virtually shut down by this Epstein saga.

And the White House had been betting for some time that the president being the effective leader of the MAGA movement, would be able to kind of tell his supporters, let's move on. There's nothing to see here. But the problem for him is that it's not happening.

I was really struck by what Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, told us at the White House yesterday. She said it's his baby that he made. He knows what his supporters want. That has been true for many other instances when he sort of deviated from what the base had wanted. But it is not happening this time.

And I think it's because -- part of it is because this is a problem of his own making. These are conspiracy theories that he stoked during the campaign and his -- a lot of his supporters are saying, you know, what do you -- what are you now hiding that you claim during the campaign existed?

RAJU: I mean, is that going to be enough him to say, Russia investigation, Obama committed crimes, Adam Schiff committed crimes to turn his base into that, rather than have his base focus on Epstein, which has been a huge problem for this White House.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: It's an interesting strategy, I guess, to say, don't pay attention to this conspiracy theory. Here are five other conspiracy theories to pay attention to. And they're all even more specious, it seems like, than what we've seen as some of the Epstein stuff. The issue is not just what he's trying to get people to talk about instead, it's to me, it's all the things that they've done just in the last week, right?

[12:20:00]

If you are trying to tamp down, people talking about Jeffrey Epstein, then how do you explain firing the attorney -- the U.S. attorney in New York who was in charge of the case. Just in the past week. How do you explain this -- what Laura Loomer is complaining about. They've got Maxwell in prison. How do you explain the fact that Donald Trump, it's not just that he's talked about this, but that -- and that he's clearly paying attention to all this stuff. When it goes across Armenia.

He has made clear over and over again that he sees the Justice Department as essentially his own private law firm. To expect that the Justice Department in his administration, Nolan, led by a guy who was his personal attorney, just was freelancing here and he went to go talk to Holmes.

RAJU: And he didn't know anything about it. I mean, especially, you know, as you know, the questions are going to be, why didn't when they put out this memo a couple weeks ago, why did they talk with Maxwell before that? And that's going to be --

DOVERE: Why did they say, a couple months ago there were files, and now there are not files. They're caught up in all of the different explanations that they've given here or lack of explanations and keep on feeding things into it.

RAJU: And the old adage in politics, when you're explaining, you're losing. So, but I want to get a bit of a fact check of what Donald Trump just said at the White House. From CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale, who joins us now. So, President Trump made a lot of claims, Daniel, about former President Barack Obama. But what's the reality?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, President Trump has a long history of accusing former President Obama of committing crimes, while not specifying how exactly those crimes were supposedly committed. So, in this case, he kept saying Obama was caught. His name was on a document. I didn't specify what Obama was caught doing and did not say what document he was talking about. So, it's a bit difficult to fact check.

But I think there's a strong chance he's talking about something highlighted by a Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that refers to an email post-election in 2016 where the member of the intelligence community said the president had directed the intelligence community to come up with a new assessment of how Russia had attempted to use tools to intervene in the 2016 election.

So, two things about that. First of all, that is post-election. That is pre inauguration, but post-election, so it would not be an election rigging effort, as President Trump specified. And second of all, the president directing the intelligence community to assess Russian interference is simply not treason. There is very little there.

Now, Tulsi Gabbard has alleged that that new assessment that was produced after that meeting, she said, directly contradicted previous assessments. She did not prove that, and she is emphasizing the fact that that new assessment in January 2017, did not find that Russia -- sorry, that previous assessment did not find that Russia had altered the election results, altered vote counts.

Well, the new assessment didn't either. What the new assessment found was that Russia engaged in hacking operations, targeting Democrats, had engaged in influence operations online to attempt to alter the results in favor of Trump to hurt Clinton. That is not contradictory, as far as we know. And a GOP led Senate Intelligence Committee review of this found that these conclusions were correct and that there had not been political interference by the Obama administration. So, look, there continues to be analysis by this current administration of what happened back then, but what we have so far from Ms. Gabbard, from President Trump, simply does not come close to proving that President Obama committed any crimes here.

RAJU: Yeah. GOP led the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Marco Rubio then sat on that committee as well. All right, Daniel Dale, with the fact check for us from President Trump's remarks. Thank you for that. And up, next for us. Speaker Mike Johnson shuts down the House to end or delay GOP civil war of the Epstein files. We have the details, after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: We're following the breaking news. President Trump just weighed in on the Justice Department requesting to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's close confidant. She's currently in Florida, serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein's trafficking and abuse of children.

I want to bring in CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez. So, Evan, can you tell us what's behind this latest move?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, what you see right now, Manu, is an effort by the Justice Department to simply stay in line with or maybe stay ahead of members of Congress. Over the last few days, you heard members of Congress in the halls talking about giving Ghislaine Maxwell a limited use immunity in order for her to say what she knows.

And so today, what you saw, just before the -- one of the committees on the House side send a subpoena or authorized a subpoena of Ghislaine Maxwell. You saw the turn -- the deputy attorney general on Twitter saying that they were reaching out, trying to get some kind of a meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell to see what she knows.

Now, one thing we should make clear is that, you know, during the previous administration and the first Trump administration, this investigation was ongoing. There was a full effort to try to figure out whether there was any other people to charge in this case? And they came away with the decision that they couldn't find anything. That's what also the current Justice Department also did. They determined that there was no other cases, no prosecutable cases to bring as a result of this investigation.

So, I'm not sure what the deputy attorney general is saying when he says that no administration has tried to get the full story. We'll see, however, whether this meeting produces anything new. I should point out Ghislaine Maxwell is trying to appeal her 20-year sentence. [12:30:00]