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NYT: Trump Jr. Met Russian for Dirt on Clinton; Russian Lawyer Speaks Out About Trump Jr. Meeting. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 10, 2017 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer after being promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

[05:57:30] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This wasn't just anybody. This was an advocate and a voice for Vladimir Putin.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), RANKING MEMBER, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: We're going to want to question everyone that was at that meeting.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: When it comes to Russia, I am dumfounded. I am disappointed. And at the end of the day, he's hurting his presidency.

REINCE PRIEBUS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The president absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.

NIKKI HALEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: From a cyber standpoint, we need to get together with Russia. We need to tell them what we think should happen and shouldn't happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: WE might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, July 10, 6 a.m. here in New York.

Here's our starting line. Up first, President Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., changing his tune about his meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer last June. He's now saying that the woman told him she had dirt on Hillary Clinton. What does this encounter say about the Trump campaign's willingness to accept help from the Russians?

Meanwhile, President Trump backtracking on his push for a cyber- security unit with Russia after facing bipartisan criticism for proposing that these two nations cooperate to prevent election interference.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Adding to the president's Russia troubles, why did Mr. Trump say it is time to move forward on Russia despite the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence that Putin ordered the hacks on the 2016 election? Did President Trump buy Putin's denial when the two men met last week?

And the battle over health care heating up again. Congress is back in D.C. What will they get done? That question starts in the Senate. Can the GOP, the senators from the Republican Party get on the same page?

We have it all covered for you. There is news to discuss. Let's begin with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux live at the White House -- Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Well, news of this meeting with -- between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian national, of course, first reported by "The New York Times," raising some new questions about the connection between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, really going to the heart of the question over the federal investigation, whether or not there was collusion.

And there's also a focus, as well. Donald Trump Jr.'s changing explanation about why this meeting happened in the first place.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): "The New York Times" reporting that "Donald Trump, Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton" before agreeing to meet with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin at Trump Tower on June 9, two weeks before his father became the Republican nominee.

Trump Jr. admitting in a statement that "potentially helpful information was a pretext for the meeting," but insisting that nothing meaningful was provided, noting, "The woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense."

The president's son insisting that his father knew nothing about the meeting, a statement reiterated by Trump's legal team.

PRIEBUS: And it was a nothing meeting.

MALVEAUX: In Donald Jr.'s initial statement, released Saturday, he gave a different explanation for the meeting, explaining that they primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children and making no mention of Hillary Clinton. Both statements noting that the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort were also in attendance.

SCHIFF: I think we're going to want to question everyone that was at that meeting about what was discussed.

MALVEAUX: This as President Trump is facing scrutiny over his response to Russia's election hacks after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump walking back a tweet about forming an impenetrable cyber security unit with Russia to guard against the threat.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I am sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he's doing the hacking.

MALVEAUX: Facing backlash, President Trump reversing course 12 hours later, tweeting, "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a cyber-security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't. But a ceasefire can and did."

GRAHAM: It's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close.

MALVEAUX: President Trump also insisting Sunday that he "strongly pressed President Putin" about Russian meddling during Friday's meeting, but not indicating if he accepted Putin's vehement denial saying only, "I've already given my opinion."

TRUMP: I think it was Russia, but I think it was probably other people and/or countries, and I see nothing wrong with that statement. Nobody really knows.

MALVEAUX: This after the Russian foreign minister said Friday that President Trump heard and accepts Putin's denial, a claim the president's aides denied on Sunday after initially declining to answer questions about the matter during a gaggle aboard Air Force One.

PRIEBUS: The president absolutely did not believe the denial of President Putin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: President Trump yesterday declaring that now is the time to move forward, to work constructively with Russia, but that might be difficult. Congress is now in the process of finalizing a bill to slap additional sanctions on Russia for its meddling in the election. Administration officials quite frustrated, saying that President Trump needs more flexibility to negotiate with President Putin -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Suzanne, thank you very much for that.

So the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. is speaking about about their meeting. And she has a different take on what happened. CNN's Matthew Chance is live in Moscow with more. What are you learning, Matthew?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, we've actually reached out to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the name of the lawyer who is implicated in this, who had that meeting in Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., with Paul Manafort and with Jared Kushner. But she hasn't given us comment.

She has spoken, though, to "The New York Times." We're trying to get our own reporting from her, as well. We're hoping to get that to you later on today. She told "The New York Times" that whatever was discussed, it was

nothing to do with the presidential campaign. She said she's not a representative of the Russian government, has in fact, never represented the Russian government in court. And that she's never even discussed the issues that she was talking to those three members of the Trump campaign about with the Russian government.

So she's sort of categorically denying any suggestion that this is an example of the Trump team, as they prepare to go into that election campaign in the United States, were colluding with the Russian government in any way. And of course, that tallies very well with what the Russian government themselves say. They categorically deny any of these allegations of collusion or interference in the U.S. presidential election.

CUOMO: All right, Matthew, appreciate it. Thank you for the reporting.

Let's bring in the panel. A lot to talk about. CNN political analysts Maggie Haberman and Jon Avlon; and CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd. Maggie contributed to the reporting about Donald Trump Jr., this story.

Thank you for being with us this morning, Maggie. What does it mean? What are the highlights for you?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The highlights are a couple of different things. You had Don Jr., who is the president's oldest son, meeting with this Russian lawyer at the request of an intermediary. He invited Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort to join. This was on June 9 in 2016, which was a pivotal moment for Donald Trump. He had captured the nomination by winning enough primaries and securing it loosely, but he was facing a delegate slog going into the convention. And they were very focused on that.

[06:05:11] What the -- what Trump initially said, Don Trump initially said, is that this meeting was strictly to talk about adoption and Russian adoptions. The story then changed. And then it became, actually, there was also this discussion initially about opposition research against Hillary Clinton.

Don Jr. did not join government, so his disclosure requirements are not the same as Jared Kushner, who did join the government and whose initial reporting form on his foreign meetings was blank. He has been updating that. I think he has greater implication in this.

But I think the main problem for everyone is that the story changed. I think that, if they had just said initially, "Look, this is what the meeting is about, and it did include this issue about Hillary Clinton initially. And then this woman changed," which is what the story said yesterday, "and she switched topics; it was almost a curveball," I think that would have been mosh understandable. But the optics of it are problematic.

CAMEROTA: John, obviously, all campaigns do opposition research on their rivals. JON AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

CAMEROTA: What makes this one different?

AVLON: They're usually not outsourced to a hostile foreign power. I mean, you can't say that loudly enough.

Look, I've participated in campaigns. And, yes, it's perfectly normal to do opposition research. It's totally abnormal to have foreign governments, particularly Russia at a time when they're not only trying to hack our election, we find out subsequently, on this campaign's behalf, have so many connections with this campaign, the extended family, so to speak, and to have them be denied.

I mean, just look at the cadence of this reporting. Never met with Russians in the context of this campaign. To earlier this weekend it was clearly about adoption. I mean, this is as close to apple pie as you can get in the Russian context. To "Maybe we were shopping negative information about Hillary Clinton," which would show a degree of interaction with the Russian government in a campaign context. That's a big deal. That also just one more example of the stories of the Trump senior staff not lining up with reality.

CUOMO: All right, so...

CAMEROTA: Want to read the first statement?

CUOMO: Yes. Now, also, the timing here is important. All right? This was in June. This was before the e-mail dump. This was before all of the Russian collusion had hit the papers. That's important for people to remember. So this may not have been on their radar.

But Donald Trump Jr. said earlier that he had never met with anybody. And he said it; he was on the record. He was loud and clear about it. And when he was asked, "Are you sure that nobody was trying to shop information to you guys? That maybe they were trying to reach out, solicit you?" Never, never, no, nothing. And all along he must have known about this meeting.

Now, his first statement, just to kind of clear the record here -- let's put it up -- about what this meeting was: "It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance but was told -- but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting beforehand."

CAMEROTA: Now, can we stop right there? That's strange, right? You don't know the name of the person you're going to be meeting with, but you bring Paul Manafort with you, the campaign manager, and Jared Kushner?

HABERMAN: It was, as I said before, at a moment in the campaign. They were preparing to fire Corey Lewandowski. He was the campaign manager at the time. Don Jr. was very involved in that. Jared Kushner was ascendant in the campaign at that moment. So was Paul Manafort. They were both consolidating power. So that lends less credence to the idea that this was just a casual meeting about adoption for which you invited Jared Kushner.

AVLON: Yes. And also, you know, if the campaign -- in the campaign context, if you get a random tip about possible opposition research, you send a loyal, trusted, third-tier staffer. You don't get the troika who's about to take over the campaign and tooting the brother- in-law and the son. And the ascendant, soon-to-be campaign manager's got detailed dealings with the Russians via Ukraine. So I mean, this just all just -- it's a terrible story because it lines up with the narrative, reinforces the narrative, rooted in reality that this campaign had inappropriate contact repeatedly with the Russians.

CUOMO: Now, the real problem here is the change in the story, not just because it points to potential lying about what happened, but it's the implication of what this meeting was really about.

The statement becomes this.

CAMEROTA: OK. "After pleasantries" -- this is what he says now. "After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information."

So that's the second statement after "The New York Times" confronted with him what they had learned. So that changed from this being about adoption to actually being about opposition research.

Phil Mudd, your thoughts on all of this?

[06:10:00] PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I think there's a couple interesting aspects. You're talking about the substance of what happened, Alisyn. As I look at this, having been at the FBI, there's another piece of this that I find fascinating. And that's lying to a federal officer.

Determining collusion, especially when you can't talk to the Russians, piece, I think is going to be difficult. I can't speak for the legal standard, but I've read the statute. I think it's going to be tough.

Here's where this gets really interesting and why this investigation is so complicated. Let's assume that federal investigators are looking at phone, e-mail contacts among these people. But the more significant piece, let's assume they're interviewing dozens of people.

If you're a federal investigator, a couple of things happen in that circumstance. One, you're collating the stories, and we're seeing now a year later that the stories don't line up. When the stories don't line up, you have a simple question, Alisyn: Did they tell the truth during the initial interviews with the federal investigators? If they didn't, and someone else tells a different truth, that's a federal violation. That's what's called a 1001 charge. And these guys are vulnerable to a federal violation and a charge from the special counsel, Robert Mueller, if they didn't tell the truth.

CUOMO: Well, you'd have to have them on the record with the FBI, telling the first story. It wouldn't just be a public account.

CAMEROTA: Meaning, you can lie to "The New York Times" and not be in trouble.

CUOMO: That's true. But my point is we've just seen stories by a couple of people. I'm going to assume they're interviewing and reviewing documents related to many dozens of people. It's going to be impossible for all those people to coordinate their statements. So if we see just in this sliver of the story that people's stories aren't lining up, I'm going to almost guarantee you that when you start interviewing dozens of stories. Somebody is lying.

HABERMAN: I think that's an really important point. I don't want to say that somebody is lying, and we know that they're lying to federal investigators, because, to be clear, we do not know that.

CUOMO: And these statements were not to the FBI. These were public statements.

HABERMAN: Correct. But I think that as this -- as this goes along, the more that you are seeing various pieces of this puzzle, over the weekend you had the spokesman for the president's own legal team issue an entirely different statement, actually lined up more of what the second statement was from Don Jr. about what this meeting was.

CUOMO: Why do you think Don Jr. added the second part, which is what all this stink is about? All of this goes away if it was just another meeting with another person. And why was Jared and Manafort there? "Well, they're a tight-knit group, and that's how they were doing it."

I'm saying, you could plausibly explain all of this away until he changed the story about, "Oh, and by the way, the reason I went was because they supposedly had some dirt on Hillary working with the Russians," whatever it was. Why do you think he added that?

HABERMAN: Because "The Times" learned additional information, and it was not -- no longer sustainable that the story was simply that this was about adoption.

CAMEROTA: Also, isn't it because Jared Kushner had to disclose this?

HABERMAN: I think Jared Kushner has disclosed a meeting.

CUOMO: Yes, he had to disclose.

HABERMAN: I don't know that he had to disclose the nature of the meeting. I don't know...

CAMEROTA: Give us the context, Jon. In your mind, how big of a development is this? AVLON: I think it's a significant development, because for the first

time, it shows that the campaign is dealing with Russians who are peddling opposition information about the election, right?

But also the lawyer they met with is somebody who has lobbied on behalf of the appeal of the Magnitsky Act whose primary client is somebody who's had assets frozen in many different countries. And so, you know, the sort of thicket of relationships surrounding, you know, the Russian community, big investors with shady legal backgrounds and this lawyer in particular, there's no way it's not troubling.

CUOMO: Right. Except that she actually helps Don Jr. on this. She says, the lawyer in question here, "I didn't say anything about the campaign. I never worked with the Kremlin. I don't have anything to do with any of this."

Magnitsky Act But he says they did it.

CUOMO: That's the interesting part. And this is the first time that we see why investigators would be looking at whether or not the Russians were trying to get involved with the campaign. It doesn't mean that the campaign was dirty or wanted to collude, but that the Russians were looking for opportunities.

HABERMAN: They were also looking for opportunities, I think, is the key point. You are dealing with a group of people, with the exception of Paul Manafort, who have never been involved in politics before. They had never done a campaign before. And they do, just to be completely fair here, they do, particularly Don Jr., have a habit of meeting with practically anybody. This is not a huge surprise.

CAMEROTA: Context, very quick.

AVLON: Yes, there's an old American aphorism by Mark Twain that said basically, you know, "Always tell the truth, because I don't have the memory to be a good liar."

The reason these stories aren't lining up and keep falling apart and people contradict each other is because there are a lot of people not telling the truth.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you all very much for all this developing story.

Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing for a cyber-security unit with Russia to stop election meddling; then, he did an about-face, tweeting, "It can not happen." Why the reversal? We discuss that with our panel next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:47] CAMEROTA: President Trump now backtracking on his proposal to create a cyber-security unit with Russia. The president faced major backlash from lawmakers on both sides early Sunday, tweeting this, "Putin and I discussed forming an impenetrable cyber-security unit so that election hacking and many other negative things will be guarded."

But hours later, he changed his tune to this: "The fact that President Putin and I discussed the cyber-security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It cannot, but a ceasefire can and did."

CUOMO: What happened between these two tweets?

CAMEROTA: There was backlash.

CUOMO: Yes, there was.

CAMEROTA: Let's bring back Maggie Haberman, Jon Avlon and Phil Mudd. So what is this about, Maggie?

HABERMAN: I mean, as the president is fond of saying, you're never going to really know. But what seems to have happened is that there was an enormous amount of criticism, bipartisan criticism that you would be pairing with the people who, according to the leading national intelligence agencies of this countries, were involved in hacking e-mail accounts and trying to meddle in the election.

What also happened was the fresh reporting from "The Times" about this meeting, that Trump's son and son-in-law and then campaign chairman had with a Russian lawyer, possibly, about you know, clearly there was some offer made about opposition research. I think all of those factors combined, made the president realize that they ought to walk -- he ought to walk this back. But once again, you had his own aides sort of walk the plank defending it.

[06:20:14] In the meantime, you had Steve Mnuchin, one of his cabinet appointees, go out and say that this is a significant achievement that the president should be credited for. And then the president hours later, tweets, "I" -- you know, "J.K. I'm just kidding. I'm not serious about this." And that is -- this is another example of creating his own mess, and it's not really clear to what end.

AVLON: It's a transparently bad, facepalm bad idea out of this -- out of this meeting, right? You're going to -- in the wake of Russians trying to influence the election, you're going to do a cyber-security unit and get in bed with them, and then, sir, campaign surrogates come out -- or sorry, administration surrogates come out, including Nikki Haley trotting out, you know, "Godfather" references, you know, "Keep your enemies closer." And of course, Steve Mnuchin comes out and tries to defend it as an accomplishment of our, you know, our dear president, and then the president totally undercuts it. And it is a microcosm of the administration.

But part of the question is how did such a transparently bad idea get elevated to the G-20 in the first place?

CUOMO: Well, that's assuming that it did. You know what I mean?

AVLON: I think...

CUOMO: This came from the president. This was a tweet from him. You know, there wasn't anybody from the NSA in there recording it. There's no objective take on it. The Russians didn't say this was in the offing. This is just something that the president may have decided to tweet to show some kind of progress and ran away from it. But there is something that...

AVLON: You really think the president made that up?

CUOMO: Look, all I know is he unmade it really fast.

AVLON: He did unmake it...

HABERMAN: I don't blame Chris for questioning...

CUOMO: Because look, nobody else would have come up with this idea. You have Marco Rubio's tweet. From him to Lindsey Graham, to John McCain, everybody thinks that this is what you think it is, which is an odd idea.

CAMEROTA: It's worth -- I think it's worth nothing, because they spoke in such colorful terms. So Marco Rubio's tweet there: "Partnering with Putin on a cyber-security unit is akin to partnering with Assad on a chemical weapons unit."

CUOMO: That's why it was an insensitive way to put this joke.

CAMEROTA: OK. But listen to McCain and Adam Schiff, who -- both sides of the aisle, who both also criticized it. Listen to this.

CUOMO: Wait for it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCAIN: I am sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he's doing the hacking. I mean, it's -- it's..

SCHIFF: We might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow. I don't think that's an answer at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So they put a finer point on it, as well.

Phil Mudd, what are your thoughts on why this reversal and why the president thought it would be a good idea to partner with Vladimir Putin on cyber-security?

MUDD: Boy, if you can figure that out, Alisyn, you're a better man than I am.

CUOMO: Which I tell you all the time.

MUDD: You have the president walk out of Mar-a-Lago, which we know, speaking with the Chinese premiere, saying, "After ten minutes, I realized North Korea is really complicated." He said the same thing about health care. He said the same thing about resolving the Palestinian issue. And now he walks out with the Russians and says, "Well, maybe it's not a great idea to talk to a spy service about coordinating against spying in America." Let me give you a defense of this so-called deep- state conspiracy. If he had come back to Washington and told the National Security Agency, the FBI and the CIA, people who hold the positions I once held, "Hey, we're going to develop a cooperative relationship with the Russians on cyber-security," they would have looked at him and said,, "That's great, we'll try that," and nothing would have happened.

I can't figure out how this idea came up in the first place. But don't be under any illusion that, if he came back and confirmed it, anybody would have done anything. People like me would have slow- rolled him.

CUOMO: All right. Look, we have two big things that have come home to roost here over the weekend. Functional.

The first one is, let's look back for one second, because "I think we've missed a big point." Just to be very clear, it wasn't Don Jr. having some bout of recollection or some crisis of conscious and deciding to change his story. This is the White House. These were advisers to the president that wound up going to "The New York Times" and adding details about a meeting that had been had that changed the narrative.

HABERMAN: I don't want to get into details of how...

CUOMO: Well, what I'm saying is the perspective of this was the story. I went, and I had a meeting. Jared didn't report it, and did kind of report it. Manafort's never said anything about any of this.

Don Jr. says it comes out that there was a meeting. OK? "The Times" gets the reporting. I don't want to know your sources. I'm saying you get the reporting.

When advisers talked about this, it gave legs to the suggestion that, yes, there's more to this. There has to be -- there is more to this than we know right now. That, in and of itself, is a very unusual dynamic.

HABERMAN: I'm going to dispute your characterization of how the events unfolded, what -- without getting into sourcing or specific methods. One thing that was very notable was, I think it was shortly after it came out, there was a statement from Mark Corallo, who represents the president's lawyer; and that statement made a reference to, you know, offers of this -- possibly this was a setup, or something like that, or maybe that was an add-on.

[06:25:15] That was, I think, part of what tipped the idea that there was more here, and then there was additional information that "The Times" got and that approached people with; and then that was how this additional statement came out.

It was not a crisis of conscience. What you are seeing, as I mentioned, with Mark Corallo, who represents the president. You have someone representing Jared Kushner. You have somebody representing Don Jr.

And then you have somebody representing the president. And this goes back to something we were discussing earlier, which is different statements from different people. And that is where you start to have a problem.

CUOMO: And that's my point. You put it much better, thank you. That's why you're at the table, Maggie, is that you have this failure of coordination that winds up leading to new information. You have the same thing on the meddling. You have the president who, for obvious political purposes -- and we've told you this before, and you know it by now yourselves instinctively.

When he hears Russian interference, meddling, hacking, propaganda, whatever it is, no matter how remote from him it is, he says, "Bad for me." And that has worked. And when we give you suggestions of what the legitimate questions are, he says fake. And that works for his base.

Now he went into the meeting with the Russian president. He had to own the reality from the intelligence community, stick it in Putin's face, which all his people want to say he did. But he can't have done it that way, because he just questioned it the day before. Now that has come home to roost, also, which is where you have these people trying to say two things at once. One is, he went to Putin, he looked him right in the eye, and he said, "I know you meddled, buddy. And it's not happening on my watch."

CAMEROTA: But that's not how he said that.

CUOMO: But that's what they want to say.

CAMEROTA: He said, "So, this election meddling..."

CUOMO: No, no, no, he went at it first. He went at it long. He went at it multiple times. He wanted to see the look in his eye. And when Putin denied it, he didn't believe it. But how does that square with him saying the day before maybe it was Russia, maybe it wasn't.

CAMEROTA: No, he said, "Did you do it?" One of the reports was...

CUOMO: "Not me."

AVLON: Look, it doesn't square, because it doesn't square. You know, the president's statements to date in public, when he's...

CUOMO: The day before.

AVLON: Even the day before, he's sort of blowing it off. Then there starts to be a narrative about a strong leader looking out of the -- after the national interests but then deciding, really, that we're going to agree to disagree and really all move on, because this really, you know, is an intractable problem.

The problem is what you just said, is that the president -- the standard seems to be, "Is it good for me?" And the standard should be, "Is it good for America?" That's where we keep falling apart.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much. Obviously, we'll be covering this all morning long.

CUOMO: All right. Another major issue unfolding right now you've got to keep your eye on. Celebrations in Iraq. Why? The liberation of Mosul. But you still have pockets of ISIS fighters remaining. So what is the situation on the ground? Is the war over? And, if so, what is the next chapter inside Mosul, next.

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