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Inside Politics

Travel Ban Stay Remains; Trump Slams Court Ruling; Challengers of Ban Hail Victory; Republicans Face Backlash at Town Halls; Flynn Talked Russia Sanctions. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 10, 2017 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] MATTHEW MILLER, FORMER AIDE TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: He needs to prove that he is going to actually enforce that law, and I think the burden is on him.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we - well, we will - and we will watch, along with you. Matt, thanks so much.

MILLER: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Thanks so much for joining us AT THIS HOUR. "Inside Politics" with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Kate.

And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Happy Friday.

President Trump vows to repeal, but a big loss in court means his travel and refugee ban remains on hold. That's a huge early setback.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a political decision that we're going to see them in court, and I look forward to doing that. But it's a decision that we'll win, in my opinion, very easily.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Plus, a big day on the world stage for the president. There's a swirling controversy around his national security advisor, and Japan's prime minister is at the White House hoping President Trump is a very different man than candidate Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At some point we have to say, you know what, we're better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in it North Korea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And who says Washington isn't consistent? Another long night of Democratic complaints. Then, another party line vote to clear a key Trump cabinet pick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: What Tom Price essentially wants to do is to get us into the way back machine and return us to a time when corporate insurance companies were calling the shots in our country, back to a time when a person could go bankrupt because of medical bills, back in time when Americans had to choose between paying the rent and paying for a life-saving medical treatment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Senator Markey with the perfect accent there.

With us to share their reporting and their insights, Laura Meckler of "The Wall Street Journal," Ryan Lizza of "The New Yorker," Matt Viser of "The Boston Globe," and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson.

Now, President Trump and Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, scheduled to meet with reporters at the White House next hour. We'll keep an eye on that event.

The president no doubt will be asked about a major loss at the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which in a 3-0 ruling late yesterday decided to leave in place a lower court order that blocks the administration from implementing its travel ban. Among other things, the three judges said, quote, "the government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack on the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the executive order, the government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all. We disagree."

So that leaves us where we are today. The administration says all options are on the table. They said that in another court hearing in Virginia today where there's another case against the president's travel ban. All options on the table means they could appeal this ruling to the full Ninth Circuit to see if the full panel of judges would reverse it. Unlikely to happen when you have a 3-0 decision. They could go straight to the Supreme Court and try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. Or some people say, Ryan, they could just pull it. Pull the executive order and say, you know what, we're not going to fight this, we're going to write a new one.

RYAN LIZZA, "THE NEW YORKER": If you look at the commentary from conservative legal scholars last night, there is a great deal of fear that they have gotten themselves into a war with the courts that they don't want to pursue anymore. In other words, the argument is Trump pulled the executive order, writes one that's more legally solid, that doesn't open you up from some of the legal challenges from the left, that doesn't give, for instance, potentially due process rights for non-American immigrants, that doesn't, you know, cut the president's ability to have great sway over the visa and immigration policy. They read that opinion last night and they said, maybe this is a battle that we don't want to pursue. So I would watch for that. Now that Jeff Sessions is the attorney general and the Justice Department is more fully staffed, watch to see if they review it and decide, pull this order, that case will then become moot, and write a more bulletproof order.

KING: Now, that's a - that's a more nuanced and more cautious, say, hey, you know, if we take this to the Supreme Court and lose, we might set a precedent that we don't like. Not only for our administration, but for conservatives going forward.

However, that's not the president's instinct. The president's instinct is - is to be pernicious (ph). When he loses a round, he punches back. He tweeted last night, "remarkably in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother to cite the statute." He's mentioning a (INAUDIBLE) blog there. "A disgraceful decision," the president goes on to say. He also tweeted, "see you in court. The security of our nation is at stake."

So, the president's instinct is to fight, which is understandable. It's an understandable instinct if you think you're right. But will he?

LAURA MECKLER, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, we'll see. I mean I think that that's probably the de facto position that he will take is to continue to appeal this case. The problem, you know, makes sense on one level to say you're going to rewrite the executive order, but - and there are some things that they could fix, but they're - I don't think it's going to be that simple to write an executive order that achieves the same thing that he sought to achieve here and still get by what the Ninth Circuit said because these issues of due process - what they said essentially is that due process rights aren't just for American citizens, they're also for anybody who's in this country. So if you're someone who's here on a visa - not a green card, but just a plain old visa, which is a temporary right to be in the United States, and suddenly the administration is saying, no, you can never come back in the country. You can't leave and come back. There's no due process rights for you. Then that's - it's going to be kind of hard. Now, of course, the administration can, at any time it wants, stop issuing new visas perhaps, but it's - it's going to be hard.

[12:05:04] KING: But in the case of the executive order, if you read the decision, part of it is that the judges disagree with the administration's position, but part of it the judges are clearly trying to make the point that they think this was sloppy.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes.

KING: It was not rolled out well.

MECKLER: Right.

KING: And it was not done well. So then - then you get into the argument, do you just pull it back and rewrite it and say, take two -

HENDERSON: Right.

KING: But how - but that's a legal decision you would make, and a process decision you would make. But in terms of personality and politics, of suffering, if he does - if he doesn't fight this one, will the president be perceived as losing big out of the box?

MATT VISER, "THE BOSTON GLOBE": There was also - I mean the decision - unanimous decision was point by point striking down everything that the administration had laid out. There was no room for compromise in the judges -

KING: Let me interrupt you. Just one second. We see the president of the United States there. He's greeting the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, outside of the West Wing there. Always a beautiful shot. Someone pulls up to the White House. We just watch the greeting.

See them heading into the White House now for the Oval Office and their talks. Not the first time these two men have met. It's the first time they will meet as - with Donald Trump as president. Prime Minister Abe came to the United States during the transition to try to begin the relationship there. So we'll watch this as it plays out. We'll talk more about it (INAUDIBLE).

I'm sorry, back to the executive - court order.

VISER: So the - I mean the other thing in here was the Muslim ban.

HENDERSON: Right.

VISER: I mean the court cited Trump's own rhetoric on that. That he was calling it a Muslim ban. That Rudy Giuliani, others who were involved with this, were calling it a Muslim ban. So I mean that's the other thing that makes it difficult for Trump to square is his past rhetoric and the way that he's referred to this executive order.

KING: And that was part of the interesting legal argument because the government was arguing that so-called legislative intent. That, you know, when Congress passes laws, and they end up in courts all the time, they go back to the debate on the Senate floor, the debate in the committee about what - what was the legislative intent of this? But what the government was saying here is you can't say the candidate says, the candidate intent, because candidates routinely throw their promises out the window. That you can't go back to pre-inauguration. But the court here clearly was saying - and some of the things Rudy Giuliani said were during the transition and after.

But let's just remind people, this was during the campaign. Now, the administration says this is not a Muslim ban, but the court considered statements, including this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countries representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

In addition to screening out all members of the sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles, or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, again, the government says that was pre-inauguration. You shouldn't count that in. It seems from this decision that had they handled the roll-out differently -

HENDERSON: Right.

KING: And had they had the secretary of homeland security give a briefing on exactly what they meant, they might be more protected from that, in a sense that there was no government record of what the president meant in this order, just the order itself -

HENDERSON: Right.

KING: Which a lot of people found confusing.

HENDERSON: In part of the order, in part of the president's own words, they suggested that they wanted to give Christians, religious minorities, in their own, you know, religious minorities, Christians, in Muslim majority countries, preference. It also - you know, we've heard from this White House, listen, don't pay attention to what this president says or what he tweets, but in this order, of course, it very much came back to haunt him.

Something else that he's saying, since this order has been up for review, is that there seems to be some very serious, serious national security crisis that this order is meant to address. So if that's the case, and the response is "see you in court," which could take weeks, then it's sort of -

KING: That's generous. This could take months.

HENDERSON: Yes, yes, it could take months. So the idea that he has months, he's going to take months to address what he is saying is this urgent crisis sort of doesn't make sense.

MECKLER: Well, that was the other interesting thing about the court case of this saying, that you're saying this is an urgent national security threat. We don't see it.

HENDERSON: Right.

MECKLER: We don't see - this was, you know, Barack Obama was president, you know, three weeks ago and nobody felt like we were in urgent risk and that - and I think the court sort of struck down one of the main points - another main point that the Trump White House had made, which is that this is so urgent that we have to get this out right this minute and they were saying, we don't - we don't buy that.

KING: Right. And in the political debate, Trump critics have accused him of exaggerating, of using hyperbole, of using fear mongering some critics have gone on and said.

MECKLER: Yes.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: That he's trying to elevate this. That it's pretty much the same intelligence as you had in the final days of the Obama administration. Yes, this is a problem. Yes, this is an issue. Yes, you campaigned on toughening the vetting and having a stricter policy so got about doing that, but go about doing that in the traditional government way, not with this action out of the block.

VISER: I think it shows, too, that words matter.

HENDERSON: Yes.

VISER: You know, I mean, and Trump has overcoming that so many times. There were no - there weren't consequences. Voters didn't punish him for some of his words during the campaign. But, you know, and there was this talk about literally or figuratively, how do you take him? A court's going to take him literally, you know? They can't interpret and have, you know, figurative conclusions about Donald Trump's language. So this is one of those first times where he's really sort of punished or there's been sort of consequences for that rhetoric.

[12:10:11] KING: And a lesson out of the box. We were talking about this ban, banning refugees and putting this temporary ban. They say it's a pause. The administration calls it a pause on immigration from these seven majority Muslim countries, but it's also, besides the specifics of this issue, a huge test of his executive powers. And this president, out of the box, has tried to use executive powers. In court, the administration says, this appeal, listen here, this is the attorney general of the state of Washington. His critics are now emboldened. The states attorneys general are lined up to fight, not just on this issue, but on a bunch of other issues. Listen to Bob Ferguson, he says, let's keep fighting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB FERGUSON, WASHINGTON STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL: We have seen him in court twice, and we're two for two. That's number one. And, in my view, the future of the Constitution is at stake. That's at stake as well. The president does have a choice. He can continue to fight this or he can tear up this executive order and start over. I would strongly encourage him to consider the latter course of action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I mean this is on the signature - a signature issue of the Trump campaign and now the Trump presidency, but this is going to happen time and time again, especially if he keeps using executive actions and he's going to be challenged in the courts, and this could get interesting, and we could test the limits of his power pretty quickly.

LIZZA: Absolutely. I mean we're seeing the traditional institutional restraints starting to kick in on a president that wants to be more aggressive, states attorneys generals suing them, the courts taking action. And I thought - I thought one of the most important lines in that decision last night was the Trump administration argued that the court didn't even have the right to review this. HENDERSON: Right. Yes.

LIZZA: Right, reviewability was the one section of the opinion. They said, you don't - I have such broad powers when it comes to national security that the courts can't even touch this. And the court basically laughed at that argument and said that the government misunderstands the basic constitutional structure of America if it thinks that.

HENDERSON: Yes.

LIZZA: So just a pretty serious rebuke.

KING: Right, revenge of the so-called judges I guess we could call that.

But in his tweets - I say that somewhat flippantly, but in what he has said after, the president has been more careful. He called the ruling a disgrace. He says he's going to fight it, but he has not attacked the courts - the judges themselves.

LIZZA: Yes, he's reigned that in.

HENDERSON: Yes. Yes. And I'm sure some of that - you know, judges are human.

KING: Right.

HENDERSON: I'm sure some of that weighed into their decision, wanting to really have a full-throated rebuke of this order in this presidency. Essentially saying that he didn't understand the sort of separation of powers and the judicial branch can check it. And, you know, the thing is, we saw some of this with Republican attorneys generals against Obama too in his -

LIZZA: His own immigration executive order.

HENDERSON: His own immigration executive order.

KING: Right. Right.

MECKLER: Exactly.

HENDERSON: Obamacare, of course. And so we're seeing that again with these Democratic votes in states like Washington.

KING: Right.

HENDERSON: We'll see it from New York as well and Virginia.

KING: All right, hang - hang tight one second.

Up next, members of Congress encounter fed up, fired up constituencies demanding answers when they go home. It's feisty out there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:17:14] KING: Welcome back.

Moments ago we showed you the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, going into the White House. The White House pool has just left the Oval Office. You'll see the tape on the bottom of your screen in just a minute. We're told the two leaders just had a greeting inside the Oval Office and a hug. They didn't speak on any issues of substance, so we're not going to take the audio of that tape, but you will see it when it feeds from the White House pool on the bottom of your screen. A little glimpse inside the Oval Office as the president has that meeting.

It is Friday here in Washington, which means that's get-away day for members of Congress on Capitol Hill. The Senate was here late, though, past midnight again last night, this time to confirm President Trump's pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services. That is Congressman - soon to be former congressman - Tom Price. Price now will be the point man on repealing, replacing or repairing, if you want to choose that word, it's been around a lot this week, Obamacare. That solution is currently MIA, or a work in progress, depending on whom you ask. But constituents back home in districts across the country, listen in, they're fed up. They want to know what's going to happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CROWD (chanting): (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That - there are the pictures right there of the president and Prime Minister Abe in the Oval Office. And, again, let's - that's a much calmer scene than what we just saw.

VISER: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

HENDERSON: Nice yellow tie.

KING: That's quite peaceful.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: Jason Chaffetz is thinking, can I be in that room? That look - that looks kind of nice. It's comfortable.

What we were just looking at, though, the pictures of Jason Chaffetz's home last night in Utah. Now, he has a conservative district, but he also has - you know, part of this is organization and people showing up at town halls, much as we say in the Tea Party days. Conservatives showing up at Democratic town halls and at Republican town halls as well. And I guess that's my question, how much of this is organization and how much of this is pure outrage, anxiety, questions, demand, and can the progressive groups, let's call them that, sustain it?

MECKLER: Well, I think - I think that the main - in order for organization to work, you have to have true angst and anxiety behind that.

HENDERSON: Yes.

MECKLER: So it may be a combination of the two. I do think it helps to have somebody corralling you. I think the thing that's really interesting here is that the positions in Washington have really completely flip-flopped.

HENDERSON: Completely reversed, yes.

KING: Right.

MECKLER: And you have Democrats now in the position of - as an opposition party trying to stop something. And it's always easier to be a critic than it is to try to advance an agenda. And, you know, we saw Republicans do a pretty good job of stopping things in recent years here in Washington. And I think that now we're seeing Democrats trying to organize themselves both as much as they can in the Senate and out in the field. They are out there trying to make noise. So I think it's important.

KING: It's important. And if you think - we just showed you the Jason Chaffetz video, if you think, OK, that's just one congressman. There are 435 of them. What's the big deal. We also had a crew last night in Tennessee, Congresswoman Diane Black back home. Look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE CARLSON, GOP TOWN HALL ATTENDEE: I have to have coverage (INAUDIBLE) to make sure that I don't die. There are people who have cancer that have that covered that have to have that coverage to make sure that they don't die. And you want to take away this coverage? And have nothing to replace it with? So how can I trust you to do anything that's in our interest at all?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:20:17] KING: If you think of the combination of what we just see, you see a rowdy crowd at one town hall. You see a very pointed, personal, this is about my life question at another town hall.

LIZZA: Yes.

KING: This is the kind of thing that, you know, that the Republicans will say these are plants, the Democratic groups are putting them in our town halls. But especially when you get a personal story like that, that will get the attention of a member of Congress who will come back and say, Mr. Speaker, we need a plan.

LIZZA: I remember in 2009, as Obamacare was making its way through the system and there were protests against that, especially in August of 2009. A lot of Democrats saying, oh, this is just Koch brothers funded AstroTurf. And maybe it was.

HENDERSON: And it was, yes. A lot of it was. Yes.

LIZZA: There's always money involved in this but you can't buy - you can't spend money and manufacture -

KING: Right. But 2010 and 2014 happened.

LIZZA: Exactly.

HENDERSON: Yes. Yes.

LIZZA: Exactly. It's always a mixture of big money and grassroots support. And a lot of Democrats didn't see that coming. They dismissed it as fake AstroTurf organizing.

But I think what you're seeing both with the court, part of our last conversation, and with the public starting to step up, you're starting to see our system working. You're starting to see institutional restraints. When one branch of government to one part of our country gets too powerful, you start to see other things kick in.

KING: And so the - so it does this. And Speaker Ryan has asked for better security as the members go home now -

HENDERSON: Right.

KING: Because they're anticipating this at the town halls. Does it - there's - you know, there's a lot of conflict now in the Republican Party about what to do. They want to repeal. They're unified there. But the replacement part is really hard. The president has frustrated conservatives because he has made a list of things he wants in a bill that happen to be the most popular and the most expensive parts of Obamacare and so they don't have a plan right now and there's some people saying we'll try to do it this year. Other people say it could spill over to next year. I assume with these kind of protests that there will be pressure on the speaker and Majority Leader McConnell to figure this out fast.

HENDERSON: Yes.

VISER: Well, and look at where these are happening too. I mean these are in two very conservative districts. Diane Black and Jason Chaffetz have won repeatedly by 70 percent or more. And I mean, they are in the safest of seats, and they are seeing this kind of atmosphere at their town hall meetings. So I think it's an indication, not only of the organization, but of the potency of some of the arguments against taking away something. You know, it's a lot easier to make that argument, as Laura was saying, than it is to make (INAUDIBLE).

MECKLER: And the thing that Republicans are learning is that health care policy is complicated. It's very complicated.

KING: Right.

MECKLER: You cannot just give people the popular parts and not the unpopular parts. You don't - it all fits together. So if you want to cover people with preexisting conditions, somebody has to pay for that.

KING: Right. MECKLER: Under Obamacare, the way that works is that we try to force healthy people into the system so their premiums cross-subsidize other people's premiums. Well, if you want to take that mandate away, you've got to replace it with something else. So that's what they're finding is, it's very easy to say repeal and replace, and we've been hearing that for years and years now, and frankly, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Republicans on this. They've been promising a replacement, and they've never coalesced around one.

HENDERSON: Yes, and you - yes.

KING: And their - because - but their conferences, both in the House and Senate, especially in the House, though, are split into so many factions.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: You have free market guys who say, get the government out of here. Leave it up to the market. You have the more moderates who say, we'd better keep these popular parts of Obamacare or we'll get wiped out in our districts.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: So it's a complicated debate. I bet the protests increase the urgency though.

We've got to move on. Everybody sit tight.

Next, that big White House meeting with Japan's prime minister. Plus, new questions about a top perfect aide's dealings with Russia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:26] KING: Welcome back. You see there in the Oval Office, President Trump meeting with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe. That's at the White House today. They plan a news conference at the top of the hour. Stay right here at CNN. We'll have special coverage for you.

And as you just saw, we got a quick glimpse right there of the two men in the Oval Office. That's hardly the only big international story we're tracking today. A lot of big stories moving.

In a phone call with China's president last night, Mr. Trump affirmed the so-called One China policy. How Beijing had insisted on that because of actions by Trump and his team during the post-election transition period that China found offensive.

Another area of uncertainty during the transition, the Iran deal. Remember candidate Trump, he said he would tear it up, the nuclear deal, on day one. Now the chief of the European Union says President Trump's senior officials indicated to him the United States remains, quote, "committed" to implementing that deal.

And there's a giant debate rippling through the West Wing today. Did President Trump's national security advisor lie to the vice president? And, as a result, lead to the vice president lying on national television? At issue, this unequivocal Mike Pence answer when asked if General Michael Flynn, in calls to Russian officials during the final days of the Obama administration, discussed how the new Trump administration might ease sanctions against the Kremlin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was strictly coincidental that they had a conversation. They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia. But what I can confirm, having spoken to him about it, is that those conversations that happen to occur around the time that the United States took action to expel diplomats had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: "Nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions." That was the vice president right there on camera. You saw it. No wiggle room there at all. But "The Washington Post" reports today that U.S. intelligence intercepted of the Flynn calls to the Russian ambassador clearly indicates sanctions were discussed. And Flynn, who had adamantly denied talking about sanctions, now says he can't say for sure whether the topic came up.

Ah, ha.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: So you have an interesting - number one there's an obscure law that's never been used. No one's ever been prosecuted under it, that says you can't essentially interfere. That, you know, we have one president at a time and you can't be discussing potential future transactions with another government. That's one issue. Did General Flynn at least violate the spirit of this law?

But the - to me the more political conversation is, Mike Pence's credibility. The vice president of the United States, we are told, our Elizabeth Flanders doing some great reporting on this, says that he's a little concerned about this and he's trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. Now, clearly, U.S. intelligence intercepted those calls. The vice president and the president, and General Flynn for that matter, now know what those intercepts found, and General Flynn is backing off a bit.

[12:30:05] HENDERSON: Yes, and - yes. Yes, I mean the choices seem to be either he lied to the vice president and any number of additional people, or he can't