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Inside Politics
Republicans Criticize Trump's Sexist Tweet Rant; Senators Seek Compromise on Health Care Bill; Assessing Trump's Agenda. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired July 02, 2017 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[08:00:10]
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A sexist rant at a news anchor and allegations of a bizarre tabloid threat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is maddening because this is beneath the dignity of the President of the United States.
KING: Off message on health care, too.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Health care is working along very well. We're going to have a big surprise.
KING: Plus it's back to the world stage, including the first face-to- face with Vladimir Putin.
NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: Russia is our most dangerous adversary in the world today.
KING: INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best repoters now.
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KING (on camera): Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. To our viewers in the United States and around the world, thanks for sharing your Sunday.
A big week ahead for President Trump includes his first meeting with Vladimir Putin. The White House won't say if the president plans to raise Russia's unprecedented election interference.
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BURNS: If he continues to refuse to act, it's a dereliction of the basic duty to defend the country. And Russia is going to do this again.
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KING: Prospects for a major overhaul of America's health care system also hangs in the balance this week. The Senate was schedule to act this past week, but giant policy differences within the Republican family are a giant obstacle to compromise.
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SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: We have a clean repeal and then you have a separate spending bill that, for the big government Republicans who think spending is the answer, put it on a bill that the Democrats like and then they can work with the Democrats on the big government aspect to it. But let's have a repeal bill because that's what we promised.
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KING: But we begin with the president's defiant rejoinder to those who call his Twitter rage unprofessional and unpresidential.
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SEN. PAT TOOMEY (R), PENNSYLVANIA: This is -- it's maddening frustrating, because this is the beneath the dignity of the President of the United States, or at least it should be. And it's a distraction. And it really ultimately starts to undermine the president's ability to get his agenda done.
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KING: With us this Sunday to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Pace of the Associated Press, CNN's Phil Mattingly, Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight, and CNN's Sara Murray.
Score the president, who was at the Kennedy Center last night for a veterans' event, as unswayed by the criticism of recent days.
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TRUMP: The fake media is trying to silence us, but we will not let them. Because the people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House, but I'm president and they're not.
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KING: Now, it's hardly news that the president is thin-skinned, impulsive, and overly sensitive to cable news. Distracting, annoying, unpresidential, counterproductive -- all words we've heard before. I'm sorry, Mr. President, not from the media, but from the president's own friends and allies after tweet storms launched by our very different 45th president.
But there's been an important shift in the past 72 hours or so, after a sexist tweet tirade against a female cable news host. More and more of the president's fellow Republicans are discussing their concerns about his discipline and his temperament, not as anonymous sources but on the record, on camera.
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REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R), ILLINOIS: That's a tweet that's not even becoming of a city councilman.
REP. LEE ZELDIN (R), NEW YORK: I'm not going to even defend his tweet. It was ugly. And I personally do hold the President of the United States to a higher standard.
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KING: Columnist Kathleen Parker of the "Washington Post", a conservative but never a Trump fan, summed up the temperament talk in this way. "Impulsivitity combined with narcissistic injury is a red flag to many for the man with access to the nuclear codes."
Now that has been the conversation about the President of the United States in recent days. What strikes me the most -- Kathleen Parker's always been a critic, but it's a very thoughtful call on questioning why he would do this to himself? But, as I said, the Republicans willing to -- they've talked privately about this for months, and a few have talked publicly about it, but there was no shortage of Republicans this week saying, Mr. President, this was wrong. Mr. President, it crossed a line. Mr. President, it's unpresidential. And Mr. President, you are undermining your own agenda.
There was a shift. The question is where do we go from here?
JULIE PACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Well, and here's where I think the disconnect remains between Republicans and the White House. This is Trump's agenda. Going after the media, trying to tear us down is as much a part of his agenda as passing the health care bill, trying to get a tax overhaul. He sees this as actually part of that effort. If he can undermine the reporting about him, if he can undermine the credibility of the press, he thinks that he has a clearer lane to do some of the things he wants to do.
For Republicans, the choice is whether they feel that if move forward on health care, for example, if they feel this would undermine their ability to sell a bill if it passes. If they're so closely linked to a president who does the types of things that we saw this week, that it undermines the policy.
So far, we haven't seen much beyond the rhetoric from Republicans, but we're heading into a pretty intense summer of legislating.
[08:05:04]
And I think that we'll have to see if these Republicans start backing away from the actual policy positions.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, so that's the trigger, right? If policy opportunities or ability to get policy passed, conservative policy that they've been talking about for eight years, all of a sudden go out the door, I think you see a bigger shift than just Republicans saying things. Right? That's always been the big question: When are people going to stop
being concerned, or have problems with this, or would like him to change, and actually start taking action? We haven't seen any action obviously. This week was a change in tenor in the sense that people were willing to go on camera to talk about this, but as long as the ability to do health care, or tax reform, or infrastructure, sits out there, I think that's why you're going to see Republicans limited to words at the moment.
One interesting moment, I talked to somebody who speaks to the president, in support of the president, they made this point. He doesn't feel like he's lost yet. Right? He won the election with his numbers looking at 35, 36, 37 percent for a long period of time doing the same exact things. Until he feels like he's losing, until he feels like his ability to do what's gotten him to this point is no longer working for him, there's no sense for him or his top advisers for him to change. And, at this point, if you don't believe the polls and you feel like your agenda is still moving forward in some capacity, why change? And I think that's a key point I'm reminded of repeatedly, which is he's not going to change maybe ever, but specifically if he still thinks what he did to get to the White House, pretty prominent position, isn't hurting him up to this point, or hasn't changed.
KING: And he clearly has -- he just has different lines than we do.
To that point, friends who sometimes get the president to calm down for a couple of days or back off for a couple of days, say in this case he's not listening to them because, to your point, he thinks he's right.
The president tweeted this out yesterday. And he makes this just about the media, but there's a long list of Republicans -- I showed you three there; I could show you ten -- members of his own party who are concerned about this. But he says this: "My use of social media is not presidential, it's modern day presidential. Make America great again."
SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I don't know why Washington thinks that this 70-year-old man is suddenly going to change. He's not going to change.
And also, like, before we go out handing awards for bravery and courage for senators standing in front of a camera and talking about how ashamed they are of Trump's behavior, let's remember that many of these members of Congress watched Trump say things that were equally disturbing, equally sexist, equally horrifying in 2016, and then not only voted for him, they showed up and they told their voters to vote for him too.
You got what you paid for. This is not a new person that you elected. This is the same person that I saw time and time again on the campaign trail. So it's a little bit of a sham to say that we should be surprised that he's still behaving like this. He's a 70-year-old man. This was what he was like during the campaign, and this is what he's going to be like as president. KING: To Phil's point, Perry, about this is part of the strategy, I
just want you to listen to Kellyanne Conway here. As all this is playing out, as the week closed down, she goes on TV and she's right that some of the things said about the president are pretty harsh. Especially on the show he had the big fight with this past week.
The question is he's the president, why can't he just let it, like water on a duck, roll-off? She says no.
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KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: He's called a goon, a thug, mentally ill, talking about dementia, armchair psychologists all over television every day. George, it doesn't help the American people to have a president covered in this light. I'm sorry, it's neither productive nor patriotic.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC HOST: Kellyanne, as you know --
CONWAY: The toxicity is -- the toxicity is over the top.
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KING: Every right to her opinion, the part that jumped out at me, during the July Fourth weekend here, that it's not patriotic. Actually, whether you or disagree, one of the great gifts of this country is the Frist Amendment and being able for the media -- and I'm not saying we're right all the time -- but the right to speak your mind is patriotic.
PERRY BACON, FIVETHIRTHYEIGHT: Honestly, their view of the press and mine are very similar so (INAUDIBLE). But I think it's really important to say the tweet he actually sent that got the members criticizing him was very sexist, very personal, very mean. The rest of the tweets he sends about the media being fake news and so on, the members themselves often do not complain about. So the line he had to cross was so far to get criticism, is I'm not sure they're going to keep criticizing him if he goes back to his normal "all news is fake" and mocking people but not in the most sexist way possible.
KING: And that's a key distinction that, you know, he could beat up the media all he wants. That's a political strategy. And sometimes we get too whiny about it. It's a perfectly logical political strategy. He should say what he wants. And if he can point out factual errors, he should point out factual errors. If he wants to point out what he perceives as bias, that's completely his right.
It's the sexism that (INAUDIBLE) in that tweet, which is what some people think is a snapshot into how he thinks, especially about women.
I just want to show you what the American people think, though. You make the point, and Phil did, that until he's losing -- until he thinks he's losing, he's not going to back off. How can you sell an agenda when the American people think this about you?
Would you say Donald Trump is intelligence? Yes, six in ten Americans say he's intelligent. Does he have good leadership skills? 54 percent say no. Is he honest? 57 percent say no. Is he levelheaded? 63 percent of the American people say no.
It is hard to sell your agenda beyond 38 percent, 35 percent, 40 percent, whatever it is on any given day, if you start as a minority president, and he lost the popular vote -- it's hard to sell your agenda when majorities of the country thinks that, and worry that you're not levelheaded.
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PACE: But here's to point that Phil made earlier. You can pull up similar numbers from the campaign. It's not like during the campaign that Trump was polling very well. He was running against a candidate who in some cases polled even worse on some of these attributes. But when he looks at this, he says I managed to win without the majority of the popular vote, I managed to win with majorities of Americans thinking I'm honest or trustworthy, and I'm here still. And I can overcome that. That's how he feels. He feels like he can overcome those numbers through strength of personality and through Twitter, through going around the media and being able to go directly to the American people.
MURRAY: And those are the numbers that Kellyanne Conway is going to be putting in front of the president or that they're going to be looking at. They're going to be looking at numbers on how people feel about the economy, for instance. They feel like if they can keep unemployment low, the point where it is right now, the economy humming, that -- those are the numbers that give them confidence that Trump could get re-elected again in four years. They think that that is sort of a bigger barometer of where things are headed than how people feel about Trump's personality, because his numbers on personality have never been outstanding.
BACON: I raise the question of what is his agenda? He seems to tweet more enthusiastically about the media, CNN, than the health care bill. So at times I'm not sure if his agenda is, like, mocking the press and demeaning other institutions. He's accomplishing that in some way, in a great way. I'm not sure that necessarily him talking about health care is his passion or his interest, candidly.
KING: The question is what does he want to achieve? In the sense that he called all those Republican senators down to the White House. Some of things that Republican senators said privately about the president after meeting with him are shocking. Shocking.
BACON: He doesn't know anything.
KING: Shocking, how stunningly critical they are and mocking, almost, of the president's demeanor.
Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted this after the tweet this week. "For the record, @POTUS tweets have real foreign impact as they can raise serious doubts overseas regarding his judgment and wisdom of relying on the United States."
The question is what is his goal? And is his bar just his political standing, or is his bar getting stuff doen, or respect?
PACE: I think it's respect. I think really so much of what drives Trump is this insecurity about the election, and this feeling that people look at him in this office and think that he either doesn't deserve to be there or somehow got in through a set of circumstances in the election that couldn't be replicated in four years.
So he is driven by that. He is constantly trying to convince people that he deserves this office, constantly seeking their respect. But the reality, I think, over a four-year presidency, is that he will be judged in the end by the economy, by how people feel about their health care, by how they feel America's standing in the world is.
So while on a day-to-day basis, he feels like his agenda might be driven more by going after the media, trying to gain respect, over four years, it will actually be judged on his accomplishments.
KING: I think that's true. Everybody sit tight. Up next, will a little holiday home-cooking help or hurt? The Senate Republicans try to find a health care compromise.
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KING: Welcome back. Obamacare has divided America essentially from day one. And on this, day 163 of the Trump presidency and full Republican control of Washington, Obamacare remains the law of the land.
Senate Republicans were planning to pass their replacement plan on Friday, but they can't agree on a plan because of familiar and frustrating disputes about how much to change, how big of a role both spending and rule-making along here in Washington.
Here's one way to look at this divide, courtesy of the most recent NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll. Americans were asked, in a word, describe their take on Obamacare. For those helped by the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, look what you see. Get to stay on my parents' insurance. The biggest -- preexisting conditions. You cannot be kicked off your insurance for preexisting conditions. Affordable care. Help for low income people. Affordable prescriptions.
Republicans trying to sell their changes need to sell them to these folks, the people who are happy, who've been helped by the Affordable Care Act. Republicans are targeting most of their political message though to this group, those hurt by the Affordable Care Act. And look, you can see. What do you hear from Republicans? You hear these frustrations. High deductibles, high premiums, not affordable, expensive prescriptions. Too much out of pocket.
These people hurt by Obamacare are those the Republicans say they need to urgently help. Here's the political problem -- they're home this week. They want to come back with a compromise. Americans don't like the Senate Republican plan, at least what they've heard about it so far. 12 percent approval in a Suffolk University poll; 16 percent approval in a Quinnipiac University poll; 17 percent approval in an NPR/PBS poll.
The American people have looked at the Senate plan; they don't like what they see so far.
The challenge in trying to bring the compromise? The Majority Leader Mitch MccConnell who, home in Kentucky in recent days, had a pretty interesting explanation of the road ahead.
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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MAJORITY LEADER: I'm sitting there with a Rubik's cube trying to figure out how to twist the dials to get to 50, to replace this with something better. American people said we elected a Republican president, a Republican House, a Republican Senate, we want to see some results. And I can't say anything other than I agree with you.
But it's not easy. And we're going to continue to wrestle with this and try to get it done.
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KING: He also said it's not easy making America great again. Is it?
You spent a lot of time on the Hill, Phil. Do you see -- does Senator McConnell walk around with a Rubik's cube?
MATTINGLY: In his brain.
(LAUGHTER)
MATTINGLY: You can see it. You can see it actually working at all times. He's not a big talker in the hallways, but I feel like he's always working through that.
Like, he's right. And this has actually been an analogy or a metaphor that people have been using for a couple of months now, that you twist one way and you lose people the other way. And you twist the opposite way.
Look, they're not there right now. And there's no kind of doubt about that. They don't have the votes. Things weren't in a great place when they left town. They wanted to try to hammer out a final compromise agreement before they left, get something over to CBO, allow their members to digest it for a week. They didn't get there.
Now, they are still sending proposals to CBO, so they'll be able to turn it around pretty quickly. They have kind of the basic outlines that have gone to CBO already. But the dynamics haven't changed.
And, John, we've talked about this a lot over the last couple of weeks. Everybody knows where kind of the parameters of this debate actually lie. Everybody knows the Medicaid expansion senators is one. Everybody knows not just expansion state senators, but senators that have large Medicaid populations in general who are concerned about the overall reform of the program, where they stand. Everybody knows where conservatives stand on regulations.
They know what they need to get into the bill. The question is can they get x into the bill without losing Y? And at this point, they still don't have an answer yet. They've got a number of proposals on the table.
[08:20:00]
If anybody can get it done, you hear repeatedly from Republican operatives, it's Mitch McConnell. The guy's the kid that can get a Rubik's cube done in 10 seconds. The question is, is this a flawed Rubik's cube that you can never actually finish, and I don't think they have an answer to that.
KING: And let me add this question. McConnell had -- Leader McConnell had asked the president to essentially stay out of the way.
Now, the president would argue his approach worked in the House. The speaker was frustrated at the time, but the president would say we've got a bill passed. They all -- the leadership criticized me, say why do you say this open to negotiation? Why do you keep tweeting about this? They got a bill passed.
The president added this to the mix, Leader McConnell is trying to get this done and the president tweeted out, after being lobbied by Senator Rand Paul, Senator Ben Sasse, two conservatives who want a vote on repeal. "If Republican senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately repeal and then replace at a later date."
That is a hand grenade into the middle of a very sensitive negotiations. And Leader McConnell is not happy, but it doesn't appear the president cares.
MURRAY: No. And, you know, the best irony of all of this is the reason we're on this track was because, as soon as Trump got elected, he said we're going to this simultaneously. We're going to repeal and replace and do it all at the same time. So the Hill said, OK, this is what the president says we're going to do; I guess this is how we're going to proceed.
And this is why they would much rather have Trump out there trying to tout some virtues of this plan, trying to pull up the approval ratings, saying here's how we're -- how this plan is going to make your life better, rather than trying to get into the horse trading and the actual deal-making on this. Because it is just sort of just a hand grenade in the process. They worry it's going to send the conservatives back to their corner and say, well, the president doesn't even like this legislation anymore, so why should we deal with it?
PACE: This is one of the dilemmas that Republicans have been talking about privately over the last couple weeks. You have a president from their party who will sign legislation if it goes to his desk. He has a huge platform. He has Twitter, he can go these rallies and get these huge crowds. That's a huge platform if you're trying to take an unpopular bill and try to bolster its popularity.
But every time he weighs in on health care, he does it in ways that aren't quite where the Republicans are. When he was in Iowa for his last rally, he talked about adding more money to this bill. Well, if you're Republicans and you're trying to preach fiscal discipline, that's not exactly the message that you want to send.
So they're so torn about how much they actually want him to be at the forefront of this debate, and he sends tweets like that that dig into the strategy, it just reinforces the idea that they should -- they want him to maybe take the back seat.
BACON: I assume the process will go -- the House had an impasse and passed the bill. It looks to me if you move the bill to the right, you're going to get the Mike Lees and the Rand Pauls and so on. And then you get Collins, Heller against it, and you have a path to passage. That's what I thought coming into this week.
I'm a little bit more confused now because Ben Sasse and Rand Paul, I can't tell what they're for, what they would vote for. Senator McConnell is apparently kind of flustered by the members, and I agree with him. They voted for things earlier that now they're saying they're not for. Rob Portman's position also was what is he talking about?
You know, there are times I'm not sure these -- I'm getting the sense some of these members are sort of scared to vote for the bill that they've been saying, with ideas that they've been for for a long time..
KING: It was easy to call for repeal and to oppose it when you had a Democratic president.
BACON: Yes.
KING: You knew it would never happen. Now they -- now, whatever they do will become the law of the land and they will own health care.
Let's come more broadly up here. The health care debate has dominated the first five months of the Trump administration. It has kept the conversations about tax reform, infrastructure, other things on the back burner.
Listen to the president last night who one of his grievances is that he doesn't think he gets enough credit for what he's accomplished.
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TRUMP: Their agenda is not your agenda. You've been saying it. I will never stop fighting for you. I am delivering on trade, on the economy, on the Supreme Court, on the Second Amendment, on our military, for our veterans, and on our borders.
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KING: Now, the question is, if you look at a traditional grade -- I want to just put up a quick graphic here, quickly -- Obamacare repeal and replace, that's still a work in progress. We don't know if they're going to get to the finish line. Tougher trade deals, we're waiting. In the next week or so, we're expecting some announcements about that. The president says he's done some. We're waiting actually on some of that.
There has been progress on the crackdown on immigration. Build the wall? No, we're still waiting on that. But there has been tougher immigration enforcement. But tax reform, infrastructure, two of the big campaign legislative promises are TBD. They haven't even started yet.
But to the president's broader point, his use of executive powers, use of the bully pulpit, is some of that sometimes ignored?
MATTINGLY: I think on the court side of things, absolutely. I think the Supreme Court justice -- I just had to watch the end of the term, and you have recognize Neil Gorsuch is huge development for conservatives. He's going to be somebody who's on the court for decades to come, and is extremely important.
You also look at the lower courts as well. The nominees that he's put forth for that, it's going to reshape the face of the judiciary in the United States of America. Extremely important. He doesn't ever seem to pay attention to it. He's talked about it a lot. Republicans on the Hill are very happy with that aspect.
On cutting back regulations, using the Congressional Review Act, they're very happy with that as well. But those are small bore items. They did a VA bill, a bipartisan VA bill, that was really important. Those are all important items.
But here's the issue, and this a regular fight I get into with my Republican staffer friends on the Capitol Hill that say we don't pay enough attention to what they've actually done. Your big picture agenda items are what they are. You have control of all the levers of government right now.
[08:25:02]
You've promised to deliver on those things. You haven't delivered on those things yet.
They're in process, they're in progress, no question about it. But until they pass health care, until they work kind of thoroughly forward on tax reform, until they do something on infrastructure, those were the key promises. Those haven't been delivered upon yet. And while it's early, I think the process has raised a lot of concerns inside the Republican Party. And I think that's why you get a lot of people saying right now, eh, you're not quite there yet.
KING: And they're as complicated, in some ways more so, than health care, when you get to those big ones. So if it's taking so long to get consensus on health care, what can you expect as you move on?
Up next, a big week on the world stage for President Trump includes this giant question -- will he rebuke Vladimir Putin for Russia's election attacks?
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KING: Germany is the host of this week's G20, the meeting of the world's largest economies. And we know from President Trump's first visit to Europe back in May that trade, migration, and climate change -- just three of the big differences when he's at the table with traditional American allies like Germany and its chancellor, Angela Merkel.
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ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (via translator): The U.S. are an important part of the G20, and this is why we will make every effort to work together and not just have our differences.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Now, those differences and their importance are not to be underestimated, but they are likely to be overshadowed by what the diplomats call a pull-aside. Not a formal sit-down meeting, but while at the G20, President Trump is scheduled to have his first face-to-face conversation with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Europeans want a tough US tone on Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. Here at home, the biggest question is how President Trump will handle an issue he is loath to discuss, the unprecedented Russian cyberattacks on the United States during the 2016 election.
The Trump White House says there's no formal agenda for the Putin meeting, which is their way of saying, they can't guarantee the president is prepared to rebuke the Russian president or even raise the election interference.
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NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: It is his duty - President Trump's - to be skeptical of Russia. It's his duty to investigate and defend our country against a cyber offensive because Russia is our most dangerous adversary in the world today.
And if he continues to refuse to act, it's a dereliction of the basic duty to defend the country. And Russia is going to do this again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Those are tough words from a veteran diplomat, Nick Burns there.
Why won't the White House even say, of course, the president plans to raise this. It's a pull-aside meeting, we won't get access to it, they'll tell us about it after. But can the president really meet with Vladimir Putin and not say stop.
SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The president hates talking about this. We did a story this week about how disengaged he is on questions of Russian meddling in the election because he conflates with potential collusion between his campaign and Russian officials.
He sees that as an effort to undermine his presidency. This is not something that he wants to talk about. This is something administration officials have struggled to get him to care about.
And there are plenty of people in this White House who don't think it's a big deal, who really believe that countries hack other countries and what Russia did is no different than what any other country does.
Now, that's not true according to basically every intelligence expert that we've seen testify in the Hill and then we talk to privately.
And so, I think that that is the issue that they just cannot guarantee that this is something Trump will bring up with Putin. And if he doesn't, conservatives on the Hill - John McCain is just going to go apoplectic. I can't imagine what their reaction is going to be when he comes back from that meeting, having said nothing.
JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF FOR "THE ASSOCIATED PRESS": And this is one of those moments where, as president, you have to go into these meetings thinking about what's in the best interest of the country versus what you feel is in your own personal interest.
As everyone who has gotten up on the Hill and testified about the election hacking has said, Russians are not Republicans. They were not doing this because they want the Republican Party to be in power. They want to destabilize American democracy. They will do this again.
And it's incumbent on the president of the United States, speaking as the representative of our country, to be able to say that clearly to the Russian president. And the idea that he couldn't, that he couldn't get past his own feelings, his own insecurities about the election, to do that is pretty troubling.
KING: Let's listen to the president. This is an "NBC" interview back in May where you say, will he bring it up to the Russian president, our president, the American president doesn't like to admit it to the American people.
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DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think that we have to get back to work, but I want to find out - I want to get to the bottom. If Russia hacked, if Russia did anything having to do with our election, I want to know about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Now, in a vacuum, that sounds great. But as he says, if Russia, if Russia, this is months and months and months and months after the unanimous finding of the intelligence community that Russia did. It is months and months after members of his own national security team - you mentioned the political people don't - they think no big deal. But his national security advisor knows this is a big deal. His defense secretary knows this is a big deal.
Just this past week, his homeland security secretary said the integrity of the US election system is going to be a problem because of Russia and other foreign actors.
Why is the - I get the insecurity. "Oh, you people are saying I wouldn't have won." He's president. He's president. He's president of the United States. He has the strongest, most powerful job in the world.
If Russia hacked?
PACE: It's baffling.
PERRY BACON, SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER, "FIVETHIRTYEIGHT": It's hard to think about if Hillary Clinton was president or Marco Rubio even, how this would be. (inaudible 4:16).
Actually, the second question about this meeting, which is that we've talked about this idea, it sounds like Trump is somewhat - he didn't the sanctions were - he didn't like the sanctions. He's not enthusiastic about them.
Does Putin ask about that too? Will you consider lifting the sanctions? And Trump's inclination, I think, is yes. I know the Senate will stop him or try to. But I think that's the second issue here, is about - is Trump going to be more open to changing that policy as well.
KING: That's coming down the pike pretty soon. All right. They had to go back to rewrite on Capitol Hill.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. They should finish it up in the House. They had to send it back. They should finish it up when they come back from recess.
I think an interesting parallel here is there's a certain new leader from France who kind of laid the script out for how you approach Vladimir Putin in a public place in front of cameras, explicitly stating your views about what happened in your particular election.
[08:30:02] And so, that's what anything the president is going to say is going to be compared to that, that kind of response that was applauded, as Sara talks about, on Capitol Hill by Republicans, by Democrats, by everybody. This is how you confront somebody who did what the intelligence community says the Russians did in our election.
And if he falls anywhere short of that, which I think all expectations are that he will, he will be criticized and people will be wondering what the motivations are for whatever he wants to do or the agenda he has in the relationship going forward. MURRAY: And to Phil's point, it's not just people here in Washington who are going to be watching. Our allies are going to be watching to see how he handles this because just like everyone expects Russia to try and meddle again in US elections, they have been meddling in other elections.
They've meddled in the French election. They were involved in the German election. They were involved in Montenegro. They were involved in Qatar.
And so, our allies are looking to say, do we still have an ally with America who is going to help us push back against Russian aggression or are we on our own when it comes to them.
KING: And to that point, we talked about the Putin meeting, but I want you to listen to a little more of Angela Merkel. This is back to the NATO Summit meeting essentially saying President Trump is new and we here in Europe have to realize we can't always rely on him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MERKEL (via translator): The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: That's some of the emotion there with the reaction of the climate change decision the president made, pulling out of the Paris climate accords.
But you hear this more and more from European diplomats and publicly in speeches from European leaders that they just can't count, they don't understand this administration. They get one message from the State Department and one message from the Pentagon, but a very different message from the White House, and they're having a hard time trying to sort things out.
MURRAY: It's just a stunning statement to hear from Merkel, even several weeks later to hear it played again.
But one thing you have to remember is, inside the White House, there are some people who say, that's fine. We actually think that the Europeans and the rest of the world should be leading the way on their own issues. They shouldn't always have to call on the United States.
So, that is kind of baked into what Trump actually hears from some of his advisors every day.
KING: And certainly, his America first voting base thinks that that's - they take it at its word, America first. Keep it - and let the Europeans do their own business.
BACON: Important his staff learned, I think. Remember, they promised Article 5, he's going to reaffirm, and that did not happen. So, it's good his staff is not promising something about Russia that he doesn't want to do. So, at least, we don't have to go back and forth on that.
KING: History and context, God forbid.
Up next, the president of the United States is mad that states are now laughing off the White House effort to prove one of his leading conspiracy theories.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:41:38] KING: Welcome back. The president likes to give visitors a version of this map, showing his remarkable state-by-state path to the presidency, but he's still mad about this - losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
And he is determined to prove it only happened because of millions of illegal votes cast by undocumented immigrants. Now, there is zero evidence of that. Zero.
And now, more than 20 states have said no to a sweeping White House request for voting records. A number of Republicans among those saying it's a waste of money and an invasion of privacy.
In addition to those objections, Democrats call it a mix of fantasy and conspiracy theory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALISON LUNDERGAN GRIMES, KENTUCKY SECRETARY OF STATE: Not on my watch. Are we going to participate in a political activity that is really - it's a commission that is set up as a pretext to try to find an answer to a problem that simply doesn't exist.
There's not enough bourbon here in Kentucky to make this request seem sensible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Always nice when people have good, colorful lines, not enough bourbon.
Burt this is - Democrats and Republicans are mad about this. This was the election integrity commission the president forms. The vice president heads it. The Kansa secretary of state, who shares the president's belief that there are millions of undocumented casting fraudulent votes in our elections, even though 99.9 percent of secretaries of state say it doesn't exist, that it's a very minor problem.
Why, I guess, is my question. They sent out this sweeping request to the states. Last four digits of social security number, felony convictions.
The states are saying, we don't have a problem.
PACE: I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier that, for Trump, he still looks at the election and feels like people question whether he legitimately won.
And for whatever reason, he has gotten obsessed with this idea that the popular vote total would have been different if all of these people hadn't voted illegally. There is no evidence that that happened.
And again, we do not pick our our presidents by popular vote. So, it doesn't even matter in the end. But for him, this has become almost an obsession and he has managed to bring Mike Pence and others in his administration into this.
I mean, this is a commission that Mike Pence now is supposed to be leading.
KING: Mike Pence's credibility is at play in this. But at first, I thought they formed the commission because the president made a promise to do it. They would just form the commission and then it would go away.
Or maybe, they would morph. God forbid, they told states, let us help you with your cybersecurity, let us help you clean up the voter rolls. Yes. Could states use some help cleaning up the voter rolls? Are there people registered in two states? Yes. Are there 5 million people illegally in this country who voted illegally? No.
But you would think maybe they would just form it, let it go away, but the president tweeted yesterday, numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished voter fraud panel, what are they trying to hide? So, here we go again.
MATTINGLY: So, the interesting element here I think very distinguished is the problem here and that there's no trust on the state level officials with the individuals who are at the top of this commission right now. And that excludes the vice president. And I think the Kansas secretary of state has raised a lot of concerns about what he's done in the past, what he's talked about in the past.
But I think the interesting element here is, this isn't a partisan thing. This isn't Democrats kind of circling the wagons.
It's - the Mississippi secretary of state who actually bettered the bourbon quote by saying my reply would be they can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.
Republican secretaries of state look at this as a sovereignty issue. Democrats feel like, if you're asking for this information, this is step one into purging voter rolls. There's often a conflation amongst people that are related to this panel about the difference between people being on voter rolls and people illegally voting.
There's no question that the voter rolls could be cleaned up, but that process could also lead to removing people from voter rolls and suppressing vote in general.
[08:45:06] So, I think there's just a lot of concerns here. There's no trust between state officials and federal officials when it comes to this right now, and that's kind of where the problem is lying.
And this initial request - because I think a lot of people weren't sure how serious to take this panel. This initial request was kind of a whoa, OK, what are your plans here. And until people have a fuller explanation of what their goals are, what they're trying to do, they're going to see responses like this.
KING: It's remarkable, the instant blowback, though. And again, from red and blue states.
MURRAY: Well, right. But the other reason is, this request was done in such a sloppy manner. I mean, if you looked at any of the experts who work on elections, they say, first of all, some of the people you've asked for cannot legally turn this information over to you.
Secondly, it's extremely expensive to share these databases. So, if they share them with you for free, then they could theoretically be sued and have to share them with everyone for free.
The last four digits of your Social Security number are not public information that we would give out. If you are just trying to cleanup voter rolls, why do you care about someone's political party affiliation.
The stuff that was included in this request is - it's just like a junior varsity ask. And so, people look at this and say, these are not people who know what they're doing. These are not people who know how to clean up the voter rolls. There is not sort of the academic aspect that you would expect on this panel if you were taking it seriously.
And by the way, an effort like this would cost millions and millions of dollars. So, come back to us and show us what you want to do with this, how you want to do it, that there are real people we respect and who have the knowledge to be able to do this, and then maybe you'll get states that are willing to play ball.
But anyone who has spent any time looking at these databases says that this is not how you do this.
KING: And if this problem doesn't exist, that there were not 3 to 5 million illegal voters, so you're spending taxpayer dollars, a Republican conservative administration spending taxpayers' dollar chasing what.
BACON: Yes, you kind of said it well. The combination of Chris Kobach and Donald Trump looking into voting was not going to be popular with anyone.
You have a sovereignty question, so into a little bit of question with the Republicans. We have a voter ID, are you trying to suppress the vote question on the Democratic side.
So, I don't think this is a - I thought this commission was going to be kind of toothless and not do anything. That was - had been my impression. The whole (INAUDIBLE 2:04) had an overbroad request and now I wonder if the whole commission cannot work anymore at all.
If you get people in Kentucky - she's a Democrat, but still - Grimes is from Kentucky. People have been this opposed to it early on that may weaken it permanently.
KING: (INAUDIBLE 2:17) Delbert Hosemann, secretary of state of Mississippi. Come on down to Mississippi. We've got a gulf where it's actually - it is a beautiful launching point. He's correct.
All right, everybody. Sit tight. Our reporters share from their notebooks. That's including, get this, could healthcare repeal come down to Ted Cruz?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:51:45] KING: Let's head one last time around the INSIDE POLITICS table, ask our great reporters to dig into their notebooks, share a little something to help get you out ahead the big political news just around the corner. Julie Pace?
PACE: One of the other meetings that the president will be having when he goes abroad next week is with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
And you'll remember that they had a summit in Mar-a-Lago in April and they emerged from that meeting as best friends. But the White House is getting increasingly frustrated that China isn't doing more to put pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program.
And last week, we saw this flurry of action from the US that really infuriated China, including a big arms sale to Taiwan. Now, the Trump administration says that those actions are not aimed at pressuring China, but certainly this relationship is starting to cool off. So, that's another big meeting to be watching for when Trump goes abroad.
KING: Big week ahead on the world stage. Phil?
MATTINGLY: So, in talking to aides involved in the healthcare process, everybody seems to agree the key here is Ted Cruz and specifically his proposal right now related to regulations.
Essentially what it would do is, if an insurer offered an ACA regulation compliant plan, they would also be able to offer one that's not compliant at all. The idea being conservatives want to cut back on regulations, lower premiums. This would give an opportunity to do that.
There's two major problems with this. First and foremost, it touches pre-existing conditions. That's, obviously, the big issue that not just moderates, but conservatives are very concerned about as well. This would be allowed to offer plans that don't protect pre-existing conditions.
The other issue I think that you hear right now is whether or not it can actually get into the bill at all. This would be the key to unlocking conservative votes. There is no question about it. Can they keep moderates on because of the pre-existing conditions issue and, more importantly, would insurance markets be stable if you essentially split off these two groups together?
Those are still open questions, but Mitch McConnell's ability to threat this needle, if he can get something like this into the final bill, that might be the key to passage.
KING: Ted Cruz, inside player.
MATTINGLY: A dealmaker.
KING: That is breaking news. Perry?
BACON: (INAUDIBLE 3:27) healthcare outside of Washington because the members are back home for town halls, except most members are not having town halls. (INAUDIBLE 3:35) they think they're too active. The activists are too mad and things like that.
So, you're going to see this week, I think, the liberal group Indivisible is talking about trying to find your member at a 4 July parade or at the grocery store or anywhere else and make sure to get in his or her face and really say do not vote for this healthcare bill.
So, I'll be curious to see how this week goes in terms of what kind of activism can you have when there aren't town halls to go to.
KING: Where does one draw the line of civility? Parade? Grocery store? Sara?
MURRAY: Well, look, official Washington might have been outraged by Donald Trump's attacks on the media this week, but he has good reason to keep them up. I mean, one, he finds them personally therapeutic.
But, two, donors are clamoring for this. They have made it clear they are willing to write big checks to his outside group to take on his number one enemy, the media.
And then, at this fundraiser this week, the crowd went wild when Trump was taking his swipes at CNN. They raised $10 million out of it.
KING: A lot of money early on for the president. I'll close with this. Already intense, Alabama about to become a five-alarm fire in the Republican Party's civil war.
There's a primary, August 15, in the special election for the Senate seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Poling circulated in the Republican establishment in recent days set off a panic.
Their favorite, Sen. Luther Strange is losing. Strange was appointed to the seat back in February. But the new polling shows a Christian conservative favorite, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore opening a now healthy lead in the crowded Republican field.
Moore, a few years back, drew national attention when he advised Alabama state judges to ignore the United States Supreme Court decision recognizing same-sex marriage.
With an already tiny 52 to 48 Senate edge, the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not want another conservative firebrand in his conference and is making urgent appeals to get strange more help as this heated primary enters the final month.
[08:55:19] That's it for INSIDE POLITICS. Again, thanks for sharing your Sunday. Hope to see you at noon Eastern during the very big week ahead.
Up next, "State of the Union" with Jake Tapper. Have a great day.
