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Corker: I Wouldn't Support Trump Again; Top U.S. General Reveals New Info On Niger Ambush; Trump Arrives On Capitol Hill For Meeting With McConnell, Corker, GOP Senators. Aired 12:30p-1p ET

Aired October 24, 2017 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:02] DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: -- the way that they have to shift their approach and to fit it into Trump's world which is this is your problem, dude. You figure out what you want to do and then we'll act.

SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, BLOOMBERG: they're in a very awkward place there because on one hand they need President Trump's base. He's got 75 percent to 80 percent approval among Republicans higher than virtually any of them. But a lot of them do share at least some of what Senator Corker has been saying about it.

JOHN KING, INSIDE POLITICS HOST: I don't want to stand on a rug because it's going to pulled up among them. Everybody sit tight, we'll continue this conversation as the President makes his way up to Capitol Hill. Plus, a very important event depending on yesterday. America's commanding general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff trying to give the answers he can give at this point on the deadly ambush in Niger.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JOSEPH DUNFORD JR., JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: The reason why we're in West Africa is because it's an area of concentration of ISIS and Al Qaeda. The reason why our special operations forces are operating in Libya is because there is a threat of ISIS attacks from Libya. The reason they're in east Africa is because there's an Al Qaeda and a smaller ISIS presence there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's General Joseph Dunford at the Pentagon yesterday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff briefing reporters on that ambush in Niger that left four U.S. service men dead. And in the process offering a very important reminder. Sixteen years after 9/11, 14 years after the first bomb fail in Baghdad, the war on terror or whatever you call it is hardly limited to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just look at the map here. Look at here, a dozen countries where U.S. service men are on the ground fighting ISIS -- Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliated terrorist groups, Boko Haram. We don't spend enough time on this until unfortunately there are tragedies. These are the countries in this part of the world. In all, 165 countries around the world where U.S. service members are stationed in at least 165 countries.

As for the Niger ambush, General Dunford did offer some details including the patrol that was attacked by ISIS fighters just as they were about to return to base from a reconnaissance mission. General Dunford says that team waited an hour before they requested additional support. The remotely-piloted aircraft arrive minutes later but it took an additional hour before French Mirage jets arrived.

He also ask for patients making clear it's going to take a long time before many of the questions he said are very legitimate can be answered.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DUNFORD: We don't know that definitively right now. I can't answer it definitively. I don't know how this attack unfolded. I don't know why the Mirages didn't drop bombs during those initial passes. I don't know if the unit on the ground asked them to do that. I don't know personally how these soldiers that they were equipped -- if they were wearing body armor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:35:02] KING: It was interesting just that that event happened. We have had in recent days the President in a Twitter and other war with the gold star wife widow, who just buried her husband. Credibility questions about the chief of staff, a retired four star marine general who happens to be General Dunford's best friend.

And so this was focused on the White House. There were questions about credibility, questions about tone, questions about why is the President whether he's right or wrong in this back and forth with the gold star widow and then up top general done. He couldn't answer many of the questions but what a steady, reassuring presence to say we're going to get to the bottom of this.

BASH: And the Twitter war, the back and forth with the President and first the congresswoman but even more very surprisingly, the widow accept. And the President was asked at several events before General Dunford came out by reporters screaming questions about the gold star widow and he wouldn't answer which is not a typical thing for the President. If he's angry or upset about something or just worked up, he's not shy about saying so and he didn't.

So, it was clearly a correct attempt to shut it down and to put the focus where it should be on the fact that four American soldiers were killed, and they were killed in a mission that has a lot of unanswered questions in terms of what happened. And that's where everybody should be, you know, focused including the President and the people who worked for him. Not on a week long back and forth.

Now in his defense the whole thing started bubbling up when a Democratic congresswoman went all over television saying that the way that she heard him talk to this widow was terrible and it was disrespectful. And that was a point of contention in terms of interpretation, but the fact that it continued was really remarkable. And that was Dunford saying, OK, enough.

KING: Dunford saying enough. And in the process, I think it's the fault of our business, too. It takes an ambush like this, it takes a tragedy, it takes having to bury four American heroes for us to remind people and sometimes to remind our ourselves that, yes, there are Americans in Libya, there are Americans in niger, there are Americans in Djibouti who as we speak here or in the hours to come are going to put their lives at risk. And we don't spend enough time reminding the American people.

If they're not your sons and daughters, your neighbors, or if there somebody went to high school with your children went to high school with, and it's happening everywhere. And to that point, we were just talking about how Senator Bob Corker is picking a lot of fights with the President. There have been some members of Congress who after this ambush were like we have troops in Niger, what were they doing there? They should know. If they don't know where American troops are around the world, they're simply not doing their job. This is Senator Corker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BOB CORKER (R), TENNESSEE: I received a congressional notification, I think it was in June, they likely did too and just maybe somehow didn't see that or notice it. But, I was aware and I think at the time they notified us, we had 600 to 700 troops that were there and as time goes on, you know these things expand. But yes, I was aware that we had troops there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: If you heard General Dunford yesterday, he was asked about this. Why did members of Congress say they don't know about this. And I thought it was an interesting moment, maybe a teachable moment for the President is because the fact is that most of them or maybe all of them were notified but what did General Dunford said. He said, if that's the case, then I need to redouble my efforts to communicate.

If you listen to people in the military community, the national security community, what they say are two things. One, not enough Americans know that we are in all of these places and why we're in these places. This is something I think we definitely lost in the last eight or nine or 10 years and that the military needs to do a better job of communicating.

KING: And to the wide part, they're about to have at least one hearing on Capitol Hill about the authorization of the use of the military force. The administration has to explain why, but that's (INAUDIBLE). It would be nice if that the Congress would do its job and actually have and hold hearings and talk about these things. And our business needs to, again, focus on these things not just when there's tragedy to remind people what's happening.

Quick break. When we come back, President Trump in the motorcade about to arrive on Capitol Hill. On the menu for lunch, tax reform and tension.

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[12:42:15] KING: Welcome back. We expect to see the President arrive in Capitol Hill any moment now. And as he arrives, another personnel feud stealing most of the pre-mail (ph) tension. But when the President gets inside, the lunch with Senate Republicans, the goal is to talk tax reform and to plot a strategy that keeps lawmakers and the White House on the same page.

Now, follow politics, you know, tax reform has long been a capital P, priority for the Republican Party. But there are already some complications. Now, the President tweeting just yesterday he won't touch a 401 k. That's good for your wallet. His voters probably loved that. But it was a constrained on the tax writers who were trying to say policy. They don't like that interference.

President's tweet to some conjures that goes of the Obamacare repeal debate. Which failed in part some Republicans say because the President repeatedly jumped into the policy fights and repeatedly changed his mind. Ask lawmakers now, they understand they better pass tax reform before they go before the voters in 2018.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: Come back to tax reform.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RUBIO: I don't know how you as a party continue to run in 2018 unless you get them both done. Now I like to move to Anna (ph). By the way, I agree with that 100 percent. The reason why I came back here, we're not going to do those things, there's no point in being here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: If we're not going to do these things, there's really no point in being there. I mean, is that the biggest momentum for tax reform right now? It's not about cutting corporate taxes. It's not about trying to come up with a plan to help the middle class. It's about -- we promised to repeal and replace Obamacare. We didn't. We promised we would repeal tax reform, we haven't yet.

If you had the President's promise for infrastructure, that was supposed to happen this year, it won't. That we've had all Republicans in Washington for 10 months now and when it comes to big legislative victories, they have zero.

KAPUR: Here's one way to think about this. Republicans say in the next months or two they want to rewrite the tax code. Do the most dramatic revenge since 1986 but we don't even know basic details like where the tax brackets will be. We know there are trillions of dollars short in revenue. They've taken things off the table like the healthcare deduction.

They don't want to repeal mortgage interest. They want to keep charitable giving. This is where the money is. How you get that revenue while keeping these things off the table. It's a huge challenge for them. And we barely even seen the lobbying once again. That is when things really get difficult. This is the easy part, you know, passing a budget vehicle that's nonbinding, that disallows them to begin the debate.

President Trump is there. I think he has a huge role to play in this. Let's see what he says.

JENNA JOHNSON, POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: And the big thing is -- I mean, Republicans needs a victory. They wanted victory for 2018. But the other thing that they need to keep in mind is they need to do something that makes the lives of their voters better. You know, some sort of tax cut that they actually see more money in their household.

We're heading into open enrollment season for those who have insurance plans through healthcare.gov. Some people in some states don't even know what insurance companies might be on those exchanges. There's all of the money for advertising, a lot of that has been cut.

[12:45:04] People aren't really sure where to go. They're not seeing those premiums go down like President Trump had promised them that they would. They want to see their lives change. And in the next 12 months, they just need a little bit of something.

KING: Go ahead.

WARREN: If the mid terms were presidential election and this were Trump running for re-election, he might actually have something to run on here, at least the economy is doing pretty well. He's done a couple of things on national security. He's gotten Neil Gorsuch passed. The problem is that it's Congress who's up for re-election or at least a bit chunk of Congress for reelection.

And so, while you have all of these sort of positive things Republicans could talk about, what they need to have is some kind of legislative win to say, look, we can't just talk about the economy in sort of general strokes. We need to say, we passed these tax reforms and look how it's improved your life.

KING: But is there any evidence before us that the lessons of Obamacare, the debacle, is that, a, Republicans on Capitol Hill will learn to compromise on policy which they could not do on Obamacare and, b, the President will learn to moderate his behavior in terms of Donald say negotiations are now open when the speaker tells you this is the best deal I can get. Don't say anything. Don't open the door to negotiations. Or to celebrate a health care bill and then call it mean. After that, we'll vote. It's not just the President.

We focus on the President sometimes because he did do things and undermine the Republicans at certain times in the argument. But they also would refuse they couldn't compromise. Now they have very strongly held positions. But you're going to have the same issues whether to state the local from tax reduction for the big state Republicans or somebody saying this doesn't help the middle class enough?

BASH: Look, this is different because Democrats would not play ball in anything that is called or even smells like Obamacare repeal. They just wouldn't. Democrats want to play ball on tax reform. If it's done in ways that many of the incumbents endangered Democrats up for reelection next year can say, you know what? I work with in a bipartisan way to make your lives better. To give you more money in your pocket.

The question is whether the President can take that ball and run with it. he met last week with some of those Democrats and the way they tell it, he promise on the moon and the stars and, you know, and everything that goes along with it. He made it sound like he was willing to make sure that there's a little pass tax cut into other things that don't appear to be in what is beginning to through the Senate Republican led committees. The question is whether the President can actually bring them together. It is possible.

KING: Hold this thought one second. We'll sneak in a quick break because we the President is arriving on Capitol Hill. When he gets there, he'll walk in. We'll get some great drama. We'll get conversation there to report you. The President is up there. Big policy initiative and as we've been discussing, some key personal feuds to settle as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:52:08] KING: All right. Live pictures at the United States Capitol waiting for the President of the United States to arrive. He's having lunch with Senate Republicans on the agenda tax reform. But there's a great deal of anticipation here because of the failures in the past few months to say repeal and replace Obamacare because of re-igniting of the feud today between and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Even senators have a sense of humor about these things. I want to show you a photo. Republican Senator Thom Tillis -- here comes the President right now. We'll watch the President's motorcade arrive here on Capitol Hill. If there's any way to split the screen, I would like to also show you Thom Tillis as we wait for the motorcade to dome in these are long motorcades, welcome to Washington, D.C.

Thom Tillis, Republican senator of North Carolina about to head up to this meeting filling up a bag of popcorn. Asking if he's bringing the popcorn up for the Corker/Trump fight? He said, yes.

You're waiting on anticipation of these photos control and you're going to wait a long time. Presidential motorcades in Washington, D.C., go a long way here. The President arriving on Capitol Hill, let's talk. I guess we're fascinated to show the D.C. police department and their great equipment. There's the President's motorcade coming into the White House right now.

We're making light of this because of the personal feud but, again, we are about 10 months into the Trump presidency. They have zero big legislative wins. So our Jeff Zeleny saying the President wants to press them to move more quickly to confirm his nominee so we're still waiting.

Now, the President is late to nominate a lot of these people and the Democrats have taken every advantage they can to then slow the pace down when it gets up there. So the President will push not just for tax reform, perhaps suggesting the Senate stay in on the weekends. Jeff Zeleny is reporting to get some of the nominees through before the end of the year. So kicking the can a bit there.

But the big question here is a, the tax reform, b, what the subset of the relationship. Because the relationship was not where it needed to be to get Obamacare done. The question is can they get there? The President is going to be in this room. He is fighting today with Bob Corker. He's been fighting in recent days and this one goes back a while. It has a history with Senator John McCain.

There are others like moderate Susan Collins, more moderate Lisa Murkowski who disagreed with the President not just on the substance of Obamacare but on how he went about the debate. You've had Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska tweeting that the President misbehaves too often, doesn't speak in a way that he finds to be, shall we say, civic minded?

It only takes two Republicans to take the train off the tracks because they have a 52/48 majority. Is there any expectation that the President tries to make things better or does the senators, the most I talk to think that the President is not going to change, therefore, how do we navigate this?

BASH: And they have tried to change. The senators are trying to change. I think as we watch, the President's probably going from the first floor to the second floor as we speak to go into the Mansfield room right off the Senate chamber where they have these lunches. He is known to charm people. I mean, that's what he does.

This is a very unusual time. It is very tense because it is coming off of several hours of, you know, rhetorical combat with the Senate Foreign Relations chair who's going to be in that room. I'm wondering how many food tasters are going to be there before they actually take bites of their lunch.

[12:55:11] There you see him probably the President coming around. But I think that it's going to be hard to imagine that it will get as tense mano-a-mano as it has via Twitter and a television.

KING: And it's always a great opportunity just to see the United States Senate. For those of you who don't get to Washington, you'll get to see the Capitol. It's a cool thing to go through. It's a history lesson whether the President is there or not. It's a great history lesson.

It also happens at a time we haven't mentioned this when the President has said he understands his friend Steve Bannon saying I'm going to target all these Senate incumbents. But he doesn't agree with him on the particular races. I assume one of the things the President going to be ask, now, you see the President coming down the hall of the United States Senate is, you know, are you going to speak out publicly about this? Are you going to have our back?

And you see him there walking with the man who has the most interesting job in Washington, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Who is no fan of how the President conducts himself on a day to day basis. But as you mentioned in your interview Sunday, he deserves more credit. He doesn't give himself enough credit. Playing the flattery game which works with the President.

WARREN: Remember, when the President said that about he's not sure about Steve Bannon that was after a meeting with Mitch McConnell at the White House. They came out last week. That was last week, right, gave that press conference. This is something McConnell has sort of realized, OK, I'm going to have to play ball with him if we want to save this 2018 -- this majority in 2018. The problem with all of this is that individual senators are sort of hard and unwilling.

KING: This showing you the scrum on Capitol Hill. A lot of reporters up there anyway. When the President makes a rare visit it's get a little more interesting, shall we say. Not always civil.

KAPUR: They're the ones who are up for re-election, right? The senators, not the President as you pointed out John. And I think the senators on the bubble with taxes, McCain, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, Bob Corker. They're not going to be charmed by the President. We've seen this. What he needs to do is shape the bill in a way that doesn't tank the provisions they need to get their votes.

He needs, you know, for instance, his tweet about 401 ks, if that ends up being, you know, tweeted by him on a separate provision that is needed to get their votes, that could scuttle things down the road. I think he has an important role to play there.

I also want to point out, there is a bit of a bifurcated argument he's making with regards to the economy. On one hand, he's saying things are going terrific. You know, we're doing great with the jobs. The market is going very well. On the other hand, he's saying the economy is shackled by our high taxes.

There is a truth there in that nuance which is that one of the reasons the market has done so well this year is in anticipation of these tax cuts. You can have a perfect storm brewing where if Congress fails to deliver that expectation goes away. The markets could tank. Republicans political prospect could tank and that would just be a disaster for them.

JOHNSON: What the latest senators really want to say is very basic answers. What do you want in a tax though? What is they're going to take to get healthcare legislation through?

The thing with Trump is in previous administrations, a president would walk into meetings like this with a very clear list, what clear answers he would going to give. With President Trump, who knows where this conversation could go today. Who knows what is on his mind as he walked into this room or who's going to catch his eye or what one question is going to spurn him to say something. Who knows? Like we don't know what could come out of this. (OFF-MIC)

KING: By the way, that's an excellent point though. The President's own senior staff doesn't know because they made promises to Capitol Hill. And then the President watches something on cable television in the morning and starts tweeting about it. That's one of the big things they want him to say, Mr. President, talk broadly about tax reform. Talk about how great it is, talk about how important is. Don't get into the details. Let us do that part, but they have no confidence that the President will listen to them when they say that.

BASH: No, not at all.

WARREN: I got an e-mail right before -- about an hour ago from someone at the White House. What's on the agenda with this meeting? Just aggressive push for tax reform. Not even a period at the end of the sentence. It is about as vague as possible because nobody knows with this President.

KING: Nobody does know. High drama on Capitol Hill. The President of the United States, a rare luncheon with Senate Republicans at a time of great tension both on the policy of tax reform and his personal feud with several Republican senators. One of them re- igniting again today with Senator Bob Corker.

We're going to take a very quick break. Wolf Blitzer will continue to cover this dramatic story. The President live on Capitol Hill in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington.