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Trump Open to Citizenship for Dreamers in 10-12 years; Oprah Says She's Not Interested in Running for President; Advocacy Groups File Lawsuit Against Secretary DeVos; Justice Dept.: "Reckless" to Release Nunes Memo Without Review; DOJ Watchdog Says It Has Recovered Missing FBI Texts. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 25, 2018 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's been going really well. A lot of people are coming back to the United States. We are seeing tremendous investment, and today's been a very exciting day, very great day, and great for our country. Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --

(OFF-MIC)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: You see the president there at the World Economic Forum in Davos, optimistic about the U.S. economy, optimistic about his agenda in Davos.

Back here on the home front, here's the headline President Trump's base almost likely never thought they'd see. Breitbart News this morning giving the president a new nickname, "Amnesty Don." Here's why.

President Trump dropped into a meeting yesterday between reporters and his Chief of Staff John Kelly. The chief's goal was to lay out a White House tough posture for coming immigration negotiations with Congress, but the president apparently had some other ideas.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you want citizenship for Dreamers?

TRUMP: We're going to morph into it. It's going to happen at some point in the future.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does that mean?

TRUMP: Over a period of 10 to 12 years, somebody does a great job and works hard. It gives incentive to do a great job. But they've worked hard, they've done terrifically, whether they have a little company or whether they work or whatever they're doing. If they do a great job, I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive of after a period of years being able to become a citizen.

(END AUDIO CLIP) KING: It was announced a short time after that meeting that Chief of Staff Kelly is staying behind in Washington and not traveling to Davos. The White House says he decided it was best to stay back for immigration talks and you can be (INAUDIBLE) that included some House conservatives who view what you just heard the president say as amnesty.

So, what was that? What was the president trying to do? He has -- let me be kind, he has not been a straight line in recent weeks in explaining his views on immigration. Well, in the context of the shutdown and this was the biggest issue, and just when his chief of staff is trying to say, sure, we'll have a Dreamers deal, but we want this. And they wanted that to be the headline, that we have a couple of things that we need to give back. The president comes in and says, let's do it.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Look, I think a couple things. I want to be fair, though, it was made clear prior to the president's impromptu gaggle that John Kelly was not going to Davos. So I don't think there's a cause and effect there. I think too many people are reading into that, number one.

Number two, I think what you saw yesterday is about two different things. One is immigration and one is the fact that the president emphasized -- there's always going to be in this framework that they released on Monday, as I understand it, some reference to a path to citizenship over 10 to 12 years for DACA recipients. That coincides, at least partially, with an aspect of the Graham-Durbin plan.

What the president was not supposed to do was emphasize that almost to the exclusion of everything else. And the incenting and wouldn't it be nice to have incentive for people to do well, and so forth. There is a much harder line than members of the administration and the White House were expected to take in a background briefing. But I think the other thing you saw honestly what this was about was not the president wanting to stake his claim on immigration policy, i Think it was the president wanting to demonstrate to a chief of staff who he felt one- upped him, essentially, by going on Fox News and by telling "The Hill" that the president was not fully informed about his opinions about border wall, he wanted to show who's boss.

JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I'm in charge here.

KING: So, we're back to that. But to your point about the emphasis, of course, there's going to be legal status and perhaps a path to citizenship for the Democrats to accept a deal. But that is it beyond an, eat your peas moment for a big chunk of House Republicans.

HABERMAN: Correct.

KING: And so for the president to be emphasizing that up front --

HABERMAN: Yes, exactly.

KING: -- is just anxiety. SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, BLOOMBERG POLITICS: This depends on the definition of the world morph, what the president meant, because there's a crucial distinction to be made here. There is legal status which people like Tom Cotton and House conservatives want, which allows people to apply for green cards through the normal channels.

It's a very high bar. Lots of Dreamers, lots of people in the country illegally now would never be able to meet it. What Lindsey Graham and what Dick Durbin and what Democrats want to do is to create some sort of a guarantee that if you meet these criteria, if you're a Dreamer, that you speak English and so forth, that you get a green card.

That is a sort of thing that looks OK to people on the outside, but that is a make-or-break type of thing that's going to be as part of the negotiation. I mean, I really think at the end of the day it's less important what President Trump says than whether he sticks to it. He has not shown an ability to stick to anything on immigration. And on something this divisive for the Republican Party, it is very dangerous for Speaker Ryan or Mitch McConnell to move forward --

KING: For the Republican Party anyway, especially if the Republican Party in an election year, especially for a Republican Party in an election year where if you're a Republican running for reelection, your primary deadline hasn't passed yet. The last thing you want to do is get too far to the left, if you will, on immigration.

Listen to Marsha Blackburn here, she's a member of the House who's running for Senate. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that something you'd vote for?

REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R), TENNESSEE: We do not want to see anyone get in front of people that have been going through the legal immigration process. And all of us know families and individuals who have spent years and thousands of dollars working through this process.

[12:35:03] It is not fair to them for someone to jump in the queue in front of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: John, that's the exact same rhetoric that we heard covering the immigration debate in 2007, over 10 years ago. It's the same talking points and it's the same problem for the Senate in '07 and in '13, is the fact that you've got folks in the House, and not just Blackburn, who's running for the Senate, but folks in the House who politically care more about their primaries than general elections.

HABERMAN: Right.

KING: But doesn't that get back to the point that the president's supposed to move them before he starts emphasizing citizenship? MARTIN: And you add to that the fact that a lot of them saw Eric Cantor lose his primary in 2014 out of the blue in large part because of this issue. So they have great fear about being seen as too liberal on this issue and being Cantored (ph) to create a verb.

So, I think the fact is on Trump, yes, they're looking for some kind of cover from Trump. He's never going to give that to them because he's going to be here one day and over there the next! So, they can keep waiting for that. It's not going to happen.

MARGARET TALEV, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG: Which brings us to the calendar, because it's January 25th, and like the witching day is somewhere around March 5th, and the White House's position up until now has been that that's not a fungible date. I think that is the real question --

KING: I think the question we'll be talking about, if this continues on the path now is, will the president said the way Obama did it was unconstitutional, issues some temporary executive action --

TALEV: Because it will be constitutional the way Trump does it.

KING: -- but let them stay longer.

MARTIN: Buying time.

KING: If it comes to that, we will see.

Up next, Oprah back in the political radar. Yes, she is. With some definitive words on whether she's interested in running in 2020.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:01] KING: A quick look now at some other stories on our political radar today. It turns out Oprah has no interest in the Oval Office, so you might want to rethink your bets on her running for president in 2020.

Winfrey tells In Touch magazine quote, it's not something that interests me. I don't have the DNA for it.

A top aide for President Trump's drug czar will be leaving his senior position by the end of the month. Taylor Weyeneth is just 24 years old. He worked on the president's campaign then he rose quickly to his senior position at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy but became a political lightning rod after the Washington Post uncovered a series of major inaccuracies and inconsistencies on his resume.

The group of civil rights organization is filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The lawsuit claims DeVos' decision to rescind Obama-era guidance on how school should handle sexual assault under what's known as Title IX is unconstitutional. DeVos made that decision last fall saying the accused also deserves due process. One student survivor says she's the one now being denied her rights.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Administrators have told me more than once that my case just isn't a priority. Prior to Betsy DeVos rescinding the Title IX protections for survivors, complaints like mine had to be handled promptly. Now the Trump administration has removed any timelines for completing investigations to allow schools like Johns Hopkins to continue delaying the process endlessly until one of us graduates or gives up. Survivors should not have to spend their college years sharing a campus with their abusers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Up next, a Trump-appointed Department of Justice official picks a fight with the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee. We'll tell you why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:46:49] KING: Welcome back.

What began as a predictable partisan spat has now turned into something far stranger. The point of contention, a memo written by the Republican House Intelligence Committee staff purportedly, emphasis on purportedly, outlining widespread abuse of federal surveillance powers. The debate split Democrats and Republicans about whether to release it to the public and whether the accusations in it reflect reality.

Then last night, this twist, a Trump appointee in the Justice Department, Stephen Boyd, issued a public warning to the Republican- led committee. Don't release the memo without first turning it over to us. Doing so in the department's view would be extraordinarily reckless.

Firing back, Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy says to his friend, Mr. Boyd, don't weigh in on something you haven't seen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I would say this to my friend, Stephen Boyd, let's lower the rhetoric. I don't care if you've seen the memo. The memo was derived, distilled from information that the department gave us.

So it's not like there's new information. Everything in the memo they already have. What they don't know specifically is what are their complaints? And I'm fine to share them with them, but you can't possibly say a memo is reckless if you haven't read it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: But to me, this is even more proof of the total dysfunction of this town and this process. In the sense that if the Republicans really believe they have credible evidence of abuses in intelligence services, abuses in surveillance that, then dear God, the public should see that, and those responsible should be held accountable.

But if this is a Devin Nunes/Trey Gowdy, all-Republican memo, even if it's right, half the country is going to say it's wrong. Why do they do this without -- and why would Speaker Ryan allow them to do this without saying, if you guys really have something, find some Democrats, go behind closed doors, shut up until you have a consensus and then come out?

HABERMAN: I'm not sure they would be able to find Democrats, first of all. And I think to be fair --

KING: If it's real? If it's real?

HABERMAN: I think even if it's real at this point --

KING: Oh, dear God.

HABERMAN: I'm sorry. To your point about the dysfunction, let's just be honest about this. That having been said, you are I think correct that this is emblematic of exactly what we have seen over a long period of time, a breakdown of essentially what used to be all normal processes and what was considered a political and what should be held up as devoid of politics. We have seen this for a very long time.

And again, to your point, if there are systemic abuses that are documented here, if there is something real, show it. I mean, this is the problem with this memo, with what Ron Johnson said about these missing texts between FBI agents, characterizing something before it's actually clear what it is, characterizing something before you are presenting it, that's a problem.

KING: And to the credit of the Trump Justice Department, it has said, number one, don't release classified information without checking with us. That's our information.

And number two, stop talking about these texts until the I.G. finishes his report, we'll have a comprehensive report then we can have a debate about it.

To those texts, Ron Johnson, two of them are FBI agents that Republicans are saying had a bias. They were trying to protect Hillary Clinton, trying to hurt Donald Trump. They think there's a deep state secret society within the FBI.

A partial look at some of the texts, if you only see some of them, sure, like any of our texts, if you see some of them out of context, you could come. So, here's Ron Johnson today, again, a Republican, an important committee chairman of a committee in the Senate. Listen here to Manu Raju, this is take two.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:50:06] MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Senator, the text message seems to be a comment about secret society was in jest. Do you agree that it appears to be in jest?

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R), WISCONSIN: Sort of a possibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Today is a real possibility it's in jest because there was good reporting by ABC News first, matched here by CNN, that shows the text in a greater context that it sure sounds, if you read the whole thing, it's some kind of a joke. That was Senator Johnson today. Here's Senator Johnson yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Do you really believe that there is a secret society within the FBI plotting to take down the president?

JOHNSON: All I said is when I read those texts, that's struck in pages term. Again, we are a committee of jurisdiction that protects whistle blowers. We have whistle blowers coming to us from across agencies. But that didn't surprise me, because I've heard from an individual that there were FBI agents or, you know, management at the FBI holding meetings offsite.

RAJU: Offsite to do what exactly?

JOHNSON: I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I mean, how can they expect to have credibility? It's the people are saying standard, which I know --

HABERMAN: I think many people are saying.

KING: Many people are saying.

(OFF-MIC)

KAPUR: That's what's striking to see a senator get ahead of it.

MARTIN: He's doing it. And in fact, he is, you know, constantly floating conspiracy theories. During the campaign we heard it all the time. Why --

KING: Why not draw the line to rebuild trust in institutions, not contribute to the declining trust in institutions?

MARTIN: That's the culture.

KAPUR: As striking as it is, this is revealing of something which is how much pressure there is on Republicans in Congress to feed this narrative emulating from their echo chamber, from pro-Trump media that this whole thing is a deep state conspiracy. And I think that might explain why some members including Ron Johnson got a little ahead of themselves portraying something that -- TALEV: This is dangerous business. And it is a reminder of why any

reporter who gets leaked texts should be very dubious if they don't have the full picture. And it is a reminder of why it's really important that Robert Mueller is investigating this and we're not relying on --

KING: It should also be a lesson to them that should there come a national security crisis or law enforcement crisis, the American people need to be able to trust their elected officials when they engage in this horse pocky to be polite. It undermines confidence in institutions. I'm done.

Up next, it is tough crowd in Davos, but President Trump does have some friends.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: As you finish your first year in office, I want to say that I look forward to continuing our remarkable, tremendous friendship in the years ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:56:40] KING: Some breaking news just in to CNN.

The Justice Department now telling Congress it has been able to recover the missing texts of FBI agents, two agents in particular, texts that were of notice to Congress, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Now Republicans in Congress who say these two agents who are in a personal relationship were texting in a way that proves to them, the Republicans say that they were biased, in favoring Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. That there had been a controversy that their texts were missing over a five-month span, not just their texts but their texts and other FBI texts missing over a five-month span.

The office of inspector general at the Justice Department has succeeded in using forensics tools to recover the text messages from FBI devices, the Justice Department says, including texts between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent and received between December 14th of 2016 and May 17th of 2017.

And so they now have all of the texts and again, as we were discussing earlier, these are gotten caught up in a big debate with Republicans trying to undermine the credibility of the FBI and other investigations, including the special counsel investigation.

HABERMAN: Now we'll see what they are. I mean, I think as opposed to speculating and having intense suggestions of impropriety based on a lack of something. Now, there is something and I guess we will know more.

I think that there are aspects of Republicans/Trump's complaints about investigations from the FBI that have merit. There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about donations to Andrew McCabe's wife from a close ally of Hillary Clinton. It is perfectly fine to raise questions about that.

It's a little curious to do that and then make the person the acting director of the FBI. That would suggest you didn't think it was that big a deal then. But there are legitimate concerns. It's just what ends up happening is people -- and this is not (INAUDIBLE) but it certainly has been louder from Republicans on these issues, despite their control of government. Then it becomes a rush to, and therefore this means something evil.

KING: Amen, amen. And I was hyper venting a little bit in the earlier segment, but we need the Congress to do good oversight. That's why they're there, Democrats and Republicans, but they have to have credibility when they come forward.

And to echo your point, for any conservative saying that's just people on CNN, that's the New York Times, that's the fake news, this is the Justice department spokeswoman right here, she's a Trump appointee, she works for Jeff Sessions. She is a conservative saying, everybody, just take a breath.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH ISGUR FLORES, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: I think a lot of Americans who saw that initial release of text messages were very disturbed by what they saw and understandably so. The inspector general's investigating it and I look forward to their report, at which point, you know, we can discuss that further.

I mean, wait for the inspector general report, who's investigating this. Let the inspector general do their job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's good advice. I should also just note for the record that in the case of Peter Strzok, when Bob Mueller, the special counsel found out about these texts, which show, whether they show bias or not, we don't know. They do show bad judgment, he immediately removed him from the investigation.

MARTIN: One fast last point. It is not just us talking about how this is a distraction for the GOP. This morning the top House GOP super PAC issued a memo saying to incumbents, please, talk about the tax cut bill. We could not hold the majority if we don't talk about tax cuts.

They want to talk about the tax cut bill. That feels like ancient history, guys! It was one month ago. You know why? Because Trump wants to keep talking about the FBI and his allies do on the Hill, too.

The folks who are running the campaign this year, the Republicans thought about taxes, it's disappeared. That's bad news for them.

KING: Bad news for them. Thanks for joining us today on the INSIDE POLITICS. A little breaking news is always good. Hope you like the new set. Wolf starts right now.