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Inside Politics

Ten Suspicious Packages Found; Trump Says He's Behaving Well; Trump's Rhetoric. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 25, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

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[12:00:20] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

More bomb scares today. Suspicious packages targeting the former Vice President Joe Biden and the actor and fierce Trump critic Robert De Niro. The morning after calling for unity and kinder discourse, the president returns to his roots, attacking the media as the source of the nation's anger. Ten packages in all now and fear there could be more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: The light at the end of the tunnel is the more packages that they send, the more likely that we'll find them faster, right? Every package there's fingerprints, there's possibility of DNA. There's more and more evidence on every package.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And we begin there tracking the breaking news.

Authorities have found a total of 10 suspected pipe bombs concealed in mailing packages addressed to prominent Democrats and targets of President Trump. Three new packages found today. Two of those addressed to the former vice president Joe Biden, discovered in separate -- recovered in separate Delaware post offices. Investigators have been trying to locate at least one of those since yesterday after they came to believe the package was circulating somewhere in the mail system.

And another package at a building in lower Manhattan address to actor Robert De Niro. Law enforcement sources telling CNN it's very similar to the others pipe bombs discovered in recent days. All 10 packages intended to reach high-profile targets, likely intended to assassinate or intimidate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the former CIA Director John Brennan with a package sent to CNN's New York office, former Attorney General Eric Holder, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Democratic donor George Soros.

The mayor of New York City saying, if you get that nagging feeling something doesn't feel right, don't ignore it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK: Everyday people can be part of the solution here. We need to be vigilant. We need to recognize that anything suspicious, don't explain it away, don't, you know, think maybe it's not a big deal. If you think a package is suspicious, call the authorities immediately. Protect yourself. Protect everyone around you by being vigilant. That also can be part of how we find the perpetrators. That information from the grassroots, time and time again, that's what allows law enforcement to ultimately win the day.

KING: CNN's Evan Perez joins me live now with the latest on the packages discovered.

And, Evan, where are we in this investigation?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, now we're up to 10 packages, as you said. And overnight what happened was the U.S. Postal Service was scrambling to try to find at least one or two packages that were addressed to former Vice President Joe Biden. This morning what we found out from the FBI is that they did identify two separate packages that were addressed to Joe Biden. One of them appeared to have been -- there was an attempt to return to sender, again, back to the same sending address at Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former -- the congresswoman in Florida. What the authorities were able to do was finally track down those two packages, both in the Wilmington area, one in Newcastle, the other one in Wilmington. And, at this hour, the authorities have now removed those two packages. They believe it's safe enough for those two locations to reopen to be declared safe.

But you can see the reaction that was spreading today, especially because the day began with a call from Robert De Niro's production company. A security officer there found an envelope that matched exactly like the other ones that we've seen and called the police. The New York Police Department was able to remove that device. It looked exactly like the other ones that we've seen. They did an x-ray and they found what looked like the same type of device. And so that one is now being examined by the FBI.

As we mentioned, the FBI has been -- has taken over this investigation. They are treating it as a domestic terror investigation. And everything, as the mayor said just a little bit there in that video you just played, everything is a clue. Everything from the envelopes, from where the postal markings from where these items were shipped from, every one of those things is going bring the FBI closer to finding out who is doing this.

I'll give you a quick hint. Back in March, there was a series of bombings in Texas, in the Austin area. And one of the key thing that is the FBI and ATF were able to do was simply go to surveillance video and found video of this man - this man who was dropping off these packages. They matched his cell phone. They found some DNA. All of this was able to be done over a period of 18 days before they were able to solve that series of bombings. And I think that's what they're trying to do exactly here right now, John.

[12:05:03] KING: Evan Perez with the latest on the investigation. Evan, keep in touch. Appreciate that reporting.

Joining me now to share their reporting and their expertise, the former FBI agent Raymond Lopez, Art Roderick, the former assistant director of the U.S. Marshal's Office, Juliette Kayyem, the former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and former FBI special agent and senior profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole.

Mary Ellen, let me start with you.

Based on what we know about the packages, about that everybody who's been targeted so far is a -- has criticized the president of the United States. If there's a preliminary profile sheet this morning, who are they looking for?

MARY ELLEN O'TOOLE, FORMER SENIOR FBI PROFILER: Well, preliminarily, they're looking for someone that has planned this out very well. And that means someone that didn't just happen to decide to do this a couple of days ago. This is also someone that seems to be very knowledgeable to a certain extent about -- follow politics and knows the people that he doesn't like. So his dislike of these people might have been manifested on social media prior this to, and that becomes important, or he may have sent a letter to someone talking about one of these people and how he disliked their politics.

If you look at the forensics, you've got someone, that because of the planning that went into it, I would be very careful about summarizing or concluding that any makes that you see in how he addressed the letters or the return address, to assume that they are mistakes. It may be very intentional because it does look like he's planned this out fairly well.

The other thing that I think is very concerning here is that if these devices are meant to not be functional, we'll know that when the FBI lab completes their analysis, and each one could be functional if one additional thing occurred, this person may now decide to make them functional and this person may also be really just taken with all of the attention that they're getting. It's thrilling and exciting, even more than what he thought. And this may perpetuate him continuing to do it because, look at the all the attention he's getting. And that's a concern if that happens.

KING: That's a huge concern, I'm sure.

Ray, take us inside where the FBI is and with the assets available in a sense, you heard Evan Perez talk about, number one, you have these packages.

RAY LOPEZ, FORMER FBI AGENT: Right.

KING: So you're looking for DNA, fingerprints, any identifying marks. Where they -- if they're common from a postal area. What else? Surveillance video? And then, I assume, the devices themselves.

LOPEZ: Surveillance -- right, surveillance videos. You're doing neighborhoods to see if anybody picked up on anything prior or these things being dropped off, or trying to establish timelines as, you know, when this package may have been delivered and trying to identify who delivered the package if it was, in fact, the post office or if it was a delivery service. Those are things that they're looking at.

Overall, though, the FBI is trying to, I think, get all these things together as they -- you know, today was kind of a wake up that we found several more devices today. We don't know what tomorrow or this afternoon holds. But it's trying to get those things all together and look at them and then catalog them. Are they the same? Did they come from the same -- these pipes, are they from the same lot? Or, you know, the timers and these things and put them together in perspective and say, OK, yes, this seems to be the same ones consistently and work backwards from there. Where were they purchased? Where were the items -- where could these items possibly come from? And then that generates leads, investigative leads, to go out and actually start looking for people who actually sold these things or, you know, may have knowledge of these things. So it's a long way away.

KING: And, Juliette, when you listen to the reaction to this, these are 10 packages directed at people who have been sharply critical of the president and he has been sharply critical of them. There are many people saying it's obvious domestic terrorism. One person who has not said that is the president of the United States. Should he?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So he doesn't have to use those terms, domestic terrorism, but, you know, his two predecessors have, you know, been the subject of, you know, you could call it an assassination attempt. Look, we -- we're lucky these did not work. If they had worked, we'd be in a very different sort of space right now.

So I think one of the things that we're not getting from the White House right now is just this sense of immediacy and this sense of gravity. Two former presidents, a first lady, a former secretary of state, former cabinet secretaries, media institutions, this is a targeted terror -- terrorist -- terror, you know, terror attack. And I think that's why you see on the operational level so much focus on this. And what the White House could do is sort of -- you know, in the same way that I think that the mayor did quite successfully is engage us, the American public, because someone knows. There is no question in my mind, as we see with most of these cases, that there is an enterprise, a community around this person or people who have some inkling, who have sold something, who heard him say something, who may actually know the plan and now feel guilty about it, who should come forward and feel welcome to come forward because the gravity of this just can't be underestimated. These are -- if it was just the two former presidents, it's a big deal.

[12:10:21] KING: If it's just the two former presidents and it's bigger than that.

And, Art, just build if you will. Obviously you had yesterday, which was a horrific day.

ART RODERICK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right. Right.

KING: And now you have more found today.

RODERICK: Right.

KING: You have the legitimate concern. Governor Cuomo mentioned this earlier today, that the attention given to this, if you are this person or person, that you're getting what you want . you're insighted fear. You've insighted terror. That right in itself makes it terrorism. And you're getting attention.

RODERICK: Right.

KING: So how do you crack it?

RODERICK: I mean as a criminal investigator, I listen to somebody like Ray, who's a bomb tech, to tell me what these devices are all about. But I think the American people should also be confident in how this investigation is being handled. It's being handled by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is managed by the FBI. There's 102 of these Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country and that's key because we have several different states that are involved that have crime states going on. There's 4,000 members of these task forces that are state, local, and federal investigators from 55 federal agencies and 500 state and local agencies. So this Joint Terrorism Task Force as all those assets at their availability to go ahead and conduct this investigation. And all the stuff that we've talked about over the past 24 hours, all that's being fed and spread out to all these different Joint Terrorism Task Forces. So all these leads are being handle very quickly and with a ton of resources at their availability.

KING: Well, hopefully with the ton or the resources and leads, quickly we get to a suspect --

RODERICK: Exactly.

KING: Suspect in the near future.

Appreciate everyone coming in with the insights. I'm sure we'll talk about this more over the next few days. Again, two more packages discovered today. Three more packages today. We'll keep an eye on this one.

Up next for us here, the remarkably short lifespan of a presidential plea for the country to unify.

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[12:16:07] KING: Welcome back.

Fight and divide are this president's reflexes. Back on display this morning despite his own call for a moment of national unity. Morning tweets are where the president likes to do his combat and this today, a very big part of the anger we see today in our society is called by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the mainstream media that I refer to as fake news.

Assigning blame less than 12 hours after using his rally pulpit to try to stitch the divided country back together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That plea is what we expect, what we need from a president during a nationwide scare. But in the same speech, this tongue in cheek reminder, the president knows the expectations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And, by the way, do you see how nice I'm behaving tonight? This is like -- have you ever seen this? We're all behaving very well. And hopefully we can keep it that way, right? We're going to keep it that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Well, he didn't keep it that way this morning. But the president there giving himself credit, I guess, for not calling his political critics in that speech evil, or label the media the enemy of the people.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny live at the White House.

Jeff, you have some new reporting on the president's mindset as this national issue plays out.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, we do.

And the president's mindset is pretty clear from what he's saying publically as well. But when you heard him there last night at that rally in Wisconsin saying I'm being -- you know, I'm behaving nicely, that is a sign that is a sign that he is assessing the politics of this every minute as well.

But this morning I am told that he is having conversations with his normal round of confidants and advisers and he is planning to dig in on this. He believes that he is believing unfairly linked to all of these suspected pipe bombers here and he has no plans, at least at the moment, of changing his approach on this. He believes it's a winning approach. He's done it before, at least politically speaking, going after the media, frankly, is popular among his base. He is essentially programming the day, if you will, on conservative talk radio, conservative television. That is the message that he believes others should do.

But I was speaking with one confidant of the president who spoke with the president, John, and he told me this, just offering a window into his thinking. He said, he believes he's being treated with hostility and he's being treated unfairly. There's no talking him out of that. So that is the sense again of this president. And, you know, as in

most situations, what we're seeing publicly is what he is saying privately as well, at least the best as we can determine at this point. So do not look for, at least in the short term, any change in his strategy, any apologies, any reaching out to his predecessors here who served in the Oval Office. The president doubling down for now and believes he's being unfairly linked to all of this.

Now the question is, what impact, at least politically speaking, will this have on the midterms? We do not know the answer to that. But the president is also keeping an eye on the investigation and he believes that this person, or suspects, will be brought to justice. So look for him to talk at that point.

But as of now, John, he's digging in his heels and we know what he's saying publicly and privately.

John.

KING: Jeff Zeleny, fresh reporting live at the White House. Jeff, appreciate that.

With me here in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Matt Viser with "The Washington Post," Rachael Bade with "Politico," and Mary Katharine Ham with "The Federalist."

No one's blaming the president. Is anyone blaming the president? But the president now wants to make this about him. Amen to the president for what he first said yesterday. Let's take a breath. Let's -- everybody tone it down. Let's just see where the -- let the investigators do their job. We can all be better. But then, it's our fault, why?

[12:20:00] ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, because I think for this president everything comes back to him and how he thinks he's being perceived, how he thinks he's being attacked, or if he feels like he's under siege. And as always with him, the media is the culprit. The media is responsible for him being treated poorly in the public sphere. So this is really no different.

I mean I think what Jeff reported there a few minutes ago is the same way that he's reacted to a lot of these kinds of crisis in his presidency, going back to Charlottesville when people were looking to him to kind of set a different kind of tone, his response was often that you're trying to blame me for this and I'm not responsible.

But what people are actually asking him to do is, is to step back from himself and to set a tone. And sometimes by setting the tone, you have to be self-reflective in order to do that. This president has never really been willing to be self-reflective. He's actually been very reluctant to set any kind a tone at moments when the country needs him to. And when he feels under siege, he lashes out. And I think his aides are pretty transparent about that. They say he has a right to fire back when he feels like he's being attacked, even if it kind of undermines himself. RACHAEL BADE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": Yes, yes, it's

interesting because, you know, of course he played no role in this, but you have to look at the sort of greater context of this atmosphere that he has created in Washington in attacking the media and you have to wonder if that has contributed to what happened yesterday. I mean the president is popular with the base because he speaks frankly, he goes after and mocks, you know, his enemies, and people like that about him, but there -- you know, there's a line and that -- it's one thing to be critical of your enemies. It's another to say that the media is the enemy of the people. That we're intentionally making up false stories.

To go to Montana just, you know, a couple days ago and praise a lawmakers who body slammed a reporter and was charged with doing so and pleaded guilty to doing so? That's a whole different level. And, of course, that's got to contribute to this atmosphere we're seeing right now.

MATT VISER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": You heard him last night also saying, I'm trying to be nice. You know, almost as if reminding himself to not veer off script to his base instincts, which he's returned to today and at portions yesterday, to make it about him. He -- none of these were sent to him. None of these packages. They were sent to other people, Democrats mostly. And that is -- he's distracting from that, you know, and that idea of what atmosphere we have in our country right now. And he's not doing anything to really tone that down. He's sort of, you know, reacting to the base instinct, which is to blame others.

KING: At a time when he could have a moment. And he did briefly. He did briefly. This is a moment where, I don't care whether you're a Democrat, a Republican, an independent, whether you follow politics very closely, whether you deliberately stay away from it. You start seeing news like this.

I was off yesterday. I was, you know, traveling in my hometown of Boston with my son. You start reading these things and you get worried about this. People are talking about it. Everywhere you go they're talking about it. A chance for a president to say, let's be together, let's calm down. And he did that. But then.

MARY KATHARINE HAM, SENIOR WRITER, "THE FEDERALIST": Yes. He -- occasionally we can see him have a moment, but it often does not last long.

I will say, I think in coverage of this, there is a pretty clear implication by much of it that rhetoric inevitably leads to violence. And I actually think that that is not a great thing to be saying. We walk a fine line.

I keep my rhetoric responsible for a reason. I think it's best for the country. And it's best for me and my soul.

But rhetoric did not cause a shooting in Tucson. Rhetoric did not cause a shooting in -- on the congressional baseball field. It didn't cause executions of cops in the wake of Black Lives Matter. And if you start making the clear implication that speech that you object to -- and, by the way, it's very tempting to say that only the speech that you object to causes violence, causes violence, then we're in a bad situation with the freedoms that the First Amendment affords us and that we enjoy here ever single day. And I do think that that is a political temptation that too many people go down that road.

And, by the way, in this case, we do not yet know the perpetrator or the motives.

KING: Right.

HAM: So it's good to hold off on that and to be careful about the reflex to blame your opposition.

KING: I agree completely. And I also want to make clear, we're talking about the president now. We're going to get to some rhetoric from the left in a moment. If we're going to have a conversation about rhetoric, we're going to have it across the spectrum.

The point being, though, look, the -- I covered the Clinton White House. Polarization was bad then. It got worse under Bush. It got worse then under Obama. Now it's worse more under Trump. He tends to -- he uses this as a political strategy more than other presidents I think to amp up the rhetoric. I've never heard a president call critics evil or the press the enemy of the state.

A president, though, is supposed to be unique among us all. He's supposed to be the figure higher than everybody (ph). This is Ben Sasse, a Trump critic, yes. Trump supporters out there will say of course you go to Ben Sasse. A Trump critic but saying, the president of the United States has to be a singular figure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BEN SASSE (R), NEBRASKA: We don't refer to the press as the enemy of the people in America. There are particular stories that are often and regularly biased. We should criticize that. And the way we do it is by arguing about the merits of a story, not by delegitimizing or dehumanizing the people who are on the other side of a political fight or on the other side of a particular account of one -- one set of facts that we're debating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:25:20] KING: That's the senator from Nebraska making his case.

This is John Brennan, the former CIA director, who was among the targets here. It was sent to CNN. He works at another network as a commentator. But a pipe bomb set to CNN to John Brennan. He goes straight -- he does go straight at the president. He says, stop blaming others. Look in the mirror. Your inflammatory rhetoric, insults, lies and encouragement of physical violence are disgraceful. Clean up your act. Try to act presidential. The American people deserve much better. By the way, your critics will not be intimidated into silence. Now, they have a running feud that predates this. I'll put John

Brennan in the same box I just put the president. Shouldn't everybody just find a way or are we just past that point where we can think, this is not the day or the week for that?

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, I think every -- that is what we're trying to figure out as a nation is that, how do we turn the temperature down? And I think Mary Katharine is right, that speech in and of itself is not something that necessarily is responsible for violence. However, even the president acknowledged that the way that we talk about each other last night, that -- this is what he said. The way that we talk about each other and to each other matters. The question is, does the president now turn that inward and look at what he has been saying and say, OK, I'm a little bit responsible for this. I'm not the only one, but I'm a little bit responsible for this environment.

So it's not just about kind of like blaming a speech that you don't like. But it's also just about setting a tone about how we talk to each other, how we have a political discourse.

And, you know, this morning at the White House, we had Sarah Sanders basically blaming the media's negative coverage of the president, which is literally saying, we don't like the way that you report on the president, maybe what he says, what his policies are, and that's responsible for this environment. I don't think that's the answer either. So there's a lot of -- there's a lack of introspection all around. But if you're in Ben Sasse's camp, you might -- you might be -- it might be fair to say it starts at the top. It has to start at the top.

KING: We'll continue the conversation. Up next, Democrats also under pressure, as I just noted, to maybe check their tone as investigators continue the hunt for whosever responsible.

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