Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Pelosi and Schumer News Conference; Trump Won't Work with Democrats. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 22, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You read on Twitter every single day from the president, multiple times a day, except this time he said it in person and he singled out Nancy Pelosi, something we haven't seen that much from the president, essentially holding her responsible for these investigations even though she's been the one trying to tamp down the talk of impeachment, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks so much, Kaitlan.

John King is going to continue the coverage of this breaking news right now.

John.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Kate, appreciate the toss.

Dramatic, breaking news here in Washington playing out, and momentarily we will get the other side of this contentious Oval Office meeting. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the speaker of the House and the top Democrat in the United States Senate about to speak to reporters. You see it on the right of your screen there. This just moments before what was supposed to be a White House meeting on perhaps the one area -- one or two areas they might be able to cooperate in contentious Washington breaking up.

The president complaining to the speaker of the House that she accused him of a cover-up, walking out of a meeting that was supposed to be to discuss if there was any hope, any possible hope of a bipartisan deal on infrastructure spending. Instead, the president walking out of the Oval Office meeting and then walking into the Rose Garden, accusing the Democrats of trying to continue investigations, says he doesn't do cover-ups, saying that he would not work with them until they drop their investigation. The president going on then to say several things that were just not true about the Mueller report.

Let's get the Democratic response. Here's the speaker and Senate Democratic leader with some of their deputies.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Good morning, everyone.

This morning we went to a White House for a follow-up meeting with the president. A follow-up to a meeting we had a few weeks ago where we agreed on a dollar figure, while we agreed on a -- the percentage of 80/20 in terms of responsibility and we discussed some priorities about infrastructure. It was agreed that that time that we would return today to talk about how we would cover the cost of such a proposal.

Last night, and the times -- time in between, the president was making some sounds that we questioned how serious he could be if he was saying what he was saying. And last night he put forth a letter saying that unless we pass the U.S./Mexico/Canada free trade agreement there was no reason for us to -- you know, we couldn't go forward with infrastructure.

We didn't see those two as related. But the fact is hopeful, optimistic and seeing the necessity for a big infrastructure initiative for our country, we went, in the spirit of bipartisanship, to find common ground with the president on this.

This -- he came into the room, made a statement that he made was -- well, I won't even characterize it. But I will say this, and when I said after he left, Thomas Jefferson, when he was president of the United States, tasked his secretary of the treasury, Gallatin, to put forth an infrastructure proposal for the -- initiative for the country. It would follow the Lewis & Clark Expedition, the Louisiana Purchase. It would be about -- it would be about the Erie Canal, the Cumberland Road, things like that to build into America.

A hundred years later, 100 years later, Teddy Roosevelt did his infrastructure big initiative and it was called the Establishment of the National Park Service, the green infrastructure of America.

We had hoped that we could give this president an opportunity to have a signature infrastructure initiative to create jobs, to improve the quality of life, to just do so much for our country on the ongoing -- not only the jobs it created by building, but the commerce it would promote. And that included roads and bridges and mass transit. Well, net new --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

PELOSI: Broadband into rural America and other underserved areas, clean water, waste water, all of the things that have numerous needs. The American Society of Civil Engineer says it's in the trillions, the deficit we have, we're talking about a couple billion dollars.

For some reason -- maybe it was lack of confidence on his part, that he really couldn't come -- match the greatness of the challenge that we have, didn't -- wasn't really respectful of the reason -- of the Congress and the White House working together. He just took a pass. And it just makes me wonder why he did that.

In any event, I pray for the president of the United States and I pray for the United States of America.

I'm pleased to yield now to the distinguished Democratic leader of the Senate, Mr. Schumer.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Well, thank you, Speaker Pelosi. [12:05:01] And to watch what happened in the White House would make

your jaw drop. We Democrats believe in infrastructure. We believe our roads and bridges need repair. We believe that rural America, as well as inner city America, needs broadband. We believe that to bring clean, new energy around the country, we need a power grid modernized and updated. We believe in modernizing our transportation fleet with electric cars. We believe in all these things.

And so despite signals in the previous few weeks that he might not be serious, we went forward. We came here very seriously. The president asked in his letter last night, where would Democrats spend the money on infrastructure? I was prepared to give him a 35-page plan detailing this in all the areas I mentioned and more that had the broad support of Senate and House Democrats.

We were interested. We are interested in doing infrastructure. It's clear the president isn't.

He is looking for every excuse. Whether it was let's do trade first or whether it was he's not going to pay for any funding or whether today that there are investigations going on. Hello. There were investigations going on three weeks ago when we met. And he still met with us. But now that he was forced to actually say how he would pay for it, he had to run away. And he came up with this preplanned excuse.

And one final point, it's clear that this was not a spontaneous move on the president's part. It was planned. When we got in the room, the curtains were closed. The president -- there was a place for him at the front so he could stand and attempt to tell us why he wouldn't do infrastructure. And, of course, then he went to the Rose Garden with prepared signs that had been printed up long before our meeting.

We want the president to do infrastructure. We want our Congress to perform its constitutional responsibilities and create jobs, create income, create wealth for the average American. We can do both. It's clear the president doesn't want to do any of that.

PELOSI: I just would add this one thing, that we had a very distinguished delegation to the Congress, very powerful House and Senate, as you can see, distinguished leader on the Appropriations Committee, Congress -- Senator Patty Murray, Mr. Carper, the ranking member on the committee of jurisdiction that oversees some of what we're talking about here, Richie Neal, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, our distinguished Democratic leader in the House, Steny Hoyer --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

PELOSI: Where's Dick Durbin? Is he this way?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right here, ma'am.

PELOSI: The Senate whip, we call it assistant -- whatever the title is in the Senate --

SCHUMER: Number two.

PELOSI: Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a leader on all of these issues in her committees in the Congress, our assistant speaker, Mr. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, our distinguished whip of the House, the Democratic whip of the House, Mr. Clyburn, chair of the -- I love saying chair, the chair of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee appropriate up to this discussion, Mr. DeFazio, and the top Democrat on the Finance Committee in the United States Senate, Ron Wyden.

So we came with heft, with commitment, with knowledge, with what we hoped was a shared vision of creating this great jobs initiative for our country. In the spirit of President Eisenhower, when he instituted the highway -- the interstate highway system. It was important for jobs and mobility. It was a national security initiative. And it was bipartisan. Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn in the House and Senate, the president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, we had hoped that we could do something comparable. Unfortunately, the president isn't ready for that.

Thank you all very much.

(CROSS TALK)

KING: Welcome back to the program.

You're watching the Democratic speaker of the House, the Democratic leader of the Senate, their key deputies, they were at the White House for a meeting with the president. That meeting didn't last very long. The president walked into the room, said if Democrats continue their investigations, there will be no conversations about infrastructure or any other of the big issues.

Speaker Pelosi returning fire there moments after a remarkable Rose Garden event from the president of the United States in which he said, I don't do cover-ups. Speaker Pelosi, among other things, saying, I pray for our president and I pray for the United States of America.

[12:10:11] CNN's Kaitlan Collins is live at the White House. With me here in studio to share their reporting and insights as well, Nia- Malika Henderson of CNN, Karoun Demirjian of "The Washington Post," CNN's Evan Perez and Margaret Talev with "Bloomberg."

Kaitlan, I want to go to you first. Just -- you heard the speaker lay this out. Number one, there are a number of serious issues at play here, whether we're talking about the investigations, whether we're talking about hope of any legislative progress, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's the president's trade deal, whether it's a big spending deal they have to get done before the end of the year, all of that off the rails today after this confrontation in the Oval Office. The Democrats essentially saying they were set up. They're saying the president never intended to be serious about this meeting on infrastructure. Their proof, they say, was the fact that he walked in then walked out and that he had the preprinted signs already ready in the Rose Garden.

What does the White House say? KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes, and we're

told by sources that the White House started planning for this to happen this morning after Nancy Pelosi walked out of that meeting with her caucus and said she believed the president was engaged in a cover- up. That's when those aides here at the White House printed out that sign you saw on the White House podium that said the Mueller investigation by the numbers, accusing them of all of the things the president typically says on Twitter. So they were prepared for this.

But what's interesting here is they didn't un-invite Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or any of the other Democrats from coming to the White House. Instead, they waited for them to arrive. The president walked into the room. He did not shake anyone's hands. And clearly he made his anger over Nancy Pelosi's comment that he's engaged in a cover-up very evident to them.

Then he walked out of that. He marched into the Rose Garden, where we had been called just at the last minute, and that is when you could tell the president was seething with anger over that comment by Nancy Pelosi and over these investigations in general. And, John, he declared he's not going to work with Democrats until these investigations come to an end.

Now, we've been talking about how the White House has been fighting these subpoenas and how some of this could play out through the 2020 elections. So that would make you think the president is saying he's not going to work with Democrats for the rest of his presidency. At least his first term, whether or not he wins a second term is still up for debate.

But, clearly, you could see the president's anger. And he was singling out the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, specifically there, John.

KING: Kaitlan Collins, stand by.

I want to get up to CNN's Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill.

As I get to Manu Raju, for those of you who maybe weren't tuned into the news this morning, I want to play -- this is the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. She had a big meeting with her Democratic conference this morning. There is a split in the conference. They respect the speaker's leadership. But some Democrats think that it's time to open an impeachment inquiry. It's time because the White House keeps saying no to all these demands for documents and witnesses, to have a formal impeachment inquiry that gives them more legal standing to insist on those documents. Speaker Pelosi coming out of the meeting this morning saying she believes it's not time to do that but she also said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Would you believe that it's important for the -- to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States. And we believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up. In a cover- up. And that was the nature of the meeting. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Manu, the president says that's what set him off. The Democratic perspective we just heard from the speaker and the senate leader, Chuck Schumer, is that he was looking for a fight and that might have just given him the ammunition he needed, but he wanted this.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. They believe that --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. I mean there's no --

RAJU: (INAUDIBLE) this meeting going in, and this was an excuse that he used to end this. They argue that, look, there were investigations that were happening three months -- three weeks ago when they first met about infrastructure. What's different right now? But those comments this morning are something that the speaker has been saying behind closed doors. I'm told at a closed door meeting on Monday night, she just said that the Democrats, part of their messaging should be that the president is engaged in a cover-up. That's the argument that they believe that the White House is doing in terms of invoking executive privilege, blocking subpoenas, not complying with their demands.

And that is one area where the Democrats are largely united. They're not united about impeaching this president. The speaker herself made it very clear in her caucus this morning that she wants to pursue the route of investigations, which will take time to play out, not open up a formal impeachment inquiry. And most of her caucus is on board with that, though there is a growing contingent that is push to at least formally open up an impeachment inquiry.

And I just tried to ask the speaker about that, John, at this press conference. I tried to ask her, if you believe the president is engaged in a cover-up, why not begin the impeachment process? Why not support at least an impeachment inquiry? She did not want to take questions. She -- you saw, she declined to answer any questions. She left.

We'll have an opportunity to ask her in a later date for certain, but did not want to step on their messaging here today, which is that the president did not want to go forward with his infrastructure meeting. They believe it is the president who is sabotaging a significant bipartisan achievement because there are a number of members in her own caucus who are pushing very hard to get some sort of bipartisan deal through. But Democrats, even though the president wants them to drop up their investigations, they're not going to do that. So this stalemate legislatively will continue on Capitol Hill as Democrats continue to pursue their investigations here as well, John.

[12:15:19] KING: Manu Raju live on The Hill. Appreciate it.

I want to bring the conversation into the room.

There are a thousand ways to come at this because the specifics matter. If you live in a town with an aging bridge, if you live in rural America and you thought maybe they were going to bring the Internet to your schools and your hospitals, forget about it. Sorry, forget about it.

If you -- you know, we have a spending deal to keep the government open, that they thought they made progress on yesterday, this is going to set that back. Speaker Pelosi, this morning, thought she had tamped down this demand for impeachment right away. A lot of those Democrats who want impeachment are going to watch that Rose Garden event and say, he's not going to cooperate. Let's do something.

The moment here -- look, they didn't get along anyway, but this -- this break is remarkable.

I covered the White House the last time a president was impeached and it never got like that.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think this -- today is going to be remembered as a turning point in Nancy Pelosi's very careful remarks where she spoke about bipartisanship. She hit everything from Thomas Jefferson to Theodore Roosevelt. And then her line about praying for the president and praying for the United States I think was meant to lay down a marker and to say that she recognizes that it's a turning point and that it happened kind of on his timeline.

But this is not the first time he has done one of these walkouts. He did it back in January over the shutdown. He invited Democrats there and then walked out of the meeting when they said that they were not going to pay for his border wall. He kind of lost that short-term battle, but then ended up doing the emergency funding. And so I think he is showing now he is willing to go to the mat to deny them legislative accomplishments, to force the conversation back on to impeachment and to make himself a victim.

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. At this point, look, the Democrats cannot say, OK, we're going to start impeachment proceedings tomorrow. That will look just as impulsive as what the president's doing. But this does kind of lower the cost of actually going there because what they were concerned about was that they would have to answer this either or question, are you focusing on the investigations or are you focusing on the stuff that's actually the bread and butter issues for the country?

The president just kind of called that bluff and made that decision for them. So that actually lowers the price of pursuing the impeachment proceedings, as long as they don't look like they're doing it as just a counter, instinctive punch for what the president said today.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: One of the interesting things that -- that -- one of the questions that the president was asked briefly there was whether -- you know, do you respect the other branches of government, and he says, I respect Congress. But nothing that we've seen so far has shown that he actually respects any of that. Now, you know, they're dodging subpoenas. You know, and, obviously,

even with the Mueller investigation, they turned over a lot of documents, but the president never sat down for an interview with the investigators. So, you know, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of limitations, a lot of guardrails around what he says when he says I'm being transparent, I'm being cooperative. Despite what my -- what the attorney general says, I think the president is far from being cooperative in any of this.

KING: Right, I brought this up for just that reason. I had the staff bring it up. We were getting ready for the program beforehand, because when the president says no collusion, no obstruction, that's not true.

PEREZ: No.

KING: In the sense that Robert Mueller said, I could not find the evidence to bring a criminal collusion case. The president's right about that. But he does not say, there's no obstruction. And I'm looking -- you just mentioned here, I'm looking at one page here. We also sought a voluntary interview with the president. After more than a year of discussion, the president declined to be interviewed.

You can go on and on about the ten counts of potential obstruction Mueller lays out here. He left the decision to the attorney general and to Congress. Now, it's a legitimate debate if you're a supporter of the president, you think Congress is going too far revisiting this. If you're a supporter of the Democrats, you think, call the witnesses, at least get Mueller to testify, bring up Don McGahn to testify.

That was the argument when we woke up this morning. After seeing this divide between the Republican president and the Democratic speaker, there's a bigger fisher (ph) at play here.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: This is a bigger fisher at play here. And what we don't know is where the public ends up on this. We know where they've been so far. They haven't really been for impeachment. Democrats have been, about 70 percent of Democrats or so.

But what we do see in some of the polling, some of the polling that was out today, was they do want more transparency. They do want to hear from Mueller. They do want to hear from McGahn. So when the president gets up there and says, I don't do cover-ups and, you know, he says to the audience there, you know that better than anyone, I don't really know what he means by that. But the public certainly wants to hear more about this investigation.

The other interesting dynamic here is just Nancy Pelosi. She seems to have his number. She seems to be able to get into his head in a way that I don't think we've seen, right? I mean not only this sort of, I pray for the president, which is sort of a play on bless his heart in some ways. I mean this was full of shade. I mean even playing to his ego, this idea that you could have this big, historic win and be on the level of Roosevelt and Eisenhower and Jefferson. And somehow she said that maybe he lacks the confidence to actually get it done, playing again to his feelings about his masculinity in some ways. [12:20:06] KING: Well, let's -- that's important, because, again, whatever -- pick your issue. And what happens from this moment on, after what we've seen play out in the last hour or so? Part of it is, Speaker Pelosi and the president have had a strange relationship from day one. He tried to be her friend. He called her Nancy. It was Chuck and Nancy. They were going to get along. She essentially was saying, boy, Mr. President, playing to his ego, this could have been a Mt. Rushmore moment, and then she ended with this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): In any event, I pray for the president of the United States. And I pray for the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, you have the atmospherics, which are now a and z. They're just -- they're gone. And on the substance, the Democrats have a point, if you want to get nerdy about the infrastructure debate, this is a letter the president sent last night. Three weeks ago, remember, they emerged from the Oval Office. They had agreed on $2 trillion. The president said, come back in three weeks because the Democrats said, with a Republican Senate, there's no way we can get $2 trillion unless you, Mr. President, take the lead on how we're going to pay for it. He said he would do that. Then his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, revolted. Mitch McConnell revolted. Conservative groups revolted. And they backed -- they got the president to back off.

In this letter, he backs off saying, why don't you come to me with how you would pay for it. This letter essentially said, infrastructure is dead.

So the meeting was not going to make progress anyway. And then it became this.

DEMIRJIAN: And now it's no longer really about infrastructure --

KING: No, it is not.

DEMIRJIAN: Except for how they can spin that political message potentially.

And right now it's -- I mean it's a power struggle. You are just watching a classic power struggle. And it's not that they're actually trying to win any of the policy turf in the middle. They're trying to win the political argument right now. So Nancy Pelosi says that she's going to pray for the president and for the country. She's actually trying to sound more presidential than the president that this moment because that's what she has to do in order to kind of give her party a leg up in this tit-for-tat that's been going back and forth and try to make this look like it's an uncalculated mistake that the president made.

TALEV: To Karoun's earlier point, like, I do think that you could make an argument if you're among those Democrats who wants to make the case for impeachment, you can make the argument that there's less reason now not to do it. But, alternately, Pelosi's point of view has always been that you use the pressure and the language and the rhetoric of impeachment without actually pulling the trigger on these proceedings. I mean you saw her ratcheting that plan up today when --

HENDERSON: With the cover-up.

TALEV: Yes.

PEREZ: And it seems to be -- it does seem like it's working. I mean to the point I think one of the congressmen today said they think that they're winning. I mean the president is on a bit of a losing streak. I think that's why he's so frustrated. He felt, you know, he was -- he was doing his victory lap after the Mueller report. But now, you know, you have not only judges saying that he has to -- his financial records have to be turned over, there's a hearing this afternoon in New York where there's these records from Deutsche Bank that are being subpoenaed. So there's a lot of things that are not going exactly his way and he's frustrated by that. So, I mean, again, not that I'm going to psycho analyze Donald Trump, but I think that's (INAUDIBLE).

KING: Well, that was my question coming in this morning, when the president had a long tweet rant this morning --

TALEV: Is, what is he so upset about?

KING: And I asked, well, what is he upset about? Because I've said since day one, he knows more than we do. He's being told by his lawyers, he's being told by the Trump organization, he's being told what the state of play is out there. The Justice Department beginning to cooperate after confrontation with the House Intelligence Committee. What are they sharing there? Or is he just mad? I don't know.

Back to -- I want to come back to the political argument, and the argument that Speaker Pelosi was making this morning after what happened. We'll see if she can continue to make it.

But on the question of, should the president be impeached? Look at some of these polling numbers here, should the president be impeached. Fifty-six percent of the American people say no. That has been a consistent number.

So, Speaker Pelosi is going into her caucus saying, should Trump be impeached, and that's what she's getting. Then she has the question of, should the president be re-elected? No. No, 60 percent. If you're Nancy Pelosi, you're thinking, we're in a very good political position.

HENDERSON: Yes, and --

KING: We're in a very good political position. Why would we risk it? Her view is, the last election was all about Trump and Hillary Clinton lost. If you started impeachment, then the election becomes all about Trump and she doesn't want to run that risk. HENDERSON: Yes, and today -- you know, I think the president, as much

as he might think this is a win, he does come across in a way as the kid who wants to up-end the monopoly table because he doesn't think people are playing very fairly. And this idea that he literally is saying he's not going to get anything done with the Democrats unless they drop their investigations, even though this was something that he said in his state of the union, right? He said, as long as there are investigations, there are no -- there's no legislation. It's a bit of an awkward rhyme but -- but that's -- that's what he said. So it's not a surprise. But I think, politically, I mean this is a president who said he can get everything done. He's the greatest negotiator. It puts him in an odd position.

KING: And to that point, let's listen to the president a little bit. He walked in. He talked about -- the president himself described -- remember, Chuck Schumer says your jaw would drop. Members of Congress, committee chairmen, the leadership in both the House and the Senate on the Democratic side waiting there for the president. Chuck Schumer says the president came in, didn't shake anybody's hands, made clear. Here's how the president described it.

[12:25:02] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I walked into the room and I told Senator Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I'd be really good at that. That's what I do. But you know what, you can't do it under these circumstances. So get these phony investigations over with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, whatever you think of the investigations, whether you agree with the president they're phony, whether you agree with the Democrats that they're necessary, his explanation is phony. Again, his letter last night pulled the plug on infrastructure. That's the facts. These are the president's words and that's the president's signature on the letter.

But, to this point here -- again, I covered the Clinton White House when he was being impeached. Our politics weren't as polarized then as they are now, if you can believe that, but he worked with Speaker Gingrich. They got things done. They had -- somehow they had the ability to sort of have the -- this is the investigation/impeachment track. This is the -- we have a government to run track. And it wasn't perfect. It was messy. It was personal sometimes, but they did get things done. That train's off the tracks.

DEMIRJIAN: Also, we're dealing with a different personality person. We've seen at various junctures, whether it's the president's unwillingness to talk about Russian interference in the election because he thinks it's a judgment on his presidential victory, or a number of other issues, he's not that good at separating his own ego from what's going on. And you're seeing them come and just make a head-on clash at this point.

TALEV: But that worked.

DEMIRJIAN: And, I mean, it could help, it could hurt. The question is, who panics and who blinks faster? And I think that that's why Pelosi's trying to play a slower game, even if she ends up, you know, taking this opportunity if nothing happens for the next several months (INAUDIBLE).

TALEV: But it helped -- it helped Clinton, though, to do that. It helped Clinton to have sort of a demonstrable record of saying, look, I'm here to get things done as president. You guys are focusing on personal stuff. And so I think it is a political risk. It's a political calculation by this president to -- for his tact to say I'm going to stop --

KING: He needs Nancy Pelosi to pass the U.S./Mexico/Canada trade agreement.

HENDERSON: Exactly.

TALEV: Yes.

DEMIRJIAN: Right, but the --

KING: The odds of that happening went down today.

TALEV: They -- they did, a bit.

DEMIRJIAN: Also the president doesn't necessarily say political calculation and that's how I make my decisions. He makes a lot of decisions based on his gut. We've seen this happen over and over --

HENDERSON: And emotion. And emotion, right, yes?

DEMIRJIAN: Exactly. So that's what we saw on display in the Rose Garden, which is usually a more formal setting than he chooses but --

TALEV: Well, his tool has been the economy though. His tool has not necessarily been legislative accomplishment. He tool has singularly been the economy, which is what makes the China trade stuff so sort of precarious. But I think he appears to still be betting that he doesn't need to show bipartisan with Democrats. He needs to show that Democrats are being partisan against him and that he's got a strong economy. But he's -- two things have to work for him to prevail on that. One is that the courts need to either move really slowly or not uphold what Democrats are trying to do. And, two, is that the economy needs to keep going. And if either of those legs falls off the stool, he could find himself in a lot of trouble.

KING: That's part of Pelosi's message this morning was, can we wait and be patient? If he defies a court order to turn over documents, then we could have an impeachment question again. We'll see if that happens.

And, number two, to your other point, this was -- the president is inconsistent on some issues, very consistent on others. His reflex is to play to the base. That's what we saw happen today. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more of this

remarkable moment, the president walking into a meeting in his office and telling the Democrats never mind.

Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:30:00]