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Biden Calls Putin "A Worthy Adversary" Ahead of Summit; Biden Arrives in Geneva for High-Stakes Putin Summit; Emails Show Trump Pushed DOJ to Back His "Big Lie"; U.S. Presidents and Putin Through the Years. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 15, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Thank you so much for joining us for this hour. I am Kate Bolduan. John King in "Inside Politics" picks up our coverage right now.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello, everybody, welcome to "Inside Politics". I'm John King in Washington. Right now Joe Biden is in Geneva for a giant test, his first summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Biden's preview, the United States does not want conflict, but we'll draw red lines on Russian aggression.

Plus, here at home a very important first, the Attorney General outlining the Biden plan to fight domestic extremists. More prosecutors, agents and analysts are the key pieces. And brand new CNN reporting on the 2022 Senate map finds no shortage of red flags for Donald Trump.

Up first for us this hour a Geneva Summit that promises high drama and huge global consequences. Tomorrow, Joe Biden caps his first international trip as President with the U.S./Russia stare down.

The President admits up front, Vladimir Putin may choose not to listen. But the list of complaints is very long for Putin's crackdown on dissent at home to military and cyber aggression against his global critics. Let's get straight to Geneva CNN's, Moscow Correspondent Matthew Chance. Matthew set the stage for us this very important meeting.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a very important meeting indeed. It's the first time that President Biden will be meeting in his presidency with President Trump, it's their first summit.

And of course, there's a list as long as your arm John of outstanding fraud issues that the two leaders need to discuss whether it's your arms control, whether it's returning ambassadors to each other's countries, neither have an ambassador in each other's countries at the moment, whether it's ransomware attacks and the continuing malign cyber activity carried out by the by Russia against the United States?

Or whether it's Alexei Navalny the main opposition leader in Russia, and the broader crackdown by the Russian state on the opposition in that country Joe Biden U.S. President saying he's going to make clear that U.S. opposition to those issues, and to basically establish what U.S. red lines are.

But from a Russian point of view, Vladimir Putin is coming to this meeting tomorrow, here in Geneva, Switzerland, with President Biden, and you get very little sense from them, that the Russian President is prepared to back down on any of these issues, what he wants is for the United States basically, to accept that Russia is going to do these things.

He's got his own domestic audience, of course, who will be playing to and what he wants to show them is that he is a statesman on the international stage, and he can stand up to the new U.S. administration of President Biden.

And so what we're expecting to see here is a very fraught meeting, a very tense meeting, there's not even going to be a joint press conference media conference. At the end of it, they're having separate news conferences at the end of the bilateral meetings.

Now they're not even coordinating it. So we don't know whether they're both going to be running those news conferences at the same time where they're going to overlap with each other, or whether, you know, one of them is going to go first followed by the other one. So it could be quite a turbulent end to this summit tomorrow we'll see how it how it pans out John?

KING: As we wait - it could be turbulent to just the fact that they won't coordinate even that tells you they go in apart expect to come out apart. Matthew Chance appreciate the important preview live from Geneva.

With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights CNN's Abby Philip Vivian Salama of "The Wall Street Journal" NPR's Tamara Keith and POLITICO's Rachel Bay and so let's start there.

And let's start by listening to a little bit of President Biden yesterday he was leaving the meeting with the European leaders. He goes into this meeting, and he is openly skeptical about Vladimir Putin listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I have found that he is a, as they say, when he used to play ball, a worthy adversary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify what do you say to Vladimir Putin?

BIDEN: I'd verify first and then trust. In other words, everything would have to be shown to be actually occurring. It does not about you know, trusting it's about a green.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Vivian that to me is the most significant if you go back through Putin's history of American Presidents; I was covering the Clinton White House when he took over for Yeltsin. There was some hope that he could be a reformer.

Then we went through that with Bush, we went through that with Obama. Trump was fighting for four years that the American President goes into this meeting, calling him a killer on the record Putin and openly skeptical that that he'll even listen to long list of complaints. That's a big difference.

VIVIAN SALAMA, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Absolutely. And obviously, you know how did that work out in terms of the reformer? We obviously know now from having seen President Putin in action over the past two decades that he is the furthest thing from a reformer, and he's, if anything sort of clamped down power and is monopolized all, all politics in his favor in the country.

And so President Biden now going into this with eyes wide open, he is completely aware of the adversary that he's facing. And so when he says there, you know, I'm hoping to at least talk to him, see what we can achieve.

It's not so much that he's going to you know - they're going to bombed and they're going to really make some breakthroughs in terms of believing Putin, it's about trying to achieve a couple of areas of cooperation.

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SALAMA: And also, obviously President Biden wanting to list a long list of grievances that the U.S. has with regard to election meddling with regard to the solar winds hacking from last fall with regard to ransomware attacks in recent months.

And so obviously, those are the issues that President Biden hoping to get some, you know, common ground with the Russians - as far as any trust, I don't think he's naive about that.

KING: And so from a White House perspective, they list these experts that president met with in advance so many of them, most of them Putin's skeptics, most of them saying he's going to talk he's going to say things you shouldn't believe.

How do they judge a success in the sense that President Biden is going to say you should free Alexei Navalny? You should allow Democratic opposition in your country? Putin's not going to do that.

He's going to say you should stop interfering in U.S. elections and other elections around the world. Putin is unlikely to do that maybe crackdown on other rogue ransomware operators within Russia, what is their test of some success?

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: They are trying so hard not to say what their test of success is because they do not want this to be seen as a failure. And so the president and his aides have really resisted saying what would make it a success instead that as you said earlier, they're talking - they say that they will tell Russia what the red lines are, presumably with regards to human rights and cyber attacks.

But maybe they'll get some sort of non proliferation agreement, maybe they'll get an agreement about how to work with Afghanistan as U.S. troops leave. But don't expect a big, blockbuster pile of deliverables to come out of this meeting.

RACHAEL BADE, POLITICO PLAYBOOK CO-AUTHOR: Even President Biden himself has sort of been - this down or tampering down expectations. I mean, he was saying over this weekend, reporters were asking him, you know, the U.S. has put sanctions on Russia before it hasn't stopped their attacks on, you know, elections, it hasn't stopped their attacks on cyber. \

What are you going to do that's going to make this stop? And his response was like, well, he might not. This is Vladimir Putin, so he very much seems to be saying to everyone, as well, like, and that's - don't expect any changes.

SALAMA: That's a very deliberate part of their strategy. They're going into this saying, listen; we're going to put our case on the table. And then when he - and doesn't do anything that they've asked for, at least they can say, look, we tried. And now when we hammer Russia, we're very justified in doing so.

KING: You've covered the Trump White House, and it's just A and Z in terms of how this you look at the perspective here. Let's just listen to a little bit. Again, President Biden goes into this meeting, after meeting with the European leaders. Biden trying to say this is you're not just meeting with the American President.

I'm representing the entire western Alliance; Donald Trump mocked the Europeans and then would often go meet with Putin this tone from the European leaders very different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES MICHAEL, EUROPEAN COUNCIL PRESODEMT: America is back on the global scene--

URSULA VON DER LEYEN, EUROPEAN COMMISSION PRESIDENT: In think it is the last four years have not been easy. The world has dramatically changed, Europe has changed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That is significant that the optics have changed, the camaraderie has changed. The question is leaving Europe going into sit down with Putin can the substance change?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Right. Yes, I mean, it's so interesting to see how blunt they are about what the last four years was, like for European leaders the sense of chaos.

But also, you know, in addition to the fact that there are some concrete things that the White House probably wants to cooperate with Russia on they want. They do want some practical things to come out of this. There is an important tonal change that's happening here when we talk about human rights issues.

The former - the prior administration had a philosophy the president in particular; don't stick your thumb in his eye. Don't get on his bad side, try to be friends try to make nice. And deliverables will follow.

The Biden Administration is taking a different strategy and they are asserting a sort of Western civilization, European and American alliance that is focused not just on some of the practical things, whether it's nuclear or cyber, or what have your climate change, but also on the softer values, human rights, democracy, et cetera.

Both things are hand in hand, and it's so it's practical stuff. But it's also a tonal change. Even if we know he's not going to free Navalny. He's not going to suddenly change into a Democratic Leader as opposed to an autocratic one. But being able to go into the room and say it is part of the challenge.

KING: And oddly Putin to your point has the giant ego he wants to be seen as Russia is rising on the global stage not shrinking on the global stage. And yet Biden goes into this meeting, hoping for some progress on some issues, including start.

To get the nuclear - get nuclear agreements back on the table with Russia to turn down the temperature, at least in part of that. And the goal is not so much to have an agreement with Russia, but to then try to get Putin to help you focus on China, that China is actually the cloud even over the U.S./Russia meeting?

SALAMA: And it's a very central part of the Biden Administration's overarching foreign policy is that they want everyone to be in on the crackdown against China, even the Russians. And so for President Biden, obviously he wants to sort of sort out some of the issues with Russia and then we can turn our tension to China.

But whether or not that the Russian issues go away, of course, nobody is under the impression that that's just going to kind of, he's going to flip a switch going into these meetings and fix that.

[12:10:00]

SALAMA: And so, obviously President Putin comes in with a very strong position, because he knows that the Biden Administration wants his help on a lot of these issues. And he can dangle, you know - he does not have to give - he can also dangle and you know any kind of surface level cooperation in their faces all the while to kind of stringing them along.

KING: And what's fascinating here, as we wait to see what plays out in Geneva is a very different conversation in Washington. And I'm going to get to a piece of it that's actually quite silly. During the Trump years, Republicans were frankly embarrassed that their president was standing next to Vladimir Putin saying I believe him.

He says he didn't interfere, I believe him. Why would Russia do it? The President made a you know what, of him on the global stage when it came to these issues. So listen to Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House this morning, when he says Joe Biden now is on the global stage with Vladimir Putin and he's worried.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I do not want to join the EU. I want America to be first. I don't care about charming Europe and think you're one of them. That my concern is that Biden is making our adversary stronger. Russia is stronger today, under a Biden Administration, than he was under the past administration. China is stronger today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We have no idea where the Biden chapter goes? We don't know the answer to what we get. But we do know that Biden just convinced the Europeans to stand with him to confront China that Biden came out with a NATO alliance, the Europeans at his back going into a meeting with Putin.

That is completely different from the atmosphere into Trump. I'm not sure what was in his coffee this morning.

BADE: Yes I snort and roll your eyes. It's absolutely why laughable, right? I mean, Republicans on the Hill, have long sort of tried to paint their party as being tough on Russia. Trump comes in; he refuses to stands up to Putin. He agrees with Putin when Putin says no, I didn't interfere with the election.

I mean, they put their heads in the sand. And now you have Biden coming in who is going to clearly confront Putin, Right? I mean, President Biden, at one point, you know, when he was Vice President even told Putin that he looks into his eyes and doesn't see a soul, which is the exact opposite of what George W. Bush said to Putin during their first meeting, you know, decades ago.

But look, I mean, clearly, Biden is going to have a way tougher stance on Putin than the Republican President Trump ever did. And Republicans this is pure hypocrisy, if they're, if they're trying to suggest other.

KING: We will see the test is on Biden to deliver and to prove he can get something productive, even out of a static, you know, relationship. But what we just heard from the Republican Leader, his fantasy left.

BADE: Right.

KING: All right. Up next for us, a new reporting detailing Donald Trump's desperate attempts to get the Justice Department to embrace outlandish 2020 election fraud claims.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00] KING: Stunning new details today on Trump's big lie and how he tried to enlist the Justice Department in his wild conspiracies? Newly released emails show repeated White House appeals from mid December through early January to get the Justice Department to embrace fraud claims that had already been tossed out in state and federal courts.

Most of the pressure was placed on the Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Remember, he took over the DOJ when Bill Barr resigned after the election. One example, the White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailing Rosen and asking the FBI to meet with a Rudy Giuliani associate about "A voting fraud theory".

The fantasy theory Meadows cited that Italy was using military technology and satellites to flip votes from Trump to Biden. I just spoke those words on television. CNN's Whitney Wild joins our conversation. And that Whitney is what makes this so extraordinary.

These clients had been dismissed in state courts dismissed in federal courts. And whether it was the president dictating things to an assistant send an email over to justice or the Chief of Staff, not anybody at the White House sending investigates - the absurdity of it directly to the Acting Attorney General is what makes it wow.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: It was absolutely outlandish. And the moment that these accusations came to the Justice Department, that was the reception that they thought this was simply outrageous.

I mean, at one point, when discussing this allegation that Italian satellites were somehow manipulating the vote count here in the United States, the number two in DOJ at the time, called it pure insanity. That's just one example.

I mean, John there, there are a list of examples and around 232 documents or so we got from House Oversight Committee that really document in granular detail, the hysteria that was building between December 14th and January 3rd.

December 14th is a really critical day because the day the states certified electoral college votes, the day that the Trump White House went on offense on Jeffrey Rosen trying to get him to overturn.

KING: So you can put that calendar up and go through it. So you just look as Whitney notes, it's the 14th. That's when the electors meet around the country. And we're done, right? Yes, we certify our states, then they send word to Washington, January 6th, is when they're supposed to look in between there you see, you know, three or four occasions where you have emails from the White House pressure from the White House.

Hey, look into this, hey, look into that, essentially trying to take the train off the tracks where I take the transcripts. One of the things I love from this reporting is this is the Acting Attorney General and you have to have some empathy for him. He's getting this incoming. He's in this job temporarily. He thinks he's in for a few weeks. And then there's an inauguration. I

flatly refused Attorney General wrote the Acting Rosen says and instead I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his "Witnesses". Even he had the smarts to put witnesses in quotes and reaffirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this.

Can you imagine that you're the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States at that moment, maybe on a temporary basis, and they're telling you to meet with Giuliani and among the things we want to talk about is that the Italians are using satellites and military technology to flip votes. Excuse me?

PHILLIP: Yes, it's completely nonsensical. And, you know, at that time, there were a lot of people who theorized that the president was just sort of faking this, that he had this sort of grand scheme to say publicly that he believes the election was stolen but privately he knew otherwise, clearly even privately.

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PHILLIP: Not only did he believe it, but senior members of the White House, were pushing the Justice Department to back it up something that the prior Attorney General Bill Barr, not to give him too much credit here, but refuse to say, when he was asked repeatedly, he did not give credence to all of these election lies.

So this was deeply ingrained in this White House in this president. And it was not just the word; they were trying to act on it. And that's what makes it so difficult.

KING: That's what makes it so different. Outlandish is a great word, you could pick any number of words for it. So here's my question. You learn - you learn again today about more of these emails. And yet, most Republicans will not speak out publicly and say the words, if you needed any more proof, Donald Trump must not return to national politics, that he would do this with the presidency and yet, it's largely crickets.

KEITH: There's no badge of courage that any elected Republican gets other than, you know, some hits on cable news, that they don't get electoral benefits from crossing, Former President Trump. And so there is a head in the sand. If we just don't talk about it. If we just don't confront it, then maybe it will go away.

Of course, that's their heads in the sand during that period from Election Day until January 6th, also. And it turns out the wheels were turning in the White House trying to find any way possible to undo a free and fair election.

KING: And that heads incense extends to another issue we've learned about in recent days, which is these extraordinary measures using, again, using the levers of power to get records of Democratic members of Congress, the Trump's own White House Counsel. So they say investigated in the White House, Mitch McConnell says this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The Department's Inspector General is fully equipped to determine whether these procedures were followed in this case. So I'm confident that the existing inquiry will uncover the truth. There's no need for a partisan circus, here in the Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is it fair to say Mitch McConnell's view as if it involves looking back at all the stuff about Trump that I don't want to talk about because it's horrible? Can we just forget about it?

BADE: Yes. I mean, clearly, he sees that as a problem for Republicans in 2022, when he's trying to take back the Senate Chamber. I mean, the problem with the relying only on the Inspector General report is that he doesn't have the power to compel Former DOJ officials to come in and testify.

And so, you know, Congress Democrats on the Hill right now, both the Judiciary Committees on in the Senate in the House talking about subpoenas, bringing people in, I think we're going to see these investigations sort of continue, but it's just a reminder of how much we still don't know about all the different things that were happening in Trump's White House that, you know, we never got to the bottom of, frankly.

KING: If you want the truth, that's the problem. The limited scope, if you're the Republicans who want this to go away, I don't think they view that as a problem. I think they view that as the promise of keeping us in that place. Up next for us the evolution of Vladimir Putin two decades, five American Presidents, and a very thick file of bad behavior.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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KING: Vladimir Putin is a familiar villain on the world stage. He came to power more than two decades ago back in 1999, and has both captivated and frustrated American Presidents since. Bill Clinton was the first U.S. President to have a summit with Putin tomorrow in Geneva, Joe Biden becomes the fifth.

Let's walk through some of this history. Number one, if you look here, to my right to the left of your screen, that was when Putin took over for Boris Yeltsin back at the beginning in 1999. This is an NBC interview in advance of the Biden Summit here.

If you remember some of the more memorable moments George W. Bush first met with Vladimir Putin, the Russia summit in Slovenia, I covered the summit back in June 2001. Bush shocking the world after this brief meeting with the Russian leader, by being incredibly optimistic about the capability.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD U.S. PRESIDENT: I look the man in the eye. I found it to be very straightforward and trustworthy. And we had a very good dialogue and was able to get a sense of his soul.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: President Bush would go on to have a very different view of the man he said he had had a sense of his soul. President Obama then his first meeting was in July 2009 of the U.S./Russia summit in Moscow. At this point, Putin had left the presidency and was Prime Minister he would come back to be president again, part of how he has worked the system in Russia.

But Obama went into the meeting, again, optimistic that somehow, somehow he could change the Russian President's behavior and get a "Reset". He did it by praising Putin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH U.S. PRESIDENT: I am aware of not only the extraordinary work that you've done on behalf of the Russian people, in your previous role as President, but in your current role as Prime Minister. There's an excellent opportunity to put U.S./Russian relations on a much stronger footing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Russian military aggression in Europe, Russian meddling in U.S. elections all continued under the Obama Administration. Under Donald Trump it was four years of funding Donald Trump never had a bad thing to say about Vladimir Putin.

Their first meeting was at a G20 Summit in July 2017 in Germany. Then there was the Helsinki Summit where Trump said he believed Putin when he said he didn't interfere in the election from beginning to end when it was Trump and Putin the American President praising even saying he was honored.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, 45TH U.S. PRESIDENT: President Putin and I have been discussing various things and I think it's going very well. We've had some very, very good talks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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