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Trump Praises Pompeo for Berating NPR Reporter; Former Chief of Staff John Kelly: "I Believe John Bolton"; Key Vote Murkowski: "Bolton Probably Has Something to Offer Us". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 28, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: --making these arguments with the Senate, and the Senate having to sort of parcel all of that out. That could be a difficult complex process.

Going to court is tough because they're -- what the White House would be doing is going to court and saying, judge, we're in the middle of an impeachment trial. There is a deposition that's going to be scheduled or already has been scheduled, stop the presses. Courts, you tell Congress to stop an impeachment.

Now, at least on a federal level, that hasn't happened before, and I think a judge is going to be reluctant to do that. But the other angle is the court saying, well, you've now brought me this case. I want to take a look at it. I want to see briefs and arguments. You know, Senate, would you be willing to hold off?

And there, I think that would put some pressure on the Senate to give the courts time to evaluate it.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And the Senate would have to wait until the courts decided, wouldn't they?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. So that's the tough part. Let's say there's s a deposition -- a subpoena-issued deposition scheduled for tomorrow or the next day, the White House would go to court and say, court, issue an injunction, issue an order telling the Senate to not have this deposition. That is a very tough burden. That's quite something to ask a court to stop the Senate from actually doing this trial.

But I think the more likely result -- the odds of that happening are not zero, but it's tough. The more likely issue, though, is the court says, all right, I need time to consider this. You know, Senate, would you give the judicial branch, the courts, a little bit of time to evaluate it. And there I think the Senate would be sort of hard pressed to not give the courts that time and give the president his day in court.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's also not entirely clear that the witnesses, if they decide to vote to have witnesses, that can't be retracted if they know the court case is going to be even longer. They may have the opportunity to say, oh, it's going to take that long, well, maybe we don't actually need it. If that Bolton book comes out or manuscript, it may change the calculus.

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: From a political and historical point of view, it would be very bad for the White House to intervene and prevent someone from testifying. If the White House is honest in saying there's nothing there, the call was perfect, this is not an abuse of power, the American people are going to ask, then why not let this man speak. Why are you -- because the concept of executive privilege is not understandable to most people who haven't spent time thinking about the presidency or constitutional law. Americans will want to know why can't this man speak.

If the president is concerned, why is he concerned?

COOPER: Moments ago, President Trump praising the secretary of state Mike Pompeo for berating an NPR reporter who asked him a question about Ukraine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:37:14]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- friends, and our great Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

That's impressive. That was very impressive, Mike. That reporter couldn't have done too good a job on yesterday, right? I think you did a good job on her, actually.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: That was President Trump moments ago praising Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for berating and cursing at an NPR correspondent. This all started a few days ago when NPR's highly respected Mary Louise Kelly pressed Pompeo on why he had not spoken out in defense of his fellow employees, people who work under him at the State Department including former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: She later accused her of lying to him about the topic she would cover in the interview. She denies that and e- mails appeared to back up her version of the events very strongly.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is joining us from the State Department right now. Kylie, now it appears the State Department is retaliating against NPR for this whole episode?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes. That's what it looks like, Wolf. So here's what happened. The NPR reporter here at the State Department who has been covering the department for nearly 20 years was kicked off an upcoming secretary of state trip. She was planning to go on that trip. It involves a stop in Ukraine. But she was notified over the weekend by the State Department that she would no longer be traveling.

And I think it's important to note that she wasn't just going to report for NPR, she was the pool reporter which essentially meant that she was going to be providing reporting for all radio outlets on this trip. She has been kicked off, and we have asked the State Department multiple times about their rationale for kicking her off the trip because it does appear that this is retaliation on behalf of the State Department for an interview that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn't like.

And as you mentioned in that interview, Mary Louise Kelly, a different NPR reporter, asked the secretary a number of pointed questions about Ukraine. After that interview concluded, he then invited her into a different room and proceeded to berate her.

And I want to read you what she did, how she described him berating her. She said, quote, he shouted at me for about the same time of the -- as the interview itself had lasted. He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, quote, do you think Americans care about Ukraine? He used the F word in that sentence and many others.

I think it's important to note also that the State Department Correspondents' Association is fighting back here and claiming that this is something that is completely unacceptable.

[12:40:08]

They put out a statement on behalf of the State Department association of this yesterday, and I want to read you a part of that as well saying, quote, the journalists who covered the State Department are dedicated to informing the public and holding this and every administration accountable by asking questions about the issues of the day. And we find it unacceptable to punish an individual member of our association.

So, we have not heard from the State Department a firm answer as to why they have kicked Michelle Kelemen off of this trip, but that is where we are today and she is not set to be traveling with Mike Pompeo when he leaves tomorrow.

TAPPER: All right, Kylie Atwood, thank you much.

Let's talk about this. And Susan Glasser, let me bring you in here. Because what's interesting here is, look, the interview between Mary Louise Kelly and Mike Pompeo was tense. She asked a bunch of questions about Iran as she -- as he wanted to talk about it, then she asked some about Ukraine. He ended the interview after a few questions. That's fine.

Then he got mad at her. That happens in this town. And he keeps dragging this out. He then -- she described the conversation because apparently there was no agreement it was off the record, and he issued a statement on State Department letterhead accusing her of lying and berating her, saying that the media has gone crazy, or something words to that effect. Now the State Department, apparently punitively, is banning another NPR reporter from going on. And then President Trump just told Mike Pompeo, I think you did a good job on her, actually. I don't really understand why the secretary of state and the Trump administration would continue to do this. She was just asking reasonable questions about Ukraine.

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, that's right, Jake. First of all, I think it obviously is a clear escalation on the part of Secretary of State Pompeo. And I think in listening to that comment from President Trump right now, you sort of hear a possible answer.

I spent six months last year reporting a profile of Mike Pompeo for the New Yorker and what I found was that even in an administration where Trump demands personal loyalty in his senior officials, Pompeo was described to me as perhaps the most obsequious. And again, that's not my word, that was the word of a former senior official who observed him interacting with President Trump, constantly complaining to the audience of one. He was described to me by a former U.S. ambassador who worked directly with him as a heat-seeking missile for the president's posterior, and it works.

I think that comment was really striking. You know, we've all been around Washington for a long time. I've had Democrats curse at me in the middle of the night from the White House in previous administrations. This is not unusual behavior. What is unusual and even shocking, I would say, was the written statement coming out of the State Department. And, again, I've observed secretaries of state for several decades now. I've never seen a statement like that ever released by a secretary of state in which he not only accused this NPR journalist, Mary Louise Kelly, of lying, but in fact there is written evidence to contradict him on it.

He said, that well, I only agreed to talk about Iran. She had a written email from the night before which have now been reviewed by other journalists, pointing out that she has said I never agree to take anything off the table, number one. Number two, I'm specifically going to ask about Ukraine.

Number three, if you listen to the full transcript of the interview, she asked 11 substantive questions about Iran to which there weren't that many answers forthcoming, and then at the end pivot to a couple questions about Ukraine.

And again, what is the question that causes the secretary of state to explode? Well, of course, it's the question that gets you right to this impeachment trial of the president. She simply asked, how come you've never publicly defended Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch who was smeared and fired on baseless allegations. And he just -- he lost it.

BLITZER: You know and John, you and I have covered White Houses over the years. To remove a long-time State Department correspondent from a pool on a trip like this, that truly is an extraordinary measure of retaliation on the part of the State Department.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And they've been asked and haven't explained it so we should give them their due and we'd like to see the explanation. But, since they haven't explained it, it just seems like a petty retaliation that is beyond the pale but not if you look at the way this administration has made a decision, from this president on down to, it likes enemies.

And you see the president even today criticizing Fox News because they dared to put a Democratic senator on television to ask him questions in the impeachment thing. This is part of a political strategy.

Sometimes, as I stress to the younger people in the business, I'd say be a duck, let it hit you, let it roll off because we're not supposed to get involved with these fights, it's not our job. So we should try to de-escalate whenever possible. But in just laying out the facts here, it's just a petty, small move by people who have decided this is their political strategy.

[12:45:06]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, let's also pay attention to actually what the secretary of state said to this journalist which was, using an expletive, nobody cares about Ukraine, right before he is about to head over to Ukraine. That's a problem, one would presume, if he's going to go over to Ukraine, but instead, what does the president of the United States say today. Well, Pompeo did a good job on her.

That's what he's thinking about, not about the fact that Ukraine is important and that this could be a problem, that in throwing a tantrum as Pompeo did, that he actually said that to a journalist. How is he going to explain that when he gets over to Ukraine?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes. And I think this is how you increase your stature in Trump's America. I mean, we saw this with Martha McSally for instance, it was a same sort of thing, she used it as sort of a way to raise money, she got on Laura Ingraham. And so we see today what the result of this was from Pompeo.

He got this huge cheer, the president complimenting him for his terrible behavior in relation to this journalist, but the president has set this tone. And if you want to have an outsider's reputation in this administration and in sort of Trump's Republican Party, this is what you do it. And I think we'll see it over and over again.

TAPPER: So one of the things that I just remembered is, in 2016, I think it was, Hillary Clinton then running for president did an interview with NPR's Terry Gross' Fresh Air. And Terry Gross was asking some polite -- as NPR reporters do, polite but pointed questions about the fact that -- if I'm interpreting correctly, Terry Gross didn't exactly buy the fact that Hillary Clinton just all of a sudden supported same-sex marriage. That maybe she likes to (INAUDIBLE) believes in check. And Hillary Clinton got very mad and she got peeved, and it was very clear.

But what we didn't see was an attempt by the Clinton campaign, and I understand Democratic audiences are different than Republican ones, and we can go into the history of the media and all that, but what we didn't see was a desire to keep this story alive for days and days and days. Because you know why, because it reflected poorly on her. Because if you are running for president and Mike Pompeo theoretically might want to run for president in 2024, you have to be able to answer questions.

RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Here's what I think is the way that the administration and many Republicans look at this is that the world is divided into camps and they believe that the media is in the camp with the Democrats. That's what they believed.

And so, they look at the mainstream media and the Democratic Party now as one and the same, and so they get treated as one and the same. Now, obviously, that as journalists sitting around this table, you say, well, that's ridiculous, I'm just telling you the perception is that in particularly through these investigations and the impeachment, that the media has just sort of just carried the Democrats' water throughout the process, and now you got the stink on you, and we're going to treat like the other side.

BORGER: But shouldn't you be able to answer that question, why didn't you defend Marie Yovanovitch -- he should know that it's --

SANTORUM: The specifics -- look, I can't defend the specifics. I'm talking about the general perception and the reason that this is becoming more common.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: The Clinton White House thought that the media was in embed with Republican and we were -- that we were all carrying water for the Republican Party and repeating everything they say when it came to impeachment.

GLASSER: Well -- and again, the senator is, of course, exactly right, that is the world view that is informing this incident. What I would say is to journalists like us who I spent a career as independent -- people who are not, you know, on any team, who are not in a party, and Mary Louise Kelly by the way, I've known for three decades, and she's not on a team. And, you know --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's excellent.

GLASSER: -- the thing that I would say about this that I think is really important for the audience is that, the antidote for that is facts. And in this situation, to have the secretary -- it's not that he had a temper tantrum because he's human and politicians have temper tantrums, you know, I --

SANTORUM: Never me.

GLASSER: Not you, sir. But, you know, we've been yelled at and sworn at by people of both parties. That's our job. It's extraordinary in this situation to have the secretary of state misrepresenting the facts, putting out a statement on secretary of state letterhead from Foggy Bottom saying things that aren't true. OK, so that's the antidote to this partisanship, is to insist that the facts matter. And the secretary of state is misrepresenting what happened here.

TAPPER: And what --

GLASSER: And maligning a reporter whose professional integrity is at stake, by the way.

TAPPER: And I don't think anybody who knows Mary Louise Kelly actually believes any of the claims being made about her. But one other thing I say is the message that the secretary of state as well as the president send and how they treat the media is significant when it comes to how the rest of the world looks at this. Because we've already seen tyrants and dictators, actual ones, actual literal dictators using the terminology that we hear here from people who are hostile to the press, fake news.

BLITZER: Enemy of the people.

TAPPER: Nima Elbagir with that great report on slavery in Sudan and then was attacked by the Sudanese Government for (INAUDIBLE) fake news. And it won a U.N. award, that report.

[12:50:10]

BLITZER: The U.S. is supposed to be promoting a free press around the world. Instead, some of these dictators are just trying to copy some of the language that they're hearing from the president and others, his supporters here in the United States. And the retaliation by barring an NPR reporter from being a pool representative, that is unacceptable.

TAPPER: It doesn't project strength.

BLITZER: No.

We're going to have much more on another significant development unfolding right now. The former White House chief of staff John Kelly says he believes John Bolton after Bolton reportedly made damning revelations about the president.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: As we reported only moments ago, the former White House chief of staff John Kelly is speaking out now for the first time about the allegations the former national security adviser John Bolton has reportedly making in a new book that President Trump asked him to directly hold up U.S. military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation of the Bidens. When asked about that, John Kelly tell a reporter and I'm quoting now, I believe John Bolton.

CNN Presidential Historian Tim Naftali is with us, and Dana Bash is on Capitol Hill. Dana, before we get to the comments from former chief of staff John Kelly, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, one of the possible votes in favor of more witnesses just made an interesting remark about Bolton. What did she have to say?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: She said the following. She said, quote, I think that Bolton probably has something to offer us. That is Murkowski talking to some of our colleagues in the hallways here. She's making her way to the Senate chamber.

That is significant because there has been, you know, a lot of toing and froing about witnesses in general, about Bolton. This is the furthest she has leaned into the notion of voting yes to call John Bolton as a witness, because as we've been talking about, it would be and will be a vote to make that happen.

And, Jake, the fact this is coming on the backdrop of the president's former chief of staff saying not just that he believes John Bolton but he thinks John Bolton should testify is interesting, because there are senators like Murkowski who sound to me and look to me like they're looking as a way to get to yes can use the experience.

[12:55:06]

Eighteen months in the White House with President Trump that John Kelly has as a crutch to get to yes, if she feels that she needs that, Jake.

BLITZER: All right, everybody stand by. We're only minutes away now from the final day of opening arguments from the president's defense team. Some Republican senators are now asking to see the Bolton manuscript. If not, have him testify live.

Stand by. Our complete coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Welcome to CNN's special live coverage of the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump.

TAPPER: And I'm Jake Tapper along with Dana Bash who is leading CNN's coverage on Capitol Hill.

It is the final day today for the Trump legal team to argue their case that President Trump should be acquitted on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives. Today's proceedings are expected to begin any moment.

BLITZER: But senators are also preparing for what comes next. They will soon submit questions to both sides and then decide whether to subpoena witnesses and documents. At least two Republican senators have now indicated they are increasingly in favor of that, especially in the wake of those revelations from a draft manuscript of a forthcoming book of former national security adviser John Bolton.

TAPPER: Now according to the New York Times which has spoken with individuals who have read Bolton's manuscript, Bolton claims that he heard President Trump directly tie security aid for Ukraine, almost $400 million worth with demands for the Ukrainians to conduct or at least announce investigation into the Bidens, as well as to investigate a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine.

And now new reporting from the New York Times that says that Bolton told Attorney General William Barr that he, Bolton, was concerned that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China.

BLITZER: A very significant development unfolding and very soon we're going to see the chief justice of the United States bring this session -- open this session. And then what we're expecting about two hours for the White House lawyers to make their final arguments in favor of the president.

TAPPER: That's right, we expect the lawyers, Jay Sekulow and Pat Cipollone of the White House counsel to make about two hours worth of arguments at which point it's expected that the Senate will just break the day. Maybe they'll conduct other business relating to other legislation.

And then tomorrow will begin the process of questions being asked and questions being answered. And then we think -- all of this, of course, is subject to change. On Friday there will be a vote on whether or now to allow more witnesses including John Bolton who would be subpoenaed if they vote that way. It's very unclear.

And Friday is actually the day that everybody is really wondering about that vote, because as of now, there's clearly not 67 votes in favor of removing President Trump from office. So it's a question about whether or not there will be more witnesses, more documents or not.