security priority and that's why they had to roll it out so fast so the bad guys couldn't rush in, what does it mean now that it's being phased in, skps they're giving this lead in to it. guys, it's great to see you. a lot of news happening this hour. we'll continue throughout the day. thank you for joining us at this hour. inside politics with john king. john king will pick it up right now. this is cnn breaking news. welcome to "inside politics" i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. a day of busy breaking news in the nation's capital. take two of the trump administration's controversial travel ban. six nations on it this time, not seven. the united states and is had aides standing by the president's stunning allegation over the weekend that president obama wiretapped the presidential campaign. a lot to discuss in the hour ahead. we begin with the brand new revised trump administration travel ban.

>> to provide the information we need to vet them responsibly, all when those government actively support terrorism. this executive order responsibly provides a needed pause to review how we scrutinized people come here from these countries of concern. >> with us to share the reporting and their insights, cnn nia malika, henderson, and karen of the washington post. a conversation about the politics of this, and the other big story in washington state. let's go first to our senior legal analyst.

>> does the president have a stronger legal case here with travel ban number two? >> he does have a stranger legal case. i don't know if he will win, but he certainly has improved some of the problems that the court saw wrrks first of all, it's clear that green cardholders and people with valid visas are not covered by this executive order. also, it appears they have removed the religious preference for religious minorities. that is christians that made this look like a muslim ban. also, in defining the scope of the problem they are defining it in terms of the absence of government controls in the six named countries. not the religious nature of those countries. i think when you combine all those things together, it makes for a more defensible package. the problem they still have which the aclu and the government challenging it will

still raise is that president trump said he wanted a muslim ban, and this is just a muslim ban with some protectoral explanations. certainly, the trump administration has helped their legal case by watering this down. >> and to the point you just made. i'm not a lawyer, so please laugh at me if this is silly, but listening to secretary tillerson, then the attorney general jeff sessions and then secretary kelly of homeland security make a public case, brief in all cases, but to make their public case about how they viewed this policy, why they needed this policy. see, it seemed to me that he were this trying to create a record for the court essentially to rebut. this is no longer about candidate trump. this is about president trump and these members of his cabinet. >> oh. well, i think that is part of the story. just the governmental justification for the order is a very important part of why -- of how this will unfold in the courts. remember, the first executive order seemingly came out of nowhere with no

justification,ing no explanation, and, you know, again, atmospherics do matter, though they do not have technical legal significance. >> this will be much more associated with cabinet members rather than the president announcing it, and that is all helpful in the atmospherics of the legal case. >> jeff, before i let you go, during our conversation, the new york state attorney general, a democrat, says who has been a trump critic, released a statement saying his office is now going to review this new order, look at the details, but that he "stands ready to litigate." i assume by the time you get to have lunch today, someone is going to be in court challenging this. >> i think that is as safe an assumption as you can make anywhere. >> jeff tuben, our senior legal analyst, thank you so much. we'll come back to you as developments warrant. >> politically, this is important for the administration, but clearly, clearly, one interpretation of this is this is a signature issue of the trump campaign.

it was one of his early actions as president. a court stopped him and blocked him. this is a much softer travel ban. number one, six countries instead of seven. majority muslim countries. number two, syrian refugees are not barred. they, like others on this, are subject to a 120 day pause. it is certainly softer. >> even as the members of the trump cabinet were speaking, senator chuck schumer, the democratic leader tv the senate, issued a statement saying that this ban is still a ban, that this is mean-spirited and unamerican, that it makes us less safe, not more. i don't know that they're going to pick up any support from people who have already been criticizing this whole approach. >> on this issue, republicans, largely with him, they were very critical of the sloppy roll-out of the first one. this were very angered that they

were not consulted the first time around. in terms of the general policy being tougher against the threat of terrorism, he has much more republicans standing now, right? >> i think so. >> it's an easy legal argument. also, i think the whole idea, though of this was urgent that you had to do this because there were terrorists going over the border and coming over in airplanes. that seems to have disappeared, and you wonder if that comes back. there still doesn't seem to

be -- >> we should note to that point, this order doesn't take effect until march 16. this is not something that takes effect like that, and again, as we're having the conversation on this fast-breaking story, the house democratic leader to your point, carkaren, nancy pelosi s take two, changes nothing. she calls it immoral and unconstitutional. we know the democrats will argue constitutionally against it. we know legally we're going to end up back in courts. the first roll-out, general kelly has taken the hit. he says i take responsibility for this. we know from our reporting that he and other cabinet secretaries were largely blindsided when the first travel ban came out. it was orchestrated by senior staff at the white house level. listen to secretary kelly today making the case no one should be surprised this time because we're going to do this in a calculated way. >> i have spent much of date on the phone explaining the ins and outs. i did the same thing last week.

there should be no surprises whether it's in the media or on capitol hill. thank you very much. thanks for your time. >> or in his own office. this is the point i wanted to make there. they were not happy the first time. >> they weren't. actually, when kelly went out afterwards. , he had the press conference to explain what happened. that's when republican members of congress felt a little bit better. they believed that kelly had it under control. they could stash the bleeding just a little bit. that was interesting just to have the secretaries being a public face of this. it's politically for their own parties to have them selling this, explaining it, and looking like they're thinking through it, rather than have the president himself, who has known to shoot from the hip to discuss this. the question is what does the republican leadership do? we know that paul ryan in the past criticized the roll-out, but not the policy. what about some of the other people who had been long-time critics of the trump administration, the lindsey grahams of the world. do they come down? do they call this tant tantamo

a muslim ban? i think you'll have the critics still be critics in the republican party. >> that's one of the reasons it was -- blocked in the courts. >> in that they were continuing to assert that the original travel ban was perfectly legal. >> they will drop that fight and say that fight is now moot. they have travel ban number two. the attorney general saying this is legal. you have the secretary of homeland security saying essentially sorry. this time we're going to brief you and take our time. it's not implemented until march 16th. this is done in a careful way. we know if there had not been a debate at home, but around the world, many u.s. allies have criticized this saying they believe the president is doing something that's not good for the fight against terrorism, so the secretary of state was part of the roll-out this time, and here was his message to our allies around the world.

>> to our partners around the world, please understand this order is part of our ongoing efforts to eliminate vulnerabilities, the radical islamist terrorists can and will exploit for destructive ends. >> radical islamist, not radical islamic as the president likes to say. >> this is so different in completely how it was rolled out are but the biggest difference, the president has an term now. that was one of the biggest problems on the first friday when he signed that at the pentagon. he didn't have his justice department in place. it was so rushed. this is how it's done. i think republicans will respond to this much better. it's softer. it is going to be challenged, of course. he can defend it. thaegts a huge difference. look how the president signed this. in fact, we can't look at it. the media was not allowed in the oval office. this is a president in the first six weeks or so who seems to me to love signing executive orders. he holds them up.

>> i think that's very revealing as well. >> there were no questions taken at the announcement either. >> we're going to take a break and talk about it more in a minute. he would very much like to be front and center in revising it, be and proving that i'm sticking with it. he criticized the judges publicly. the fact that we won't show you the picture of the president signing an executive order, that was important to his administration and an important policy debate. we will not show you the picture. we will show you a policy that we cannot have canned press releases. you have to let the reporters in. the president is a big boy. he doesn't have to answer questions if they're shouted at him, but they wouldn't let anybody in because of the other issue front and center today. that is the president saying that he believes his predecessor somehow wiretapped him during last year's campaign. that will be our case when we come back. a quick break. stay with "inside politics." the president makes that allegation, but more than 50

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. >> welcome back. donald trump as a candidate and as president has said provocative, at times outlandish things that sometimes the gravity of his statements get lost in the drama surrounding his statements. let's stop and make sure we get the gravity here. the sitting president of the united states is accusing his predecessor of a nixonian abuse of power. it starts with sunrise tweets. just the timing is important. it gives us a glimpse of how it operates. his staff learned about the obama wiretapping allegation. the same way all of us did, by seeing it on twitter. mccarthyism, he claimed in one tweet. nixon, watergate was his tag in another. we are 50 plus hours later now, and the white house has provided no evidence to support the president's allegations.

>> for the part of the national security apparatus that i saw as dni, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign. >> at this point you can't confirm or deny whether that exists. >> i can deny it. >> there is no court order? >> not to my knowledge. >> of anything at trump tower? >> no. >> if you believe mr. clapper there that was one of the big questions in the weekend. did the president know something? we don't know. does the president have access to intelligence that says there was, because we do know the justice department was investigating alleged contacts, maybe contacts between trump associates and russia. was there some wiretap approved by a court to listen in on some conversation? he says no. mr. clapper says no. if that's now mr. clapper is also part of an intelligence

community that donald trump has said he was acting like nazis. if you are a trump supporter, you probably don't believe jim clapper, who happens to be a career public servant from democrat and republican administration. if that's the truth, and there's no fisa court, that the obama justice department, not the president -- the president does not have the legal authority to order a wiretap on anybody. the justice -- if that's true and the justice department didn't approve one, then what is the president talking about? >> no one knows. >> the current president. >> great question. they said that they aren't going to have any more discussions about this, but then as sarah huckaby sanders has been on morning shows the past couple of mornings saying if this is a possibility, we need to look at it. our friend martha radditz had a good rejoiner yesterday saying if, if, if. the president did not say if in his tweets. he stated it as fact. the reality here is the white house has the ability to hold a news conference, the ability to get anything out there. the reality is the

administration is trying to follow his lead. he sent out this message on saturday, and now they're trying to sort of get behind what he said. no one knew what he was talking about. >> the fact that he had just learned. >> just learned. >> so as we see is his aides say, well, maybe he was referring to press reports back in the fall. that is not what the president said. he said he had just learned as a fact that he had been wiretapped. >> a lot of reasons why that doesn't make a lot of sense because one of which is that if there is an investigation, and we know that there is an fbi investigation that is going on in russia, over russia, over russia's meddling in the elections, we are pretty certain we're looking into alleged contacts between trump campaign officials in russia officials. trump would not be briefed on these wiretaps. if he is being wiretapped in the middle of an ongoing investigation. that makes very little sense. typically i have talked to members -- sources on the various committees in congress,

and they said that you'll be briefed maybe after an investigation is concluded, but you not during an investigation. even if the wiretap thing was accurate, there's really no way of trump to be briefed on that, and so it makes you think that perhaps he did learn it from some of these conspiracy theories, on-line. >> in the initial moments and hours after the president's tweets on saturday morning, again, his senior staff was caught completely off guard by this. they had no idea it was coming. you would think if a president was going to accuse his predecessor of a possible crime, he would tell the rest of the staff, but a lot of the staff, this is senior aides, paid by the president of the united states, hired by the president, said they thought the information came from this. a breitbart news story that was about a mark levine news story in which he said there's a deep state of intelligence community and otherwise in the federal bureaucracy conspireing against the president of the united states and obama is now part of it. president obama is now part of it. that's what he said. kellyanne conway counselled the president, went on television today and said, no, it the president has access to information we don't get.

that's back to the intelligence part of it. a number of republicans are seize says on this. he believed there was a warrant. you just heard jim clapper say there was a warrant. there might have been during the investigation. conservative outlets are saying former bush ag said trump is right. what the conservative outlets are passing on is this part. >> it means there was some basis to believe that somebody in trump tower may have been acting as an agent of the russians for whatever purpose. not necessarily the election, but for some purpose. >> that's a republican who spoke at the trump convention saying if there was a wiretap, it was because they had evidence of something pretty serious. has the president opened a bks here he may regret opening? >> typically one of the theories about donald trump and his twitter tantrums is that he wants to throw people off the trail. in this case he seems to have thrown people on a trail and

opened up this pandora's box of investigations and scrutiny into either his behavior or the behavior of folks around him. it is also true that i think he has been a conspiracy theoryist. he has had history, whether it was about birtherism or ted cruz's father supposedly being involved in the j.f.k. assassinati assassination, and there is an appetite on the far right for this kind of stuff. i mean, in the far right's imagination, obama is this all-powerful sort of dictator sympathizer with terrorists. i think he senses that. >> largely that has been absent on the hill. >> we just saw the secretary of state, the attorney general, the secretary of homeland security come out to unveil a key pause in the initiative, and they didn't take questions. >> they need to explain it to congress. it's controversial. they wouldn't take questions because they know what the first question is going to be.

they don't want him to be in a position. again, he doesn't have to answer them, of reporters shouting questions. you mentioned the sean spicer at the same time chg, both clever and laughable at the same time in the sense that we were asking them please give us evidence of what the president is saying about the former president. then he said there are reports concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election. >> the president will not comment further until oversight is connected. saying congress needs to look into obama. well, number one, those investigations on capitol hill were already ongoing. somebody here at the table tell me, if the republican house intelligence committee, republican-led, or the republican-led senate committee of the nixonian abuse of power by president obama during the

investigation. >> don't you think they would tell us. >> we know they haven't seen anything, according to susan collins of maine who sits on the senate intelligence committee. yesterday she has seen no evidence, and if the white house has the evidence to provide it to the committee. he is saying they will look into this new. new chairman devin nunez says they will, but a lot of people like adam schiff, the top democrat on the committee, think they're not going to find it. >> he thinks it puts republicans in a tenuous position. marco rubio, went down with the president and sat out awe great supportive tweet after the education event. he is on the sunday shows yesterday being asked what does the president mean here, and? >> so obviously i have no -- i'm not sure what it is he is talking about, where perhaps the president has information that not yet available to us. if it's true, obviously we're going to find out very quickly, and if it isn't, then obviously he will have to explain what he meant by it.

i'm not sure what the genesis of that statement was, but imagine we're going to learn more about it over the next few days. one way or the other. >> i imagine. >> the president's frame of mind over the weekend, and my colleagues, bob costa and phil rutgers and ashley parker did some amazing reporting about what it was like in mar-a-lago in the oval office. the president goes into the weekend absolutely livid that he believes jeff sessions should not have recused himself and there has not been a strong enough defense of him, that they should be pushing back. against that we have these four really incendiary tweets. i think ultimately if it turns out there is no evidence of wiretapping, that is going to be our explanation as to why all

this happened. >> that's the art of the segue. up next, the president of the united states is described by friends and aides as angry, frustrated, and convinced. there's a coordinated campaign to undermine him. as after a dvt blood clot,ital i sure had a lot to think about.

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zbliefrmt welcome back. an angry oval office session friday. more anger in lashing out saturday and sunday in florida. the president who accused his predecessor of tapping his phones is described by a number of sources frustrated with his own staff, curious leaks and now convinced there's a calculated coordinated effort within the -- the president and his teams say this media, the news media, us, are an eager part of this conspiracy. >> the media loves to create this false narrative against the current president, but is so quick to dismiss anything under the past administration.

if the president walked across the potomac, the media radio worth that he couldn't swim. >> i think we would report that is pretty cool. listen, god bless people who work for politicians and have to defend them in times of crisis. oom not here to pick on sharon. >> oh, sure you are. >> this is not the people's court. this is not the people's court. i want to get at the president's state of mind. you tufrpd on it a moment ago. now his aides -- he has put his aides on television. she says he firmly believes this may have happened. this may have happened. that barack obama may have -- may have nixonian mccarthy abuse of power. kellyanne conway, if something happened, the american people need to know. you don't do mays and ifs after the president of the united states accuse the former president of the united states of breaking the law. >> if he believes all of this, he should get out and say it. all of a sudden he is hiding behind twitter and the white house. he doesn't want cameras in there. i don't think sean spicer is going to brief on camera today of those three cabinet officials

that didn't want to talk about it. instead is he putting these remarks on twitter and sending his aides out and hiding. >> when they try to push back, they often push back against us saying anonymous sources, anonymous sources. you mentioned your colleagues have great reporting. we at cnn spent a number of -- a half dozen contributing to the story saying is he mad, lashing out, calling friends and saying his team can't get out of its own way. he is mad at people within. here is a good friend of the president, chris, the ceo of the conservative news site news max. he said he was pissed. sorry, i don't like to say that in the daytime, but that's a quote from somebody close to the president. i haven't seen him this angry. we're not making this you up. >> not at all. you spent the weekend on the phone, as did every reporter. the reality here, though, one thing of all the people we spoke to, we didn't hear him taking any responsibility for this himself.

the reality, though, he has created all this. one thing that was absent from that friday meeting, which was incredibly animated in the oval office right before he went to florida, was any sense of something that he can change, that he can do differently. i think that is the issue here. he is furious at his attorney general who is very -- he supports and likes him, but he did not think that he should recuse himself. if you think back, this is stuff that he has said for a long time and gotten a ton of press for it, but he is president now. she realizes, of course. that's the only difference here. >> it should take some responsibility. it was saturday morning twitter tyrade that has gotten him off message, and i have talked to some republicans on the hill in the last couple of days, and they are frustrated to say the least. you heard mitch mcconnell say a couple of weeks ago, stop tweeting essentially because you take us off message. what do the republicans on the hill want to do? focus on repeeling and replacing obama care, central part of trump's agenda. it's not -- it's going to be overshadowed by things that the president himself did. >> yet, some people think you

just alluded -- that he does it to distract. we are talking about could possibly president obama have -- didn't tell congress with the meeting and had to recuse himself. the trump campaign after months of saying there were no meetings, had to disclose that not only were there more meetings, but one of them was involving jared curbner at trump tower. we have a brand new poll that think that a majority of americans think there should be a special prosecutor. even most democrats in congress are not sure that we're at that point yet. 82 prz of democrats, 67% have independents, but that's a problem for -- that's a problem for cnn. you get the graphic right. 43% of republicans think this should be a special prosecutor, and now he has taken this story to -- he has added more steroids to it.

under normal circumstances, if we had a white house full of people who have lived through this government, not just as part of a campaign, they would know this the first thing you need to do is learn all the facts yourself. get them all on the table. learn everything we can so you can get ahead of it. they are have felt that -- it's their stances to deny and counter punch. they are behind the curve. he says it's not gsh it's leak after leak. former obama administration. the white house is trying to figure out a systemic way to figure out what's happening. the chairman is right. it is actually happening. the last several leaks have been

about jeff sessions did meet with the russians. jared kushner did meet. they know this is an issue. the last several leaks have all been about correcting the record. not neff airus stuff. just correcting. they say this, well, it's not true. >> exactly. you have to wonder if all of this sort of stuff over the weekend is to pave the way for something else that also may be coming. is there going to be some other information about someone who actually had a conversation? i think there may be more strategy in here than we -- >> this whole idea about the media being the enemy of the state, that was after a lot of russia coverage, and now this claim about obama doing something illegal and wiretapping him have also come

in the wake of conversations about russia. >>. >> he -- nunez has been very concerned about the leaks. he said that any law has been broken right now, it's possibly the fact that classified information has been out there, although some of the -- something has been leaked is not classified. nevertheless, that's where at least republicans -- some republicans want to put the focus of this investigation as much as the trump contacts. up next, some new poll members that are favorable for the president and his agenda. cheese for over 100 years like kraft has, you learn a lot about what people want. honey, do we have like a super creamy cheese with taco spice already in it? oh, thanks. bon appe-cheese! okay...

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welcome back. a brand new cnn-orc poll out today shows us the president did not get a big bounce after last tuesday ae speech to congress. that's always the goal. a big joint address of congress, the president hopes to get a bounce. his approval rating 45%. it was 44% heading into the speech. barely a blip. up maybe just a tiny bit within a poll's margin of error. if you look at this by party, pretty of the same as going into the speech. republicans are with the president. 8 % approve of president trump's job performance. independents, a majority disapproved. democrats, forget about it. it's pretty much a mirror above. that's the polarized environment we're in as the republican congress tries to begin movement on the trump agenda. economic issues, tax reform would be included in that. the president is on pretty good standing. a divided country. this is where it gets problematic for republicans on issues like immigration and health care. the president is under water at the moment. the health care debate very important because house republicans want to start moving

this week on their plan. if you get obama care, if you get government subsidies for your health care, republicans say we have a better deal. >> let me say this. whether you double the cost or not, i don't think we're going to do that at all. what we're going to do is republicans have better ideas on how to fix health care, says and the daunting issue is still, chris, that if people go without coverage, they're going to show up at the most expensive point of health care, and that is an emergency room. republicans do understand this, and so if we allow individuals and the tax credits at the heart of this, if we allow all individuals to have the same tax advantage, they can be responsible for a fair shot of gaining health care, and we are struggling with that. republicans are going to have to come up with an answer. we said we could deliver, and we've got to. >> they said they would deliver, and they've got to. help me.

number one, are they as unified as congressman sessions seems to think on this tax credit idea. can they get it through the house? how much does this broader political environment where the president didn't get much of a bounce where washington has consumed now by stunning allegations from the president of the united states about his predecessor. how much does this environment affect the nuts and bolts of the agenda? >> huge impact because you need the president to be healthy in order to get -- take really difficult vote, particularly the members in modern -- the conservative members come under a lot of pressure at the end of the day because he is still popular with his base. the conservatives are also concerned about the policy. there are a number of these members of the house freedom caucus who believe that the issue providing tax credits to provide for health insurance, a lot of people to provide health insurance is nothing but another entitlement. >> we don't know how much this

proposal is going to cost at this point. we also don't know how many people are going to be covered by it. they have not released any estimates from the congressional budget office, and we're about ready to get into votes in the committee this week. a lot of questions about whether they can get this through, but we do know paul ryan wants to get this pass out of the house by the end of this month, but he can only afford to lose 20 ments members. that's difficult in a chamber that is somewhat nearly divided. >> and sell. that's another issue. republicans don't like some of the -- they don't like the tax credit idea. >> even planned parenthood, defunding planned parenthood. >> i have talked to republicans who say this is not a problem for the president. this is an opportunity that if he can engage on policy, if he can start knocking some heads and sorting out these differences on tax reform, on health care, that this could be, you know, what gets him through all of these other difficulties that we have spent the rest of the show talking about.

>> start doing things that are relevant. things that are relevant to the people out there as opposed to making wreck it is allegations. >> we have seen so far glimmers of that. obviously with his speech on tuesday, they thought they were going to be able to ride that through the week and right into momentum for this week in terms of all the issues they want to be talking about. i mean, clearly some good numbers for him in terms of the economy, and i talked to one republican early on. she agrees largely with what karen said. this idea that he has to do a few things around obama care. tweak it, repeal it. reform it. whatever around tax reform as well. maybe some sort of a wall. i mean, maybe it's probably going to end up being more like a fence, but so far he hasn't been able to get out of his own way, and hasn't been curious enough in terms of engaging with congress to get some of the stuff done. >> changing, and getting things done and changing washington would go a long way in helping improve the standings. up next, our reporters share their notebooks, including a new buzz word right here in the nation's capital. ahh, sir?

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let's close as we always do. ask our great reporters to get you out ahead of the big political news just around the corner. nia. >> it's going to be fascinating to watch the trump effect in terms of politicians and politics, and we've seen that somewhat in france with marin la pin, and also in mexico there is -- his name is andres man well obador, and his nickname is anlo for short, and he is seemingly doing really well in mexico right now in terms of being the next president,

possibly replacing enrique pena nieto, and he sounds both like trump and the anti-trump. he talks about the mafia of power, the mafia politicians and is doing really well in gaining traction there. it will be interesting to see how he does in terms of campaigning for the presidency. he has run twice before. there's a whole new ballgame now with trump. >> new playbook to copy. >> there is some skepticism and some objection to the health care bill. well, this is going to be the first sign and the test of how strong the trump movement actually is. he is not traveling this week, which i was not surprised. at least he is not scheduled to travel. at some point when there is opposition, what will he do specifically to urge them to vote for this? this is not one thing we have seen him use, the power of the presidency for. i am told that he is going to use it, and he is going to convince some of these reluctant

conservatives to sign on board of this. >> we'll see. manu. >> we're two weeks from neil gorsuch's confirmation hearings, and republicans are still searching for those eight democratic votes in order to put gorsuch over the top because they're expected to need to get 60 votes on the floor of the senate and 52 republican senators. they don't expect to lose infantry the republican senators. where do those eight republican senators -- the conservative groups are pushing neil gorsuch to get the red state democrats who are on -- who are running for re-election, including joe donnelly, who has been a target of 1 .2 million dollars worth of ads in indiana from conservative outside groups. the question is where there are three more members, one person, bob casey of pennsylvania, also up for re-election. i talked to him about gorsuch.

he is not there yet. a lot of questions about where those final votes are going to come from. >> the phrase that you have been hearing on everyone's lips, and i think especially within, like, the last week is the phrase deep state. this is the idea that there is an entrenched federal bureaucracy. not just in national security, but throughout the government that basically leans left. it will be there after he leaves. what i am finding extraordinary is the degree to which people on the right are now calling for donald trump to do something about that. certainly steve bannon believes that the success of his presidency really hinges on bringing deep state under control.

newt gingrich is actually calling upon the model of abraham lincoln essentially saying that there has to be an idealogical house cleaning of the federal bureaucracy. >> they could start by filling the hundreds of jobs they've yet to fill for their own appointees so they could put them in these agencies. >> the president's stunning wiretapping allegation puts front and center a fascinating new thing in the new washington. they say they're determined to ignore all the drama and just focus on passing their ambitious agenda, but there is no ignoring or escaping the drama. the republicans who wish the president would cancel his twitter account. no, they are going to be asked daily about his twitter misses. they're beyond thinking he will change his ways. they see the liablehood of that as about equal to the likelihood of the president curing his twitter addiction.

>> after i a quick break, wolf blitzer.

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>> hello. i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you are watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. we're following two major stories this hour. first, the uproar over explosive but unsubstantiated wiretapping claims levelled by president trump against president obama. the president alleges without presenting any evidence that president obama ordered the wiretapping of his phones last year. several former senior u.s. officials have dismissed the claims calling them nonsense. we'll have the latest on where this goes from here. also, president trump just signed a new travel ban