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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  February 19, 2018 10:00pm-11:00pm PST

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other side effects include upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ♪ otezla. show more of you. 13 russians indicted in a mueller probe. lt weekend tweet storm making everything about russia all about himself. dragging the florida shooting victims into it. the students taking action they hope to make this latest tragedy the last. a story you'll only see here about a new dimension in the mueller investigation. will it cross a presidential red line. we begin with the tweets. jeff zelny joins us now. >> i was this palm beach with him covering him. it was quiet early on.
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the storm started saturday evening and continued throughout the day sunday. throughout the day on sunday, 21 tweets in all talking about everything from the russia investigation to the fbi to the shooting to a nascar. one common theme throughout all of them, as you said, talking about himself, facing two national crises, the tampering in the u.s. election and another school shooting. he turned it back to himself. here's a couple examples, just a sample, if you will, if you happened to miss it over the weekend of some of those messages he sent out. let's take a look. on the fbi -- he said this on saturday night. he said, very sad that the fbi missed all of the many signals sent out by the florida school shooter. this is not acceptable. they are spending too much time trying to prove russia collusion with the trump campaign. there is no collusion. get back to the basics and make us all proud. not to spend too much time fact-checking that, anderson, but clearly the indictments handed down on thursday did not say there was no collusion. simply that was his take from that. of course, he went on to talk
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specifically about the russia matter in other ways. he said this:. he said, i never said russia did not meddle in the election. i said it may be russia or china or another country or group, or it may be a 400-pound genius sitting in bed playing with his computer. the russian hoax was just that, the trump campaign colluded with russia. never did! i feel like groundhog's day here. he's gone through the u.s. department of justice and a special counsel said pretty clear on friday that they have enough evidence, they believe, to show that russia did, indeed, meddle in the election. that, of course, was on his mind on sunday. >> do we know what contributed to the president's mood the past few days? on friday he seemed pleased that in his opinion he was cleared of collusion, but then it just seemed to kind of devolve over the weekend. >> a lot of white house aides i talked to were mystified. the advisers see him in realtime, most of them, anyway,
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as we do. he did get a sense of vindication on friday after he left the white house here, but then he started watching the coverage over the weekend on cable news. he was not out on the golf course on friday or on saturday or on sunday, not until today, of course, out of respect for those shooting victims. and he was sitting around watching coverage, stewing and stewing. his sons were also there, don jr. and eric trump, also there over the weekend talking about the fbi, talking about how they believe this russian investigation has been so unfair to him. that combination sort of fed together and that's what led to the tweet storm, at least most people believe. >> jeff zeleny, thank you so much. i want to bring in kristin powers, albert mook, al stewart and ryan lizza. there were no tweets after the weekend. you would think of all the things to tweet about, that would be one thing he would
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mention. >> i can't imagine being a young person today and seeing something like this. all the time i've been aware that we had a president. through my childhood, through my teens, through my adulthood. the one thing you could count on is whatever you thought of the president, whether it was the person you liked or your family voted for or didn't vote for was in times of tragedy, you could count on them to make an effort to bring people together. to have the president be behaving this way when such an enormous tragedy has happened and these kids are suffering so much, and the whole country is suffering because of this, it's unreal. >> matt lewis, conservative writer, said he thought it was terrible to use the russia investigation in the wake of the massacre. >> to a certain extent, why wouldn't the president go out
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and tweet when he knows everybody is going to cover it and it's going to drive the sunday shows and all the coverage. whether he's talking about adam schiff or the russia investigation or president obama, it's like groundhog day with russia and covering the tweets. >> it's on the mind of literally every single person i know. why is it not on his mind? >> he was down there visiting to the people who want to save him. >> you don't think talking about the fbi investigation and making it about him and making some crazy claim that they didn't follow up because they were spending too much time on russia isn't insulting to the kids? >> no, and my pushback would be where is the president inaccurate in his tweets? he is a massive tweeter. adam schiff said he is a massive tweeter.
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>> he's doing it for the reasons we're here now. we're getting into a discussion of what's true or not true about the russian investigation. we're not talking about children dying. what was so striking to me today is this j.r. student who they are planning to have him buried with military rights or honors. it's incredible dying in a combat situation in the united states and the president won't even go to these people and meet with them. he wants us to be talking about the russia investigation because that's where he can sort of pull the strings and get us fighting with each other and not solving the problem. that's exactly why he's doing this. >> when i was in arkansas we had a school shooting there years ago, and governor huckabee appealed to the people in the state, calm reflection, offered prayers and thoughts for the
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victims and really brought people together. i think president trump did a fine job with the statement he gave to the nation last week, but he canceled it all away this weekend by the comments that he made. this was a weekend for him and the nation to have quiet reflection, to hug your children and to reflect on what we can do as a nation to heal and to make sure this doesn't happen again. for him to go on and on and on about russia and speaking more about himself than offering prayers -- >> why doesn't the president just shut up? be quiet for a weekend? children were killed and he -- >> it's okay if the president is attacked and he can't push back at all? so he has to just take an attack? >> he cannot tweet out on twitter every single time someone attacks you. he's supposed to be a new yorker. he is the most thin-skinned
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person -- he doesn't need to defend himself all the time constantly, especially after a major national tragedy where kids died miles from his resort where he's living in luxury. >> he went and visited with folks who are on the scene now. >> that was a good thing to do, and he should have just quietly let the weekend go by and allowed people to mourn, have people come together for solutions and he'll pick it all up today. >> i'm sorry, he was being attacked around the clock. >> so what, it goes with the job, nathan. this, again, just highlights how unqualified he is as president of the united states. he does not have the temperament. you have to be able to take the hits if you're going to be president of the united states, and he is unable to do it. so instead he behaves like an insecure lunatic on twitter as opposed to being a mature adult as the president of the fricking united states. i'm sick of you guys making excuses for him. >> so being attacked and not doing anything in response makes you a good president? >> no, it's how you choose to
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act to adversity. the way this president chooses to act to adversity is to behave like a petulant child and he goes on twitter. >> we don't have a commander in chief right now. we found out our country was attacked, they actually sent people in our nation, and all he can do is think about himself. we have children being shot and he can't express his condolences. he expresses our moral fiber and he speaks out when something happens. he defends our country when we are attacked and we were attacked. >> even if some aide had said to him, here's the name of the person whose funeral is today, or the two names. this is what their lives were like, maybe say something about it. >> we're this close to the president attacking some of those kids for speaking out.
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>> that's too far. i hate to say it, jason, normally i would never think that a president would do that, but a president who has attacked a gold star family. >> now you're going to attack the president for something he hasn't done based on what you think he could -- >> i'm just saying this is a president who crosses lines and i wouldn't be surprised if he did that. but you're right, he hasn't done that. what would you do, jason, if under barack obama putin sent a bunch of spies into the united states, they ran around, illegally spent money on the election. what would you do if the reaction from barack obama was, i didn't have anything to do with that so it doesn't matter. then a few days later if there was a mass shooting under obama and obama blamed his own fbi for focusing on some unrelated investigation and sort of blamed them for not preventing the shooting. just turn it around for a second and think -- whenever i think i'm being biased, what i do is
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how would i react if someone else, the other party, had done this? he didn't speak to spies running around in the country -- >> they completely missed the warning sign with regard to the tragedy in florida. that is an accurate statement. >> but what's not accurate is the president saying the reason they missed it is because they're all spending too much time in the russia investigation. you well know the number of fbi personnel involved in the russia investigation, the mueller team, is miniscule compared to the thousands and thousands of personnel working at the fbi. >> but i think -- >> they're two separate things. >> i do think they completely -- look, they missed -- it wasn't just a warning sign, it was -- >> they missed it. they acknowledged that. >> i also think they're spending way too much time on this whole -- >> the president is conflating the two. you just said everything the president said was accurate. you don't believe that was accurate, do you? the reason they missed is because they were spending too
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much time on russia? >> i think they can both be accurate. i would say go split your time between the two. we go back to the fbi who missed this massive warning. >> did they miss it because they're spending too much time on russia? >> i think there are a lot of questions going on with the russia investigation right now. >> i'm asking did they miss it because the fbi is spending too much time with russia? >> i don't know what's going on with russia. >> do you know how many people work at the fbi? >> i don't know. >> 35,000. do you know how many people are working on the russia investigation? it's miniscule. solicit idea there is a linkage is just factually incorrect. not only is he tweeting, not tweeting about dying kids and funerals, he's lying. >> but there is no collusion proven and that's all we see in the news. >> he's lying about these things and tweets constantly and we all
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say, okay, it's just another lie. it just seems normal for this president, which is a sad thing. we have to take a break. we'll pick up the conversation next. also the wake of parkland students and young people around the country trying to change laws and change minds on guns. introducing dell cinema. technology with incredible color, sound and streaming. just as the creators intended. ♪ up to 40% off at dell.com ♪ they have businesses to run they have passions to pursue how do they avoid trips to the post office?
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for just $99 a month. learn more at your john deere dealer. the point raised before the break about the president's tweets. we asked the fbi how many people are working on the mueller probe. he said no more than two dozen. there are 35,000 employees at the fbi. when asked if the president was comparing apples to oranges, he said, no, it's more like apples to wheelbarrows. he received no specific instruction on fighting it, something he said it's incontrovertible except perhaps
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to the president. here's what he said about air force i three months ago in a conversation with vladimir putin. every time he sees me, he says, i didn't do that. and i believe -- i really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. but he says, i didn't do that. and then you hear it's 17 agencies. well, it's three. and one is brennan and one is whatever, i mean -- the only the term the department of justice used as well. response by the president on friday and over this weekend has been about himself. it's nothing specific or concrete about here's how we're going to man the barricades, here's what we're going to do, here's what we need to do. >> could you imagine ronald reagan at the height of the cold war and an indictment comes down about how 13 russians went to
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the united states, ran around the country doing a counter-intelligence operation, went back to russia and launched a sophisticated propaganda campaign over three years that cost millions of dollars, all detailed by the justice department? can you imagine someone like reagan standing up and saying, well, that proves i had nothing to do with that operation. that was the president's response. he basically said, this indictment proves i had nothing to do with that. when my kids do something wrong -- when something happens in the house and i ask my kids, who did that? they all say, i didn't have anything to do with it. it makes you look a little bit suspicious when your first reaction is i had nothing to do with those spies running a campaign for the election. >> it's premature. >> a couple key phrases that came out of this whole report were specifically saying that in this indictment and persons known or unknown, which tells
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anyone with half a brain that this investigation is far from over. what we saw with the 13 indictments, clearly russia meddled in our election. whether or not it influenced the out come remains to be seen. but for the automatic response instead of highlighting the fact, this tragedy happened and could happen again if we don't do something, for the president to stand up and say it didn't have anything to do with me, we don't know that yet. >> it will be interesting. so the republicans control congress right now. and we didn't see a lot of incoming -- for them cruz and rubio and others were potential targets. during the last election, marco rubio wouldn't comment on e-mails that were stolen, in part, in retrospect, because he knew they had his e-mails. it will be interesting if republican candidates are attacked in the midterms using information stolen by russia or narratives by the russians. will the president stand by when it's their election? >> and will democrats actually
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have the self-control to not touch that? i hate to say it, but i don't think a lot of democrats will be able to do that. and frankly, in 2016 if the shoe were on the other foot, i'm not sure the democrats wouldn't have just ignored the stolen e-mails. i might be wrong on that, but it takes a lot of self-control when you can use weaponized information out there and you use it to hurt your opponents. >> at what point are people going to say the trump campaign is not colluding with a certain entity? there is nothing in that report even when rosenstein got up there and talked. he basically put it squarely on these people. >> but isn't the answer to that, when the investigation is over? >> for the motivated parties and opponents, it's never going to be. look how quickly the news coverage. you see this hatred for president trump. we have this horrible, sickening tragedy that happened last week,
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this mueller announcement, the 13 russians being indicted comes out, and all of a sudden people go to covering that and people go, oh, this is really damning. this is terrible for the president. the president had absolutely nothing to do with this. wait people turn on a dime, i think, is disgusting. >> when mueller finishes the investigation. that's what we're talking about. why are you acting like that's not going to happen? >> i'm saying the partisan opponents will keep on saying the only reason trump won is because of russia -- >> there will come a day. they will finish their investigation -- >> i'm not saying hillary clinton lost because of russia. i'm saying russia meddled in the election. >> she lost because of comey? >> that's a whole other town hall. all i'm here to say is we all learned russian agents infiltrated our country, spent millions of dollars illegally on ads attacking democrats and
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republicans, and our commander in chief is awol. that's all or any other democrat is saying. >> a couple things. they spent, at least we saw from the reporting, millions of dollars, but there wasn't that much actually spent on advertising. >> you're betting on their hotel expenses? >> there was an ad that said, do not trust hillary clinton. >> your campaign talks all day long about how effective a platform facebook is. so don't tell me now that when people advertise on facebook, it's not effective. >> but we do know what else they were spending money on, they were spending money on organizing rallies, hiring people to dress up as the president. >> we had someone on facebook say they didn't think his goal was to win the election, it was to -- >> you are minimizing what the russians did. >> i'm not minimizing. >> you are.
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you're saying, they only spent so much money. but oh, trump had nothing to do with it. a foreign enemy infiltrated this country to try to meddle in our elections and they were successful in it. when we quantify how successful, i think that's up for debate. the point is they did it, we caught them, and our department of justice came out with a very detailed indictment explaining what an enemy of this country did to us. and the president of the united states and his enablers seem to think that, well, as long as the president didn't have anything to do with it, let's move on. he hasn't had a cabinet-level meeting on this. christopher wray and others have said they have not gotten specific instruction from the president about what they need to do -- the president of the united states' number one focus should be protecting the american people, especially from
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foreign enemies. so why has the president taken any proactive interest in making sure the russians don't do this anymore? >> totally agreed that we can't have a foreign enemy meddling in our elections. >> then how come the president hasn't tweeted that out? he hasn't tweet that had out. >> because all the attacks on the president is saying -- >> it's bigger than him. >> all these attacks lately are about russia interfering in the election, and he's not commenting about that. he's taking everything personally as if it's all about him. >> that's what the news coverage is. >> no, it isn't. i did two hours of news coverage friday night, and it wasn't about attacking him, it was about his silence on this and this incredible indictment and what the russians did. i know you interpreted it as an attack on him and he certainly interprets it. >> the people i want on top of this is pompeo, wray. >> you don't want the president to do it?
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>> i think the president has a pretty complex game he's playing. we talked about syria. >> you think he's playing a complex game? >> absolutely. how we're helping the ukranians with energy. >> has he ever said anything negative about vladimir putin? >> i don't know if he ever has. i'm not around him 24/7. >> publicly he's never said anything negative about vladimir putin. >> he never tweeted anything negative against putin. >> he does have a pretty complex game with north korea. you think we can solve the north korea problem without being able to deal with the russians on this? >> no, i think the president of the united states should forcibly come out and condemn what the russians did and reinforce the american people that he's on top of this and we're not going to tolerate this moving forward and that he's instructed the national security -- >> i don't want ronald reagan to say, oh, we'll look the other way with all the spying going on
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in the united states. >> we have to take a break. there was a lie-in across the street from the white house. they were supporting the victims who died in the parkland shooting last week. we'll talk to the mayor about the shootings. 1234506789
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two more people were laid to
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rest from the parkland massacre. i'm joined by parkland's mayor. thank you for being with us. it's been five days since the shooting at the school. i'm just wondering how you and the community are doing. >> well, the community is still grieving. some people are still in shock, and it's very difficult right now. we have all the funerals and the viewings, and we're a community in grief right now, and everybody is grieving in their own way and at their own pace. so we're trying to make sure that people are taking advantage of the grief counseling that's available and to make sure that everybody in the community is taking care of each other. sometimes as part of grief, people get very angry, and we want to make sure that everybody remembers we're all hurting here and we all need to look out for each other right now. >> i think one of the things that struck a lot of people in the immediate aftermath of this shooting is some of the reaction
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by the students, how they were speaking out, whether on television or rallies, sort of on gun control issues, which is something often one hasn't seen in the immediate aftermath of a school shooting from the student themselves. i'm wondering how you see it, what goes through your mind when you see these young people use their voice in this way. >> knowing some of these young people, i'm not surprised that they're speaking out. as a mayor and, frankly, as a mother, i'm extremely proud to see students speaking out and using their voice. we talked today about how people have kind of turned off and are no longer engaged in the voting process and in their government, and i think it gives us all hope to know that there are students out there who are going to work hard and get engaged, and i'm hoping they're going to inspire other young people to get engaged. >> i know you met permanently with president trump on his visit to parkland. i wonder if you can just say what he said to you, what struck you most about his visit.
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>> just to clarify, i didn't actually meet with him. he called me. so when we were on the phone, he expressed his condolences, and he said he would help us out. i told him it would be a long road for our community to heal and that we would be needing services going forward for grief counseling, mental health and also for security. and what struck me is that he seemed very impacted by his visit to the hospital. he spoke of one student who he met in the hospital who had seen his two friends get shot, and the president, i remember him saying several times, how do you recover from that? >> what do you make of the white house today signalling that the president might be open to backing some legislation to improve background checks for gun purchases? >> i think the students are having an impact. i think it's wise to be listening to what they're saying.
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these students were there. they had a firsthand account of what happened. they are survivors of this. and i think we can learn a lot from listening to them and listening to their experience, and i hope it motivates all lawmakers to look at all things we can do to prevent something like this from happening in the future. >> i know you've asked for vigilance, for a search for many solutions to avoid this happening anywhere again. are you still hopeful that something can and will be done politically and otherwise? >> yeah. what gave me hope today is i had seen that there seems to be a growing support for red flag legislation, which, from what i've been told is legislation that when someone is in crisis or somebody looks like they might harm themselves or someone else, it gives law enforcement the tools to remove guns from them. i think that's -- the fact that that's gaining momentum and that you hear some gop members saying
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they would be open to it, i think that's a good start. we can't -- if we want a solution, we have to look at everything. and that gives me hope. >> mayor hunschofsky, i appreciate your time tonight and i know there are some very rough days and weeks and months ahead for you and your community, and i wish you the best. >> thank you very much. >> we'll get the panel's take next. also ahead tonight, more on what the students hope to achieve so they and others can be safe. -looks great, honey. -right? sometimes you need an expert. i got it. and sometimes those experts need experts. on it. [ crash ] and sometimes the expert the expert needed needs insurance expertise. it's all good. steve, you're covered for general liability.
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before the break, the mayor in parkland, florida said everyone was grieving in their own way. we're all hurting, she said. she also talked about activism by the students there. listen to the people on the front lines of it. >> us kids seem to be the only ones that notice and our parents call b.s. they said no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. we call b.s., that us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. we call b.s.! if you agree, register to vote, contact your local congress people. >> back now with the panel. do you think something will be different this time? i've been to a lot of school
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shootings and i said this when i was down there, i've never seen kids in the aftermath of a shooting, immediately in the aftermath of a shooting come forward so quickly to speak out. usually it's weeks or months later some get involved. >> i think it's because we're at an absolute breaking point. i don't know that something will happen now. i do think something is going to happen, and we think we're all in this sort of learned helplessness that nothing will ever change. but nothing ever changes until it does, and we just saw that happen -- for my entire adult life, women just said to each other, we're just going to be sexually harassed, and if someone is powerful, there's nothing you can do about it. if someone in power attacks you, he'll be protected. guess what, that isn't true anymore. it took a long time, but this also has been going on for a while. i hope it's reached a breaking point. i don't know if this will be it, but i do think people should keep trying because eventually things will change. >> one thing the president said in his address the other night, which i would love to hold him
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to it, he said, this is not only the time to take action to make us feel like we're making a difference, we need to make a difference. those kids are going to hold politicians' feet to the fire. what's currently being done with background checks and incentivizing agencies from preventing criminal behavior and making sure they don't have access to guns according to the legislation, and red flags, people who have mental illness, trying to keep them from gaining access to guns. these are proposals that need to be talked about. i think we also need a larger discussion about mental health and their impact on these shootings, but we need to put it all on the table and talk about it, not like we did with bump stocks, we actually need to do something about it. >> and there is a cornyn-coons bill where there has been a breakdown in the background
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system and that there needs to be tighter controls with that. we saw the failure of the background check system in the texas shooting, church shooting, in the south carolina church shooting where there were issues that should have been reported that weren't that would have prevented these people from getting guns. so i think that's a good start. but the difference this time around is that you actually do have the president giving some ground, expressing a desire to do something. >> do you think that's real? >> i think it is. because in the past, he has made comments about gun control, however you want to define that, before he became this republican. remember, he was a democrat up until 2009, and so he had made comments in the past that seemed to lend him to commonsense gun control. so he may, if the nra and some of the more ardent gun control folks spend money supporting him, maybe he'll change his
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mind, but i think seeing the passion in these kids and what went on in the latest tragedy and what impact it has on him, with his property being in mar-a-lago, it's very close to there, i don't see how he doesn't do something. it may not be the big overarching banning assault weapons and all that, but i think starting with at least fixing some of the holes in the system now is a good step forward. it would have to be incremental. >> i also think there is something going on at a societal level that i haven't seen enough coverage and i wish we would be talking about this a lot more. the first big shooting that happened, i remember, as a kid was in stockton, california. that was the first one that stuck with me and i thought, wow, this is a scary thought, and obviously it's become way too frequent. what's changed since then, you talk about how kids are exposed these days to the first-person shooter games that look so realistic. you look at the way some of
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these kids fall into these traps where there are these chat rooms and they're separated from reality and so many of these kids, as they move along, realize it's right in front of us. these are red flags and i think so many things have swung into the privacy side and hippa that if we do see a red flag, we have to do something about it and there has to be better background checks to make sure this doesn't happen. there is something going on with society today and with kids today where we have to address that, i think. >> no one is addressing guns. >> yeah, i was just going to say, the whole issue here is that an 18-year-old or 19-year-old can go buy these guns. i disagree about president trump. i think what he'll try to do is he'll float that he's on board with something happening. he'll float it and he'll do that to kind of push become against people who are protesting and complaining, and then it gets muddied up and it never happens. i think that's a real risk here. first the president kind of hints he'll do something to
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placate people, but the real question is can republicans in congress cast a vote? that's where the students must sustain this. that is the key, they have to sustain. yes, this will get a lot of coverage the next few days, but it will not sustain over the long haul unless people stay at this and don't let up. and don't get placated by half-statements. >> also he doesn't understand the dynamics of the politics. even if he has a view, it will run up against the view the republican party has and the nra. the only thing to really address the problem will get shot down, it's just a fact. you can talk about mental illness all you want, it is a factor, but most mentally ill people don't go and shoot up people, and the common denominator here in all these situations isn't mental illness, it's guns. we're not the only country --
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we're not the only -- they don't all, actually, and we're not the only country in the world of mentally ill people. we're the only country in the world that's a developed country that allows people access to these kinds of guns. that is the commonality. we have to cut off access to these kinds of guns. >> they're not all mentally ill. >> some have emotional problems but they're not all mentally ill. >> these people are whacked out. let the republican party pass a mental health bill. let them fund free mental health for every american, then i'll believe this. we have to take another break. when we continue more on the cnn exclusive, robert mueller taking a look more into business activities. this while donald trump jr. head to india to help with foreign financing efforts.
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cnn is reporting that jared kushner is facing more questions from robert mueller about financing for some of his projects. back here with our panel. also joining the conversation is jeffrey toobin. this does seem to indicate that special counsel mueller is looking to more than just all things russia. >> it does. certainly he's already charged the manafort and gates case which is not directly related to russia. his jurisdiction is really very broad. russia and any related cases. and jared kushner is obviously intimately involved in both the campaign and the possible obstruction of justice, and here you have a situation where the potential for conflict of interest is so enormous. this is why all previous presidents in the modern era have not had active business interests while they are president of the united states.
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jared kushner is facing a crisis in his real estate business because of his failed investment in 666 fifth avenue. he desperately needs capital. he has gone around to china, to qatar, to other countries with whom the united states has very complicated diplomatic relations and he's trying to raise money from them. that's a conflict of interest, and i am certainly unaware of any crimes that he's committed, but there's certainly potential for all sorts of -- >> the new yorker has said he's been the point person with china, meeting with china's ambassador, that he's sort of the point person in the white house on china. >> while he's running his business. he's not running it day to day but he's still personally involved in it. it's totally inappropriate. it's not been done in the modern era. whatever you say about richard nixon or warren harding or anyone in the 20th or 21st century, they never have been
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running profit-making businesses out of the white house as the trump family is doing. >> his son still doesn't have a full security clearance. >> because he lied on his financial form. >> he modified it several times, including leaving out a hundred foreign contacts that he had. so if he was this wonder kid running his family business in his 20s but he couldn't figure out how to fill out a security form? oh, he just forgot all these foreign contacts he's had, all these different financial entanglements that he had, just forgot them all. and it was just reported that he requested more classified information than anyone outside, more than the national security councilmembers? what is jared kushner doing in the white house in this capacity? he has zero foreign policy experience, zero diplomatic experience. he has run his family business almost into the ground, yet he doesn't have a security clearance, he has no
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intelligence background. what the hell is he doing being the point person on foreign affairs, on peace in the middle east, running around as a shadow diplomat in saudi arabia? >> he's a smart businessperson. >> no, because he's the president's son-in-law who has all kinds of business problems like jeffrey just said and he needs the money for foreign investments. >> if i'm reading the story, and gloria and shimon and carter all fantastic reporters. if i'm reading it and i'm jared, i'm feeling pretty good. it was basically everything that was in the michael wolff book, and they're going to see what was in the michael wolff book and ask questions about that. i would have been concerned if there were new questions and concerns thrown in there. jared has complied with the house, the senate, and he sat down with the mueller team. i think he's doing everything that he needs to be doing in this. >> that's not completely true. 13 democrats sent a letter because he was not complying with requests that they had made from him concerning financial entanglements. >> he has a multi-billion-dollar
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business that he's vesting himself from and that takes time. we haven't had successful people in business like this just come in who haven't been active -- >> nepotism at its worst. >> this is why we have nepotism laws, for this very reason right here. you can talk about his multi-billion-dollar business, the 666 fifth avenue project is a billion dollars in debt. if he can pick up the phone and make some calls to different people that may potentially help him out, that's a problem. >> if there was some issue or he was freaking out about it, he would have stayed outside the white house and just stayed in his business. >> or maybe he has more access because he is inside the white house and it gives him unlimited access to anyone he wants. oh, please, just like trump isn't doing business. >> who is running his business, then? >> you're telling me he isn't talking to people who run his business. you actually believe jared kushner has absolutely zero -- i call b.s. that jared kushner has nothing to do with his business
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anymore. >> you have no proof. >> circumstantial proof. >> the biggest problem we had is we didn't know what we didn't know. i think there is a very important lesson for the electorate here. when candidates will not release their taxes, when you don't understand the fundamental conflicts of interest themselves the candidate may be acting on, you have a real problem. the fact of the matter is we don't know anything. we don't know what business interests donald trump has. i will tell when you we as a campaign tried to look into this, it is overwhelming. it is a tree of llcs and shell companies. we couldn't even get to it. we had people working on this full-time all day long. >> now it becomes the guilty until proven innocent game. >> the point is when you choose to become president of the united states, you have a
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special responsibility to the people of this country to be honest about what conflicts you might have. and the problem is this is getting even more complex. we now have a son-in-law with a whole separate set of conflicts. >> meeting with russian bankers, too. let's not forget that. >> according to "the new yorker" piece, he was still running his business during the transition when he's meeting with chinese officials and russian officials in qatar and others. >> initially the response to these is quite telling. the cnn report coming out today outlining all this. his attorney's initial response was, here we go, another accusation based on nameless sources, instead of addressing the facts in the story. that's how you knock down a story like this. >> abby lowell, who is the lawyer, he did say he has not been asked to produce documents related to 666 fifth avenue. he has not been asked about
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these things. the mueller investigation, i think it's quite clear, is a long way from over. they may go back to him, but at the moment i think abby lowell made a fair point, that if they were so interested in 666 fifth avenue, they would have asked her. >> does anyone disagree with me, the entire story and what basically came out of the supposed sit-down with meuller was just a recap of the wolff book? >> the point is we just don't know anything. >> we have to take a break. thank you, everybody. we'll be right back. more news ahead. who's the new guy? they call him the whisperer. the whisperer? why do they call him the whisperer? he talks to planes. he talks to planes. watch this. hey watson, what's avionics telling you? maintenance records and performance data suggest replacing capacitor c4. not bad. what's with the coffee maker? sorry. we are not on speaking terms.
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that's it for us. thank you for watching. time to hand it over to don lemon. "cnn tonight" starts right now. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. we're following two, huge stories tonight. first, breaking news and it's a cnn exclusive. robert mueller asking questions about the president's sister-in-law. and it's not just jared kushner's russian contacts. while he was working for the president, he was also trying to get financing for his company from foreign investors, including the chinese. mueller's investigators have been asking questions about