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headquarters in the background. what we are being told is that just before 1:00 p.m. local time, police got the call that there were multiple gunshots fired inside youtube and they got here a few minutes later, and when they came in, right away they saw that there was a person, a victim, who was shot near the front of the building. and then when they performed a subsequent search all throughout the building, they did find the shooter, who appears to have died of a self-inflicted wound. then two others were found at an adjacent business or businesses. i can tell you i spoke to a worker at the carl's jr. restaurant. she says one of the victims actually came in on her own volition. she appears to have suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. she was taken to the hospital and appears to be okay. but obviously, a lot of rattled nerves. i did speak to some youtube employees who are just sort of in a business parking lot and of course, very concerned over what happened. >> do we know anything about the motivation behind this? >> reporter: at this point,

police not pointing to a clear motive. law enforcement officials telling cnn that the shooter, the female, does appear to have known at least one of the victims, what her connection is to youtube, we don't know. what her connection ultimately is to the victims, we don't know. of course, one of the things they will be looking at of course is whether or not this was a domestic situation. >> what's the status of the victims at this hour, do you know? >> reporter: right. three victims were taken to a local hospital. i can tell you that one of them is a 32-year-old woman in serious condition. also a 27-year-old woman in fair condition. and a male, 36 years old, in critical condition. we can tell you that the weapon used was apparently a handgun. >> dan simon, appreciate that. we will continue to follow that throughout the next two hours and bring you obviously any late developments that we learn throughout the evening. want to turn to the white house today and a series of statements made by president trump that signal possible, i said possible, major changes in military deployment here and abroad. keeping them honest, the president made a series of false

statements on a number of fronts today and seemed to get out ahead of the people making policy and in the case of the military, actually carrying it out. mr. trump also amped up criticism against the company amazon as well as the president of this network and leveled a new and somewhat baffling allegation against former president obama. so there's a lot to talk about. in short, today the president seemed to reveal more than he has in a long time, a side of himself we and many others have been reporting is increasingly going to be coming out. today, in two press availabilities with the presidents of lithuania, latvia and estonia, and of course on twitter we got a big dose of president trump uncut. here he is speaking about the u.s. military presence in syria which he announced last week he wants to end and he reiterated an idea he used to talk a lot about on the campaign trail, taking another country's oil. >> i want to get out. i want to bring our troops back home. i want to start rebuilding our nation. we will have as of three months ago, $7 trillion in the middle

east over the last 17 years. we get nothing, nothing out of it. nothing. and as you remember, in civilian life for years, i said keep the oil. i was always saying keep the oil. we didn't keep the oil. who got the oil? isis got the oil. a lot of it. that's what funded their campaigns. they took a lot of the oil and it was largely responsible for funding. we should have kept the oil then. we didn't keep the oil. >> well, it should be pointed out the united states didn't keep the oil or take the oil which is the word mr. trump used to use on the campaign trail. didn't take the oil of a sovereign foreign country because among other reasons, that's called plunder and it pretty much went out with genghis khan. as for the pulling out of syria part, you can make a case for or against it from a foreign policy standpoint but that's not the issue. the issue is this all seems to be news or still seems to be news to senior national security officials, even though it's been several days since he first broached the idea. in almost the same moment that the president was once again saying he wants troops out of

syria, his global envoy in charge of fighting isis was saying this. >> in terms of our campaign, we are in syria to fight isis. that is our mission. the mission isn't over and we are going to complete that mission. >> the president also spoke today about nato, something his three baltic guests obviously count on to deter their former russian occupiers, which must have made it awkward when the president returned to another favorite theme. >> nato is delinquent. they were not paying their bills. they were not paying. a lot of states as we discussed, they were not -- they were not paying what they should be paying. since i came in, many, many billions of dollars additional have been paid by countries that weren't paying and now they're paying. and they will have to pay more, frankly. they will have to pay more. >> keeping them honest, the president has long spoken as though he believes nato is a dues-aying organization. it's not. there is no nato bill that comes

due on the first of the month. but if its member nation defense spending that he's really talking about, which it seems he is, there's a nato guideline on that. the baltics sharply increased theirs. they did it to counter what they perceived as the russian threat. and for accuracy's sake, they started before president trump was elected. speaking of russia, the president once again insisted that nobody has been tougher on that country than him. nobody. ever. watch. >> nobody's been tougher to russia than donald trump. we have been very tough on russia, frankly. nobody has been tougher on russia. nobody's been tougher on russia than i have. there's nobody been tougher on russia. >> once again, keeping them honest, this president would be correct in perhaps saying that no president has been tougher on russia in the last several weeks. he has, after all, joined nato and other countries in expelling russian personnel after the poisoning of two russian nationals, a british police officer, and more than a dozen

others in the uk. he did not, however, exactly lead the way. shortly before the expulsion, mr. trump congratulated vladimir putin on winning what was a rigged re-election. on the same call, he talked about them meeting at the white house. as for the president's claim to be the toughest president ever on russia, that might come as a surprise to his predecessors. >> it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from cuba against any nation in the western hemisphere as an attack by the soviet union on the united states, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the soviet union. >> mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. >> so has president trump been tougher in word or deed than that? has he been tougher than, say, president truman who confronted the soviets over berlin in 1948? you can decide that for yourselves. now you might dismiss the president's comments about being the toughest ever as hyperbole perhaps. but it wasn't the only hyperbole. the president said this about

the border with mexico. >> it's like we have no border because we had obama make changes, president obama made changes that basically created no border. it's called catch and release. you catch them, you register them, they go into our country, we can't throw them out and in many cases they shouldn't be here. many, many cases they shouldn't be here. and after they get whatever happens over the next two or three years, they are supposed to come back to court. almost nobody comes back to court. they're in our country. we can't do anything about it because the laws that were created by democrats are so pathetic and so weak. >> well, as we said on the program last night, catch and release is not actually a law. democratic or republican. it's the result of a variety of factors including a lack of space in detention facilities and some republicans say loopholes in existing laws. the president also continued his attack on the company amazon.

>> you take a look at the post office. you take a look at the post office and the post office is losing billions of dollars and the taxpayers are paying for that money because it delivers packages for amazon at a very below cost, and that's not fair to the united states, it's not fair to our taxpayers. >> now, keeping them honest on that, if the president has a beef with amazon he should leave the taxpayers out of it. the post office certainly has. on their own website's list of ten things to know about the post office, fact one is, i'm quoting, the postal service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund its operation. now, here's another fact that might be relevant. amazon's founder jeff bezos also owns "the washington post" which the president despises. his attacks on amazon have been blamed for sending the stock market into wild gyrations. hundreds of points at a time.

on top of that, the president attacked our boss at cnn, misspelling his name, took yet another shot at hillary clinton, and then tweeted this in reaction to some new polling. thank you to rasmussen for the honest polling. just hit 50% which is higher than cheatin' obama at the same time in his administration. not sure what kind of cheatin' he was referring to, perhaps we shall have to wait another tweet to explain that. mr. trump also repeated his call today to send troops to the southern border. >> i have been speaking with general mattis, we will be doing things militarily. until we can have a wall and proper security, we are going to be guarding our border with the military. that's a big step. >> it was quite a day. cnn's jim acosta was in the room for much of it and joins us now. so jim, the version of the president we saw today, is this all part of a bigger shift in terms of who he's listening to, his general confidence in his ability to do the job? >> reporter: well, it is hard to tell, anderson. he was in mar-a-lago over the weekend, sort of gold-plated

echo chamber listening to people like sean hannity and judge jeanine pirro from fox news. that seemed to be guiding some of his white-hot immigration comments we had coming into this week. we do know earlier today, the president did have a national security meeting with top administration officials, including his chief of staff, his defense secretary, on this situation down at the border. i just talked to a senior administration official within the last hour who says the trump administration does have a working number of national guard troops that they want to deploy to the southern border with mexico. they are not releasing that number at this point. they are waiting on the white house to make the announcement. in addition to that, they are looking to "operation jump start" which is something that happened during the bush administration when president george w. bush deployed national guard troops down to the u.s. border to help with border patrol down there. so in addition to the president listening to people from fox news, his own advisers, he's also harkening back to the bush administration to try to find a solution that he likes on the

border. >> we should also point out, i think it was 2006, national guard troops were sent down, they are basically there to help out with clerical operational things, not actually stopping people from coming into the united states. >> reporter: that's right. >> the idea is to try the free up border patrol officers to do that. >> reporter: that's right. they were not involved in law enforcement. that's a border patrol task. but they were doing some other tasks down there that did free up border patrol agents. so when the president was talking about this earlier today and sounding as if this was a fairly draconian step, we should point out not only did president bush do this, president obama did this as well. >> aides you are talking to in the west wing, i'm wondering what they're saying about what they are seeing now from the president. >> reporter: well, i can tell you that i have been talking to aides who are still looking for some clarity on the syria issue. as you know, the president last week made this stunning announcement that he's ready to pull u.s. troops out of syria

before the fight against isis is finished. i touched base with a senior administration official this evening who said no further clarity on that from this administration in terms of what is happening with the u.s. commitment to battling isis in syria. we do know that the president was essentially contradicting his own envoy to the battle against isis in realtime as the president was speaking at this news conference earlier today with the baltic leaders, saying he wants to pull u.s. troops out of syria. brett mcgurk was saying the u.s. is not leaving syria until the fight against isis is finished. he's not only confusing people sort of in the lower level among his aides and so forth, he's also contradicting top officials like mcgurk, who are widely respected, worked during the obama administration, who are looked to around the world for guidance as to what this president is doing in a very important battle against isis. >> jim acosta, appreciate it. the panel weighs in on all of this shortly.

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and biased agenda are worried about the competition and quality of sinclair broadcasts. the fakers of cnn, nbc, abc and cbs have done so much dishonest reporting that they should only be allowed to get awards for fiction, exclamation mark. that set the tone for today and raises questions along with all of it for our panel. cnn political analyst david gergen joins me as well as gloria borger. gloria, the president we have seen over the last couple of days, i'm wondering, is this kind of the unrestrained version of him or the less restrained version we should be seeing more of or expect to see more of going forward? >> i think we are. i think this is the president now who has been talking to friends and i have talked to some of his friends who are saying he feels like he's kind of, he knows how to do this job. he's got it under control. he has said publicly that i'm sort of close to getting the cabinet i want. he's listening to people who he's comfortable with, the people that show up in his living quarters night after night from fox news, and those are the people i believe he's consulting as well as his own

instincts because now, he told one friend you know, i've got this. i know how to do this. and so you're seeing things not only on policy that he seems to announce as jim acosta was talking about, such as troops at the border or withdrawal from syria before there's been any kind of real consultation or plan, and then he's also kind of playing games with people like he did with general mcmaster on his future and like he may be doing with pruitt, and maybe even with general kelly, who our reporting today shows that general kelly didn't want him to fire tillerson the way that he fired tillerson, and instead the president did it his way. i think this is the real donald trump and i think we are going

to keep seeing him. >> david, the notion the president has kind of reembraced the idea that he is his own best adviser and is relying more and more on his own instincts, i'm wondering if that's something you think as someone who served in white houses with republicans and democrats, if that will serve him well. >> no. no. presidents, no matter how much experience they have, need stabilizing forces around them, they need someone there who can look them in the eye and tell them you're full of it or you need to hear the other side of the story, you are only hearing one version of the truth. you may be hearing the fox version of the truth but if you consider there may be other ways to think about this. presidents need that. i think it's a mistake. i do think, what i'm told is there were three heavyweights who were the stabilizing forces in the past months. and two of them are now gone. gary cohn on the economic front and h.r. mcmaster, national security, and the third is general kelly and the president is going around him, ignoring him or bypassing him for a lot of things. so you have a trump who is unleashed on his own volition. what's he doing? fox news has now become even more important in his mind. it's almost like people work for

fox are his advisers, informal outside advisers he's listening to, playing golf, there were a bunch of them at mar-a-lago, sean hannity playing golf and the like. i think what we are seeing is a new chapter in the trump presidency, and what we don't know is the people coming in, kudlow on economics, bolton on national security, whether they are going to be stabilizing forces or if, in fact, they'll play to his instincts to go outside the mainstream and harden up or go pretty far right on a lot of things. >> gloria, there was this interesting moment in the luncheon today, the president tried to get the president of estonia to praise him for his work on nato. i want to show that. >> three presidents just told me that nato has taken in a tremendous amount of money because of donald trump that would have never happened, so nato is much stronger. you may want to say that. would you like to say that? madam president?

has donald trump made a difference on nato? this is a very risky question. i think if she says the same thing that she said in the oval office -- >> well, he's kind of used to getting that. from his own cabinet, as we saw a couple of those dear leader cabinet meetings. he's used to getting that. he likes to get praise. tell you what, the lithuanian president was pretty honest today, i thought, when he said at one point, she said at one point that there was kind of unpredictable leadership. and that at some point, we want to, she kind of moved, they kind of moved around it and said but we still need leadership from president trump. so there's clearly a sense in the baltics they would like the president to be more predictable when it comes to russia. while they were happy to praise him, they also went in with a mission trying to get a straight answer out of him.

>> david, during the joint press conference today -- go ahead. >> i just want to say, the most disturbing part of the news to me today was this notion that he wants to now send troops to the border. it's true that two past presidents have deployed national guard on the border, because there were pressing needs. there's no pressing need here. this is more of a political move. and it suggests the president increasingly sees the military as a play toy that he can make political points with. first he wants to have his big massive parade which most people in the military say why are we really doing this, and the country is shrugging his shoulders, because he's now got the money. he wanted to take money out of the military budget to pay for the wall. now he wants to send troops to the border. there's no real reason why we need to send troops to the border other than to make his political point and to satisfy the people talking to him from fox this past weekend, saying your supporters are getting impatient, they want to see action on the wall. >> but they're not supposed to be used for law enforcement

anyway. >> exactly. >> gloria, to david's point, it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that this idea that he now has of sending the military, and by the military, the national guard, because you can't send active service who are full-time u.s. military personnel inside the united states, but it can't be a coincidence that it comes now after he's received criticism from some of the folks he's listening to who, according to all the reporting, had raised issues that maybe his base thinks he's weakening on immigration. >> yeah. you can kind of look at this and say okay, he invited the fox green room to mar-a-lago over the weekend and he heard from people who were upset with him on immigration, he was told about what ann coulter was tweeting about the notion that he's likely to get impeached and she can't stand him now, and this is a president who is concerned more than anything about pleasing his base.

so what we are hearing from him are base sweeteners and that, you know, he's going to build the wall, he's going to send troops to the border, he's going to withdraw from syria because we won the war against isis, and so i think, you know, it's kind of, he's become the echo chamber to these people. >> gloria, david, appreciate it. thanks. coming up next, breaking news tonight. reporting in "the washington post" to tell you about, whether the president is or is not a criminal target in robert mueller's probe. the president's lawyers have been informed recently. we will tell you what they were reportedly told, next. ♪

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call today. there's big breaking news in the newspaper the president loves to hate tonight. perhaps not so much tonight. "the washington post," carol leonig and robert costa saying special counsel mueller has briefed the president's legal team and told them he does not, i repeat, not consider him a criminal target at this point. the reporters attribute to it three people familiar with the discussions. they report that in talks early last month about a possible presidential interview, mr. mueller described the president as a subject of the probe. the question is what's the distinction? joining us is cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin and

cnn legal analyst carrie cordero. jeff, the decision that mueller is continuing to investigate president trump but does not consider him a criminal target, but rather a subject of his investigation, what is the difference? >> in federal law enforcement there are three categories of witnesses. there are targets, who are almost certainly going to be charged, going to be indicted. there are witnesses who are just people whose information is of value to the prosecutors. and in between the two, there is something called a subject, that is someone who is under investigation but who may or may not be charged. trump is a subject, and i don't think that's particularly good news for him. it's a big deal to be under criminal investigation by the fbi, particularly if you are president of the united states. this has been implicit in what the mueller investigation has been doing, but this confirmation that the president is under criminal investigation,

that's a pretty profound thing to think about. >> carrie, according to "the washington post" reporting, to the point jeff just made, some of the president's attorneys have told him that's part of the danger of him sitting down for an interview, that you can go from being a subject to actually a target pretty quickly. >> well, one could, depending on the outcome of that interview. so certainly being a subject, they shouldn't be cracking open any champagne in the white house if he's the subject of an investigation as jeffrey just described. there is certainly risk of him sitting down for an interview, although it's really difficult at this point to see a path forward for this investigation both in terms of its look at the russian influence on the election and any potential cooperation or knowledge on behalf of the campaign, and the obstruction piece. it's hard to see how it will conclude without the president at some point being interviewed by the investigative team.

>> but in a normal circumstance, a subject would simply take the fifth. would simply say -- most lawyers would advise a subject of an investigation, don't talk under any circumstances. now, the question of course is can the president of the united states take the fifth? i think he can. i think he can just denounce the investigation, say this is a witch hunt and i'm not participating. i don't know what the political fallout of that is but i think it's entirely possible he will simply refuse this interview. >> carrie, according to the reporting, mueller is still pushing hard obviously to interview president trump to both determine if the president had any corrupt intent and that's why he feels this interview is so important, that he needs to figure out the intent behind some of mr. trump's actions. >> certainly. on the obstruction piece in particular, his specific, the intent that he personally had is really important to that investigation, because of

course, it's actions that he took, statements that he made over the course of approximately a year that potentially could put together the case for obstruction. so on that piece in particular, he probably has the most exposure, but also, his statements or what he has to say about his intent is also the most relevant to that piece of the investigation. >> jeff, i heard you earlier today talking, there was news on other fronts as well in terms of the investigation. i heard you talking about some of the developments today led you to think it very possible that paul manafort might try to get a plea agreement. >> well, i thought that for a long time. he is in desperate legal trouble. now that his right-hand man gates has pleaded guilty and will cooperate against him, i just think his case is nearly indefensible. it will take millions of dollars

to prepare because it's a very complicated case. and also, he's nearly 70 years old. he's looking at a sentence that could leave him in prison for the rest of his life if he goes to trial. there's a motion pending in front of the judge where the judge is being asked by manafort's lawyers throw the case out because mueller doesn't have the jurisdiction to bring it. mueller's brief which just came in yesterday makes a very convincing case that he does have jurisdiction, and i just think the walls are closing in on manafort, where he's really in an untenable legal position. >> carrie, mueller is required to report his conclusions to the deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein, and to jeff's point, in the brief that mueller filed last night, it basically said that he has been checking in with rosenstein all the way. at every step of this. >> he has. it's very clear from that filing. rosenstein has been clear in his public statements and his testimony before congress that

he has been conducting active oversight of the special counsel's investigation, so the memo that was filed as an attachment to the government's pleading last night confirms that oversight that he's been conducting. but on the issue of a report, this is really a question that myself and other observers of this case have been trying to figure out, what type of report might get filed. the regulations don't require what we might think of as a whitewater-style report or what formally we might see in a congressional type investigation of a big narrative explanatory document that is meant for public consumption. there's nothing in the regulations that require that. what might happen is that the investigative team, they could write a report or they could right prosecutive memos and submit those to rod rosenstein in his acting attorney general capacity, then it's up to him whether or not to make those reports in whatever format they

take place, whether or not they make them public. >> carrie cordero, appreciate it, jeffrey toobin as well. just ahead, president trump delivers another surprise today. this time saying he wants american military troops to help protect the mexican border until his promised wall is built. we talked about this a little bit with david gergen and gloria borger. we will show you more on the details how that might work ahead. (phone) maddie... you have everything you need right inside you.

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returning to the meeting with the head of the baltic states today, the president is saying he's asking the military to guard the mexico border until his promised border wall is built. >> i have been speaking with general mattis. we are going to be things militarily, until we can have a wall and proper security, we will be guarding our border with the military. it's a big step. we really haven't done that before, certainly not very much before. >> at that same meeting, the president also couldn't resist a shot at hillary clinton, saying that nato countries would have received far less funds if she were president. >> with all of that being said, because of me, and you can speak to the head of nato, mr. staltenberg, he said because of what i've said to the countries they have taken in, general, i think you will confirm this too, many billions of dollars more

than they would have had if you had crooked hillary clinton as president. okay? that i can tell you. many billions of dollars more. >> joined by retired army general wesley clark, who is nato's former supreme commander and by retired army lieutenant general mark hertling. thanks for being with us. general clark, as a former nato supreme allied commander, i wonder what you make of the president's comments, what went throughed your mind if you heard him say that today. >> well, first, anderson, these countries have all paid their debts to nato. what we have tried to explain for years to president trump, but he doesn't want to hear, is it's about how much money they are spending on their own defense. now, full credit to president trump, he did make an issue of this and several countries are spending more on their defense, so that's a good thing. but what these presidents want and what nato wants is consistent, strong, reliable u.s. leadership.

nato is our organization. it's not something that pays us to be over there. we are not mercenaries. nato is the glue that holds the united states and europe together. it's the bedrock of security that we put together in 1949, carried us through the cold war, the post-cold war, and we need it now more than ever. >> general hertling, the president talked a lot today about the amount of money needed for nato and who was paying what amount. what he didn't spend time talking about was the strength of the nato alliance itself and how integral estonia latvia, lithuania are to that alliance. >> yeah. general clark can say that as well as i can. working with the partners from the baltics, they are unbelievably strong in terms of their support not only for us as a country but for us in our combat operations. the special operations forces of latvia, lithuania and estonia were with us in both iraq and afghanistan.

they suffered -- i had a lithuanian soldier killed under my command in northern iraq. these people have given more than funds. and truthfully, as general clark just said, the president is confused about this. they are not contributing any money to any pot. they are actually spending a percentage of their gdp on their own defense funds. for him to say that billions of dollars more have been -- has been allocated just isn't true. it's a narrative that is just false across the board. >> general clark, in terms of sending the u.s. military to the u.s./mexico border, the president was not very specific today in terms of what he meant. he talked about them guarding the border. but my understanding is what was done under president bush as well as under president obama is that it would be national guard troops and they are not actively sort of standing shoulder to shoulder on the border preventing people from coming over. >> no, that's right.

they are support troops. they are national guard. we don't know exactly what president trump has in mind. but whatever he has in mind, it doesn't seem to be justified by anything other than maybe political opinion. that is to say, the apparent pressure on the border has declined, the number of illegal immigrants have declined. there are record deportations run by immigration and customs enforcement agency. so by all sort of objective measures, the situation on the border seems to be better than it's ever been. so we don't really understand this in any terms other than political. but i would say this. the united states military is underresourced at this time. it's true we got more money in budget, but we are way behind. we spent 15 years in the middle east. we were going up against pure competitors. we had a huge technological advantage.

meanwhile, our potential adversaries, russia and maybe china, have invested heavily in new technology. president putin has been bragging about it. we are on the catch-up mode of this and we have got to get our forces refocused on what would be a much different, much more challenging combat environment than what we have had in the middle east over the last decade and a half. so i look at it as a diversion of resources that's unnecessary militarily, might be necessary for president trump politically. >> well, general hertling, david gergen echoed that point earlier. does it concern you that a president would be using military forces, the national guard, for potentially political objectives, that he feels he's under pressure, that his base doesn't feel he's done enough on immigration, he's not getting the border wall funding that he wanted and that he would be sending troops for political purposes? >> factually, he can do that. there is actually a department

of defense regulation called defense for support of civilian authorities, and at any given time, any other federal agency can request u.s. forces. and truthfully, right now, we have some active duty forces in places like fort bliss, texas, on the border with mexico. arizona, in a variety of other places, who are running things like aerostats and uavs in order to watch forces -- or watch illegal immigrants coming across the border, and they are feeding that to the homeland security forces. but to put people there without a mission and there wasn't any mission given and it seemed to surprise the department of defense, seems to be like general clark just said, a little bit senseless. >> generals, appreciate it, thanks very much for being here. up next, questionable first class travel, murky ties to lobbyists and growing calls for his resignation. the question is will the chief of the epa, scott pruitt, manage to keep his job? not so ringing endorsement from the president, coming up. ♪

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ample opportunity today to give his epa administrator scott pruitt an unqualified endorsement except he didn't exactly deliver on that.

>> i hope he's going to be good. >> ironically scott pruitt has fulfilled much of the president's agenda at the epa but all the while the atmospherics haven't been great. here's cnn's tom foreman with details. >> reporter: the epa boss has raised alarms among government watchdogs for his super low cost rental of a room at a d.c. condo from an oklahoma couple. $50 a night. complicating matters, those landlords donated money to his past political campaigns and were lobbying his agency on behalf of an energy company. pruitt has also been dinged for extensive use of first-class air travel and staying in luxury hotels all on the taxpayers' dime. >> what an exciting day. >> reporter: and he's come under scrutiny for giving some aides substantial raises even after the white house said no. >> where's scott?

>> reporter: so how has he kept his position this long? >> we have the right man with scott pruitt. >> reporter: the president promised massive cuts to environmental regulations and pruitt has been the hatchet man. >> the future ain't what it used to be at the epa. >> reporter: the secretary has promised to simultaneously step up enforcement while pruning federal regulations around air pollution, superfund cleanups, drinking water, and climate change. >> i believe that we as an agency and we as a nation can be both pro-energy and jobs and pro-environment, that we don't have to choose between the two. >> he has met far more often with industry bosses than with environmentalists. he's praised budget cuts to his own department while pushing for states to take more control over environmental rules. and time and again, especially in the area of global climate change, he has called for the reversal of obama-era rules. >> i am determining that those standards are inappropriate and should be revised.

>> reporter: and even as conservationists have howled, pruitt has praised donald trump's vision, even on the biggest matters like pulling america out of the paris climate accord. >> today you've put america first with regard to international agreements and the environment. >> reporter: but pruitt's problems are now clearly reflecting badly on the white house, and trump has shown some sensitivity to that sort of thing in the past. so political pundits are wondering if the hatchet man is himself about to get the ax. anderson? >> tom foreman, thanks very much. joining me now is someone who knows a great deal about the epa. former administrator christine todd whitman. governor, thanks for being with us. i'm wondering with these allegations against pruitt, would he still be office, do you know if, if he worked for a different president? >> i don't think there's any way. frankly if i were he, i would be preparing my résume, making it look as if this was going to be

my decision to leave because i cannot see how he survives this. the president doesn't like members of his cabinet, a, getting more press than he does, and, b, to be under scrutiny like this. i'm not sure he's long for this world. >> the flip side of it, as tom foreman pointed out, in terms of the president's agenda, he is following what the president wants and whether one agrees with it or not, has been very effective in that at the epa. >> absolutely. there's no question about it. but there are others who can do that job. as a cabinet member, your job is to do what the president wants you to do. i mean, you're not the one who was elected to anything. you're appointed and you're there to give your best advice to the president and to push back if you think he's making a mistake. but once that decision is made, you salute and you carry it out. in this instance, i happen to think scott pruitt believes absolutely in what he's doing too, which makes it very easy for him to roll back all the progress that we've made in keeping people safe and healthy and protecting our environment.

>> do you see this as part of a bigger issue when it comes to some of the president's cabinet? i mean, you know, you had obviously secretary carson with the issue of the $30,000 table and a dining room set. secretary price was fired for using his use of private planes. others as well. >> well, there seems to be a tone deafness about what's appropriate and what isn't, especially when you're talking about taxpayers' dollars and what looks right and what doesn't. for scott pruitt, i don't care if he was paying $50 or $500 a night for his room, but you just don't as the head of an agency accept something like that, particularly when you're getting a good deal, but you still wouldn't do it anyway with someone who has business before the agency, who is lobbying before the agency. you wouldn't even take meetings with them if you had an active case with them or something that they were lobbying you hard on. you just shouldn't do that. not the administrator.

others, they can meet with others, but not the administrator. >> particularly when the president has made a point of during the campaign, talking about draining the swamp, this does seem to be down in the muck. >> i would say so. it is very swampy, and it's a shame because that's an agency whose sole duty is to protect human health and the environment. it is not to promote certain forms of energy. it's to encourage alternate fuels if they're cleaner. it's to encourage cleaner things, things that will keep us healthier. for instance, rolling back these tailpipe standards makes no sense. most of the car companies have already allowed for it. they're ready for it. they've started to move in that direction. many of the utilities are encouraging carmakers to go for the electric car because they see it as a way to keep their demand up for electricity. and we know that some 300,000 people a year in this country die from dirty airborne-related causes. so when you talk about rolling back -- and cars are the major source of that, more so even than energy utilities of dirty

air. so it's endangering people's health without doing much, frankly, if anything at all, for the major car companies and jobs. >> governor whitman, i appreciate your time. thank you very much. >> no problem. coming up, more on tonight's breaking news in "the washington post" about what robert mueller told the president's lawyers just last month about whether the president himself is a criminal target in the investigation. we'll have the latest on that next. but there's no way to avoid that mi...s pmi, hey! this'll help. rocket mortgage by quicken loans makes the complex simple. there's also origination fees and... this takes care of it, thank you. yeah. understand the details and get approved in as few as 8 minutes.

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