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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  May 1, 2018 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT

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at some point, we are going to be able to beat als. because life is amazing. so i am hoping for a cure. i want this, to uh, to be a reality. um, yeah. breaking news tonight. the possibility of a subpoena for the president, a notion raised by special counsel robert mueller in at least one meeting with the president's lawyers. cnn has this now from two
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sources. evan perez joins us. what do you know about the process of a subpoena raised by the special counsel? >> this happened in at least one meeting of the special counsel, the president's team heard they were considering issuing a subpoena if the two teams could not come to terms on an agreement for the president to grant a voluntary interview to the special counsel robert mueller. so the possibility, at least, was raised for the first time, and so, look, what this means is that things are moving a lot more quickly than i think a lot of us have thought. there's still been this idea that the two sides are having meetings, they're having negotiations as to whether or not the president will sit down formally for a voluntary interview. we saw last night the 49 or so questions that the mueller team is prepared to ask. but this appears to be now on the table, the idea that a subpoena could be issued to force the president, if he doesn't sit down for a voluntary
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interview. >> what was the ten or between mueller and the president's legal team? was it cordial or did it become tense? >> according to my colleague gloria borger, she said it was a very tense meeting, simply because john dow had a very sharp response to the idea, the idea being that this would interfere with the work of the president, and this is something, obviously, the president's legal team takes very, very seriously, and this is why they believe, you know, it should never even come to this. even the idea of an interview, they believe, interferes with the work of the president, because obviously he's preparing for a summit meeting with north korea. this is something they keep bringing up as one of the many reasons why doing this would interfere with the president's work. >> earlier the "washington post" was reporting that according to their reporting, the president is thinking now of not going for an interview, not complying, that he doesn't think it's a good idea. is that what you're hearing as well? >> that is exactly what we're
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hearing. i think it's become abundantly clear that the president's legal team is getting ready for a standoff, really, on a subpoena. if a subpoena does come, there is, i think, a lot of thought inside the president's legal team that this is a line that the special counsel cannot cross, that this is something they might fight all the way to the supreme court. in their view, at least according to the president's lawyers, they believe that the special counsel doesn't have the power to force the president to go before a grand jury basically under compulsion. so i think this is something that if it comes to this, if mueller does indeed issue a subpoena, then we're going to be looking at perhaps a year of litigation, appeals process, then all the way to the supreme court. look, i think it's something the supreme court has said presidents can be subpoenaed, but the circumstances here are a lot different than some of those previous cases. >> evan, thank you very much.
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we go to jeff zeleny at the white house. there was press briefings where the thought of a subpoena has come up several times. what stance has the white house taken on this? >> reporter: the public stance was that the white house today was actually being more disciplined than i've seen any time i can remember. they were referring all questions to the president's lawyers. but the reality here is this. the president has said repeatedly he would like to sit down with the special counsel. but also competing reality here is that could not necessarily be good for him. so as evan was just saying there, this is something that the president has said constantly he wants to get this over with. the white house wants to get this over with, in their view, before midterm elections this fall. if they give in and resist an interview, a sit-down, this will interrupt midterm elections into next year. if the president doubles down, says this is a witch hunt, a
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fake investigation, would that help him with his base? but they know legally speaking, he wants to get this over with. so in the coming days and even weeks, the president will decide if he wants to sort of, you know, roll the dice and sit down with bob mueller's team or not. he said he has wanted to. he says he has nothing to hide here. we'll see if that happens, anderson, because going on and on and on here, legally there is a lot of peril for him to do that. >> yeah. jeff zeleny, i appreciate it, from the white house. joining me now, allison gappa, mildred zelman and alan dershowi dershowitz. >> we may be seeing attempts on both sides to flex some muscles. we're going to give you a subpoena. oh, yeah? we're going to do this that, and the other thing. it may still end up with a narrow four-hour or six-hour
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conversation twibetween the president and the special counsel -- >> you think they could do it in six hours? those 49 questions seem like days. >> that could be a negotiating position. if you're doing those questions, what's the possible benefit for the president to sit down? the only possible benefit the president gets by volunteering and giving up his rights is if he can narrow the questions, he can refuse to answer questions in certain areas, but if they're going to ask him about everything, might as well take it to the courts and fight. >> but isn't there a slight advantage also that if he's not in front of a grand jury, his lawyers can be present and involve themselves in this? >> right, so he'll have his counsel there, and he can still narrow the scope and refuse to answer certain questions as they're asking follow-ups, for example. the questions laid out are big broadbrush questions, and each of them will generate follow-up questions. but i think we need to remember that this presidency is kind of
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like a choose your own adventure, where every ending ends in a constitutional crisis of some kind. the ideal situation is that he sits down and does it. i do have to agree with alan, it's probably not in his interests because he does not have a command of the facts and discipline to answer the way he should. >> and jeff thinks he would take the fifth, and that would eliminate all his problems. jeff dershowitz said absolutely there is no way he should do that. >> i don't think he takes the fifth, either. i think it 's incredibly perilos to take the fifth. to take the fifth amendment basically says he would be incriminating himself if he spoke, and he would be basically saying he's guilty of a crime. i think that's more of a political question, but i think that is probably the least likely option that he's going to want to go through. >> michael zelden, do you see this heading toward a subpoena? >> if they don't reach an agreement, that's where mueller will take it. my time with bob tells me that he believes that his mandate here is to find out what
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happened and that he's going to follow the facts to find out whether those facts lead to law violations or not. and that the president is not going to dictate to him the terms under which he does his fact-finding. remember that on the team that mueller has is michael dreeben. michael dreeben is one of the most accomplished supreme court appellate court advocates. i suppose whether or not the president can be subpoenaed for his testimony, dreeben has been well briefed and knows he can make that suggestion knowing they can follow that route. >> to jeff zeleny's point, if this does go by way of the courts, this could go on for a year. >> well, it could go for a year. i suspect first it gets to district court, and the district court splits the difference. and the district court says you must answer questions about your business dealings before you
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became president. you must answer questions you may have waived, other areas, but there will be questions about your motives, your reasons, your intentions that the court will probably say is beyond the power of the grand jury. now, the interesting question is whether or not the argument that i've made, that is, you can't call a subject into a grand jury in order to give him an opportunity to commit perjury. you have to do it to get information you don't already have, whether that kind of argument will prevail. it could go both ways on that. >> don't prosecutors all the time ask questions that they know the answers to? >> they precisely ask questions that they already know the answer to. i disagree with alan. they need to get his answers on motive because that is precisely what the obstruction case terms. he's thinking before he fired james comey, before and after, and we have this litany of interviews to explain. i don't know how you can shield that.
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>> of course it's relevant but it's also privileged. you can't ask a senator or congressman to explain their vote. >> it's not prifvileged if it's not a legitimate policy-seeking or national security related. if there's evidence of a crime, it can be pierced. >> would they have asked president bush why he gave a pardon to casper weinberger? when the special prosecutor asked that, casper weinberger was motivated to end the prosecution and continue the cover-up. everybody agreed to that, but everybody also agreed you can't ask the president that question. the president, if he has the authority to do something, has the authority to do it for any reason. he can pardon, he can fire, he can do all these things. it's not that it's not relevant, it's that privilege trumps relevance. >> privilege really applies here to a very narrow set of questions that we see among the 49. as you say, professor
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dershowitz, anything that predates the president's inauguration is not covered by privilege. anything that is not advice that he receives from his advisers, his senior advisers, is not executive privilege protected. with respect to the question of whether or not he can be asked about his motives in firing people that he has a constitutional right to do, that may be one small area that the courts can, you know, battle over. but everything else is really not covered by this. and, of course, the issue is in a court setting is one forum. in an impeachment hearing analysis, it's completely different because the fifth amendment and all those things do not apply outside the courtroom. and that's another whole aspect of what's going on here, too. >> also if the president did receive immunity in order to answer questions, things he says, though, legally he would be fine, but it could be used in
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impeachment proceedings, correct? >> yes, that's correct. and also, think about -- that's correct, and think about also the fact that, you know, he would be testifying as well and providing information about other people. so, you know, we're very focused right now on the president being the person that is the target of this -- not using target in the legal sense, but the point person for these interviews, but there is a lot in those questions that relate to other people as well. so immunity doesn't take him off the hook on impeachment, and he also doesn't have the right to invoke the fifth amendment for other people. >> and some of those people are family members. >> that's correct. at one point, i think the timing question, i'm not sure it takes years. i think this is such an extraordinary matter that courts would move as quickly as possible. now, the parties would still need reasonable time to brief it and get to the court, but i think this is the kind of thing that would move as humanly quickly as possible in the courts. >> i think dreeben has briefed
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this and they're ready to pull the plug if the president res resists. which the new lawyers have to realize that. >> it's interesting, in the reporting from the "washington post," we learned that these 49 questions were not questions -- these were written down, according to the post, by jay sekulow, the president's own attorney. so if the president is critical of these things leaking down, if jay sekulow is the one who wrote down these 49 questions, it's not as if they were leaked by robert mueller, they came from someone in the trump orbit. >> not only that, they may have contained privileged information, because they were his characterizations of the questions, and he had a right to give that to the president in a lawyer-client privilege way. if someone in the white house leaked that, they may have breached the privilege, too, but we know this white house leaks, like we said.
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>> that brings the other question, would they prevail in a court, which alan dershowitz brought up earlier, which is waiver. the president may have waived the small area of the law that protects him. so he sits there pretty legally naked when it comes to trying to resist this subpoena if one is issued. >> i think that overstates it. >> the president does have the authority to speak to the public. i think the courts would find waiver only in extreme cases. i don't think he's completely naked. i think he's partly exposed. i don't want to use the metaphor of putin. he probably has his shirt off but still has his pants on. >> let's not go down that metaphor anymore. we'll have more breaking news after a quick break. behr marquee, #1 rated interior paint. find it exclusively at the home depot.
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breaking news, an intense meeting in march where the special counsel raised the idea of a subpoena for the president. one source confirms that the thought of a subpoena was brought up by john dowd. dowd has since left the team. before we dive in, i have to mention that amanda carpenter's book is hot off the presses
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"gaslighting america, what we lo love. >> congratulations. >> he's frustrated by the russia investigation because he was the campaign manager, he's the chief of staff at the might house and i think he thinks he's his own lawyer. he wants to testify, i believe. he's trying to tell his legal team, i didn't do this. i will defend myself. my gut tells me i can do this, and his team is leaking out questions and trying to talk him out of it saying, you could be in tremendous peril if you do this. he believes he's innocent and didn't do these things, it has nothing to do with any collusion so he wants to talk about it. >> in the "washington post," they seemed to be saying he's angry, he doesn't want to
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testify, and particularly in the wake of the michael cohen investigation. >> that's what i would think. i would assume he wouldn't want to testify. and everything he's done, frankly, would suggest somebody who doesn't really want to cooperate or treat this as a legitimate investigation. so i would assume they would fight it as much as they can. and ultimately, if he's not willing to do it, then i think they will have to subpoena him. but they're trying to reach some sort of agreement with him, have some deference for the fact that he's president. but in the end they're going to have to get answers to these questions. only one person has the answers to these questions and it's donald trump. >> the political calculation in this is if you fight it in court, and if it goes on for months and months or a year, then you have the midterm elections, there is a lot of different sort of -- >> yeah, you can write it out. i think the concept of gaslighting pretty much talks about the concept of everything president trump does, and that's the concept of ultimate brinkmanship. forget subpoenas, forget whether
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he's going to answer all the questions, i think it's what you're saying. he wants to clear his name himself but he doesn't want to testify. where does that lead? i could see a scenario where he sits down in a video deposition where he says, forget your questions, this is a witch hunt. so what if he gets into a perjury trap? do we really think the fbi is going to haul him out of office? what he will do, i think, is force a political confrontation. he is the come at me, bro kind of guy and begs other people to back down. do we think the senate will impeach him over this question if there is not a flaming, smoking gun? i don't think so because the country, as much as you may hate donald trump, and i don't like what he does, impeachment is a very drastic thing. this needs to go through the political process, so i think he stairs down that barrel of the senate chamber. >> then he repeeats what he's
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said all along. no collusion, no collusion. i hope that's true. if it is, go in front of robert mueller, answer all the questions, let's put this behind us so you can focus on the midterm election. he sometimes tends to embellish things, and there are a lot of questions he won't want to answer, or he'll answer them in the way he wants to, and he runs the risk of getting sbi legal jeopar -- into legal jeopardy, and that's dangerous. it's best just to get over it. >> both personal, constitutional and criminal. his legal team needs to understand that and separate themselves. that is to say, in the white house, the white house counsel does not work for donald trump. he works for the president of the united states. so his job is to forestall impeachment. his private attorneys need to
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make sure he's not charged with a crime. the best argument is the justice department cannot charge a sitting president. he may not be a sitting president all his life. one glorious day he will walk outside of those 16 acres at 1600 pennsylvania avenue, and he could be then charged with a crime. so there is a tension there. those things which might tend to protect his criminal liability can really hurt him politically, like taking the fifth. it's a really difficult thing, and so far i don't think either he or his legal team have been up to it. >> i think we also don't want to forget that mueller has a lot of evidence already collected, okay? this is not -- the political case against him, the legal case against him is not going to all be built on what he says or doesn't say. he has cooperating witnesses. he's talked to jeff sessions. he's talked to people at the cia, the white house counsel, reince priebus, all of these people, and so mueller needs to do this interview as a good
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prosecutor, as an investigator, because that is what you do when you are completing an investigation. but make no mistake, he will have a report that has a lot of other evidence there that goes to collusion and obstruction, and the president can't avoid that. >> but we've had two reports saying he's not the target of the investigation. so he has a lot of other evidence, but why do you want to get someone to sit down and just broadly talk because you don't have something on them? you know what, we have everything we need. he's the real target, we want to go after him. if you want to catch him doing something -- >> how can you do an investigation and have somebody who may later have perhaps even exculpatory evidence. you don't know. you cannot, as an investigator, lead th leave that person aside. just to be clear, the line between subject and target is very strong and it can change in a nanosecond. so i would not hang your hat on that. >> there's a lot of debate on
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this, but isn't there the intent question? nobody can answer that beside donald trump. >> nobody else can answer it, and it may behoove him to give that information. he knew about flynn, he wanted it to go away, he wanted sessions not to recuse, he tried to get the fbi to stop the investigation. >> there's a fine line between subject and target. there is also a fine line between when they told him, you're not a target today but you may be one tomorrow. the fact they delayed the sentencing for mike flynn, i think that says they're still gathering information and some of that information may be damaging to the president, so i think more than anything, we're going to find out more information that will bring him more into the loop than the other way around. >> here's a prediction, not my advice, but what is likely to happen, he'll answer all these questions in a rally in mobile, alabama. he's just going to go on in one
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of his performance tirades for an hour, hour and a half. his lawyers are all just going to die inside because it will be awful for them. he may just tweet 10,000 tweets answering each question. >> this is my point about the conflict within his team. there may be some reports where he says, i don't want to talk about this because he thinks there's no collusion and he thinks the investigation from the very beginning is a joke. but i think if you were to put him on the spot and say, if you were to defend yourself, and staff around him manipulating him on wait he does things, that's not his instinct. his instinct is, that's not what i did, let me explain it. that's not a good idea. he believes he's innocent. he wants to make the case to the american people, it looks like. >> we're going to take a quick break with more reporting on the other side. we'll be right back. es over... ...200 sites to find you the... ...hotel you want at the lowest price. grazi, gino! find a price that fits.
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new reporting on this notion of a special counsel presidential subpoena. we long heard this would be wrapped up soon by president's lawyers, but as you're hearing, there is some new thinking about that. >> yes, anderson, the thinking is this is not going to wrap up any time soon. they're preparing and bracing, certainly, for the possibility this could end up in some long-term legal fight with the special counsel, and especially because they've been talking about doing this voluntary interview, the president sitting down and talking to the fbi and the prosecutors from mueller's office. and obviously those talks have been going on and on, and as we saw from the 49 questions that were leaked to the "new york times" last night, there is a lot left for the special counsel to cover.
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we noticed the change in their behavior in the last few weeks that really signalled that there was a change in thinking about whether or not this could be over any time soon. >> pam, you're also reporting that mueller himself has raised the idea of subpoenaing the president, so have talks broken down with mueller at this point? >> it appears that they have. there certainly has been a change, as evan pointed out, in posture ever since the raid on the president's personal attorney's home and office. just that day there was a meeting that was very tense between mueller's team and the president's lawyers. they were upset about the raid and that they didn't know about it. in a sense talks have broken down, but at the same time you have new lawyers coming on board including rudy giuliani, the raskins, the husband/wife team as well, so they bring a fresh layer to all of this. but anderson, in terms of what was before, the thinking was, let's wrap this up as soon as possible to now bracing for the possibility of a subpoena and a
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lengthy court fight. >> evan, we've been talking about this tonight. couldn't the president just plead the fifth? >> he can. he has the same rights as everybody else, but the president's legal team believes they don't even have to get there. they believe that first they're going to litigate whether mueller even has the right to subpoena the president, that it interferes with his article 2 powers. this is the part of the constitution that says what powers the president has, and it interferes with that ability for him to even conduct his powers in office. it's one reason why they believe, and the justice department has said, in legal opinions that the president cannot -- a sitting president cannot be indicted for a crime. all of that goes into their thinking that essentially they're daring mueller to go there. >> pam, wouldn't that drag out the fight? >> it certainly would, but what's interesting here, according to my colleague gloria borger, is the change in political strategy to those
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close to the president. originally they were thinking, we need to wrap in up as soon as possible. now they're thinking, hey, it's okay if it drags out if there is a lengthy court fight. we've done what we could in this case to undermine the mueller investigation. let's drag this out and get to the midterms and then we can revisit some of this. >> i appreciate your reporting. our panel is back next. we'll be right back. time for medicare, huh. i have no idea how we're going to get through this. follow me. choosing a plan can be super-complicated. but it doesn't have to be. unitedhealthcare can guide you through the confusion, with helpful people, tools and plans. including the only plans with the aarp name. well that wasn't so bad at all. that's how we like it. aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. with expedia, you can book a flight, hotel, car, and activity...
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before the break we heard the new reporting from evan perez and pamela brown that the
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president's legal team is considering whether he should answer questions from robert mueller. this is a dumb question, but the president doesn't actually have to be served with a subpoena, does he? >> we were just talking about that. i just want to say this legal showdown that may be coming is both -- it could be a smart thing to do or a really, really, really dumb thing to do. it's smart in the sense that you don't have the facts, and i don't think this administration has the facts, you fight the law. you fight on the law. so at least this keeps the battle in some, like, normal, legitimate battlefield as opposed to firing and pardoning. but on the other hand, as michael zelden mentioned before, mueller's team has briefed all of these constitutional questions. they know exactly every nuance, they're supreme court clerks, they're scholars, they're prosecutors. they will win. so ultimately the president is going to lose, even, i think, on
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the law. >> i think the legal route, fighting this legally, does help the president, because it just takes it into a place where the public goes. had there been some evidence out there that showed real collusion where the president was implicated, that would be bad. because we don't have that, it just becomes a thing where it becomes like -- i worked for newt during the trump impeachment days -- excuse me -- during the clinton impeachment days -- thank you -- and one of the things we had working against us that the economy was doing well and people were pretty happy. the public's desire to go after him at that level wasn't going away. as long as they keep it a legal fight in some way, it's probably better to keep it there. >> jeff toobin has said it is either evidence of collusion or a desire to collude. >> the word i would use is stupid. i've said this to you before.
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the trump campaign could barely collude with the rnc. they had no ability to collude with the russians. the russians would have had to come over and built a campaign to collude with. >> maybe they are. >> but if russians are saying, russians who have links with the government and who say they have links with the government, are saying, we can give you dirt on hillary clinton and don jr. is saying, great, the timing of this would be great a couple months from now, let's meet, doesn't that just seem like at least a desire to collude or cooperate? >> i think it sounds like a really bigger r error in judgme. it doesn't prove they took it to end corruption. the public -- there is not -- the public does not believe that there is evidence so far that the president has colluded. and mnow we're moving into othe issues. we're moving into his businesses. we're moving into things this
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wasn't first about. so if trump pushes this into a legal fight and keeps it there, that's probably to his advantage. to whatever advantage they can keep it there and not make it a political fight where they talk about collusion, i think, is better. >> the fact that this has gone on, you're saying, 14 months, look, richard nixon complained that this was going on for a year and they haven't found anything. well, of course, they did find something. just because it's been 14 months doesn't mean they aren't going to find something. we don't know yet. i think we need to wait and see what they actually have. >> just because it was dumb or stupid and not very competent doesn't put you in legal jeopardy. >> that's the problem we have here. in addition to the meeting they
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had where they knew they were meeting with people from russia, russian leaders during a campaign, they should have known not to do that. then following up with that, getting together in writing the response. the stachtement that was writte on air force i just raises a lot of questions. i think it's very difficult to believe when the president says no collusion, no collusion, when we already have evidence that shows there was some working at least in some form or fashion with the russians. >> if he's so innocent, why are he and his team so terrified. they even gave him the questions for the test in advance and he doesn't want to answer the questions. does ehe want the answers, too? >> i don't think his team want him talking. but he's terrified of talking about the facts of what he did or didn't do. >> to no avail, by the way, and 69% of americans said they had
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confidence of mueller looking into the collusion issues, 54% in the non-collusion business issues. that's he's attacking rosen, he's attacking the fbi. he knows that. >> we think donald trump needs to fight on facts because we're used to that, because it's logical, it's what he's supposed to do. no, he does not fight on fact. he developed a whole count counternarrative on fox news against him. any time you tune in to fox news, you'll see this narrative play again and again and again. a lot of people believe that. they don't believe there's not collusion, they believe there is an entirely different reality happening that he has created. until we fully understand how that process works, we wonder what will he say in a deposition? it becomes a defensive move.
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donald trump is very effective at a defensive measure when he's creating his own narrative. gaslighting doesn't work when you're not in complete control. that's why everybody has to understand he's his best master manipulator. he creates chaos constantly as a way of taking control of the media environment, as a way of taking control of the political environment, and that's why you can't ever really predict what he's going to do next because he does things no one else would do because he's seeing that entire terrain at all times. >> he seems to be in public chaos which other people are not. >> especially in a media environment where there are hundreds of outlets that will seize on any new development. in the past it was only the "washington post," the "new york times" that you had to win, but now there's a million news outlets that not only will carry your counter-narratives but the fake news to go along with it. >> usher? >> this is exactly why the interview is dangerous for
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trump. because the fbi and mueller are going to approach it as open-ended and an opportunity for him to tell his version. he will see that as an opportunity to create his own narrative. >> just blow tout compleit out . >> and blow it out. >> allison's new book is "gaslighting america." will it be a generic demonstration or a photo op when the president meets with president kim? alo-ha. kayak. search one and done. -i think it'll look really: good without the stripes. whatever your home may hand you, behr through it, in one coat. behr marquee, #1 rated interior paint. find it exclusively at the home depot. looking for a hotel that fits... whoooo. ...your budget?
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>> joining me tonight are fareed zakaria, host of "fareed zakaria gps" and author of the book "the world in disarray." fareed, how much do you think the location of this meetings matters? is the dnc a good idea? >> there are two ways to think about these summits. one would be a place where you have an extended negotiation. for that the dmz is a terrible idea, because what you really need is a place like geneva or paris, a place where you have lots of hotels, people can regroup, it can go on for a long time. that's a long negotiating process. this doesn't seem like that. this seems to be more a kind of photo op, a symbolic meeting, which is often the case with heads of state. the dmz is a great idea. trump, above all, his greatest claim to fame has been the star of "the apprentice" in some
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ways. he knows how this works. he has produced boxing fights. this would be pay-per-view television, to have it at the dmz with these two incredibly bigger than life figures. it's good for a summit. >> is it misplaced, what the president has placed behind this movement or are they worried about what could happen as a result of the increased rhetoric? >> it could be either of those, and let me suggest the third possible reason we've gotten to this point, anderson, which is that north korea has reached a level of development or maturity in its nuclear weapons agreement and feels the intent to intentionally pause, the fact that its testing site can't be used for the foreseeable future means they're not in a rush to do anything. so it's quite possible that this stems from their own state of affairs, and it's not usually
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exclusive. it's also possible that, as you say, american threats, obviously tighter sanctions and chinese pressure, all of these things may have played a role. >> they wanted to get for 25 years, they have been pursuing a path of robust nuclear capacity with intercontinental ballistic missiles. they've gotten there. now they want to negotiate, and presumably the negotiation would involve further freezes and such. if trump can really get them to massively reverse the program, if he can which is to freeze in a pre-weapon stage, that will be a big accomplishment. that'll be them gives up 25 years of -- my guess is going in they want to do what richard said which is keep the games they have and no more tasks. they are going to keep going but
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want to free some large part of what they have. >> ambassador, the new national security adviser says the president is looking at libya for example, as negotiationing with north korea. what do you think the lesson of libya is? >> the lesson of libya, not to mention the lesson of iraq and you crane is to keep ahold of your nuclear weapons. we're setting ourselves up for a failure. i'd expect kim jong-un is very familiar with what happened after he got out of the nuclear weapons business or sadaam hussain. so the le ssson as we see it though is north korea has to give up everything. i have to agree to all intrusive monitoring verification. the location won't matter and we're going to end up with a
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diplomatic failure on our hands of the first order. >> last night the white house released a statement that said iran has a robust nuclear weapons program. obviously they quickly own lawn change it to have. i want to play that. >> how does a mistake like this get made and do you believe the white house has a credibility problem around the world with this statements like this? do you take this seriously? >> absolutely which is why we immediately corrected it. the biggest mistake is the fact that the united states ever entered into the iran deal in the first place. that to me seems to be the biggest mistake in this process not a simple typo that was corrected. we corrected it soops we knew what happened. >> i feel as though with the administration that play fast and loose with the facts so often that it does produce a credibility problem.
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they almost seem as though they're so eager to make a partisan point. the truth becomes the casualty. i think for the president of the united states they're not nearly as careful as they should be with just sticking to the facts. up next the draum may here at home over dr. ronnie jackson who withdrew his name as vrk ark nominee. he's no longer president trump's physician but he still supports him. wait until you hear what the republican chairman of the senate affairs committee has to say about this when we continue. d in the comfort of home. home instead senior care.
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some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. 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. . tonight the republican chairman of the senate veteran affairs is speaking out on "360." the president may not like what the republican has to say. jackson withdrew last week and no longer the president as personal physician, that's after allegations surfaced around him including that he improper dispenses medication. he claims to have done nothing wrong. the president wrote, quote, sect service just informed me
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statements on jackson are not true. there were no such findings, a horrible thing we in d.c. must live with just like collusion. so, does the republican chairman who works with the senator agreed without assessment. gary tucker caught up with the senator today and joins us now. >> i did catch up with him where he was speaking in carrollton, georgia. he says he does not agree with the statements. >> well, fortunately last night a story broke that made that a false statement. part of the allegations made in one of the affidavits was verified by -- what's manu's name? manu ra gee, does a great job by
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the way. but the allegations of the complaints they were held against jackson were vaultlidat in that. looks like there was a story that corroborated the fact, there were some of the allegations and that was correct. i did my job, aircraft senat eve ability to seek the truth. if you're seeking the truth then you're covered. if you're not seeking the truth or if you're fractionalizing the truth and twisting the facts that's something else. but i don't think that was done. >> since he defended senator tester yesterday he has heard nothing negative about that from the white house. he said that with doctor jackson no longer in the running to be va secretary his committee and investigation is now over. >> gary tucker thanks. time to hand it over to don
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lemon. "cnn tonight" starts now. see you tomorrow. this is "cnn tonight" thyme don lemon. another night of multiple big stories and we're following all of them for you in breaking news. president trump's lawyers are preparing for a show down with robert mueller. a warning he could issue a subpoena forcing the president to appear before a grand jury. that is a battle shaping up and we'll bring you the latest reporting on that. plus, president trump seems to really have doctor issues. one week after the scandal that brought by the physician ronny se jackson, trump's previous doctor resurfaced. he tells cnn the glowing letter he wrote about then candidate trump called him the healthiest person ever to run for the