tv Wolf CNN August 3, 2018 10:00am-11:00am PDT
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wearing your trump hat? >> i think you do, especially in smaller races where the population is more homogenus and conservative. >> thanks for that. and thanks for joining us on "inside politics." see you back here on sunday at 8:00 a.m. eastern. wolf starts right now. hello. i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 p.m. here in washington. thanks very much for joining us. we start with breaking news on robert mueller and the manhattan madam. cnn has learned the special counsel's team has talked to the infamous manhattan madam kristen davis as part of the russia investigation. davis worked for and is a former friend of roger stone's. sarah murray is here working the
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story. sarah, i know you're doing a lot of reporting on this. walk us through the latest information. >> we're learning that kristin davis, famously known as the manhattan madam, has met with the special counsel's team. they also are interested in bringing her back and having her testify before the grand jury. this is interesting because she's known roger stone for a long time, for at least a decade. she's done work for him on and off over the course of their friendship together. it tells you prosecutors still seem to be very interested in roger stone and may be trying to build a case against him. he has not heard from the special counsel, but he has said publicly that he's bracing for the possibility of an indictment. you know, kristin davis' story in and of itself is pretty interesting. this is someone who ran a prostitution ring. she went to jail in the scandal surrounding new york governor elliott spitzer, who eventually
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resigned. she's had a lot on her plate over the years. she ran for governor in 2010. that's one of the instances she worked alongside roger stone. one of her platforms was legalizing prostitution, legalizing marijuana. obviously she was not successful in this bid. and the last sort of perplexing thing about this case is we don't know kparktly what the special counsel wants to get from kristin davis, but we do know that his prosecutors have asked some bizarre questions of other witnesses. she has a son. roger stone happens to be the godfather of that son. apparently in interviews with other witnesses, people have been asked whether that child could be roger stone's child. sort of difficult to figure out how this all fits into the broader scheme of whether, you know, russia colluded or whether any russians colluded with anyone in donald trump's orbit in 2016, which of course is one of the cores of the mueller investigation. >> and it's interesting, glen, because it comes just a few days after a federal judge ordered another roger stone associate to
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appear before the mueller grand jury, specifically trying to get more information. how does this all add up in your mind? >> wolf, it does seem like this is sort of the typical strategy. when you're looking at a target, let's assume for the moment that roger stone is a target of bob mueller's investigation. he is sort of circling around mr. stone by interviewing people who are close with him, perhaps making his way into family members. miss davis, it seems, was close with roger stone both personally and professionally. interviewing somebody like that can really uncover some information important to the investigation. for example, we all remember some weeks ago when we learned that roger stone actually did take a meeting with a russian individual who was looking for, i believe, $2 million in exchange for providing roger stone with dirt on hillary clinton. surprise, surprise. what did we also come to learn?
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that he had been -- he had testified behind closed doors with the house intelligence committee and apparently forgot about that meeting. i think it strains credulity to believe he forgot about that meeting. so what might bob mueller's investigators be doing now? because miss davis is close to him personally and professionally, there's been some reporting that, for example, she would keep his schedule. of course, the investigators are going to want to deal with her to see what kind of meetings roger stone was taking. even more importantly, to see if before his testimony to the house intelligence committee he had been speaking with her about the meetings he had taken. when you uncover evidence like that, it significantly undercuts a claim that i just forgot about meeting with that particular russian. so there are all sorts of reasons for mueller's investigative team to want to
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get every bid of rel vaevant, reliable information out of miss davis that they can. >> it's significant. and tell me if i'm wrong, but it seems mueller and his team are focusing in on roger stone, this part of the investigation. they haven't referred it to another u.s. district court. this is part of the russia probe. >> it sure seems like it. bob mueller has taken his jurisdictional mandate very seriously. because we've seen him refer cases out to the eastern district of virginia, where paul manafort is on trial as we speak. he has sent several investigations -- >> michael cohen in new york. >> several investigations. michael cohen. recently we saw him refer some individuals for potentially unlawful lobbying activities, again, up to new york. he really is keeping within the lines that have been drawn for him by deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. >> i know, sarah, you're getting reaction. i assume you've consulted or
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tried to get reaction from the principals involved. what are they saying, if anything? >> that's right. a lawyer who represents kristin davis declined to comment for this. roger stone and his attorney declined to comment. i can tell you the sentiment in the orbit of roger stone's friends and allies is they really do sort of now believe the president's line on this, that this is a witch hunt. they're saying, you know, why are people -- why is mueller's team calling witnesses asking if roger stone has a love child? they pretty much all believe it's only a matter of time until roger stone gets indicted. they believe there will be something that has to do with potential collusion between roger stone and russians. remember, he talked for a while openly about how he had been in contact with julian assange during all this information coming out about hillary clinton during the campaign. he later walked that back. they sort of think there will be a top line allegation about him having something to do perhaps with hacking, perhaps with russian collusion. it could be followed by charges
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that have something to do with his finances. they maintain, and roger stone did not comment for this piece, but he's previously maintained he's innocent, that he had nothing to do with russian collusion, that he didn't do anything wrong. he says if the special counsel does bring charges against him, those are all going to be trumped up ways to just get at him over his finances. >> very good reporting with m.j. lee, sarah. thank you very much. glen, thank you to you as well. from democracy in the cross hairs to a russian hoax, president trump dismisses. the entire russia investigation only hours after his top national security team warned of a dire threat that russia poses to the u.s. elections. one after the other, the top members of his administration warned of russia's ongoing effort to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections here in the united states in november and undermine u.s. democracy. a white house official tells cnn the president instructed his team to present this show of force, but guess what, he didn't appear with them at that event. and at a rally only a few hours
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later, he actually said this. >> in helsinki, i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. i had a great meeting. [ cheers and applause ] we got along really well. by the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. that's a really good thing. now, we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax, okay? >> clearly in contrast to what his top national security advisers said only a few hours earlier. let's go to our senior white house correspondent jeff zeleny. what's behind the disconnect between the president who says it's all a hoax and his own administration when it comes to russia? they say this is an enormous threat facing the united states. >> reporter: wolf, clearly the president not speaking with the same voice of his national security officials. that was the big question hanging over the rally last evening in pennsylvania. of course, coming just hours after his full national security
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apparatus speaking there from the white house in a way we have not seen before. to have the director of the fbi, the intelligence director, the homeland security secretary, and others speaking about this, it seemed that the white house was turning a page on russian election meddling. then the president, of course, with the biggest megaphone of all not talking about that, not amplifying that message. the white house says they are on the same page. they say privately the president is giving this directive for his officials to say on this, and he is taking it seriously. wolf, publicly he's doing anything but. by calling it a hoax yet again, it is certainly sending a message that the u.s. is not taking this seriously. there's no other way to draw attention to something than to have the president talk about it in public. and so far, the president has been unwilling to do that. when you talk to supporters of his and long-time friends of his and ask them why he can't do this, they say this is the one thing the russian election meddling that simply getting to him. he does not want to be seen as
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illegitimate. he does not want to be seen that his 2016 victory was anything but that, a victory. but wolf, it does make you wonder why he can't just move on and talk about this forcefully. now, the question is, will the government be focused on this in the three months or so before the midterm elections? they say they are. but again, without the president talking about it, it makes you wonder if it's a top priority, wolf. >> nothing, i take it, objen th president's schedule today. he's out in new jersey at his golf club. >> reporter: no, there is nothing on his public schedule, wolf. we know he was looking at those strong economic numbers coming in this morning. the unemployment rate, of course, going down to 3.9%. some of us thought we would hear from him this morning, but we did not hear from him. he's not planning to speak at all today. he'll be going to ohio tomorrow to campaign for a house race. he's scheduled to be here on a working vacation for the next week and a half or so until august 13th. you can be sure we'll likely be hearing from him in some fashion at some point, wolf.
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>> even if it's only on twitter. i'm sure we will. jeff, thank you very much. jeff zeleny reporting. joining us now, mike rogers, cnn's national security commentator, former chairman of the house intelligence committee. mike, thanks very much for coming in. pretty impressive show of force yesterday by the president's top national security team, all of them showing up speaking forcefully against what russia did during the 2016 elections, when they're attempting to do in the upcoming midterms. yet, the president says only a few hours later it's a russia hoax. >> yeah, pretty powerful display from the intelligence community, including the fbi and the law enforcement side and what they're doing. it's a little confounding. i just -- i passionate believe the president cannot separate this notion of which -- and i think he believes this, there was no collusion on his behalf, he doesn't understand this investigation, and what the russians actually did to try to influence the election and pit americans against american, and
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they're ramping it up. i think he believes if he admits that that, in fact, is the case, his presidency might not be a legitimate win. i think you have to separate both of those issues. i just don't think he can get there. the good news for americans is all of these folks came out. they didn't just talk to the russians. they didn't talk to the american public. they also talked to the work force of the intelligence community saying we're committed to, this we're going to unleash some of the assets that we have. >> and with all due respect to the top national security team, including dan coats, the director of national intelligence, they were all there, the fbi director. it's one thing for the russians and putin to hear them, but it's another thing for them to hear from the president of the united states. >> clearly. and the one issue that you have to ask -- so if you're going to disrupt disrupt russian activity, you need some offensive capabilities. those are considered covert action, really sensitive. lots of thought goes into making sure you hit the right target,
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dot right thing. it needs a presidential sign-off. you have to of some offensive capability. that does need to have a policy wrapped around it and authorization from the president. >> we certainly didn't hear from the president himself. he could have showed up at that event together with his national security team. he certainly could have discussed it later in the evening when he had that big rally in california. he was silent on that except for calling it a hoax. usually calls it a witch hunt. i want you to listen to dan coats, the director of national intelligence. he spoke about the helsinki summit between the president and russian president putin. then he uttered these words. >> i'm not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened at helsinki. i'll throw it over to the national security director here to address that question.
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>> it was pretty shocking to hear the director of national intelligence, the top intelligence officer in the united states, say that he's not in a position to understand fully what happened in helsinki. >> that may have been the fastest hand-off of a question i've ever seen by somebody in a major press conference. >> wouldn't he be briefed spe k specifically? >> you would hope so. and when the national security adviser said, no, no, no, putin told us what happened in the meeting. remember when he came out and said, putin told us that was the question the president asked. you never empower an adversary with the narrative. now we have to get any c confirmation of what happened in that hearing not just from the president but putin and his information crew are using this to their full advantage. >> very quickly, because i've heard from some u.s. cyber experts, counterintelligence experts say the only way the russians are fully going to appreciate what they've been doing is if the u.s. does
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something similar to them. do some hacking, go on the cyber offensive against putin and his top oligarchs, specifically reveal some of their secret e-mails, expose some of the money laundering going on, and send that direct message to them. maybe that will have an impact. >> that is one aspect. that piece has been talked about for years. do you remember the panama papers and all of those disclosures? that start tord ged to get a li putin's circle, the money they were stealing. but it has to be more than that. it can't be just we're going to embarrass you a little bit. from has to be disruption. so we have the capability, the u.s. government, the national security agency, to disrupt certain cyber activities. it's hard. you have to be accurate. it's not an easy thing to do. but we can do it. remember, that's the part that the president has to sign off on. if you're going to another country to disrupt some activity like that, it's under something called title 50. you need lots of authorizations.
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the president normally is in that chain. he could delegate, but we don't know that piece. i'm going to guess we haven't gotten an idea yet on what those offensive cyber actions would look like. if you want to disrupt the russians, you absolutely have to have some offensive capable. >> you have to have the authorization to do it. no doubt the u.s. has that capability if the president of the united states were to say -- >> remember when mike rodgers said the president hadn't told me to do anything? that was what was so concerning. he's the guy that needed to hear it from the president. >> the former director of the national security agency. not this mike rogers. stand by. there's more news we're following. in the trial of the president's former campaign chairman, the people who handled his money taking the stand. you're going to hear what they said when they were asked about what they knew. plus, as the u.s. unemployment rate falls, china now retaliating in the president's trade war. how far will this go? and donald trump jr. compares the democratic party platform
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security agency. this is a woman who worked at the u.s. embassy for more than a decade. she was working for the u.s. secret service, which obviously has to do with presidential and vice presidential detail. she came under suspicion during a regular security review in 2016. she was caught, wolf, redhanded when the diplomatic security of the embassy noticed she was giving too much information to the fsb. these officials have some contact with russian officials as part of their job, but she was having unauthorized meetings and communications. they did a sting and caught her red handed. bofl, th wolf, this woman, she did have access to national security information. she did have access to the secret service intranet system, if you will, the internal system, and the e-mail system. but officials tell me she didn't
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have access to national security information, wolf. she did, however, have a security clearance that was revoked when she was fired a few months into 2017. >> all right. very intriguing indeed. elise, thank you. i want to bring back mike rogers. how extraordinary is this? >> the russians are very aggressive. the secret service is taking some heat for not taking it seriously. they said she didn't have access to anything outside of a very low classification intranet system. the problem is she had access to the embassy. if you remember back in the '80s, it was rife with listening devices. as a matter of fact, our state department was penetrated in the late '90s. russians had something placed in a table in a conference room that was a listening device that was beaming out very sensitive conversations. so it's not just the fact that she had access to the intranet. it's the fact she had access to the building. she could identify people coming and going for the fsb.
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she could bring devices in likely. and through that process, she could have caused a lot more harm than just being the person that was doing low-level administration work. that's what worried me about the secret service not doing a full-blown what did we lose and what risk did she pose and all the people did she touch inside the embassy. that's where you have to start being concerned. >> an enormous concern, i know, is she had for a decade, she got to know a lot of these people at the u.s. embassy. she would talk to them, have little lunches, private meetings or whatever. she would get a lot of information presumably that could potentially be useful to russian intelligence. a lot they need to work on. >> including people who work for the cia who are undercover, would likely come into contact with secret service folks. she would have the ability to observe that, even if she's outside watching that meeting take place. that's of value to the fsb in russia. >> certainly. mike rogers, thanks very much.
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donald trump jr. compares the platform of the democratic party here in the united states to the platform of the nazi party in germany in the early 1930s. the president's eldest son drew the comparison in an interview with a right-wing commentator on the want america news network. listen. >> you know, you see the nazi platform in the early 1930s and bha what was put out there and you look at it compared to the dnc platform today. man, those things are awfully similar, to a point where it's actually scary. >> joining us to discuss that and more, democratic congressman gregory meeks of new york, member of the house foreign affairs committee, the congressional black caucus as well. congressman, what's your reaction to this obviously false equivalency that donald trump jr. is making between the democrats here in the united states and the nazis? >> absolutely disturbing and
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despicable. here we are talking about a man who had an opportunity to denounce neo nazis in charlottesville, and he said they were good people. here we have a man who basically if you just read some of the statements he made and compare it to what hitler has said, they're very similar. trying to destroy our institutions, work around his own folks. for him to say that is absolutely disturbing and absolutely absurd. >> let's get to some other issues while i have you, congressman. the trump administration's entire national security team taking a very strong stand against russian attempts to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections. the strong show of force we saw yesterday at the white house was green lighted, we're told, by the president, but he continues himself to refer to the whole russian involvement as a russian hoax, a witch hunt. he certainly didn't speak about it at that hour-long event he
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did last night. what do you make of the apparent disconnect? >> it is puzzling and also disturbing. it seems clear that his secretary -- well, the head of the defense, mr. coats, and others are not on the same page with the president. and we need to hear from the president. our allies and others want to hear from the mouth of the president what he really believes. but he keeps undercutting his own administration. and so i think at some point, you have to take the president for what his word is. so he does not agree with his own administration on the threat that the russian government presents to our own democracy, even today in dealing with our elections. and it's something, wolf, that has to stop. we need a president to step up to the plate because clearly he's not defending america and our democracy against the russian intrusion. >> as you know, the president's personal attorney rudy giuliani, your former mayor in new york,
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had this to say about the stakes in the upcoming midterm elections in november. listen to this. >> i have to say this, and i say this in my role not as a lawyer but as a concerned citizen and republican, but this election is going to be about impeachment or no impeachment. >> because if the democrats become the majority in the house of representatives following the november midterms, you just need a simple majority in the house to go ahead with impeachment. does it simply boil down to what giuliani is saying? >> no, giuliani is trying to juice up their base. he knows what the democrats are looking to do. we're looking to make sure we're all doing the work of the people. we want to make sure that people have health care. we want to make sure that we do and have a strong infrastructure built so we can rebuild our infrastructure in america and put people to work with good paying jobs. we want to make sure that we're focused on those kinds of things that will prevent us from having
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a tariff war and/or having a trade war. what he's trying to do is really talk about trying to juice up their base. we're just going to let mr. mueller do the work he has to do, the work that the president and mr. giuliani want to stop immediately. let mueller do his investigation. if something comes up, it comes up. if nothing comes of it, nothing comes of it. we're going to take back the majority, and we're going to do the work of the people because we're for the people and what the people need. >> one of the president's new favorite targets is democratic congresswoman maxine waters. he calls her the new star of the democratic party. i want you to listen to how he referred to her once again last night during that hour-plus rally in pennsylvania. >> you know who the new star, you know who that new leader is? maxine waters. [ booing ] very low iq. low iq. no, no, maxine waters is like --
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she's like their new star. >> i want your reaction. she's a colleague of yours, a member of the congressional black caucus. she's obviously said some very strong words against the president, and i know that his supporters are angry at her, but when he refers to her as someone with very low iq, what does that say to you? >> again, he's playing the race card. same thing he did with the bertha sto birther story on president obama. we've watched him when he talked about the central park five. we looked at what he did before even that with reference to red lining african-americans in his business. we've heard the kind of hate treatment he's had against immigrants. he's just showing who he truly is. it gets to a point, wolf, when you sound like a duck and you look like a duck, you're a duck. well, here he's starting to sound like an individual that's playing the race card, so to the
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degree you're looking at that, then you've got to equate maybe he's a racist. but he's playing those cards. he continues to do it. he's done it on a continue us a basis. he did it in charlottesville. we know who he is by what he says. there comes a time when you just accept who a person is because of their own mouth. he says don't listen to anyone else. even what he's saying with reference to the media is just don't listen to the media. why? because you're reporting the truth. there's one thing we know, wolf, about this president. that he's done better than any other president or more than any other president, and that's lie. >> congressman gregory meeks, thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. more on the breaking news coming into cnn. cnn has learned the special counsel robert mueller has interviewed the so-called manhattan madam, a close ally of roger stone. are investigators focusing in on the former trump adviser?
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more strong economic numbers released today here in the united states. the u.s. labor department says the u.s. jobless rate is now below 4%. actually, 3.9%. and 157,000 new jobs were added to the economy last month. a bit fewer new jobs than most economists had been predicting. they thought maybe around
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200,000 new jobs. shannon, these are pretty impressive numbers. good news politically, certainly for the president. >> yeah, they definitely are. the economy is one of the areas when you look at polling that he does very well in. there might be questions about foreign policy, about his truthfulness, about his temperament, but when you ask voters about the economy, he still does really strong -- he does very strongly there. but of course, there's just this nonstop amount of distractions coming out of this white house. hissed his advisers and republicans on the hill caution him, could we just let these economic numbers be the news and not have all the other crises that continue to come out of this white house. >> i know you're happy with these numbers. all the trump supporters are happy with these numbers. they're very, very good numbers. the unemployment rate is low. the stock market is doing very nicely. the jobs created have been impressive. here's what hasn't been good. and you know what i'm going to say. the deficit. the budget deficit. take a look at these numbers. we'll put some numbers on the
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screen so you can see where it's been. during the last year of the obama administration, the annual budget deficit, $587 billion. first year of the trump administration, went up to $666 billion. it's probably going to be about 700 or 800 billion this year. in 2019, the congressional budget office is already projecting a $1 trillion annual budget deficit here in the united states. whatever happened to the conservative republican doctrine of a balanced budget? >> did you really have to rain on this parade? first of all, let me say one thing about these numbers being a little disappointing. that's been the headline all day. just one thing. they revised upward the numbers from the previous two months by about 60,000. so that's a really good number. look, what i used to always say to donald trump about these deficit numbers -- by the way, let's face it, under obama the debt did go up by $10 trillion. it's not as if -- >> well, there was a great recession in 2008.
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>> but you had trillion and a half dollar deficits and a weak recovery. what we've always said to trump is get the economy moving at a faster pace. if you can get that growth rate up from less than 2% under obama to 3% or 4 %, you're going to gt a lot of tax revenue. cbo projecting tax revenues will be stronger than expected. >> why do they think there will be a trillion-dollar deficit? >> it's a spending problem. >> it's a republican majority in the house. >> i know. >> a republican majority in the senate. a republican president of the united states. why is spending out of control? >> because neither party, not the republicans or democrats, want to do anything about reducing the size of government. look, i'm not going to defend the republicans on the budget. i did talk to the president about the omnibus spending bill. i think he regrets not vetoing that bill to send a message to congress. given the fact spending is out of control, we better get the revenues up. a good way to do that is get people work. >> it would be great to get revenues up. but if you cut the taxes, some
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people are going to pay a lot less. >> we'll see. stick around. >> what's happening on the hill? what happened to all those republicans insisting there has to be a balanced budget? >> well, i think one of the concerns on capitol hill has been they want to make sure that they get some spending bills done so there's not a government shutdown before the midterms. they know that the president threatened to veto the last omnibus bill. they're trying to move through the appropriations process. it's actually been a rare bright spot on capitol hill. they've been moving through these bills one by one and making sure that they're in a good spot to just have to do a continuing resolution on a small number of agencies. i think that moving forward is what republicans are focused on. and they know that if they don't want a shutdown, they can't make major spending cuts. >> one thing about this deficit number. during the campaign of 2016, what were the number one and two issues on the minds of american people? jobs and the economy. so people really care about their personal finances and how
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they're doing in terms of their family. and when you talked about, you know, the bump-up in trump's approval ratings, and i think they've hit the highest they've ever been now, it's because of the economy. it's because people are feeling better about their own financial situation. >> it's the economy stupid, somebody once said. that was a significant statement. back in 1992 when he was helping bill clinton become president of the united states. what's going on with the koch brothers? all of a sudden they've given a lot of money to conservatives out there, to conservative politicians, to conservative think tanks, conservative activist groups. now the president of the united states is really going after them. we saw the chair of the republican national committee saying don't have anything to do with the koch brothers any longer. it's pretty startling. >> but interesting to watch this relationship play out, not just now, but for the past two, three years. you know, the kochs were not a supporter of trump when he was a candidate.
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a lot of their agenda and policy items since he was elected have gone against the president's agenda. and i don't know if this feud is bad for the president politically because on one sense, president trump's brand is about being independent of big money and donors and the self-financed campaign. so being seen as someone who is an antagonist to the koch brothers, even though it goes against these traditional republican norms, might not be bad. >> they're very conservative. they disagree on some of the free trade issues. whatever happened to ronald reagan's big tent? the republican party is a big tent and we have a lot of different views among republicans. >> it's a different republican party today than it was in the '80s when reagan was president. i love ronald reagan. trump has really turned the republican party more into a working class party. some of the elites in the party are not comfortable, you know, with the direction that trump has taken the party. now, the two issues that charles koch has had big disagreements
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within trump on are immigration and trade. if it weren't for trump's position on immigration and trade, i believe hillary clinton -- and by the way, i'm pro trade and pro immigration, but those issues really -- i mean, you're from michigan. in those states, that immigration issue really played well with voters. >> it's this question, too, i should note, is trump a republican? is he a republican? is he a democrat? >> it's his party now. he's got 90%. >> he's certainly the leader of the republican party. what i hear you saying is the republican party now is a little tent party. >> no, i think the party is very unified. but i'm saying it's different. the bigger part of the tent right now is you've gotten those reagan democrats. that's the reason trump won, in those states like pennsylvania, ohio, and michigan. those working class americans switched over to the republican party. >> guys, thank you very, very much. good discussion. we'll continue this down the road. coming up, less than two months after historic summit in singapore, the u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo now says north korea is not living up to its
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the u.s. and north korea seem to be fading quickly. the latest sign came from the u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo telling reporters that north korea is not acting on its commitment to denuclearize and is in violation of the u.n. security council resolutions. we have also learned that president trump received another letter from the north korean leader, kim jong-un, this week as a follow-up to their june summit, but no specifics were given. let's go to our senior international correspondent ivan watson who is joining us now
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from singapore where pompeo is attending the east asia summit. ivan, is this ongoing gamesmanship or is there a clear cooling of relations? >> reporter: well, certainly, i mean, it's very striking when you consider that president trump had his historic meeting with kim jong-un here in singapore less than two months ago and that the message that mike pompeo is bringing here is very different, it's not nearly as triumphant, there's no message, hey, people can sleep safely at night, instead he's coming and he has told journalists on his flight to singapore that he believes that north korea is inconsistent with the pledge that he says north korea's leader kim jong-un made to denuclearize and that north korea is in violation of united nations security council resolutions. he's also bringing a different message to the southeast asian nations that are gathering here, calling on them to continue to enforce united nations sanctions
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and economic sanctions that are isolating north korea for its ongoing activities in developing nuclear weapons and apparently according to some recent reports, ballistic missile technology. so not the same kind of triumphant tone that we heard, for example, in a recent tweet from president trump himself who was thanking north korea for releasing the remains of what we believe could be 55 u.s. soldiers from the korean war, united nations troops that were recently returned and saying thank you for getting a letter from kim jong-un, wolf. instead, mike pompeo recently has told u.s. lawmakers that he believes that north korea is still making ammunition, fissile material that could be used for nuclear weapons. >> a different tone coming from the president of the united states on north korea and the secretary of state on north korea. ivan, thank you for that report. coming up, we will have more on our breaking news. the special counsel robert mueller's team interviewing the
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