welcome to "inside politics." i'm phil mattingly. john king is off. president trump is on his way to new orleans this hour to speak at a farmers convention. that is new orleans, louisiana as he tweeted this morning. there is a field of questions not on the plate for farmers but whether or not he is working for russians. clemson champion will meet the

president when he comes back tonight. he pre viewed the menu, naturally. >> i think we'll have some mcdonald's. >> the president's attorney general nominee is laying down a big and important marker, two of them, actually. one, the russia special counsel should finish his investigation. number two, that the american public should see robert mueller's report. more on that in a few minutes. but we begin with a straight-up denial from the president to a now burning question brought on by new reporting. mr. president, did you do the kremli kremlin's bidding inside the oval office? >> i never worked for russia, and you know that answer better than anybody. i never worked for russia. not only did i never work for russia, i think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question, because it's a whole big fat hoax. >> that question, surreal as it is, being asked this morning

because of a weekend flurry of revelations, the biggest being this. that the fbi decided in may of 2017 to investigate the president and whether he was secretly acting at the behest of russia. today new details on how and why the fbi made that extraordinary decision. cnn obtained transcripts of closed door congressional interviews with top fbi officials. the documents reveal a half dozen agents decided whether to open an investigation into the president. james comey said he did it at the direction of the kremlin. that was one extreme, james baker told congressional lawyers last year. the other pocket is tssibility president is completely innocent. as to whether the president was working knowingly or unknowingly

with russia, he said, i don't know. kaitlan, i'm sure you freaked out when he said he wasn't going to nashville. what does the white house think about this moment? >> reporter: they're furious about it. you saw that reflected in the statements they issued this weekend after that flurry of questions came out. clearly the president is bothered by it, too, because not only did he deny working with russia, he said the question was absurd. the reporter only asked the question because of the series of questions over the weekend. apparently there was a counterintelligence question that the president was saying things beneficial to russia. the president did an interview where he was asked outright by the host, have you worked on behalf of russia, are you an agent of russia? he didn't outright reject it. instead he called the question insulting and seemed to sidestep the answer, but this morning he

used no ambiguous language when he said, no, he has not worked with an agent. he seemed to downplay that piece that said he was friendly with vladimir putin. he feared that those details would leak and would get out. it came at a time when he had been incredibly frustrated by a series of leaks coming out of his administration. he told reporters he didn't think it was a big deal, that he meets with leaders from time to time, but typically there are readouts of what was said. he seemed to say it was normal and did not answer the question of whether there would be a readout of that meeting rk, phi. >> here to share their reporting, shimon prokupecz.

i want to play this from the president. you can kind of guess where the posture is going to be from the president and his allies. this is what he had to say when he was asked about some of the revelations. >> the people that started that investigation are mccabe, who is a proven liar and was fired from the fbi. arlisa page, who was forced to leave the fbi, and her lover, peter strzok, who we got their text messages and what they said in those text messages was shocking when you talk about bias. and also comey. and i guess they started it because i fired comey. they are known scoundrels. i guess you could say they're dirty cops. >> we know where both sides are going on this in this report. you're an expert on these

things. can you tell us what it actually means, what we're looking at right now? >> i think when you look at what jim baker told members of congress, the top fbi lawyer at the time, who ends up leaving the fbi and called in by congress just to talk about what went on during that time, you get a sense that there was a lot of concern by some of the people, the president there named, lisa page, peter strzok whofrks rstrzok, who was running the investigation, that something was amiss. something was going on, whether somebody got to the president or there was an intermediary somewhere else. something had happened because they didn't understand why the president went and fired the former fbi director. so there was a lot of concern. when baker testifies before congress, he uses words like "following directions." was the president following the directions of the russians? was he doing this at the behest of the russians? for whatever reason, there was this concern in the fbi.

there may be other information that came to them, but they didn't have enough at the time to open an investigation. once he fired the fbi director, once he fired comey, i think they felt they had enough there to then go ahead and open the investigation. >> and you mentioned lisa page. one of the issues that had been brought up had been a text message that had been a topic of discussion for some time. her explanation in the congressional testimony reads as thus. the case was a topic of discussion for some time. the waiting on was an indecision and a cautiousness on the part of the bureau with respect to what to do and whether there was sufficient pred indication to open. this is a major accusation and i guess i wonder what the rationale was, if you will. how are people seeing this play out over the course of the last

48 hours? >> the congress has been sharing this for a while, so they weren't particularly surprised by this report. i think the reporting in the post of the president keeping a lot of these transcripts, not allowing top officials to have readings of his meetings with elected officials, that did seem to strike people as very new and very concerning. we've seen a lot of chairmen are interested in this. you have jerry in addition ler on t-- nadler on the judiciary committee, and we're seeing a bunch of other people jump in, including elliott engle, who is chairman of the foreign relations committee, and that story has moved engel, who is a democrat of new york, to move the terror subdivision and to have them look at this issue, and why the president won't let officials come into the room, why he's been so secretive on

his meetings with russia, and that will be a key focus going forward. >> one of the other explanations as to why the president may have tried to obscure these notes and limit his administration from talking, there were transcripts and notes of these former leaders that leaked to the press. the "washington post" reported in mid -2017 about these meetins with mexico and florida that were not too flattering for the president, so that could be one reason for it. but there's no doubt the house democrats will be looking into this aggressively. you have lawyers talking about what kind of legal authority they have to subpoena these records. senators -- well, democrats did try to do this last year after the helsinki summit. there is question as to whether you can get them or not. i was assuming the administration would probably assert some privilege over these records should they exhibit some capacity. this will be a major brewing fight in the coming months for sure. >> i remember being at that meeting in germany which was

supposed to be much shorter than it ended up going. with each passing 15-minute segment, it was like, what are they doing in there? the mounting angst by the white house staff because they knew they wouldn't be able to tell us because they didn't know and they weren't going to know. i think part of this is, sure, any president wants to have some discretion until the white house can determine what fully happened and how much they want to share or not share. but when nobody knows what actually happened and what was promised internally, it's a real problem, and there was a lot of those concerns. >> you've followed foreign policy for years now in multiple administrations. you know how they traditionally work. was it your sense this was just related to the russian president, or is this how the president operates in foreign leader meetings all the time? >> i think the 2017 meeting with putin in germany was a special case. i do. i also think this administration does not read out all of their foreign leader calls. in fairness, in the past, not all presidents have, either.

but i think there are a lot of foreign policy calls related perhaps to syria, more recent decisions in the mideast we don't have full visibility on right now. >> i want to finish with you in the last 30 seconds. what happens next? what's the next step? >> obviously we're waiting for mueller. perhaps the next attorney general here saying that the report should be public. i think that's probably -- that's a good first step. certainly that's what people want to hear. we're all just waiting on mueller, really. i think the committees in some ways are going to be held up a little bit here in terms of what they're trying to do until mueller is done. we still don't know when that's going to definitively happen and how much of an impact mueller will have on this entire investigation going forward. we don't know yet. but i think not until -- once mueller is done, i think that's when the hill starts to open up a little bit. >> all of us on the hill will be

pleased. by the way thafr, that was a gr tease, because coming up next, the president's choice to be the next attorney general says robert mueller should finish his work.

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tomorrow the president's attorney general nominee comes to capitol hill for an initial grilling. today bill barr is making pre-testimony promises. he says it's vitally important robert mueller complete his investigation, saying, i believe it's in the best interest of everyone, the president, congress, and most importantly the american people that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work, barr plans to say. the country needs a credible resolution of these issues. the other important commitment? barr says the public deserves to

know what the special counsel finds. manu raju is on capitol hill. manu, the democrats made clear this would be a central issue of their questioning tomorrow. have they reacted in any way to what they've seen previewed? >> not in these written reviews, but this is how barr was getting behind the scenes to democrats last week when he was making visits to capitol hill. at the time democrats want to hear much more than what he was saying. they were not satisfied at that point. richard blumenthal, the senate judiciary committee democrat, said he wanted ironclad specific commitments, perhaps even recusal from overseeing the mueller investigation. did not go that far in his written testimony to the committee, but what he also tried to address was a june memo that he wrote from last year in which he raised concerns about the legality and the necessity of an investigation into obstruction of justice over the public facts surrounding the firing of james comey.

and he tries to reassure senators in his written testimony. he says this: my memo is narrow in scope explaining my thinking on a specific obstruction of justice theory under a single statute that i thought based on media reports a special counsel might be considering. the memo did not address or in any way question the special counsel's core investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election, nor did it address other potential obstruction of justice theories or argue, as some have erroneously suggested, that a president can never obstruct justice. i wrote it myself, on my own initiative, without assistance, and based solely on public information. he also tried to reassure the committee about conversations he had with the president, saying he got no assurances or anything from the president or given anything implicitly about how he may deal with the mueller probe going forward. the question, though, did he win over democrats and did he keep

any republicans from voting no to his nomination. >> i think that memo is probably going to come up a little bit. joining the table now, alana shore. i want to get into something specific. there are two top line points that reach out to democrats to try to assuage their concerns. on the idea of making the mueller report public, he says, i also think it's very important that the public be acknowledged of the special counsel's work. for that reason, my goal will be to provide as much transparency as i can consistent with the law. that consistent with the law part leaves a little space there to a degree. am i reading that right? >> i believe it does, and that's why there is no hard and fast rule as to how a potential mueller report would get released. he seems to crack open the door with not necessarily what we could expect from that, just

that the public can see the report. >> you have a pulse on the committee like nobody else. are democrats even considering the possibility of voting for the president's nominee to oversee, that would be overseeing, technically, this investigation? >> bill barr can say whatever he wants, and we get a sense of his testimony and what he's going to say under questioning by democrats at his confirmation hearing this week. but democrats will focus in on the memo, and that is raising major alarms among democrats in the committee. look, internal nominations are usually contentious, anyway, depending on the time. the russia element, the fact that he wrote memos, the fact he had been publicly disparaging of the mueller investigation will give almost any democrat an easy way out. i do want to point out, though, we did learn a little bit of interesting trivia about bill barr and robert mueller last week, that they actually kind of have these personal

relationships that we didn't know previously. their wives are in bible study together, mueller attended bill barr's daughter's wedding. i don't think he's going to tout that too much, but it's just an interesting little fact to remember. >> there are a couple good reasons for barr to put this out a little bitter early. sure, one is to try to assure democrats. another is to try to take the steam out of democrats' anger before they get into that room or the line of questioning. he can say, i already addressed this in my prepared remarks, but i'm happy to take another stab at it. the third, and perhaps most important, he can lay a marker with president trump by doing this. what he's telling the president is i'm happy to be your nominee, but these are red lines and don't you try to change the terms on me once i'm confirmed. >> along those lines, very similar to those lines, he says at one point in his testimony, president trump has sought no assurances, promises or commitments from me of any kind, either expressed or implied, and

i've not given him any other than i would run the department with professionalism and integrity. this will you make a promise, will you make a loyalty had been a theme particularly early on in the administration. is it your sense right now -- and again, we haven't seen the actual testimony yet -- that he'll be operating as an independent actor, which is the expectation for an attorney general? >> i think democrats will try to verify that, right. they have concerns he'll do exactly what trump will want him to do even without a request personally to lay off something or -- >> is there any way he can prove to them that that's not the case? >> of course not. you'll never know that. he'll have to testify what he's going to be doing. the interesting thing for me in the -- from the house standpoint of this is i've actually heard a lot of republicans in the house saying because barr's nomination is moving that democrats in the house need to let whitaker go. whitaker has caused a whole lot of controversy in the house and top democrats also want to bring him in and question him about

what did you talk to the president about regarding this investigation? are you going to try to undercut or bury the mueller investigation if it does come out on your watch? they've been stalling in the justice department because they don't want him to come in and republicans don't. so this is something to watch as barr's nomination moves forward because republicans want to move fast on that so whitaker doesn't come in, and frankly, they're worried he might embarrass them. up next, the shutdown has now dragged into day 24. the blame game is in full swing. and a weekend snowstorm made everyone just a little more punchy. just check senator john cornyn's tweets. snow closed what was left of washington. 50% blame trump, 20% republicans in congress, 20% democrats in congress, the rest unsure.

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it's now day 24 of the partial government shutdown and it's beginning to feel a lot like groundhog day. frankly it has the last 23 days. neither side has budged and both are eager to blame the opposite side. just see the president's morning cheat sheets for proof. nancy and crying chuck can end the shutdown in 20 minutes at this point. it has become their and the democrats' fault. president trump tells those unemployed and furloughed

workers agree with him. >> we have a very big crisis, a humanitarian crisis on the border. everyone knows it, they know it, and many of them are saying we agree with you. many of them are calling and many of them are breaking. the republicans are rock solid. we have to take care of our border. many of the people will get their money, and many of the people that aren't being paid right now are in total agreement with us. >> but even after all the tweets, the democratic press conferences on capitol hill and an extensive white house public relations blitz, a new cnn poll neither the president nor the democrats have really moved the needle on the need for a border wall. 80% of republicans say they're in favor of a wall. that's exactly the same number as last month before the shutdown began. a number of republicans aindepe democrats, a very small number have changed their minds. so how many can say impasse?

i think we've all been through a lot of these shutdown crises, and we're kind of, what's the way out here? you can map out in your head eventually this, this and this will happen and then we'll get out of this. listen to what the president said about options that may have been put on the table earlier today. >> well, that was a suggestion that lindsey made, but i did reject it, yes. i'm not interested. i want to get it solved, i don't want to just delay it. i'm not looking to call a national emergency. this is so simple we shouldn't have to. now, i have the absolute legal right to call it, but i'm not looking to do that, because this is too simple. this should be the easiest deal that i've ever seen. we're talking about border security. who can be against it? >> deal not so breezy so far. lindsey graham over the weekend pitched the idea, and it's been pitched by multiple people over the course of the last couple weeks, which is reopen the government in the near term, put

a deadline on it, declare a national emergency and then reopen it. how does this end? >> maybe it's the senate nerd in me that thinks this may end if more senate republicans feel the heat, pressure mitch mcconnell and say, hey, maybe we should have a stopgap. that's not happening now, though. there's not enough to really push mcconnell in that direction. that's one way we could get out of this which has been sort of closed for now. we'll see. short of that, democrats bud budging, but it's hard to see that happening right now. they feel like they have the upper hand. >> going to that argument about senate republicans cracking and pressing mitch mcconnell, because that's something chuck schumer has talked about for a while, the magic number would be 67 which is the number necessary to override a presidential veto in the senate. i was walking through this with some presidential sources last week, and the first tier that

might crack is pretty easy to figure out. cory gardner, people that hate shutdowns like alexander. what's next here? who is going to crack in that conservative next tier of senate republicans? a lot of them who will be looking at primary challenges in 2020. i don't see how you get there at this point and that will explain the impasse right now. >> we're hearing from top republicans on the hill that even though the president went out and said, i'm not doing an emergency declaration right now, that is not off the table. they're staying now with the last resort. in the meantime, the white house has talked about trying to go around chuck schumer and nancy pelosi and bring a bunch of b e blue dogs from the house to say, hey, what do you think about

daca and d.r.e.a.m.ers? now things have apparent flipped and he doesn't want to do the emergency. how do you negotiate with a president who changes his mind every day? democrats don't want to do it, and you can't blame him for that. i don't know how we're going to get out of this. >> the issue kind of underpinning all of this is nobody knows necessarily where the president is, so they tried to nail him to the wall at one point and that's not exclusive to democrats. republicans on the hill feel the same way, too. they're not sure which way this is going to go. there are people on the republican side who believe democrats may be cracking, particularly some of the freshmen who came here to do something, and preferably not this. is there any sense in your mind that that might be a way out? i haven't seen it but you're a better reporter than i am. >> oh, go on. i think it's wishful thinking right now, but i do think from the president's language, you can hear it in his language that

he's saying, now, the democrats there -- he's trying to build this sort of narrative transition in the hopes that if this goes on long enough, he can remessage this to convince people that the democrats created the shutdown. i do think it's important for everyone to remember that the only reason the border wall and the shutdown are co-linked intractably is because president trump co-linked them. so i think right now the democrats see there is no upside in making the first offer here, because they don't think they need to make an offer, anyhow. but i think part of what we're waiting for is the president to test the idea of whether he could remessage this. if he can't, if the numbers don't change and the public continues by a large majority to either completely blame him or partly blame him, then he has a bigger problem than he has right now. >> just a reminder, there are staff on both sides of the aisle in both chambers that could get them out of this like that. they just need the green light

to do it. up next, the harshest of harsh words by a member of congress about the president. his response? who cares?

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topping our political radar, secretary of state mike pompeo heading home from the middle east early for a family funeral after making multiple stops, including saudi arabia, where he met with king salman and crown prince mohamed bin salman. he told them those responsible for killing jamal khashoggi must be held responsible. they said they are committed to making sure that happens.

putting the brakes on a trump administration policy concerning obamacare just one day before it goes into effect. the presiding judge said sunday the administration's weakening of the contraceptive mandate could have dire health consequences. the court's injunction only applies to the 13 states that sued and the district of columbia. the supreme court sidestepping a challenge to matt whitaker's appointment as acting attorney general. critics say he could fire the special counsel, saying the assignment of whitaker violates federal law. he rejected that argument by means of a firearms case that sought to have whitaker's name removed as one of the parties. the president this morning brushing off reporters' questions about a new member of congress who says he's a racist on national television. here's the brief exchange outside the white house. >> i'm just wondering -- >> who did?

>> congresswoman ocacio-cortez called you a racist. >> who cares. >> she said, i bartended for years in new york city. i understand guys like this like the back of my hand. we get under their skin, end quote. up next, president trump brings back a familiar nickname for one of his possible 2020 opponents, this time in a racially insensitive tweet. cises to transform every cat and dog into a magnificent animal. royal canin (coughing) need a change of scenery? kayak searches hundreds of travel sites and filters by cabin class, wi-fi and more. so you can be confident you're getting the right flight at the best price. kayak. search one and done.

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president trump says he's not worried when it comes to the growing 2020 field. but that didn't stop him from going after elizabeth warren who is experimenting with a nomination bid. he said, quote, if elizabeth warren did this commercial in

front of her husband in indian garb, it would have been a smash. he also called it a catastrophe. he also had this to say about potential 2020 opponents, particularly joe biden. >> i don't want to pick anybody out, but people always said biden did okay. he was a one-percenter. he ran one or two times and never got above 1%, then obama came along and took him off the trash heap and he became a vice president so now he's probably leading. but he's basically a 1% guy. he's weak. >> all righty. not very subtle. to put the tweets aside, to be frank, other than if it forces people to read about wounded knee, great. it was a horrible time and people should read more about it. i hope you guys sharpened your message to the best points on this, but this is something the democratic field will have to contend with. how do you respond to this?

it's coming in spades. where is your sense right now of where people think they should go? >> my sense for warren, and this is true for all candidates, is people are wary of trying to beat trump at his own game. by his own gamey mean these insensitive and politically incorrect things he'll say. warren tried to get out and beat him at the game with her native american data by showing the results. she didn't respond to that tweet, and i don't think we can expect her to respond to that tweet. when she traveled to iowa, she didn't make it about trump, she made it about her own policy. so it feels like she's learning that lesson, and other candidates, i think, will follow. >> castro announced officially he's running for president this weekend. take a look at what he had to say. >> i see myself as the antidote to trump. my story is an immigrant story,

it's a testament to what immigrants have contributed to this country. i'm convinced that we're not going to beat donald trump by trying to be donald trump. what people want is they want a strong positive vision for the future of their country and how it's going to impact them and their family, and that's what i laid out today, but that doesn't mean you don't stand up to him or point out policies that are bad policies. >> i think in theory that's the dream, right, that you can pick and choose your moments, don't have to respond to everything, and mainly focus in on policies that are reality. >> i think democrats are going to try to do that. i think they learned a valuable lesson in this midterm, this past midterm cycle, and that is that house democrats didn't focus a lot on trump. they let the media do the covering about all the scandal and controversy coming out of the white house, and when they were doing ads in their districts, they were focused on things like health care, pocketbook issues. that was a strategy that they developed two years ago, and nancy pelosi and people who were sort of governing the

communication strategy like joaquin jeffries who is leading their communication arm, they were adamant about sticking to that message and it really worked for them. i think democrats running in 2020 are looking at what house democrats did by picking up seats this fall and look forward to doing that. can they withstand trump goading them and not hitting back? tbd on that. >> it's been a while since we've heard democratic leaders saying, when they go lower, we kick them, or we go lower. it doesn't necessitate responding to trump at every turn, and i'm interested in seeing, first of all, how many there are, and what their respect active approaches are to trump. because as we were talking about earlier, there isn't anyone yet who kind of made their brand as fighting trump except for

michael avenatti who we know is out of the race. >> i don't do social media, but if there is a 30-person field and everybody is trying to break through with a message, talking about longevity for social security payments going to get it done, or how do you break through? i think that's going to be part of the equation. also there are times when you have to respond to a president's attack on you, and a candidate's ability to focus on their own message when they want to but to instin instinctively hit back the right way without making it seem like it's talking points that you practice talking to 20 times with your constituent who doesn't want to do it off the cuff. here is the perfect candidate, whoever that is, is someone who knows how to do it all. stays on message when he wants to stay on message, hit back naturally in an effective way. it sounds so simple. >> the good news is we'll have

about 600 candidates. we'll get to more. up next, the president says he's not aware of congressman steve king's inflammatory comments. we'll catch him up, next. >> who? i haven't been following it. i really haven't been following it. (mom vo) it's easy to shrik into your own little world. especially these days. (dad) i think it's here. (mom vo) especially at this age. (big sister) where are we going? (mom vo) it's a big, beautiful world out there. (little sister) woah... (big sister) wow. see that? (mom vo) sometimes you just need a little help seeing it. (vo) presenting the all-new three-row subaru ascent. love is now bigger than ever.

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if you look at your screen right now, president trump is walking into the beast, as his

presidential limousine is known. he's arrived in louisiana. he will be soon heading to new orleans where he will be speaking at a farmers' event. we only have five minute left. in those five minutes, let's address something important. steve king, why don't you call your public office. known for making racist and controversial remarks, he's been called into a meeting today. he questioned, quote, white supremacist, white nationalists, western civilization. how did that language become offensive? those comments were reviewed by just about everyone over the weekend. many want action. he says his office will be just about that. >> that language has no place in america. that's not the america i know and it's definitely not the party of lincoln. i have a scheduled meeting with him on monday, and i will tell

you this. i've watched on the other side that they do not take action when their members say something like that. action will be taken. i'm having a serious conversation with congressman steve king on his future and role in this republican party. i will not stand back as a leader in this party believing in this nation that all are created equal, that that stands or continued to stand would have any role with us. >> let's go ahead and lay out what some of the options could be. as you see the president right now, it looks like he's walking over to greet some people who are waiting for him at the airport. there are things congress can do. you can take him off committees. if you look over the course of history, there are reprimands, expulsion another option. this is not new for congressman steve king. anybody who has been covering capitol hill for any number of years knows this is actually a fairly regular occurrence. you know the house republicans better than anybody. is something going to change this time? >> tbd. we can say at this point the

actions of mccarthy are stronger than we've seen before. a couple weeks before the election, king was saying additional racist comments, and we saw the leader from the house campaign steve stivers push back on him and reviewing him on twitter. some were not happy with him for doing that before a midterm election. we're seeing these remarks again, and king has a long history of making these sorts of remarks, and mccarthy is reacting. i understand he will not be asked to step down in this meeting to mccarthy, but does he come out and apologize? democrats are talking about censure. republicans would like to see that moving forward, but i'm not sure mccarthy would go for something like that. police alone and the ncc made clear they would not back him in a 2020 nomination.

he doesn't deserve the support of conservatives. does that become the outlet here and is that enough? >> i'm clear right now the party will support his calendar. traditionally they have a history of supporting candidates, and that will be put to the test now that steve king does a primary challenger that's condemning the congressman's rhetoric. it's a question we'll be asking in the coming days. again, i do want to emphasize his comments, as reprehensible as they are, they are nothing new, but it's just this pushback coming back so fiercely from the republican party that's been remarkable to watch. we talked about leader mccarthy's comments. we talked about joni ernst, who is mccarthy's senator, saying these comments are racist, they do not represent the state of iowa. and ken scott, the republican senator, writing a very formal

piece condemning those remarks. >> it seemed to open the floodgates, people taking a posture on this perhaps they hadn't taken a dozen or so times before. that's all the time we have. great panel as always. thanks for joining us on "inside politics." briana bria briana keilar starts right now. >> thanks, phil. i'm brianna keilar live in cnn's washington headquarters. the president of the united states of america having to deny that he's a russian agent. plus, the secret putin chats. why would president trump reportedly take his reporter's notes and tell her to conceal what they talked about? federal workers not getting paid in the longest shutdown ever. one saying it's like a long vacation. peopl