>> president trump vows to keep fighting after a federal appeals court keeps his travel ban on hold. i'm amy walter. we explain what happens next, tonight on "washington week." >> we are going to do whatever is necessary to keep our country safe. we will be extreme vetting. >> a three-judge panel keeps in place a hold on president trump's executive order that restricts travelers from seven muslim-majority countries. >> it's about people's lives, the impact on their lives and the future of our country and our constitution. >> as the white house reviews its options, including a possible appeal to the supreme court, trump's nominee to the high court distances himself from the president's criticism of federal judges. will neil gorsuch's rebuke of

mr. trump complicate his confirmation process? and michael flynn is under fire for reportedly discussing president obama's sanctions with russia before donald trump took office. we examine the heated debate over the law, national security and politics with michael scherer of time magazine, yamiche alcindor of the new york times, alexis simendinger of real clear politics, and josh gerstein, of politico. >> celebrating 50 years. this is "washington week." funding is provided by... >> xq institute. ♪[music] >> additional funding is provided by... boeing. newman's own foundation.

donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! >> once again, from washington, amy walter. >> good evening. the 9th circuit court of appeals delivered a significant setback for president trump's first major policy decision regarding immigration and national security. during a joint news conference with japanese prior abe, president trump promised to unveil a new security measure next week. >> we'll be doing something very rapidly, having to do with additional security for our country. you'll be seeing that sometime next week. in addition, we will continue to go through the court process and

ultimately, i have no doubt that we'll win that particular case. >> thursday's decision was not about the legality of the executive order. it simply upheld a lower court's order to temporarily suspend travel and immigration from seven predominantly muslim countries. alexis, in the last few hours, there has been a lot going on, a lot from the white house, about what they're going to do next. can you please help update us? >> well, the president was focused today with the prime minister on the goal that he set, and you heard him talking about that. and i think that's important to remember, what he's saying is that he wanted to temporarily bar the travelers and the refugees from coming in, while the administration created what he calls an extreme vetting program. in other words, a screening process. what he came back to talking about today is the many options that he sees, that the administration still has to achieve the ultimate goal. initially, we heard the president in a tweet say i'll see you in court and kind of be very hot-headed about it.

today his reaction was more measured. as the day went on, what we learned is that the options are go back and revise the executive order that he issued and clean up the parts of it that seem to be most problematic or vulnerable in the courts. right? simultaneously, he's also saying we could go back to the district court. we can make our case on the merits, which is what you described had not been adjudicated really by the ninth circuit. and we could still revail that. but he argues we need to work with speed here. it may be that the administration goes back to the district court on the merits but then simultaneously the president uses his own executive authority to either issue a new order or actually even then maybe add some instructions for the vetting, the procedure that he imagines taking place, and see if that fits within the confines of the law. >> well, josh, how does that actually work? what does that look like?

and how much more work do they need to do on this before we see whether we're gonna have real movement on this issue? >> well, they'd have to sit down and go through the order as alexis is saying and see which parts are easiest to implement and which parts create the most legal problems. one of the big screw-ups was leaving at a minimum ambiguity about whether green card holders were included in the order. it was not only a p.r. debacle, because you had people being detained, some of whom may have lived in the u.s. for years, but it was a legal debacle because it got this order off on the wrong foot. it led to dozens of lawsuits and it was almost guaranteed that those suits were going to succeed at the early stages, because green card holders have a lot of rights. now, other foreigners, people applying for the first time to come to the u.s., people who are refugees, the u.s. courts have very rarely recognized any rights for those people. in order to just focus on, say, refugees -- an order to just

focus on them would probably be more defensible. >> why not just do it now, just tweak it and send it back? >> there's a degree of stubbornness. they went through this complex process. they had general kellyanne at the -- general kelly issue some kind of blanket waiver. that didn't seem to satisfy the courts. then they had the white house council, don mcgahn, issue what he called authoritative guidance. they could have simply had trump sign another half page, saying let's fix the order, but they didn't want to back down. now you have the white house coming to terms with the fact that they're going to not be able to save face and say they did this right the first way. >> i also want to talk about where we go from here with the administration itself. we have a new attorney general, jeff sessions. he has his place now. does this now change the way that the trump administration deals with this issue and other issues like immigration and national security? >> i think the fact that we've

already gone 4 hours here -- 24 hours here without an appeal shows they're behaving differently. there was a first reset after the weekend this order was made, nach chief of -- in which chief of staff reince priebus was gathered in the oval office with the president and the president said, this guy is in charge, you have to follow him. and reince made a number of changes, to make sure this would not happen again, so this sort of chaos wouldn't happen again. my bet is that sessions' arrival, out of the confirmation process, will add another voice, another layer here, especially on these issues. sessions is going to be the attorney general but he's also something of a philosophical, ideological godfather to a lot of people in the white house, including to some extend the president. he's long advocated a tougher immigration policy and he's going to be in charge now of the department that not only brings these cases or defends cases, if

it does go eventually to the supreme court, but also implements a lot of this stuff. one of the other orders issued before this refugee order was an order about interior security for the united states. a lot of powers are delegated to the attorney general to figure out how to enforce it. it's up to the attorney general to figure out who is a sanctuary city, who is not, to make recommendations about denying federal funding. so i think it's very likely that several months from now, we'll be looking back and saying jeff sessions is one of the most powerful attorney generals we've had. >> amy, though, there is one problem that i don't think jeff sessions is going to be able to fix, whether it's with the current order or a future order, and that is the rhetoric that trump used during the campaign. he talked about this as a muslim ban. his advisor, rudy giuliani, is on the record saying they were trying to come up with a legal work-around to implement a muslim ban. those comments have dogged the effort to defend this initial order in the courts.

they will dog any future order, because people are gonna say, this is just a pretext. and i'm not saying it means these orders will never take effect. but no matter how they're redrafted, they're going to face the argument that you're just dressing up what is really, you know, an individualeous act of discrimination. that's a big problem. >> will this order actually be in place at some point, and if it is, how long in the future? >> i don't think it's gonna be in place in any form similar to the way it looks now. i think if it's reigned in, in the way we're talking about earlier, to suspend refugees across the board and maybe affect more extreme vetting on people applying for visas in the first instance, sure, i think the courts would probably go along with that, though it's hard to say. some judges might see that muslim ban remark as kind of original sin that taints this effort forever. >> i should just add, when i think about why trump does not want to walk this executive order back and why it's so

central to who he is, it's because his campaign and supporters are really built on this idea that he was going to make america safe again and the idea that trump really got away with running in a campaign without ever having to back down, without ever really having to apologize, taught him a lesson, that in some ways, he's teflon. i don't think he wants to go back to his supporters and say, i'm really sorry, i messed this up the first time, or here's the things i need to fix. i think there's a personality issue there, and whether or not he's working with jeff sessions or kelly or anybody, they're going to have to deal with this personality that isn't someone that's thinking about political expediency as much as he's thinking about whether or not i look like a winner. >> the other thing is, if he gets back to the statute, and this question of intent, whether there's some discriminatory extent -- >> and by the statute, meaning the executive order itself? >> no. meaning the law that congress wrote, giving the president enormous leeway.

the statute basically reads whenever the president feels aliens are causing some detrimental effect in the u.s., the president has the authority to limit them. it's an enormously broad order. so on paper, it looks like he has a lot of power here. when he comes back with here's how we're going to vet, he's going to have a lot of power. the problem is this intent. the enormous power the constitution gives the president comes up against this intent question. it could not just be for this issue. it could be for others. if the courts are constantly questioning whether there's some illegal motive behind what everyone pretty much agrees is the president's authority. >> president trump also faced criticism from his supreme court nominee, neil gorsuch. connecticut senator blumenthal said that judge gorsuch called the president's attack on the judge who blocked the travel ban disheartening and demoralizing during closed door meetings. one confirmed his

characterization but another said gorsuch's remarks were not directed at the president. there are many theories going around about whether gorsuch misspoke or whether this was strategic. what do you say about that? >> at the end of the day, you think about the fact that donald trump called this person a so-called judge, this person that made this order and was really going up against him. to have someone that's going to be sitting on the supreme court see somebody else in the judicial field attacked in that way, you would imagine that that person would take issue, even behind closed doors, with the fact that he said that. now, this idea that this aide is saying, well, that's not really what he meant, it's also the fact that he's still a nominee. he's not sitting on the supreme court yet. he still in some ways has to be in the good graces of the person who nominated him. i think it signals while the republicans are making real issues about what they want to pick a fight with about, with donald trump, in this regard, someone who is going to be on the judicial branch, he's saying

wait a minute. there's no such thing as a so-called judge in america. i think democrats are still very upset and feel as though this supreme court seat was stolen, even though they've talked about trying to work with republicans. all the democrats i've talked to, they kept on bringing up the supreme court, whether or not it was relevant or not in some cases. i think there's that going on. but i think that's kind of what was going on there. >> was it coordinated with the white house? seems like that was what they were trying to do, was to get everybody on the same page. then they got off the page. >> well, one of the things that we've learned, as you were just suggesting, is that the president does not take well to any kind of dissent or re refutation of his authority. it is possible in this white house for two things to be true at the same time. so i would just argue that there may have been this thought that this did not hurt the judge. what irritated the president was

listening to the democrats translate what it was that the judge supposedly said or meant. as we've all talked about, the president himself is speaking to two very fractured audiences. one is the audience that brought him to the white house. the other is the audience that is going to have to help him get that judge into the robes and among the other eight. >> well, the president is also facing a critical test over policy and personnel. on friday, the washington post broke the story that national security advisor michael flynn talked with a russian ambassador about sanctions put in place by president obama before donald trump's inauguration. for weeks, the white house had denied that flynn had anything more than a cordial social interaction with moscow. josh, if he did speak, michael flynn did speak with this russian ambassador about sanctions, what happens? >> so i mean, there is a law that prohibits private citizens from sort of freelance diplomacy. it's 218 years old. it's almost never been enforced in the entire history of the

republic. so you may hear people throw that around. but it's unlikely anything would happen as a result of that. i think the real question is about flynn's candor, both publicly and with other officials in the white house, including vice president mike pence. was he told accurately what happened? did flynn maybe not fully remember the conversation? it seems fairly well established, judging by the number of sources speaking out, about information apparently from intelligence intercepts, that this subject was discussed and that perhaps the possibility that trump might roll back some of the sanctions that the obama administration had imposed. so it's become sort of a credibility test. there have been signs that flynn has sometimes been an embattled figure in the white house, especially because some of his entourage or other members of trump's entourage, these ties with russia, have really been very problematic. >> does flynn keep his job? >> this is a question i asked today. and the answer from the president -- the president was

asked this question. he acted like he didn't even know there had been an article in the washington post and that, yes, he supports general flynn. flynn was in the front row of the news conference. the general was with the president over the weekend. the general is supposed to be accompanying the president in all of the discussions with the visiting heads of state next week, including the prime ministers of canada and israel. the discussion, though, that is fascinating to me is the white house is not denying this. they are not denying this article. they are saying the article is correct. >> and the other problem it's created is not just about whether the president supports him, because what matters in this white house is if the president supports you right now, it's whether the team can support each other. and this goes straight to that. the fact that mike pence went out publicly -- and pence is a guy who takes his own reputation very seriously, is very careful about what he says. and by all reports, is very angry that he was given false information to the nation.

reince priebus, chief of staff, also went out on bad information and told the nation bad information. this is the latest in what has become a series of fights that become public, in which aides are pitting -- >> unnecessarily. >> leaking against each other, undermining each other's credibility, challenging each other in the press with blind quotes. >> not being sure they can trust one another in the discussions they have about otherwise very serious matters. and the policy that's gonna follow. >> well, that's what i was gonna ask, for anybody here. yamiche or michael, about what it says about our foreign policy and how we're putting together -- how this white house is putting together foreign policy. >> what it says is that it can be really problematic. you think about this idea that russia -- we're still wondering, even though now it's an old story, about whether or not they interfered in our election. this idea he's now talking about possibly lifting sanctions, before he's even in office. i think, just to go back to the idea about mike pence, mike pence, unlike kellyanne conway,

unlike sean spicer, hasn't been pulled out by the media, saying, hey, we can't trust this person. when he opens his mouth, people believe what mike pence is saying. so the idea he could then get wrapped up in this credibility issue that the white house has is really problematic. aside from that, i think when you think about russia's role and the murkiness of it all, and the idea that it's unclear how close or what the relationship between putin and donald trump is, i think it can be very problematic. >> on foreign policy, there's this tension that has become also very apparent in the last two weeks. it's only three weeks in at this point. in the last two weeks about -- between -- trump's rhetoric, which is often very bellicose and uncontinental and breaks norms, and what the -- unconventional and breaks norms. what we've seen is, in a number of places, them pull back from

the rhetoric. we had trump yesterday having a phone call with the president of china, in which he endorsed the one china policy, a month and a half after making big news by publicly tweeting that it wasn't a policy he cared much for. you have had the white house pull back from its plans of moving the american embassy to jerusalem. you've had the u.n. ambassador speak very harshly against russian aggression in ukraine, which runs against the president's own language about putin may be a great guy, may be a bad guy. we don't really know yet. i think there's a separate fight going on in which the foreign policy establishment, both inside the white house and outside, is trying to assert itself against the messaging habits of the president. and so far, like the last couple of weeks, it seems like that establishment is asserting itself. but there's nothing predictable about it. >> well, we're going to turn now and talk about the democrats.

times' cover story, do democrats matter? you can see chuck schumer of new york there, with his little glasses porched on his nose. michael, you're the washington bureau chief. what's the answer to that question? do they matter? >> chuck schumer is doing everything he can to make sure they matter as soon as possible. right now, they're not having a lot of success in blocking anything. as you mentioned, very likely, gorsuch, the supreme court nominee, will go through. all the president's cabinet nominees are going to go through. but schumer does have a few things on his side. he has the fact that a lot of the legislation that the president has basically put his presidency in, a tax bill coming later this year, infrastructure bill later this year, efforts to actually rebuild something when obamacare is repealed, however it is repealed, will need 60 votes in the senate.

schumer has den a pretty good -- has done a pretty good job of corralling a very diverse body of 48 democratic voting members. so he's got that. and then the second thing that's happening, that is not -- schumer is watching it happen. he's not driving it. you have this enormous outpouring of public fury from progressives and liberals. there's just nothing that senate democrats really saw coming or knows exactly what to do with yet. and i think that energy you see on the streets, protests at airports, at town hall meetings, very well could change the political atmosphere here and empower democrats once again. >> and yet yamiche, that may be organic, but there was a concerted effort by democrats in the senate to really be aggressive in these confirmation hearings, holding them late at night. there was the dust-up between elizabeth warren and mitch

mcconnell. they seem to be taking a very clear and very directed approach on these confirmation battles. seems like it's not going away anytime soon. >> i think they lost on most of those boots. you think about betsy devos and what they lost. but at the end of the day, i think what they're giving is really red meat to their base. there were people rallying outside chuck schumer's home, because they thought he might be a little too nice to these nominees. they have a base that is angry, that wants to see their members standing up, making as much noise as possible, even if they understand that they're not going to be able to get the votes to defeat people. they don't want to see people resting on their laurels. they also want to see the energy that you see in airports mirrored in the senate. so you have these all-night protests and people showing up in tail coats to airports, because they're trying to catch up with their base. it's a base that's sphrauling and that's -- sprawling and angry for so many different

reasons, including the fact that there is a whole wing of the party that was angry at the party for having hillary clinton as their nominee. that is still something that bernie sanders supporters still feel angry about. >> we know that the president brought in a number of red state democrats to talk about the supreme court nomination. what does the white house think the relationship with the democrats are going to be? >> so fascinating, because in the interview with senator schumer, you can tell that senator schumer is trying to play that balancing act, because he has this conference and he's together. but as we know, there are 10 democrats that will be up for re-election in 2018, from red states, and believe me, donald trump, as president, and his aides, are talking openly every day about their love and affection for them, their need for them, and also by the way, we have a big target on your backs. so the president is arguing, you know, i speak to your constituents. i have the power in your state. so i want to remind you who can come into your state next year

and destroy you politically. and that's the undertow. >> but do they think they can actually work with these democrats? do they want to have deals cut with chuck schumer? >> well, it's not only the art of the deal that the president has in his mind but it's also the reality of it, because as we were saying, for a lot of the things, everything that you had on your list of legislation, you're gonna need more than what you have, in terms of republicans in the senate. so it's the reality. and it's also the president's ambition to show that he can woo a senator mansion from west virginia who turng who turns out the white house more often than maybe some republicans. >> but who also calls chuck schumer his best friend. >> our conversation continues online on the "washington week" extra, where we'll discuss the bipartisan calls for an ethics investigation into one of the president's closest advisors, kellyanne conway. you can find that and the

"washington week" news quiz online at pbs.org/washingtonweek, friday night after 10 p.m. and all week long. i'm amy walter. have a great weekend! and good night. >> funding for "washington week" is provided by... ♪[music]

>> additional funding is provided by... the xq institute. newman's own foundation. donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you! is provided by...