robert: is the meeting off or on? i'm robert costa. inside the brinksmanship between ea.sident trump and north k plus, the latest on the russia probe, tonight on "washington week." president trump: i believe this is a tremendous setback for north korea and indeed a setback for the world. robert: president trump calls off a m face-to-faceting with kim jong un. but both sides say they are ready for diplomacy. president trump:nd when kim jong un chooses to engage in constructive dialogue and actions, i am waiting. robert: north korea responds and say they will talk at any time. they callr. trump's decision to back out of the june 12 summit extremely regrettable and insist they areo ready talk

peace, after claiming to dismantle a nuclear test site. is the president's high-stakes gamb still on the table, and what role is china playing in the negotiations? plus -- president trump: if they had spies in my spain during my campaignal for politic purposes, that would be unprecedented. robert: th president steps up efforts to discredit the russia investigation, claiming the f.b.i. s on his 2016 campaign. then he sends his newest white house attorney to a classified briefing about a secret informant. >> there is nonc evi to support any allegation that the f.b.i. or any intelligence agency placed a spy in the trump campaign. robert: we discuss it all with mark landler of e "new york times," andrea mitchell of nbc news, karoun demirjian o"the washingt post," and anita kumar of mcclatchy newspapers. announcer: this is "washington

week." corporate funding is provided by -- >> on a cruise with american cruise lines, travelers experience the marime heritage and culture of new england.of our fleemall cruise ships explores american landscapes, seaside villages and historic harbors where you can expeence local customs and cuisine. american cruise lis, proud sponsor of "washington week." >> additional funding is provided by cancer treatment centers of america --nd newman's own fion, donating all profits from

newman's own's food products to charity and nourishing the common good. koo and patricia yuen through en foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the ethics and excellence in urnalism foundation. the corporation for public broadcasting, and contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. asank you. once again, fromngton, moderator, robert costa. robert:good evening. president trump was optimistic on friday that the u.s.-korea summit healled off one day earlier may now happen, as once planned, oune 12, in singapore. president trump: we're tking to them now. it was a very nice statement they put out it could even be the 12th. we're talking to them now. v thy much want to do it. we'd like to do it. we're going to see what hrtpens. roit was a dramatic shift from the letter he sent kim jong un on thursday where he blamed

the tremendous anger and open hostility of the north towards the united states for his decision to cancel the the letter also contained a threat about u.s. nuclear capabilitiesnt the presi wrote, "ours are so massivend powerful that i pray to god they will never have to be used." north korea issued a diplomtic and encouraging response. "talking about the historic summit, wepp highlyciated the fact that president trump made a brave decision to seek a meeting." mark, as you evaluate this back-and-forth, the meeting's off, now it's maybe on -- what do you see from this president in the is this the president who wrote "the art of the deal" in the 1980's saying ye have to b able to walk away from a meeting or deal in order to have leverage? or is this the negotiations falling apart?: ma think it's probably the former from his perspective. in h own mind, he probably thinks he's being adroit and

putting kim jong un on thed h foot. the difference is he's not doing a real estate deal or buying property, he's deang with an errati unpredictable country with nuclear weans. it is a fact that both men want to have a meeting. i think president trump by n has left no doubt that whatever his advisers or experts havebo o say it, he wants to go to singapore, he wants to have than unter and i think kim jong un does, too, for the simple reason that he gains so much prestige by sharing a stage with president trump. but i think the one thing we can probably all agree on is, there will be many more twists and e 12., if it happens on j i'm skeptical on the timing. but even so, i think betweenow and june 12, there will be time for more flips. robert: and thelips could be caused by people around president trump.ea an when you're covering the white house, how much are the

people around the president influences him to walk away ftim neions at this point? retional security adviser, john bolton, new secry of state, mike pompeo, what's their influence? andrea: john bolton seems to have the most influence persuading him to cancel it on thursday morning without warning s closest ally, president moon, in the region, norrapan, embers of congress. it was done so quickly, secretary of state pompeo w brought int it but it was really bolton in the president's ear. proxhity is everything w the national security adviser, one he trusts. it's not theirst time john bolton -- he did this to george w. bush -- has blown up a potential discussion with north korea. he's been against it from the beginning. pompeo has the most invested in it since he was delegated tor go to korea and have that meeting with kim jong un and had

one previously as c.i.a. director. so he's got a lot more at stake and then pompeo had to, at his first senate foreign relations committee ttimony, read the president's rathernusually crafted, personally written liker, which sounded more the breakup of a high school romance at times rather thanti nuclear negot. robert: the president wrote, call or write any time. anita, you weren the room with president trump and president moon of south korea when he was at the white house. how rattled are the south koreans about this development?t nisha: anit it is notood for them. they did not get a heads off this was going to happen. and president moon has staked his reputation on this meeting. he's tried to bring theeaders together and it's a humiliating defeat for him but he sees a silver lining because they're talking again. i was in the room on tuesday.

you mentioned president moon was here. and it was just an extraordinary y because usually we go in for about a minute or two and then we're quickly ushered out but everybody knew we were in for the long haul when we went in. president trump clearly had something he wanted to say. he wanted to talk about the meeting. he wanted to say that heto wantd o this, he wanted to send t was theage and t first time he played china, president xi, for maybe changing -- for chairman kim's mind. so he had a lot of things he wanted to say and it was really interesting because they weren't relaxed. they were sitting at the edge of their chairs, ready for all the questions from us. china: the comments abo u made are so important. lookeally wondering, as i back at my notes this week, what caused the breakup -- at leastry the momen breakup? wasn't president xi of china whispering in the air of kim jong un or was it the hawkish

comments made by john john boltd vice president president? karoun: china has been the economic lifeblood of that country. there was that meeting. there have been twoeetings in close proximity between the north korean leader and chinese president. the fact that one happens a few days before we started seeing a shift in tone, i don think you can discount even if we weren't in the room to hear that conversation. so what you've got is this weird game, it's the united states talking to north korea buthina is t person on the outside that matters and they have interests. the korean peninsula is right this. china does not want to see the rise of a unified korea andthey don't wo see instability and war on their border. meanwhile, we're talking to china about trade deals, z.t.e., trying to win them back over to play ball with us better and

this is thether part of the negotiation that's behind the scenes that is vital if you're goong to get the negotia that everybody was saying june 12 or not, to happen or mean anything. robert: andrea, you spoke withti d navy admiral who said the way the summit was moving, we wouldp end with the u.s.-north korea summit, south korea playing a bit part and chin not on the stage, this is unacceptable to president xi. andrea: president xi wants in. what he doesn't want is a reconciled korea on his border so he wants to be part of the equation. he wants stability, he doesn't want nuclear war andug rs, but he doesn't want to be excluded and i think if the

summit does get back on, down the road, i think both south korea and china have to play a part. mark: karoun mentioned the trade talks going i in parallel with the north korea drama. after all, it was president trump himself that linked trade with security last year when he said to president xi, if you help me on northorea, i'll go easy on you on trade. i think in a way the coin h turned and president xi is saying to president trump, two can play that game. we're in the middle of a difficult trade negotiati and kim jong un is getting more challenging. ppdrea: if you look at that the confusing phototunity in the oval office that anita was at, the president was pivoting fr trade in china into the kim summit and china. it was a very strange tonversation and it was the first time t he had said or

hinted that president xi might have toughened the negotiating stance of kim. the other thing is, there is a growing military escalation in the south china seas between the u.s. and china. the pentan disinviting china from participating in exercises andhina prominently landing a bomber on one of theirur manufa islands. karoun: you have to keep in versechina is better into pulling all the stringst various moments in which it's advantageous to them than the trump administration is. if youose leverage to beijing, they can call the shots on this a little bit more and that's when you see north koreay potentiaaking fast moves that have to bemp t -- shown up by what the united states has to do. anita: look at what president trump has said over t week, he's gone back and forth, he blamed china and said it was a wonderful trip there last year and no one has been given as

much of a warm welcome as he was. he's gone back and forth, it's been gd, it's been bad. robert: when we think about what's good and bad, the facts matter and we'reth coverin war of words but this week we also saw north korea, although verified by the u.s., demolish a nuclear testing site, coming weeks after the released u.s. prisoners. as much as there's a breakdown, mark and anita, how much has happened in terms of progress as the talk approaches? mark: if you remember to a year o, you had a hostile adversary testin long range missiles and nuclear bombs. all tt's been halted. these three korean-american detainees have been released. kim jong un has said in principle he doesn't have a problem with continued u.s. troop presence on the korean peninsula. there was a statement he made which he seemed to have reneged

on a bit is he wouldn't object to joint military exercises between south korea and the united states so a lot of progress has been made and president trump is not wrong to say that. this is a young leader who has taken many steps to show he's serious. i think the big unanswered question, and most people are sceptle -- skeptical of it -- will he be willing s torender a significant portion of the nuclear program? anita: the problem is that president trump raised theex ctations so incredibly high. it was going to be in one fell swoop, denuclearization. so everything would be gone in one time. there wouldn't even be tears but it would happen a once se raised the expectation so high, it just wasn't going to happen. all the north korea experts you talk to say it's not going to hppen. theyen't done it in decades. fails.ooks like he

robert: speaking to white house sources, they say by the meeting being called off, we're lowering expectations if the meeting happens. karoun, there was another showdown at home between the justice department and republican continuing thi ongoing standoff, over the handling of the federal probe into russian interference during the 2016pa cn, especially during its early days. president trump rallied with capitol hill allies this week, claiming, without psenting evidence, that the f.b.i. implanted a spy into h ranks. leaders from the justice department and intelligence community twice recently with two-point republicans and -- top republicans and democrats hoping to calm democrats and all t partisan fighting over the f.b.i.'s use over a confidential source to aid the investigation into the actity. showing up at the start of the sessions, angering democrats and

ising concerns among republicans. former new york mayor rudy giuliani defending the intense of both m at t classified meeting. the f.b.i. source underut sy is stefan hoffer. multiple news outle reported on his name. he was my professor a decade agc atbridge. as karoun noted this week, it is common practicfor the f.b.i. to use confidential sources to help advance investigations and they are notonsidered spies but the fight is the about the context of ts confidential source. who is he? and his conduct andas it appropriate at the time in 2016? karoun: informants are fairly standard practice for these investigations. the president has taken this into his own hands he's been saying spies were implanted into the campaign although there's no evidence that happened.

but they've been d this campaign, they've had help from capitol hill, devin nunes has been asking for this information that started this.e' and gotten to the point where yet again there is a face-off beten leadi house republicans against d.o.j. and it resulted in the meeting on thursday where devin nunes and trey gowdy went toen the deparof justice for that meeting there and two hours later the official from the d.n.i. and d.o.j. officials came to capitol hill to talk with the gang of eig and adam schiff ended up in that meeting. devin nunes apparently didn't say a single word during the meeting. apparently some officials had documents but no one asked to see them so there's this strange thing of there being a lot ole pe who don't think this should have happened in the first place and that the trump team is trying to weasel their

way into classified briefings to get information to use to undercut the mueller probe but everybody trying to say we're doing that on the up-and-up. i think so a lot of republicans felt caught in the middle and had to go along with this, although uncomfortable. and i think the end result is we've had a lot of weird silence from the people w were pushing for this in the first place and people like mitch mcconnell sming out anding, look, i still support bob mueller in the probe which means where did the eight ball go? everybody wondering what's next from devin nunes at this point. andrea: the concern fromorr intelligence officials who serve both democ rtic andublican white houses is that this is a terriblerecedent, intrusion into a classified process that should not be partisan. the gang of eight are the bipartisan oversight leaders of intelligence and the speaker and the my and minority leaders and that it never should

have been put in this context and initially was not going to include adam schiff. so for the white house to order this to take place, to demand it, really, through devin nunes, on his behalf, when he is a subject, if not a target, but a subject of a criminal investigation of which this is a material part, is just so inappropriate that lawyers who worked in the justice department in the past, as wein as lligence officials, are very, very uncomfortable and think of i size a terrible revers of decades of precedent. robert: right before we went to r, the a.p. reported mayor st forni will req documents and is urging the president to push on this issue and they mayht use the fver the origin of the russia probe as a way to think about ending the mueller investigation

special. ma: i think what mayor giuliani said is if we can show the spy was used inappropriately or the agencies may have had inappropriate behavior, it casts the mueller investigation intond doubt removes credibility from mueller's effort. it's obvious that esident trum views this as perhaps has most appealing target yet in terms of a long-termffort discredit mueller. i was struck this past week, it was a very busy week for trump's tweeting but if you were to count up the number of tweets about spy gate which i think the president suldrademark, he wants to get this notion of spy-gate into the bloodstream -- as i've said before, these things do register and do damage over tim they register particularly with republicans and it has an. impa anita: i think there was a real shift. we've seen foren a year pres trump has been undermining the investigation. he's called jamesomey names

and robert mueller names and has talked about it on twitter. he's said all these different things but what really shifted was was that he was getting the federal government, congress and d.o.j. to actually act and undermine the investigation. ve seenthe first time w that. he's getting house republicans, forcinghe department departmentf justice to beat -- meet with them and he's asking for information. robert: still haven't seen the documents that nunes keeps requesting but are we ever going to learn more about what the confidential source was doing? if the white house keeps casting attention to it, what do we expect, if not the classified documents, what te we goingo learn more about why someone may have been put into motion to learn more about russian activity? karoun: i think we'll see several more rounds before we get the information behind it. richard burn and mark warner had

a b chance to beefed on this earlier and said no because they were worried about leaks. you'll definitely have republicans continue to push. this is the mostd arc this kind of standoff has become but we've seen this. first they asked for the documents that went into the dossier that led to the memo that occupied the first two months of the year and at this point now there probably will be something else down the line. this is the play that keeps -- andrea: before that you had the unmasking and they've all been fake, unsupported claims from both democratic and rublican sources say the devin nunes approach has all been attempts to undermine the investigation. but with no credibility and i think that the branding of this, the president has managed to, i think, reallyion the credibility of the investigation in an effective way with "witch hunt" and other names.

he's a great marketer and by using "spy gate" over and over again on social med and fox and other shows his surrogates appear on, plant the idea that there was a spy which an informant is a regular practice. karoun: that's what matters. you'relaying to two audiences, one is the federal government, there's always something that is real that you blow out of proportion to pull d.o.j. in to create this intense convict but the -- intense conflict. and the other is themerican public. anita: he did something interesting in a couple of days. spyas maybe there was a i'm not sure, if it was, it would be horrible. and two days later, it's a definitely spy. we're callingt spy gate. andrea: all of you talked about it ase. spy g

mark: the mainstreamed is in an awkward position with some deciding to name him and others not. so the normalggressive search for truth that people like us do, i think we' somewhat hamstrung. but that's one thing that w if weren't dealing with a spy, we might be able to drive to answer mo quickly. robert: complicated stories, what we cover every week. we'll have to leave it there. coming up next on many pbs cations, "in principle," grichenlson discusses the "me too" movement. >> a lot of people are also seeing that maybe "me too" is going too and accusing people that don't deserve it. what do you say to that? >> i say it's a cop-out. robert: stay tuned and check your local listings. let us pause to remember the

women and men who served and gave their lives for this country. we remember them and their families. i'm robert costa, thank you for joining us. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content antaccuracy. vicicap.org.] r: announunding for "washington week" is provided by -- announcer: additional funding is provided by --

>> at cancer treatment centers of america, we publish treatment results for 11 cancer types so -- including the most common cancers, so patients can makeec informedions about their cancer care. learn more at cancercenter.com. >> arican cruise lines, prou sponsor of "washington week." newman's own foundatn, donating all profits from newman's own's food products to charity and nourishing the common good. e ethics and excellence journalism foundation. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen fndation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.fo the corporatiopublic broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

♪ announcer: major support for tyrus and "american masters" annouprovided by...pport for "american masters" inside an abandoned chicken coop,oo where our founder discovered a retired teacher living -- no home, no healthcare. so, she said no to this injustice and yes to transforming lives. it's this drive, this compassion that inspired aarp. today, we empower people to choose how they live as they age. we provide health and financial resources.we trengthen communities everywhere. we are aarp -- real possibilities. -the philip and janice levin by rosafoundation...le.. eland james s. marcus... judith and burton resnick... the vital projects fund... cheryl and philip milstein family, the blanche & irving laurie foundation.