robert: is the meeting off or on? i'm robert costa. inside the brinksmanship between president trump and north korea. 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 sck for the world. robert: president trump calls off a face-to-face meeting with kim jong un. but both sides say they are ready for diplomacy. president trump: if and 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 call mr. trump's decision to back out of the june 12 summit extremely regrettable and

insist they are ready to talk peace, after claiming to dismantle a nuclear test site. is the president's high-stakes gamble 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 campaign for political purposes, that would be unprecedented. robert: the president steps up efforts to discredit the russia investigation, claiming the f.b.i. spied on his 2016 campaign. then he sends his newest white house attorney to a classified briefing about a secret informant. >> there is no evidence 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 the "new york times," andrea mitchell of nbc news, karoun demirjian of "the washington post," and anita kumar of mcclatchy newspapers.

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newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own's food products to charity and nourishing the common good. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once again, from washington, moderator, robert costa. robert:good evening. president trump was optimistic on friday that the u.s.-korea summit he called off one day earlier may now happen, as once planned, on june 12, in singapore. president trump: we're talking to them now. it was a very nice statement they put out. it could even be the 12th. we're talking to them now. they very much want to do it. we'd like to do it. we're going to see what happens. robert: it 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 meeting. the letter also contained a threat about u.s. nuclear capabilities. the president wrote, "ours are so massive and 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, we highly appreciated 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 you have to be able to walk away from a meeting or deal in order to have leverage? or is this the negotiations falling apart? mark: i think it's probably the former from his perspective.

in his own mind, he probably thinks he's being adroit and putting kim jong un on the hind foot. the difference is he's not doing a real estate deal or buying property, he's dealing with an erratic, unpredictable country with nuclear weapons. it is a fact that both men want to have a meeting. i think president trump by now has left no doubt that whatever his advisers or experts have to say about it, he wants to go to singapore, he wants to have that encounter 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 turns, if it happens on june 12. i'm skeptical on the timing. but even so, i think between now and june 12, there will be time for more flips. robert: and the flips could be caused by people around

president trump. andrea, when you're covering the white house, how much are the people around the president influences him to walk away from negotiations at this point? national security adviser, john bolton, new secretary of state, mike pompeo, what's their influence? andrea: john bolton seems to have the most influence to persuading him to cancel it on thursday morning without warning his closest ally, president moon, in the region, nor japan, nor members of congress. it was done so quickly, secretary of state pompeo was brought into it but it was really bolton in the president's ear. proximity is everything with the national security adviser, one he trusts. it's not the first 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 to go to north 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 testimony, read the president's rather unusually crafted, personally written letter, which sounded more like the breakup of a high school romance at times rather than nuclear negotiation. robert: the president wrote, call or write any time. anita, you were in 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? nisha: it anita: it is not good 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 the leaders 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 day 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 he wanted to do this, he wanted to send that message and that was the 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. robert: the comments about china you made are so important. i'm really wondering, as i look back at my notes this week, what caused the breakup -- at least the momentary 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 two meetings 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't 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 but china is the 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 and they don't want to 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 the other part of the negotiation that's behind the scenes that is vital if you're going to get the negotiation that everybody was saying june 12 or not, to happen or mean anything. robert: andrea, you spoke with retired navy admiral who said the way the summit was moving, we would end up with the u.s.-north korea summit, south korea playing a bit part and china 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 and refugees,

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 in 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 north korea, i'll go easy on you on trade. i think in a way the coin has turned and president xi is saying to president trump, two can play that game. we're in the middle of a difficult trade negotiation and kim jong un is getting more challenging. andrea: if you look at that the confusing photo opportunity in the oval office that anita was at, the president was pivoting from trade in china into the kim summit and china.

it was a very strange conversation and it was the first time that he had sd 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 pentagon disinviting china from participating in exercises and china prominently landing a bomber on one of their manufactured islands. karoun: you have to keep in mind, china is better versed into pulling all the strings at various moments in which it's advantageous to them than the trump administration is. if you lose leverage to beijing, they can call the shots on this a little bit more and that's when you see north korea potentially making fast moves that have to be trumped -- shown up by what the united states has to do. anita: look at what president trump has said over the last 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 good, it's been bad. robert: when we think about what's good and bad, the facts matter and we're covering the war of words but this week we also saw north korea, although unverified by the u.s., demolish a nuclear testing site, coming weeks after they released u.s. prisoners. as much as there's a and anita,s happened in terms of progress as the talk approaches? mark: if you remember to a year ago, you had a hostile adversary testing long range missiles and nuclear bombs. all that'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 to surrender a significant portion of the nuclear program? anita: the problem is that president trump raised the expectations 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 at once so he 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

happen. they haven't done it in decades. so it looks like he fails. 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 republicans, continuing this ongoing standoff, over the handling of the federal probe into russian interference during the 2016 campaign, especially during its early days. president trump rallied with his capitol hill allies this week, claiming, without presenting evidence, that the f.b.i. implanted a spy into his ranks. leaders from the justice department and intelligence community met twice recently with two-point republicans and -- top republicans and democrats hoping to calm democrats and all the partisan fighting over the f.b.i.'s use over a confidential source to aid the investigation into the

activity. showing up at the start of the sessions, angering democrats and raising concerns among republicans. former new york mayor rudy giuliani defending the intense of both men at the classified meeting. the f.b.i. source under scrutiny is stefan hoffer. multiple news outlets reported on his name. he was my professor a decade ago at cambridge. as karoun noted this week, it is common practice for the f.b.i. to use confidential sources to help advance investigations and they are not considered spies but the fight is the about the context of this confidential source. who is he? and his conduct and was 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 driving this campaign, they've had help from capitol hill, devin nunes has been asking for this information that started this. and we've gotten to the point where yet again there is a face-off between leading house republicans against d.o.j. and it resulted in the meeting on thursday. where devin nunes and trey gowdy went to the department of 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 eight 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 of people 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 useo 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 who were pushing for this in the first place and people like mitch mcconnell coming out and saying, 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 from former intelligence officials who serve both democratic and republican white houses is that this is a terrible precedent, an 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 majority 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 well as intelligence officials, are very, very uncomfortable and think of it size a terrible reversal of decades of precedent. robert: right before we went to air, the a.p. reported mayor giuliani will request for documents and is urging the president to push on this issue and they may use the fight over the origin of the russia probe

as a way to think about ending the mueller investigation special. mark: 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 into doubt and removes credibility from mueller's effort. it's obvious that president trump views this as perhaps has most appealing target yet in terms of a long-term effort to 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 should trademark, 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 time. they register particularly with republicans and it has an impact. anita: i think there was a real shift. we've seen for a year president

trump has been undermining the investigation. he's called james comey 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. that's the first time we've seen that. he's getting house republicans, forcing the department departmef 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 are we going to 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 chance to be briefed on this earlier and said no because they were worried about leaks. you'll definitely have republicans continue to push. this is the most arched 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 republican 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, really question 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 media 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're playing 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 the american public. anita: he did something interesting in a couple of days. it was maybe there was a spy, i'm not sure, if it was, it would be horrible. and two days later, it's a definitely spy. we're calling it spy gate.

andrea: all of you talked about it as spy gate. mark: the mainstream media is in an awkward position with some deciding to name him and others not. so the normal aggressive search for truth that people like us do, i think we're somewhat hamstrung. but that's one thing that if we weren't dealing with a spy, we might be able to drive to answer more quickly. robert: complicated stories, what we cover every week. we'll have to leave it there. coming up next on many pbs stations, "in principle," grichen carlson discusses the "me too" movement. >> a lot of people are also seeing that maybe "me too" is going too far 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 and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] announcer: funding for "washington week" is provided by --

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