robert: isolated in his own party, at odds with advisers and as ever, defiant. president trump ignites a political firestorm over russia. i'm robert costa, we dig into the latest reporting onhe trump administration tonight on "washington week." noesident trump: i let him we can't have this. we're not going to have it. and that's the wayt's going to be. robert: under pressure from some republicans andemocrats, president trump insists he did confront russian president vladimir putin aboutlection interference. but earlier in the week, he mostly accepted putin's view. president trump: i have great confidence in my intelligence people but i will tell y, that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. he justaid it's not rusa.

robert: those statements led to confusion and concern on capitol hill and raised new quetions abou the president's handling of foreign policy. does he trust his own administration's intelligence on russia? >> i think anybody who think shavladimir putin doesn't have his stamp on everything that happens in russia is sinformed. robert: now the president is planning another summit with putin, this time at the white house. >> that's gonna bepecial. robert: senate majority leader mitch mcconnell says putin will not be invited to congress. we go inside the story next. announcer: this is "washington week." derporate funding is proviby -- newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good.

koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our comhinities. the and excellence in journalism foundation. the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs statn from viewers like you. thank you. once again, from washingn, moderator, robert costa. robert:good evening. welcome back to "washington week." welcome to our new home. you can be assured that even with a fresh look and feel, oure comm to in-depth conversations remains the same. now, to the news. the fallout from president trump's meeting with russian president vladimir putin has only fueled mr. trump's resolve and he invited opportunity t the whit house this fall. but that wasn't the only flashth poin week. dan coates, the president's director of nl intelligence, gave a candid and revealing interview duringse a rity summit in aspen, colorado. when asked about the trump-putin

summit,oe had little say. >> i don't know what happened in that meeting. i think, as time goes by, president has already mentioned some things that happened in that meeting -- i think we willr learn but that is the presint's prerogative. robert: and he was surprised to learn a second summit was ihe works. >> that vladimir putin is coming to the white house in the fall. >> say that again?r] [laugh >> vladimir putin coming to the -- robert: the interview made instan headlines with white house aides wondering if coates was going rogue and national security officials alarmed that the d.n.i. was out of the loop. still, a new poll shows republican support for the president's perfoance in helsinki is sky high. 79% approve and 18% disapprov some republicans, however, are not cheering. in an op-ed in the "new york times," republican congressmanwi

herd of texas wrote this.ve the course of my career as an undercover officer in the c.a., saw russian manyligence manipulate people. i never thought i would see the day when an american bresident woulone of them." quite a week. joining me around the table this evening, margaret brennan of cbs news,miche alcindor of "the new york times," jonathan swan of axios, and dan balz on "the washinost." let's go back to director coates and the question that has gripped washiton this week what is going on at the highest levels of the government, with the people around the president? margaret, you've spent much of your career cering the state department, talking to top national security officials. what is the reality of what's happening around this president? margaret: the reality is that there is one trump administration policy on paper and then there is one that the

president carries out and they don't always match up and no one on the national security team can honestly tell you witnt cert that when the president walks into a room, that he will stick to the principles they've laid out. the president celebrates this as flexibility, that it's an asset when he's negotiated real estate deals. obviously, the risk level is ch higher talking about national security objectives. so this is where it creates tension. you heard that from the d.n.i., dans, coa and looking gobsmacked on stage, almost making light of the idea that he, even though he oversees 17 intelligence agencies, didn't know that at one tim the russian ambassador and foreign minister were going into thee oval off and didn't know that vladimir putin would be welcomed around the time of the upcomin congressional races. that's not a good look. but at the same time, the d.n.i., i think, was showing here that this was some space between him and the president because he wants to stand with

the people in the intelligence community whosehe wor was dovingd -- defending on that stage. robert: jonathan, what's the view inside the west wing as thha're watching jonathan: i do the two phone calls quickly. first oneas literally while it was still going, going, have you seen y this, d know about this? i didn't know about this, did you know about this? and the second one was pretty shortly after that, a senior white house official who was already speculating t aboutmp firing coates. this is not having yet spoken to the president about it. they're all completely blind-sided by this interview. my understandings john kelly didn't know about it. the first he knew about it was when he saw it. that's not atypical in this administration. if you talk to anyone at the moment in the west wing, you can get pockets of information in a particular silo'd area based on what they spoke to the president, the last spoke to the president two days

ago. but no one feels confident in giving you imparting information. people aren't even pretendin to -- eight months ago, everyone was giving you these great otheoriesf how actually he's really playing 4-d chess, deepho insight int the president thinks. nowhey're going -- it's a big shrug. they don't pretend to interpret the presidentre or pretend they know what'soming next. robert: jonathan used the word "silo." is the predent isolated as he makes foreign policy and if director coates department know about the invitation to putin, who's driving that second invitation to putin inside the administration? yamiche: i think president trump is absolutely drivingng everyt the fact that he spent two hours with president putin alone in a room with only translators, he didn't take mike pompeo or john bolton, he didn't take any top

aides -- he said, i'm going at this alone. d.n.i.,fact that the dan coates, is saying, we'll figure out what was said at some point. at some point things will leak out to us -- it's almost like they're waiting for journalistsa like us others to tell them what happened. i think as much as we as reporters think we're wondering how do we get at the information, the people in the west wing, as well as the people working for the president, are themselv kind of searchi for information and i think president trump likes this. there's an idea that he feels as though he knows what's best for his administration. i think at the very beginning there was somedea that he was young -- not young, but not someone who was very experienced at being president or in politics so he needed to have people around him to usher him and guide h and n he's saying, i have been doing this tob more than a year a and a ha.

and this is w i'm going to do. robert: dan, what's grabbing your attention as you sit down to write your column? dan: the first thing that grabs all of us, the reaction by dan coates. is an extraordinary moment to see the director of national intelligenceeaught by surpr about a meeting with the russian president. we've never seen anything like that and you walk this week back to helsinki and everything that has happened has been out of the ordinary and different than what you would expect. i talked toer an today who had been in a previous adnistration, in a senior national security position. and he made this observation, bringwas, a decision to the russian president, particularly this russian president, to the white hse, in prior administrations would have been done only after national security meeting, principles meeting. he said there seems to be no process in this white house to

make these kinds of decisions. similarly, he said, there seems to be no process for assessing what happened in helsinki and dan coates was in the dark about whatappened in those two hours between the president and putin. so, you know, as margaret said,a we hav situation in which you have a president and his national security operation going in separe tracks and a white house staff trying to constrain a president who'sed determo make his own rules. robert: we all remain in the dark a little bit about what actually was discussed at that meeting between president trump and president putin? based on your reporting, what have we learned about what may have been agreed to by the two countries? margaret: because only the t interpreters were in the room, we are told the president held a firm line on the conflict in

syria saying he wouldn't draw down the 2,000 u.s. troops there until iran withdraws its forces. that's a pretty indefinite time line. iran is firmly entrenched there but that's reliefl to isr perhaps, a relief to the president'scuwn national ty team who had been told by the president he wants them out by the next six months so that's a huge reversal from the president but it also was a sigh of relief to many because they feared this was a chip that the inesident might bargain away with vladimir phen he got into the room and that that would hurt u.s. leverage in the region. but on everything else, the main message i'm hearing message was the agreement, the meeting was the agreement, i should say, tne next there was noseajor national rity objective achieved in ukraine, in syria. there wer proposals floated, the white house shot down forcefully one of them todaysa ng they weren't going to

accept vladimir putin's idea of holding a referendum to allow orussia t annex more territory in eastern ukraine so a push-back from the national security community to some of the proposals the president said he would take time to thi abou robert: what about the confusion in the briefing room this week about whether the administration would send over former u.s. officials, frmer ambassa to russia michael mcfaul, to talk to russian intelligence officers. the white house steamed consider it -- seemed to consider it a atted away the idea. yamiche: the fact that the president called it an incredible offer -- ias in helsinki at the press conference when he said putineaasy interesting ideas about how we can work together and get at the election ierference and all the reporters were wondering, what is that interesting ide and fast forward, we learn putin said if you all us to interrogatemericans, we'll invite mueller to come here and he can talk to russian officia

he thinks interfered in your election. sarah sanders said, we have to think about it, we'll get back to you on that. a couple of hours later, the state department said, that's absurd, that would never happen. what you have was two messages, like two messages from the intel community and president trump, you had two messages from the state department and sarah sanders and 24 hours later sarah sanders cleaned it up and said, , donald trump does not agree, he won't do that. but the fact had a they were entertaining it in the white b housefing and that the state department knew quickly t say it was absurd, tells you the administration is not on the same page. robert: who's jim mattis in jim kelly? secretary of state pompeo. we have been quiet this week. wnathan: it's funny you say that. on the trip, as well, in brussels for the nato summit. when you talk to european officials, they will -- i'm sure margaret has had similar

conversations -- theye h perfectly normal conversations with jim jim mattis like everything's normal, it's a normal administration and in many senses theyoi are normal things. trump has actually invested more military resources i europe than obama did so they're quite happy with some of the substantive things and mattis has r assure presence but it all comes to the t conclusiont this line that has been fed to them for 12 months of don't listen to the tweets, pay attention to what we do, that's kind of reaching the end of its use-by date, that line, because the rhetoric actually matters in lots of different ways and they know, these european officials and officials know, when they talk to james mattis, he's not speaking for the president of the united states, not evente re. robert: if that's the case, dan, why do they stay? if you're ihin cabinet or national security adviser john wbolton, do you stay?

dan: i would say there's ade high-m reason and not-so-high-minded reason. the higminded reason ishe belief they're serving their country. somebody like secretary mattis, lifetime career in theilitary, duty, honor, country, they believe in what they're doing and they believe when the esident asks them to serve, they should serve. i think they suspect or they believehat they are, in fact, providing at least some guide ils, that they are, in some way or another, being able to reassure allies that there is -- that there is a government that can function effectively. i think theess high-minded reason is that some people are attracted to power and it is very hard to give it up when you have it. and once you get to those positions -- and i'm not ascribing that to a particular individual, but to human nature, that that makes it difficult to step aside. robert: you've spent time interviewing national security adviser jo bolton in the past month. he seemed to try to navigate that, sometimes uneasily, with

you. margaret: it's interesting because this is where we get into the policy on paper. when you say from the national security adviser often says, that is not the policy of the u.s. government. but leaves the door open. jonathan: a wonderful line. he sai it to you like three times. margaret: exactly, yes, that's why i'm y asking why the president's saying otherwise, why is the president saying things that aret theless o the u.s. government? because it's very, very confusing to european friends and allies that you were just mentioning there. and the reason that the rhetoric matters is not, this isen a pres who was elected as a disruptor and n that's necessarily what the outcry on these national security matters is about. it's because those guard rails are in place not only to protect the president from himselfut to prote the country and to protect the institutions. when you were talking about words mattering for nato, the collective defense premise is wh nato is about. protecting each other.

if you are drawing into doubt that montenegro or on t ofse members is worth defending, then that stops working. it doesn't matte y if up defense spending, if vladimir putin doubts whether or notou come to defend those countries in the first place. so that's where the words on oato really matter, where the president is a leaving the door open, that conversation with bolton and oers on, well, maybe we can talk about parts of ukraine being up for grabs. yamiche: i spoke to former u.s. representative to nato and he, shortly after the helsinki summit, told me two things. the first thing was that he expects nato allies to start crafting work-around of the united states because he thinks nato allies will stop trusting president trump. we saw ther of germany come out and say i don't know if we can trust the u.s. with trump the helm but also said things could be a lot worse. he didn't cnge the.s.' relationship with nato, didn't pull out troops, didn't change military exercises. there was all this idea coming into the nato summit that peoplr

were worried he would do that in his meeting with putin and none of that happened so douglas lute was saying, things haven't changed but it looks crazy. robert: not only in the administration but on capitol- hill was at the capitol this week and you see alarm amongca some repub senators, like jeff flake of arizona. then you talk to others like senator rand paul and they take a different view about the president's actions. let's hear what theye to say. >> we have indulged myths and fabrications, pretended it wasn't so bad and our indulgence got us the capitulation in helsinki. we i the senate who have been threecketd -- elected to represent constituents, cannot be enablers of flings -- falsehoods. >> the intligence community was full of biased people. i don't think anybody that the russians were involved

with leailng end hacking into email but there is a questionnto whether or not the election was legitimate as a way for people the left to say trump didn't win the election. robert: we have been talking about all of the hawks around president trump but it's interesting to note that senator rand paul has been embracing president trump's position on russia. is president trump almost more of aonintervention libertarian on foreign policy than we sometizes recog dan: he may be. his comments during the campaign were contradictory. he's somebody who on the one hand wants to project strength, muscularity, increased defense spending. but ither ways as we've seen, he pulls back. w hestled with advisers over what to do aboutor afghanistan a very long time and finally agreed with them to putmo some

troops in rather than his view was why are we still there, we have been in there 17 years, 18 yrs, let's get out of there. similarly with syria, as margaret mentioned. so the president may not know his own mind about these things. he doesn't have a fullyormed sense of national security issues. he is p gutyer so he responds in certain ways when a heed about things but he hasn't necessarily thought deeply about them and i think that creates the confusion. margaret: it's a great point. n also think, on syria particular, i was speaking with a former obama administration officialell it and -- about it and i asked him what's then difference the policy and the only thing the obama administration official said to me was, at least we felt bad about it, that we weren't intervening on humanitarian --r the mat two strikes

followed through on, pinpoint strikes carried out by president trump in the wake of two wemical weapons attacks but when president tru standing next to vladimir putin, he didn't say, why are youde breaking th you made with me in hamburg last year to have are cease zone in the south of the country, why aren't we talking about humanitarian aid corridors? secretary pompeo said we would ut presidenthat trump was talking about saving lives in russia and syria instead of russia bombing spitals as they continue to do. robert: we saw the poll, 79% ofr republicans su the president's handling of russia this week. is that why we didn't see setor flake's bipartisan bill with senator chris koons of delaware even get a vote? hand wringing about his style but at the end of the day they want to stand with himca poliy. jonathan: they're terrified of crossing him, almost to a person. the profiles encourage retiring,

and there's a reason for that. ey know he's vastly more popular than they are. the polling shows it. mcconnell's got a 25% approval and trump's is up in the 80's. most popular republican president at this point in his presency. i thi he's even passed george w. bush after 9/11 with republican voters so yes, ande h also has the ability, almost a superpower, take an issue like russia that doesn't get much more orthodox than that in of republican party being tough ona, russi he's flipped on that issue and you can go down the list -- f.b.i., the republican party's view of the f.b.i -- pick your issue. it's quite uncanny. tariffs. republican voters now support tariffs. so, yeah, they're terrified. but just to pick up on that point that we were talking about his foreign polic i think, yes, he oscillates but his default position is always, w is this our problem? why is this our problem?

robert: sounds a lot like senator paul. house,covering the white you've spent time covering democrats. let's walk a clip of margaret's interview with former secretary of state john kerry for a moment. margaret: what did you make of president trump's new conference with vladimir putin? secretary kerry: i found it shocking. i found it to be one of the most disgraceful, remarkable moments of kowtowing to a foreign leader by an an american president that anyone's witnessed. it wn't that it wasust a surrender, it was dangerous. the president stood there andd did not def our country, did not defend the truth. robert: margaret, secretary kerry, that reflects a t of angst among former obama offials as they watch this. margaret: it does. this is someone who spent a lot of tim w negotiatingh russia. diplomacy with russia is not a

toxic idea to him. that wasn't his objection.he it was that president, standing beside putin, didn't use forceful language and didn't confront and after the fact with theck walk-it wasn't believable given that he spoke at length about his belief that all of this is fundamentally a witch hunt and it was interesting to hear secretary kerry describe being in china when president obama confronted adimir putin for the fir time about meddling. robert:iam each, we've heard the word treason. democrats appear to have a turning point. yamiche: i think democrats see this as one of many issues they can use in the midterms to say, look, you should elect us because we'll be tough on russia -- because we're not president trump -- even though they said that wouldn't be their message but there's an idea that democrats see another thing to add to, it separated families, tariffs, jobs -- the problem is, what rand paul said and the poll

from axios tells us that republican votens think pres trump is illegitimate and they see that as people ing mean to him because they don't want him to be president.n robert: so much for everyone being here. let me pause to thank the terrific crewt weta. this new set wouldn't be possible without their hard work. our conversation continues online on the "washington "washk extra." weatill discuss thet reports on the president's long-time lawyer, michaeldohen, possible audio recordings of his conversations with president trump. you can find that later tonight at pbs.org/washingtonweek. i'm robert costa. thanks for jning us.

♪ announcer: funding for "washington week" is provided by -- newman's own foundatioll donatingrofits from newman's own's food products to charity and nourishing the common good. the ethics and excellence in journalism foundation. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging culturalrences in our communities. the corporation fopublic broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. ank you. thank you [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, whic caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org.] visit ncicap.org.] >> you're watching pbs.

♪ narrator: a kqed television production. ♪ ♪ mildred: i guess i'm interested in making things. i'm interested in using my hands to make and think about art, and to think about it in a way that it tells a story of those who get left out. who's gonna tell their story? someone has to do that. i like the patina on it. man: what, the salty -- mildred: be interesting to see what it's like once it goes up to hunters point.