>> raucous rallies. defiant tweets. a looming showdown with the elspecial cou i'm robert costa. august is anything but tonight on "washington week." [chanting] u.s.a.! u.s.a.! robert: just hours before president trump hosted a rally in pennsylvania, his national security chiefs were sounding therm ala. >> our democracy, itself, is in the cross hares. free and faheir elections are cornerstone of our democracy and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries. robert: a stark warning from the white house. russiased and continues to use cyber weapons to interfere in american campaigns. >> the intelligence community continues to concerned about the threats of upcoming u.s. elections. both the midterms and the

presidential elections of 2020. >> make noth mistake. scope of this foreign influence threat is both broade and dp. robert: but the messages on russia were not in lock step. at the pennsylvania rally, mr. trump maintained that he wants a better relationship with vl imir putin. president trump: i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. i had a great meeting. [cheering] president trump: by the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. that is a really good thing. robert: it was the latest example of the president'sul si approach. president trump: i have great confidence in my intelligence people, but i will tell you presiden putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. robert: and the presidential shattering of norms extended to special counsel robert mueller and his russia investigation. president trump: now we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax. k? robert: it all comes as his former campaign chairman paul ma

fort goes to trial for federal tax and bank fraud charges. we cover it all, next. announcer: this is "washington week."fu corporate ing is provided by -- newman's own foundation, donating pralits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common good. koo and patricia yuen through the yuen foundation, committed to bridging cultural differces in our communities. the ethics and enaellence in r sm foundation. the corporation blic broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. once from washington, moderator, robert costa. robert: good evening. the week has been revealing,in sh the tensions inside the trump administrati. over russ in the scenes that played out at the white house and on the

campaign trail they were shown. thuray was a microcosm. that morning, top intelligence officials, including f.b.i. director christopher ray and director of national intelligence dan cote appeared at the white house. they said the upcoming mid-term elections remain a target for russia. >> we acknowledge the threat. it is real. it is continuin we're doing everything w can to have a legitimate election that the american people can have trust in. t in additio that, it goes beyond the elections and goes to russia's intent to undermine our mocratic values, drive a wedge between our allies, and do other nefarious t>>ngs. his threat is not going away. as i have said consistently, ia ruttempted to interfere with the last election and continues to engage in malignd influence operations to this day. robert: the president did not appear alongside them, but later thursday rallied his core voters in pennsylvania.

instead, he had a great meeting, his words, with n vladimir pu helsinki and, "got along really well with the russian president. and he sharply criticized the russia probe. what's next and what matters? all as this president and his advisers face mounting challenges. joining me for tonight's conversation, paula reid, white house and justice correspondent for cbs news, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the "new york times," andrea mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for nbc news,d molly ball, national political reporter for "time magazine." peter, when you think about a company, when it has its executive vice presidents come out and say a statement, the market pays attention to what the c.e.o. says. peter: right.rt ro why does it matter if president trump's deputies come out to the white house lectern d have a diferent message, starker message on russia than him? right. not just the markets. people paying attention are also the kremlin in tthhis case.

message they are hearing of course is this two-pronged approach. ou what matters a this among other things is vladimir putin puts great stock in what thele er says, the number one person says. that is the way he runsun his y and the way he presumes other people run his country and that is the way donald r trump likes t his country. iwas in moscow for four years. i remembererviewing him and bringing up criticisms issued by american officials underneath the preside he would brush it off and say that is not what my friend george says, at the time george w. bush. he places great sock in what the president says not on dan cote or chris ray. what those people are talking to is a different audience. they're talking to us, people who actually cer ts issue or care about democracy issuesa are worried about russia. they say we do take this seriously. don't y attention to the president. that is an extraordinary thing for a government in which you have this bifurcated policy. andrea: there is another issue as well. you know better than anyone how

puti this but the rest of government, bureaucracies don't move unless there is leadership from the top. the fact is they had their one and only meeting at the, you know, presidential level last friday just a week ago and it was less than an hour devoted to the whole issue of russia and its attack on the election and its continuing attack. that was two to three weeks after dan coates had warned publicly at the hudson institute that the red lights were blinking and it was the most important urgent warnin since the 9/11 prewarnings about terror. we'veteen told, t the senate intelligence committee has been told the russians arin our electronic grid, our infrastructure, to say nothing of the propaganda, false and malign information that was outlined at least alleged in the mueller indictments. so the fact that the president has not led a meeting or signaled the importance of this and k dpsying it, out on the campaign trail, and

contradicting them, is sding a signal it doesn't matter. until i shows that it matters to him, it's not going to get fixesn robert: it just the president, paula. where was attorney general jeff sessions? paula: a great question. under previous administrations the administration would be actively involved in this. from the outside from the timeer attorney g sessions took over i've asked sources within the national security division, it was clear, russia not a priority. then he had to of course recuse himself from the ooing russia probe. then rob rosenstein headed off to the special right now it seems like a lot of the leadership is either mueller investigating and handting off to rob rosenstein to sort of prosecute anything that they find or the f.b.i. that's why.be had the. chief there. attorney general jeff sessions, i have not seen any leadership on his part on this issue. robert: where is the f.b.i. in looking at what's happening with russian interference this year in the next few months? paula: the f.i. director came out and talked specifically about these two sort of two different levels we all kinof know about.

this was nothing new. there is the disinformation campaign and then there are the physical intrusions, the e attempt her break into voting machines or more likely voter data bases. he said we're looking at that. interestingly he also said they are investigati possible campaign finance violations. and that is something new and i thin something definitely a thread we want to keep pulling on. robert: is this the traditional republican party inside of this administration like senator coats who is now director coats just rearing its hea and saying, well, the president may have one different view but we're going to continue to articulate our own? ay paula: in ahat is what it is. some might even call it the deep state.yo know, the modern republican party really was built on the cold war. os and oion to the soviet empire. so there is a very deep antagonism to russia and to this foreign long-time foreign adversary within the russia hawks of the repubarcan, people like john bolten but also people like dan coats and others in the intelligence and national security aaratus. it's not ideological.

it's based on what is actually d happening, b on what they're seeing happen. what i think this week brought into such sharp relief is up until now we have tended to think of the russia probe as mostly retrospective, looking back on 2016, looking back on what was already done. this is something this week really showed this is how intensely ongoing this is. with also the facebook announcement that they are actively investigating this and it was also telling that it was facebook that was self- on that. it wasn't the authorities that were coming forward in the first placeero say, is what we're finding, this di nformation that's comi out right now. so i think, you know, if what trump -- if trump's strategy has been to cozy up to putin to defuse the antagonism between the united statesnd rsia, i think what this shows is that it has not at all called o the dogs and russia's attacks are continuing. >> there was one really important signal in that briefing. the general who heads the cyber command and also the national

security agency, he suggested that theyready to go on offense against russia, against anynd adversaries, there are some signals that order, which has to come from the president, it hasn't been done yet we are told, that might be coming. robert: is thiseg a sy, peter, from the president, or an emotional response when he takes this different tack than his own administration? ah peter: y, for a year and a half now we've been asking that question on so many topics w it comes to this president. is it a strategy or is it impulse controlue i it is really hard to pin it down. we tend to look for strategy more often than perhaps it might exist. e strategy t would th be if there was one here? peter: it wouldn't be the first president who tried to keep things at a reasonable level leader to leader while you allow your government to take actions to counter an certainly george w. bush and barack obama weren't wagging their fingers in putin's face. on articular bush ear when he had great hope of

making putin more of an ally, they would state their differences politely and they weren't like openly confrontational, p se. that's changed over time as putin becomes clearer and clearer as an adversary. so that's not necessarily new. what is different is trump doesn'y go just polit to putin. he seems to be catering toward him, kowtowing at times to him. that is certainly what a lot of republicans thin anyway and that seems to be curious to a lot of people. why would you go so over the top in fing a guy who is clearly out to sabotage american dem: racy? robee of the reasons this all happened, molly, is because the president has this cloud he calls it. the cloud of the russian investigation hanging over him. and he took some new steps this week. he tweeted early, a few days ago, "a terrible. situati attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before itin cos to stain our country any further." yet as thes president twes lawyers such as former new york mayor rudy guiliani are engaged in negotiations with special

counsel robert mueller about presidential sit down. >> i'mot going to gyou a lot of hope it is going to happen. we're still negotiating. robert: wve been here for weeks now with guiliani pushing the deadline up on this decision about an interview. but you think about the president right he's facing this question over an interview. he is facing all of these different challenges on the russia probe. how is that influencing what's happening on molly: i think it's always been obvious the crux of this for the president is his own feeling of victimization and the idea that this is as he chcalls it a rigged w hunt. but it is all directed at him. the investigation isn't actually of him. it is an investigation of russian meddling in the 2016 election. whether or not that comes t involve him and as his defenders always point out it has not yet directly ilicated him, and yet he takes everything personally. o this of his chief personality characteristics i think you could say. and so heees everything through the prism of himself

being targeted. ihe think is, i suppose it is the ce -- suppose it is the case that trump is completely innocent of absolutely anything having to do with anything russia, anything in 2016, and this -- and when he refers to aloud he i just saying, these suspicions, these unfounded suspicio have made it difficult for him to operate as president, to do his job, to govern, to create normal relations with all kinds of different countriesse of this suspicion. and so that is the case that his defenders would make. nonetheless, the -- i think any lawyer would tell their client in thisti sit, don't keep talking about the investigation. don't keep -- espec lly whe you are, you know, the boss of lese people, don't put pressure on the this even if you don't actually mean that as a directive to stinop the stigation. it looks that way. peter: we saw recent mports thller is looking at previous tweets and statements as perhaps adding up to a

pattern that could amount to obstruction of justice. president trump just handed him one more piece of evidence if that is the case he is building. he is building it with one more brick thanks to the president th: week. robeul, you have studied the president's depositions when he was a businessman. es he change his style from the president trump we know when he actually sits down for these sorts of interviews? >> absolutely. he isum the cote executive and has been through this a lot. it is interesting to read or listen to his depositions because he yunled stood the game. erred to his attorneys. his answers were very tight. he demonstrated a very nuaed understanding of his business and there wasn't a lot of emotion. you watch this back and forth m between d his lawyer. he says i would love to testify. the lawyer says i don't know if that is such a goo idea. if he truly believes in sort of a very expansive definition of ly cutive power and t believes he did nothing wrong and he will stick to the truth, there may nt be as much risk as his attorneys believe but he is exposed on obstruction of justice and potentially lying as anyone would be. andrea: the exposure also the r

meeting inump tower with him one floor away, the proximity with his son don jr., thens pattf behavior, the memo that he was involved in authoring and all of the other t witnesses ave been collected, you have to believe that mueller has been collecting a lot of evidence to that pattern. robert: when are we going to hear more, andrea? when is t report going to be issued? before or after the election? andrea: i think it has to com something -- there is a lot h pressure for mueller to deliver this mo fact or shortly after labor day because there's a lot of practice and certainly it was reinforced by the inspector gteral rep against what comey did to hillary clinton that there should be a blackout period on anything involving election cases and so he would be reporting to rob rosenstein the deputy a.g. who would then be deciding what to release and what no there could be an unindicted coconspirator. there could be, you kno any -- any manner of reports that come out of this.

d t something. could be a partial report. >> i would be surprised if we get a report this month the speci counsel's office continues to exist through any prosecution. we know nafort has trial number two in september. you take that through any appeals. it weuld be surprising to if he releases a report. i don't know that he necessarily feels the presoure the midterms. and then rosenstein has this, this decision to make. he has to decide, do i make this public and fall in exact same situation that comey fell into? or do i hand it off to congress, let them decide? or do i put it in a drawer? robert: talk about the pressure of the midterms. when you think aout what bob mueller is facing right now, yes, he has the timing issue president trump have the pressure of the midterms on his shoulders. is that the reason the president hasn't actually pulled the trigger and fired mueller or fired rosenstein? cause he is hearing from his own party that it would be a political disaster for the if it actually went over the line? they're ok with his tweets to a point? >> that may bepart of it.

i think he has -- he ds heed the warnings it would be a political disaster for him personally. i think he is less concerned, frankly, about the fortunes of ceher politicians. he is mostly ced about himself. and even with the midterms what we've heard from our reporting i is h concerned with republicans losing the house and senate only to the extent that it may impede his agenda, his ability to get things done. or his abilityot to be buried in investigations by a democratic congres soy he's -- so he is concerned primarily i think with his own room tomaneuver, but he has heard from a lot of people, and i think it's true, tha firing mueller would be a red line that a lot of republicans especially in the senate would actually get up and do something about. they've had plenty of and opportunities. robert: they certainly have not yet. inside the white house, peter, quick, is john kelly who just announced on monday he'll stay through 2020, we'll see if that happens, but he said he will.

is he the one pulling the president back from going afters roin or mueller? >> i think actually mueller is right about this. he has crossed every line the other presidents would have respected when it comes to thist kind ofng, the independence of the law enforcement apparatus. that is one line he h stayed on the -- on this side of. he does see it as potentially dangerous to himself. he does see that as being a backlash he has been told would be even worse after he fired jim comey. robert: let's turn to the manafort trialhich began at a federal courthouse in alexandra, virginia this week. paul manafort the former trump campaign chairman and long-time lobbyist is facing tk and b fraud charges. his international wire trsfers are bei scrutinized by prosecutors. paula has been in the courtroom all week where they don't alw cameras or computers, just notebooks. old school. where is the prosecution going right now with this? ula: their theory of the case is manafort made tens of millions of dollars lobbying on behalf of ukrainian officials but instead of ving his paycheck sent tone of his six

or seven homes they went to offshore accounts and the prosecutors allege he got that money into the u.s. by laundering it through luxury rchases, expensive cars, homes, and the infamous ostrich coat. and that's their theory of the case. that is h he was tryin to avoid tax reporting requirements. so they've put on the stand vendors and asked tthem, is common for someone to pay for their ostrich coat through a wrire transfer from cyprus? of course the answer is no. then the put on his accountants who talked about how they didn't know about the offshore accounts. robert: we're learning lot about paul manafort and his finances but is this really about getting manafort to flip and talk about president trump, talk about the trump campaign? andrea: i'm not so sure because he has beenes rienting -- in rerefusing having been up and gone through the indignities of the trial itself. i think this has a russ undertone in that what they are hoping to prove is that he was completely in debt by 2016,

late 2015, after the ukrainian,l russian-backder had gone into exile in russia, he was out of monday ifment they were broke. he continuing this lavish lifestyle. he was in hock yet he volunteered his services to donald trump. he had all these russian connections and offdore banks e was not being paid. how is he sustaining that and why was he st?taining t and that is sort of the odor of russia that permeates this trial as well. robert is he going to be pardoned? if you read a little bit into lye president's tweets this week he's certashowing some sympathy for m manafort. >> he does. certainly it is possible paul manafort is countin on a rdon and that is why he is standing strong not flipping and not offering anying to the special counsel if he has anything to offer. the flip side is i'm not sure whether the pardon actually gets pre osident tru of hock if there is something there to be worried about because if you give a pardon to paul manafort and paul probably

paula probably knows this better than i do. i am not a lawyer. if you pardo manafort he has no ability to refuse to testify. then robert mueller can put him onayhe stand and you now have to testify because you've been pardoned and you can't claim the a fifndment if you don't face any criminal liability. you have to tell us about donald trump. that could be backfire on the president.ro rt: molly, you've been writing cover stories for "time" on democrats this year.y en't they bringing up russia and paul manafort more? molly: they do in the contex of capitol hill. democrats have obviously been the most outspoken in the oversight rule, particularly mark werner in them senate, a schiff in the house. they're on television net works all the time talking about they take it very seriously as do many republicans. as a campaign issue, the conventional wisdom of both parties, has been that they're better off not talking about it. republicans feel that it doesn't matter to their constituents, therefore th are not motivated to speak about it, positively or netively i suppose. you don't hear them defending

trump a lot on this score. they're jusgt avoid it. for democrats, there is a feeling that i think it is two things. number one, it feels like a far ay issue, not a kitchen table matter, not something that affects the lives of the people they're campaigning in front of. number two, it so permeates the news that they don't have to about it. if there are voters who care about the threat to amican democracy, the threat of our russian advsary, all of the disruptive influences that are coming out of this case, they're hearing about it on cable ns all the time. democrats who run campaigns feel that wha voters mightot be hearing about is any kind of positive or policy message that democratht have to offer. that's what is struggling to break through and what they want to be tking about o the campaign trail. robert: going back to the eter said paul, as we are ghad to have you, a lawyer as well as a reporter here at the tle. paul when you are sitting in the courtroom and watching manafort, looking at the

evidence, you're also watching mueller'snvestigators. lot is at stake for them. the judge, t.s. ellis in this case hasaised some questions. is mueller really in his lane tath his mandate? what is at s for mueller right now? paula: this is ultimately a referecium on the s counsel investigation. if he is convicted that certainly bolsters the special ' councase. people say all right. this is what they were up to. they were building this very specific accounting case and it turned out that a jury who looks like a jury that pays their taxes convicted him. t re is an acquittal or even a partial acquittal, that will bd ster the president his allies who want to argue, look. this is politically astivated. he investigated before and wasn't charged because there wasn't enough evidence. he was posecuted this time fr political reasons. there is a lot at stake here for the special counsel te robert: he is fighting a public war. he's quietly fighting a public war with the president. the president is mounting a war against mueller with all of his tweets and wooerds but where mueller go from here? is it just in the courtroom in alexandria where he is waging his battle? andrea: and the next case of

course would be in district court here in d.c. where we are. mueller from a report is absolutely zeroed in and trtoyi you know, ignore all of this noise. but the psident has especially the last week been really rping up that tweet that you quoted on wednesday, in fact, was the most hostile and it is not true, of course, sessions could because he is cused, actually fi mueller, but it was a very threatening tweet indeed. so there are a number of things that could be at play. this could behe result o these behind-the-scenes negotiations. it could be the result of thema fort attorneys sharing information that has beenar now with them as the defense needs to have access to. and thatould be really frightening him that it's closing in. robert: peter, the president keeps saying at rally after rally, tampa, pennsylvania, th has nothing to do with me speaking about paul manafort. peter: yet he keeps bringing it

up. ifs nothing to do with him why is he talking about it? shouldn't let it go without commenting that his comments on an ongoing trial are another line other presides would never have crossed. the few times a president ever tade a comment on an existing court case they blasted for it and they regretted it because it was seen as putting undue influence on the part of the chief law enforcement officer arguably of the country. so the fact that he keeps weighing i on it makes you wonder about that. it doesn't directly relan him but he seems tongue it does. robert: we'll leave it there. thank you,verybody, for joining us. our conversation will continue er on the ev washington week extra. we will talk about the president and the. pre you can find that later tonight at pbs.org/washingtoneek. i'm robert costa. thanks for joining us.

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