>> raucous rallies. deaant tweets. ooming showdown with the special counsel. i'm robert costa. august is anything but quiet. 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 the alarm. >> our democracy, itself, is in the cross hares. free and fair electio are the cornerstone of our democracy cand it has becomelear that they are the target of our adversaries. robert: a stark warning from the white house. russia used and continues to use cyber weapons to interfere in american campaigns. >> the intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming u.s. eltions. bothhe midterms and theal

presidenti elections of 2020. pe make no mistake. the s of this foreign influence threat is both broad and deep. 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 vladimir putin. president trump: i had a great meeting with putin. we discussed everything. i had a great meeting. [cheering] president trump: by the aty, th a good thing, not a bad eaing. that is ay good thing. robert: it was the latest example of the president's singular approach. president trump: i have great confidence in my intelligence people, but i will tell you president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. robert: and the presidential shattering of norms extended ec l counsel robert mueller and his russia investigation. president trump: now we're being hindered by the russian hoax. it's a hoax. ok? : robe all comes as his former campaign chairman paul

manafort goes to trial for federal tax and bank fraud charges. we cover it all, next. announcer: this is "washington week." corporate funding is provided by -- newman's own foundation, donating all profits from newman's own products to charity and nourishing the common od. 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 contribuons to your pbs ation from viewers like you. thank you. once onagain, from washin moderator, robert costa. robert: gd evening. the week has been revealing, showing the tensions inside the trump administration over russia. in the scenes that played out at the a white hou on the

campaign trail they were shown. thursday was a microcosm. that morning, top intelligence officials, including f.b.i. director christopher ray and director of national intedigence dan cote appea 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 continuing. we're doing everything we canto ave a legitimate election that the american people can have trust in. in addition to that, it goes beyondns the elect and goes to russia's intent to undermine our democratic a values, drive wedge between our allies, and do other nefarious things. >> this threat is not going away. i ave said consistently, russia attempted to interfere th he last election and continues to engage in mignd influence operations to this day. robert: the president did notng appear ade them, but later thursday rallied his core voters in pennsylvania.

instead, he had a gat meeting, his words, with vladsiir putin in hi 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 foreignf s correspondent for nbc news, and molly ball, national politica 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. robert: why does matter if president trump's deputies come out to the white house lectern and have a different message, starker message on russia than him? peter: right. not just the markets. pele paying attention are also the kremlin in this case.

the message they are hearing of course is this two-pronged approach. what matters about this among in other is vladimir putin puts great stock in what the leader says, the number one person says. that is the way he runs his country an way he presumes other people run his country and that is the way donald trump likes to run his country. i was in moscow for four years. i remember interviewing him and bringing up cricisms issued by american officials underneath the president and he would brush it off and say th is not what my friend george says, at the time george w. bush. he places hareat stock in 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 coverhis issue or care about democracy issues and are worried about russia. they say we do te this seriously. don't pay attention to the president. that is an extraordinary thing a foovernment in which you have this bifurcated policy. andrea: there is another issue as well. you know better than anyone how

putin sees this but test of government, bureaucracies don't move unless there is leadership from the top. the fact ishey had their one and only meeting at the, you esknow, ential level last friday just a week ago and it was less than an hour devoted to the whole issue ouf rssia and its attack on the election and its continuing attaco that was to three weeks after dan coates had warned a public the hudson institute that the red lightsre linking and it was the ost important urgent warning since the 9/11 prewarnings about terror. we've been told, that the senate intelligence committee has ben told the russians are into our electronic grid, our infrastructure, to sayothing of the propaganda, false and malign information that was l outlined ast alleged in the mueller indictments. so the fact that the president has not led a meeting or signaled the importance of this and keepsg deny, out on the campaign trail, and

contradicting them, is sending a signal it doesn't matter. i untihows that it matters to him, it's not going to ge fixed. robert: it wasn't just the president, paula. where was attorney g jeff sessions? paula: a great question. under previousin atrations the administration would be actively involved in this. from the outside from the time at trney general sessionsk over i've asked sources within the national security division, it was clear,ussia was not a priority. then he had to of course recuse himself from the ongoing russia probe. thense rob tein headed off to the special counsel. right now it seems like a lot of t leadership is either mueller investigating and handting off to rob rosenstein to sort of prosecute anything that they find or the f.b.i. f.b.i. y he had the chief there. attorney general jeff sessions, i have not seen any leadership on his pst on t issue. robert: where is the f.b.i. in looking at what's happeningth ussian interference this year in the next few months? paula: the f.b.i. director came out and talked specifically about sese twot of two different levels we all kind of know about. this was nothing new.

there is thdisinformation campaign and then there are the physical intrusions, the intempt to either brea voting machines or more likely voter data bases. he sd we'reooking at that. interestingly he also said they ossible tigating p campaign finance violations. and that is something new and i think something definitely a thread we want to keep pulling on. robert: is this t traditional republican party inside of this administration like senator coats who iir nowtor coats just rearing its head inside and saying, well, the president y have one different view but we're going to continue to articulate our own? paul in a way that iwhat it is. some might even call it the deep state. you know,he modern republican party really was built on the cold war. heand opposition to soviet empire. so there is a very deep antagonism toussia and to this foreign, long-time foreign adversary within the russia hawks of the republican party, people like john bolten busot eople like dan coats and others in the intelligence and national security apparatus. it's not ideological.

it's based on what is actually happning, based o what they're seeing happen. what i think this week brought into such sharp rief is up until now we have tended to think of the russia probe as mostly retrospective, looking ba on 2016, looking back on what was already done. this is somethinghis week really showed this is how intensely ongoing this is. with also the facebook announcement that they are lyactinvestigating this and it was also telling that it was facebook that was self-policing on that. it wasn't the authorities that were coming forward in the first place to say, here is what we're finding, this disinformation that's coming out right now. so i think, youow kif what trump -- if trump's strategy has been to u cozyp to putin to defuse the antagonism between the united states andussia, i think what this shows is that it has not at all called off th dogs and russia's attacks are continuing. >> there was one really gn important in that briefing. the general who heads the cyber command and also the national

securitygency, he suggested that they are ready to go on offense against russia, against any adversaries, and there are some signals that w order,ch has to come from the president, it hasn't been done yet we are told, that might be coming. robert: is this a strategy, peter, from the president, or an emotional response when he takes this different tack than his own administration? pete yeah, for a year and a half now we've been asking that question on so many topics wheno it comeshis president. is it a strategy or is it impulse control issues? it is really hard to pin it down. tend to look for strategy more often than perhaps it might exist. robert: what would the strategy be if there was one here? peter: it wouldrst be the president who tried to keep things at a reasonable level leader to leader while you allow your government to take actions to counter an adversy. certainly george w. bush and barack obama weren't wagging their fingers in putin's face. in particular bush early on when he had great hope of

makin putin more of ally, they would state their differences politely and they weren't like openly confrontational, per 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't go just politely to putin. he seems to be catering toward hi kowtowing at times to him. that is certainly what a lot of republicans think anyway and that seems to be curious to a lot ofoeople. whyd you go so over the top in flattering a guy who isr cl out to sabotage american democracy? robert: one of the re this all happened, molly, is because the president has this cloud he calls it. the cloudf the russian investigation hanging over him. and he took some new steps this week. heweeted early, a few days ago, "a terrible situation. attorney general jeff sessions should stop thisigged wit hunt right now before it continues to stain our country any further." yet as the president tweets his lawyers such as former new york yor rudy guiliani are engaged in negotiations with special

counsel robert mueller about a presidential sit down. >> i'm not going to give you a lot of hope it is going to ha en. we're still negotiating. robert: we've been here for weeks now with guiliani pushing the ddline up o this decision about an interview. but you think about the president rht now. he's facing this question over an interview. he is facing all of terse dit challenges on the russia probe. how is that influencing what's happening on russ? molly: i think it's always been obvious the crux of this for the president is his own feeling of victimization and t the idt this is as he calls it a rigged witch hunt. but it is all directed atim. the investigation isn't actually of him. it is an i onvestigati russian meddling in the 2016 election. whether or not that comes to involve him and as his defenders always point out it has not yet directly implicated him, and yet he takes everything personally. t hhis is one of chief personality characteristics i think you could say. and so he sees everything through the prism of himself beg targeted.

i think there is, i suppose i is the case -- 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 a cloud he is j saying, these suspicions, these unfounded suspicions have made it difficult for him to orate as president, to do his job, to govern, to create norl relations with all kinds of different countries because of this suspicion. and so that ise the c that his defenders would make. nonetheless, the -- i think any lawyer would tell their client in this situation, don't kep talking about the investigation. don't keep -- especiallyu when are, you know, the boss of these people, don't put pressure on them like this even if you don't actually mean that as a dir to stop the investigation. it looks that way. peter: we saw recent reports that mueller is looking atpr ious 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 this week. robert: paul, you studied the president's depositions when he was a businessman. does he change his style from the president trump we knua when he ay sits down for these sorts of interviews? >>ol aely. he is the consummate executive s d has been through this a lot. itteresting to read or listen to his depositions because he yunled stood the game. he deferred to his attorneys. his answers were very tight. he demonstrated a very nuanced understanding of his business and there wasn't a lot of emotion. you watch this back and forth between him and his lawyer. he says i would love to testsay. the lawye i don't know if that is such a good idea. if he t ily believe sort of a very expansive definition of executive power and truly believes he did nothing wrong and he will stick to the truth, there may not be as much risk as his attorneys belie but he is exposed on obstruction of justice and potentially lying as anyone would be. andrea: the exposure also the

meetp g in trwer with him one floor away, the proximity with his son don jr., the patterns of behavior, the memo that he wainvolved in authoring and all of the other witnesses that have been collected, you have to believe that mueller has been dence to g a lot of e that pattern. robert: when are we going to hear more, andrea? when is the reportoing to b issued? before or after the election? andrea: i think it has to come --omething -- there is a lot of pressure for mueller to deliver this month in fact or shortly afterau labor day b ehere's a lot of practice and certainly it wasinforced by the inspector general report against what comey did to t hillary clintot there should be a blackout period on anything involving election cases and so he would be reporting to rob roseienthe deputy a.g. who would then be deciding what to release and what not. there could be an unindictedpi cocotor. there could be, you know, any -- any manner of reportshat me out of this. but something.

and it could be a ptial report. >> i would be surprised if we get a report this month. th special counsel's office continues to exist through any prosecution. trial manafort h number two in september. you take that through any appeals. it would be surprisg to me if he releases a report. i don't know that he necessarily feels the pressure about the midterms. and then rosenstein has this, this decision to make. he has to decide,o i make this public and fall into the exact same situation that comey fell into? or do i hand it off to congress, let them decide? or do i put itn a drawer? robert: talk about the pressure of the midterms. when you think about what bob mueller is facing right now, yes, he has the timing issue but so does president pump have tssure of the midterms on his shoulders. is that the reason the president hasn't actually red d the trigger and fi mueller or fired rosenstein? because he is hearing from his own party that it wld be a political disaster for the gop if it actually went over the line? they're ok with his tweets to a point? >> that may be part of it.

i think he has -- he does heed i the warningwould be a political disaster for him personally. i think he is less conrned, frankly, about the fortunes of other politicians. he is mostly concerned about himself. and even with the midtermshat we've heard from our reporting is he is concerned with republicans losing the hoae and s only to the extent that it may impede his agenda, o his ability get things done. or his ability t not be buried in investigations by a democratic congress. soy 's -- so he is concerned primarily i think with his own room to maneuver, but he has heard from a lot of people, and i think it's true, that firing mueller would be a red line that aot of republicans especially in the senate wou actually get up and do something about. now, they haven't yet and they've had plenty of oprtrtunities. rothey certainly have not yet. inside the white house, peter, quick, is john key who just announced on monday he'll stay through 2020, we'll see if thath happens, b said he will.

is he the one pulling the president back from going after rosenstein or mueller? >> i think actually mueller is right about this. he has crossed every line the would have ents respected when it comes to this kind of thing, the independence of the law enforceme apparatus. that is one line he has stayed on the -- on this sides of. he d 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 trial which began at a federal courthouse in alexandra, virginia this week. paul manafort the former trump mpaign chairman and long-time lobbyist is facing tax andau ba charges. his international wire transfers are being scrutinized by prosecutors. paula has been in the courtroom all week where they don't allow meras or computers, just dnotebooks. ol school. where is the prosecution going right now with this? paula: their theor of the case is manafort made tens of millions of dollars lobbying o behalf of ukrainian officials but instead of ving his paycheck sent to one of his six

or seven homes they went to offshore accounts and the prosecutors allege he got that ney into the u.s. by laundering it through luxury purchases, expensive cars, homes, and the infamous ostrich coat. and that's their theory of the case. that is how he was trying to avoid tax reportingre irements. so they've put on the stand vendors and asked coem, is it on for someone to pay for their ostrich coat through a wrire transfer from cyprus? of course the answer is no. then they put on h accountants who talked about how they didn't know about the offshore accounts. robert: we're learning a lot about paul manafort and his ut financess this really about getting manafort to flip andalk about president trump, talk about the trumpcampaign? andrea: i'm not so sure because he has been resilienting -- in rerefusing having been locond up and through the indignities of the trial itself. i think this has a russia i underton that what they are hoping to prove is that he was completely in debt by 2016,

late 2015, after the ukrainian, russ n-backed leader had gon into exile in russia, he was out of monday ifment they were broke. he wasnuing this lavish lifestyle. he was in hock yet he volunteered his services to donald trump. he had allhese russian connections and offshore banks and he was not being paid. how is heustaining that and why was he sustaining that? nd that is sort of the odor of russia that permeates this trial as well. robert: is he going tbe pardoned? if you read a little bit into the president's tweets this week he' certainly showing some sympathy for m manafort. >> he does. certainly it is possible paul manafort is counting on a pardon and that is why he is standing strong not flipping and not offering anything to the special counsel if he has anything to offer. the flip side is i'm not sure whether the pardon actually gets presint trump out of hock if there is something there to be worried about because if you give a pardon to aul manafort and paul probably

paula probahiy knows better than i do. i am not a lawyer. if you pardon manafort he has no ability to refuse to tertify. then ro mueller can put him on the stand and say you now have to testify because you've oubeen pardoned and can't claim the fifth amendment if you don't face any criminal liability. have to tell us about donald trump. that could be backfire on the ouesident. robert: molly,e been writing cover stories for "time" on democrats this year. why aren't theyringing up russia and paul manafort more? molly: they do in the apcontext ofol hill. democrats have obviously been the most outspoken in the oversight rule, parti mark werner in the senate, adam schiff in the house. they're onks television net w all the time talking about this. 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. ic repus feel that it doesn't matter to their constituents, therefore they are nomotivated to speak about it, positively or negatively i suppose. you don't hear them defendingot

trump a on this score. they're just avoiding it. for democrats, there is a feeling that i think it is two things. number one, it feels like a far away issue, not a kitchen table matter, not something that affects the lives of tple they're campaigning in frontof number two, it so permeates the news that they don't have to talk about it. if there are voters who care about the threat to american democracy, the threat oou russian adversary, all of the cesruptive influ that are coming out of this case, they're hearing about it on cable news all the time. democrats who run campaigns feel that what voters ight not be hearing about is any kind of positive or policy message that mocrats might have to offer. that's what is struggling to break through and what they want to be talking about on the campaign trail. robert: gog back to the courtroom, paul, as peter said we are ghad to have you, a lawy as well as a reporter here at the table. paula, when you are sitting in the courtrm and watching manafort, looking at the

evidence, you're also watching mueller's investigators. a a lot ist stake for them. the judge, t.s. ellis in this caseeas raised s questions. is mueller really in his lane with his mandate? what ist stake for mueller right now? paula: this is ultimately a referendum on the special counsel investigation. if he is convicted that certainly bolsters the special counsel's case. people say all right. this is what they were up to. w the building this very specific accounting case and it turned out that a jury who looks like a jury that pays aeir taxes convicted him. if there isn acquittal or even a partial acquittal, that will bolster the presidehi and allies who want to argue, look. this is politically motivated. he was investigated before and wasn't charged because there wasn't enough evidence. he was prosecuted this time for political reasons. there is a lot at stake here for the special counsel team. robert: he is fighting a public etr. he's q fighting a public war with the president. the president is mounting a war against mueller with all of his tweets and words but where does mueller go from here? is ijust in the courtroom in alexandria where he is waging his battle? andrea: a the next case course would be in district

court here in d.c. where we are. mueller from all reports is ksolutely zeroed in and trying to, younow, ignore all of this noise. but the president has pecially the last week been really ramping up that tweet that you quoted on wednesday, in fact, was the most hostile and aggressive. it is not true, of course, sessionsould because he is recused, actually fire mueller, but it was a very threatening tweet indeed. so there are a number of things that could be at play. this could be the result of these behind-the-scenes negotiations. it could be the result of the manafort attorneys sharing aformation that has been now shared with them the defense needs to have access to. and that could be really frightening him that it's closing in. robert: peter, the president keeps saying at rally after rally, tampa, pennsylvania, this has nothing to do with me speaking about paul manafort. peter: yet he keeps bringing it

up. if it has nothing to do with him why is he talking about it? we shouldn't let iutgo wit commenting that his comments on an ongoing trial are another line other presidents would never have crossed. the few times a president evernt made a com on an existing court case they got blasted for ey 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 kes you in on it m wonder about that. it doesn't directlyelate on m but he seems tongue it does. robert: we'll leave it there. thank u, everybody, for joining us. our conversation will continue online as ever on the washington week extra. we will talkt abe president and the press. you can find that later tonight at pbs.org/washington week. i'm robert costa. thanks for joining us.

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>> where am i n oh, god knows. in the middle of nowhere, i guess. [music playing] >> we're at desert x. >> desert x. >> desert x. ha ha ha! [music playing] >> yeah, i heard a little bit about des from the locals. >> i just saw it in the "l.a. times," and i thought he would like it. from irvine he