we have cnn political analyst, david druker, and david sanger, jeffrey toobin. great to have all of you. i'll start with you, david drurk, because you and i are here together in washington. let's start with this. is the thinking of president trump's legal taeam that if anyone on mueller's team has ever, say, given money to a democratic candidate, that they therefore cannot be unbiased and impartial and that would sthomew taint the investigation? >> that's the message the president is trying to send. in some ways, this is reminiscent of the special prosecutor that looked into bill clinton. where there was an all-out war from the white house trying to discredit ken starr, so any result of his investigation would be tainted. so what you're seeing here from this president, with the difference, that the president can actually -- although it would be complicated and politically explosive, could actually fire mueller, because there's no longer a special prosecutor law protecting mueller, but what the president is trying to do, like he tries to do with all of his politic

let's bring back michael smerconish, david sanger and jeffrey toobin. david, you have an article in "the new york times" this morning. this is a pivotal moment for president trump in techls of the sanctions against russia and a dilemma for him. if he goes along with congress and signs the legislation to sanction russia, that must mean he agrees with the intel chiefs that, in fact, they meddled and, of course, it scuttles his attempt to reset this relationship with putin. if he does not sign what congress wants him to sign in 2er78s of sanctions, that has all sorts of political consequences. what's going to happen here? >> alisyn, i think he'll sign it. i think he'll sign it because if he, in this political atmosphere vetoed a bill that appeared to be part of an effort by the white house to somehow protect the russians from additional sanctions, you can imagine the outcry, and the veto would probably be overridden. this vote in the senate, 98-2. the house has nat taken this up yet. the second thing i think you need to remember about this is this is a sig

david sanger, cnn political and national security analyst and heather conley, former u.s. deputy assistant secretary of state. steve, i want to start with you here. one of the things we know about vladimir putin, at least we've been told, is he responds to strength. he responds to confidence. if that is, in fact, the case, should donald trump, the president of the united states, bring up the idea of russian election meddling? >> i believe he should. i believe he should be as strong as possible because i think the biggest mistake and the thing that concerns me is going in with a very western perspective. it sounds sensible to say let's find areas we can agree on. areas we can cooperate on. and the problem is that's not the way the russians see it. what needs to be done is, yes, the election meddle, needs to be raised. the annexation of another country needs to be raised. the supporting of basically a civil war in the eastern part of ukraine, the shooting down of civilian airliners, all those things need to be discussed and a line drawn. we need further conversation really a

let's bring back in our panel, ron brownstein, david sanger. take a listen to what his defense secretary, james mattis, just said about north korea. take a listen. >> i cannot believe this capability in itself brix us closer to war, because the president has been very clear and the secretary of state has been very clear that we are leading with diplomatic and economic efforts. >> so karoon, unless the president means very severe additional sanctions on banks, for example, pretty severe things doesn't seem to jive with what mattis is saying. how do you see it? >> it's a clarification that is important that the secretary of defense made, because you saw these rockets firing in the air, and clearly, that's supposed to send a message to north korea about the force we could exert if we wanted to hold them back in. but would that make north korea ramp up faster and produce a response that would force us more towards a difficult situation. mattis is trying to be abunda abundantly clear that's not what's happening. it's also notable that there has been

and something will have to be done about it. >> david sanger, those comments seem unformulated. it's different from the advance notes we got from the white house, that they are working allies. there are strategies in place for levers and sanctions that can be used. you didn't hear that in that statement. what's your take? >> well, first of all, there's a lack of discipline in how he talks about these things. things that happen with presidents in their first year. but you would any on north korea, the issue that he's had to deal with most intently over the past six months and come way up a learning curve, he would be more specific. and we expect he will be in the speech. let's face it, chris. if an increase in sanctions was going to change the behavior of north korea, it would have happened over the last 20 years. every administration, democratic and republican we had, have responded to each new incremental north korean advance, by saying we will impose the most severe sanctions ever. there's son-in-lonly so much yo sanction a country, that's been under every sanction you can ima

cnn chief international correspondent christiane amanpour, david sanger and senior fellow in foreign policy at the brookings institution, michael o hanlan. christiane amanpour, what did you hear? >> well, look, i take a slightly different view than ambassador burns. i think he did give a fulsome praise and confirmation of the great post war liberal democratic order in europe. but as ambassador burns said, he didn't actually -- he did actually say he was going to defend it, but it was short on details. but still, i think it's the most friendly europe speech that the president has given ever since he became a candidate. so we will wait to see how it goes down in europe. i think about russia he said the sort of pat things that people expect. we're going to tell him to stop interfering in ukraine and other places. we're going to tell him to stop supporting hostile regimes, he said like syria and also iran. but he did place valencia this is important because nearly a decade before going down, an electrician in poland started solidarity and with john paul ii started the collapse of the sov

david sanger, nice to see you. let's talk about this., you know, experts are saying it's likely a two-stage icbm. it was the highest altitude ever reached by any north korean missile, so in your assessment, does this officially put the u.s. on notice? >> it pretty much does. this is exactly the pace we thought they'd be on, brooke, but it's just moving faster than i think most american intelligence officials suspected that it would. the fact that it landed only 500 miles or so from where it took off is not the meaningful statistic here. it's, as you indicated, that it went to such incredible height, about 1,700 miles in just a very sharp parabola, and if you flatten that out, you'd get to something that could reach alaska. couldn't reach hawaii. couldn't reach los angeles. but clearly, given the kind of progress they've made, that day may not be all that far away. >> that day may not be all that far away because the real fear is having a missile with this kind of range but then also miniaturize a nuclear warhead and attach it. you wrote

david sanger. chief international correspondent, christiane amanpour. and ambassador to nato, nicholas burns. we'll have other people come in as we need them. we have a big bank of experts for you. christiane, when i say context, he's getting ready to meet with president putin. in the press conference, he belittles the u.s. intelligence assessment and says we don't know if it was russia. maybe it was russia. could have been other people. that's right before he meets with putin. he's standing next to duet duda was -- he attacks a free press and the united states. conte contextually, what does it mean in the united states? >> it doesn't look good. the president usually goes abroad and touts all of the things that america has made special, freedom of the press, market economy. the idea of the sanctity borders. and the obvious, 100% commitment to article 5 of nato, which he hasn't done and has sent a shudder through allies. we'll see if he defines and redefines those words in his speeches coming up. but you know, putin is a very shre shrewd, tactical player

, bloomberg news white house reporter shannon, and cnn political and national security analyst david sanger. david, i want to start with you a piece in "the new york times" this morning, what can trump do about north korea? what's the answer to that? >> well, alisyn, his options are not good, and he has discovered over the past six months, i think in a pretty abrupt, some might say brutal way, that it's a lot easier to make ultimatums about what the north koreans will not do than to actually stop them. he's got four major steps he could take. he could try the incre mental increase in sanctions that secretary tillerson referred to in that statement last night, in which the united states admitted that this was, in fact, an ibcm. no one i know believes that's likely to work. the north koreans aren't especially sensitive to this. they're not going to give up their missile and nuclear programs which they view key to their survival in return for easing some sanctions, or at least that's the view of almost everybody who's been through this before from the clinton through bush administrations and i

we have cnn political and national security analyst david sanger. bloomberg news white house correspondent margaret tall l e live. if you read this 11-page statement from jared kushner in the first person, in his own words, do you read it as someone who was confronting a steep learning curve, somewhat over his head in his new role as senior adviser, had a lot on his plate, so a lot of what he says were casual meetings with russian officials slip through the cracks and that's all there is there. >> certainly, alisyn, the way he's trying to portray himself in that 11-page document is somebody who was completely new to foreign affairs, couldn't remember after he had met him the name of sergey kislyak, the long-time russian ambassador to the united states who suggested at one point -- kushner himself said he suggested if they needed to set up a secure communications line to the russians that maybe they should go to the russian embassy in washington and use their phone lines to go do that. i've never been in the foreign service. our fellow panelist has,

you know, david sanger, the question is, again, that has this white house lost control of its messaging? what's the message they're sending here? >> well, remember, this was supposed to be the week for made in america. and the week for the health care bill. and -- remember those, john? and here we are, you know, once again, discussing russia, discussing the president's strategy and so forth. look, if this is a brushback pitch in some ways to mueller and his team, it's an understandable tactic, as alisyn pointed out. bill clinton used it. i covered the clinton administration. i was a white house correspondent for the times at that time. and he certainly attempted this. but the justice department has very clear, strict guidelines about what does and does not constitute a conflict of interest. and even political donations to candidates is not listed among those. that doesn't mean if they were excessive that they might not qualify. but it strikes me, it's going to be a very uphill battle to make the argument that mr. bipartisan, robert mueller, the former fbi director, the decorated war her

we talk to david sanger of the new york times. >> the united states goat out to build a nuclear weapon, it is to highly precise specificses. these guys do not plan to be in a nuclear exchange. this missile is for one thing. it is to guarantee that kim jungun stays in office. so they're not actually thinking operationally about how they might do this. and launch missiles on the united states am they know that is the end of their regime. it is the end of everything. if this entire weapons program is all about survival for kim junkun. >> we conclude this evening by looking at the conflict between qatar and some sunni arab states and also the growing power of iran. we talk to michael morell, former deputy director of the cia and the ambassador from the united arab emirates to the united states. >> we are ready to sit down tomorrow and negotiate the 13 demands. if the qataris are willing to say that they are ready to negotiate. so far they haven't been able to d a solution has to be a diplomatic solution. but the willingness to find a solution lies not in rhiyad, certainly not in washton, i

. >> let me switch to the other crisis, david sanger, "new york times," said iran deal, the president is looking for a way to rip it up. a lot of us didn't like the deal to begin with. in "sea power" you talk about how it's become a cold war link. how dangerous is that flashpoint, how dangerous is that iran deal given what we've seen unfold in north korea under the 1994 agreement? >> indeed. the iran deal i think was a bad deal, as it was negotiated, but i think, hugh, simply ripping it up at this point would be counterproductive because our allies would fall out of that equation enormously. we would end upstanding alone and steaming into a potential hot war in that region. we've had a hot war in iraq, a hot war in afghanistan. i don't think we need a new one with iran. so what should we do? we ought to be using our sunni allies, our israeli allies and building a real coalition to stand against this shia, persian, iranian aggression which is driving into damascus, driving into lebanon, driving into yemen. >> iran wants to build a naval base in lebanon. >> indeed they do, and they prob

david sanger of "the new york times" says time is running out. >> when the united states goes out toar weapon, it's to highly precise specifications. these guys do not plan to be in the nuclear exchange. this missile is for one thing-- it's to guarantee that kim jong-un stays in office. so they're not actually thinking operationally about how they might do this and launch missiles on the united states. they know that's the end of their reseem. >> rose: end of everything. >> it's the end of everything. this entire weapons program is all about survival for kim jong-un. he looks out at the landscape and what does he see? he sees somebody like gaddafi in libya, who had a nascent nuclear program, no place close to what the north koreans or even iranians had and gave it up in 2003. and we said don't worry, give it up. we'll integrate you with the west. come on in. the integration was pretty poor. and then when his teem pooem turned against him, the united states, you're, and the arab states came in and bombed him until somebody pulled him out of a dish dich and shot him. kim jong-un looks

and david sanger, i want to go back to you, because -- all right. asha, let me ask you this question. back to the president today directly questioned his own intelligence community there on foreign soil. i mean, you are former fbi. you know, even if you question the findings, to say that as he did, publicly, and abroad, that cannot go well -- you know, just over well with the intel community, the agencies. >> it won't go well -- over well with the intel agencies. and actually, that was music to putin's ears. i mean, to have a president openly question the credibility of his own intelligence agencies, this is exactly what they want. and also what he said was not entirely accurate. he seemed to suggest that there was not unanimity among the intelligence agencies because there are 17 intelligence agencies and he hadn't heard from all of them. we have so many intelligence agencies because they all do different things. the national reconnaissance agency is not going to give a conclusion on russian meddling because they monitor satellites. they don't moni

yeah i'm going to quote david sanger of the council on foreign relations he wrote this week in the new york times that. north korea's i.c.b.m. the fourteen is a threat to u.s. interests not because. the north koreans will actually use it to launch a preemptive attack against the united states so then why is a threat to u.s. interests i think there are two reasons for that number one he says it's because now north korea has an effective form of deterrence so in the event the u.s. decides to take military action north korea actually has a way to strike back and fourteen can actually strike the heart of the u.s. pacific command that is located in hawaii and so what that means is that the united states can no longer threaten north korea with regime collapse and believe it around and that actually changes u.s. strategic calculus in the region so for that reason washington is very nervous number two if north korea's missile program becomes an example for other countries to follow in the future that actually challenges the nuclear nonproliferation regime which let's face it is essentially. gu

joining a me now is a david sanger, national security correspondent for the "the new york times." he wrote this story "experts say north korea could have a missile reach u.s. by next year." what changed? david: a couple of things have changed here in the short-term thing is what you mentioned, which is, they conducted this test. it was done and a high parabola, 1700 miles and came down. it didn't go far in distance, but anything that knows anything about missile technology knows that flattening it out isn't hard. decided not toy do that, because the reaction if you drop one of these rings off the coast of l.a. or something is going to be a lot greater than if you do this high parabola test. the test was actually more useful to them, because of what they need to figure out is can they make a warhead reenter the atmosphere and not burn up here to that is an issue that took us a lot of time in the 1980's and took -- in the 1950's and took the soviets a lot of time in the 1950's. we don't know exactly how close they are, but everyone has been whispering a long time that that four year

we have to looive it elise labott and david sanger taung for joining us. >> thank you. >> >>> coming7-year-old man arrested in connection with the disappearance of an illinois college student. the disturbing internet searches police found on his phone. you're live in the cnn newsroom. we, the entertainment-loving people, want an unlimited data plan that gives us more. we want more than just texting. more than just surfing and shopping. because sure, we want to use this to call the people we love- - like our directors. but mostly, to get the entertainment we love. maaaaark ! ! ! switch to at&t for the only unlimited plan that gives you 60 channels of live television on any screen all for $70 a month. you're in the match app. now tap on the new missed connections feature. it says i've crossed paths with kate six times this week. that is a lot of times. she's cute too! yea! how did i miss her? you didn't. match picked it up for you. check out new missed connections on match. start for free today! if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis like me, and you're talking to your rhe

national security correspondent for "the new york times," david sanger is joining us now. david, on the news manu rogers brought to us. the security is sending a letter to donald trump jr. requesting he come to testify in a public session before the committee and they were talking as early as next week. that's a big development. >> it's one you have to expect. once, you know, if you think about the sequence of events that started this, jared kushner, the president's son-in-law failed to disclose meetings he had been in. he submitted his form, updated form. it revealed this meeting. that led to the cascade of events that took the times to the e-mails which ultimately donald trump jr. revealed. here you have where it feels like it's playing catch up to the media and to a white house that keeps saying, as -- meetings with the russians and there's one more. this one, being particularly notable for one reason. what those e-mails establish, more than anything else is that the campaign was notified by an intermediary that a russian government wanted to help them and provide them i

political commentator and anchor of spectrum news erol lewis and cnn national security analyst, david sanger. great to see both of you. erol, on this topic, jay secula speaking out, he is a smart man. he's been in washington a long time. he's a smart attorney. what do you think he's doing? >> it sounded like the political discussion you are not used to hearing from a top level lawyer like him. >> they are good at being careful. >> yes, well -- i imagine that within the trump white house, within the trump bubble, you throw out, answer a question with another question. gee, it wasn't our fault, you know? maybe the obama administration should have screened her before she was allowed in the country. maybe the secret service should have screened. if it was so fraud of a meeting, why didn't the secret service check him out? it has nothing to do with the law. it has to do with common sense. they have changed the story. they have changed the rational. they have asked us to migrate from, there was no meeting to it was a meeting about orphans to we told you everything about it. collusion isn't illegal

if you read the piece with david sanger, he's saying essentially the whole nothing is backfiring on him's not getting anything out of it thus far, so i'm wondering, you know, the 2 hour, 16 minute meeting, an the chat around the dinner table, is that all out the window, with an attempt gone because of this bill? >> what's happened is donald trump has so boxed himself in on russia by refusing to even admit that they had the election by refusing to say, you know, let's leave this to a committee, i will fully couldn't, by creating this atmosphere where people are wondering, you know, why is he fighting this? he has paralyzed on russia policy. he can't be cooperative. in effect he can't do anything, so congress is running russia policy, and this bill that was passed overwhelmingly by both houses that trump had to sign, because there were enough votes, a veto-proof majority. the russians have realized we're in a very different world, whered administration for the first time really the decades is not running foreign policy. at the admiration is hamstrung, boxed in and congressional hawks are

and david sanger with a great piece today in "the new york times." f the big guess is why is russia doing this now, david? why is vladimir putin kicking out these u.s. personnel now and not last winter when barack obama, then president of the united states, first issue some of these types of sanctions? >> it's a fascinating question. you'll remember last winter he was urged by some in the incoming trump administration not to overreact. instead of throwing out diplomats, he invited the children of diplomats to come to a kremlin christmas party. so what's changed? the main thing that's changed is putin's calculus. i think he now recognizes that he is not going to get out of president trump the kind of change that mr. trump talked about during the campaign, a better relationship, not because mr. trump doesn't want it, but because congress has now taken control of this with a mix of democrats who are angry about russia's interference in the 2016 election and republicans who i think worry that president trump doesn't fully appreciate who he's dealing with

david sanger from "the new york times" here in the last hour said there are just not any good options for how we deal with north korea. how do we exert influence over russia and china when they have different scree yo political interests and goals than ours and they are still frankly testing out donald trump to see what they can get away with at some level, to see how he is going to deal with them? i think these trips do matter in that regard and to gordon's point, to start trim off with a series of tweets is, yes, very trumpian, but in some ways is the problem. if you had to isolate donald trump's biggest problem in his first 5 1/2 months in office, it's donald trump. it'ser his willingness to undermine, go against his administration's attempts both domestically and in terms of foreign policy to keep a consistent message to say this is what the strategy will be. he's are the tactics and the strategy. he undermines that at every turn. >> let's help the people out at home here, gordon. let's upset the premise. the premise is these tweets on the flippancy that the president likes to emp

listen, earlier in the week, david sanger, world class journalist, wrote a piece in "the new york timesg how john kennedy went to his first russian leader khrushchev. he was a bully, and he walked over kennedy. it was a mess. and from that, as you said earlier in the show, cakennedy said way back then we have to show khrushchev how serious we are, maybe vietnam is the place to start. trump didn't do that today. he didn't crumple in front of putin. and putin didn't bully him into a corner. there were no apparent shouts or anything like that. i think we should be, you know, when the president gets something -- does something better than expected, we should say so. but i do think what has been -- all of our focus on putin, one thing that's being overshadowed is this is the first time i've seen a president coming to a g20 meeting no longer regarded as the world leader and europe is going its own separate way. japan just signed a big trade agreement with europe. that is troubling. >> steve hall, we are going to talk much more about a global implication of everything going on at the g20 in a

discuss all of that, cnn political analyst john avlon, cnn political and national security analyst david sanger and associate editor of realclearpolitics a.b. stoddard. let's start with the palace intrigue incise the white house. there seems to be a balt between anthony scaramucci and reince priebus. on two hours scaramucci suggesting that he was reince priebus whom he believes is behind the leaks. >> this goes way beyond your typical office politics. this is vicious, paranoid and probably not fact-based. but it lays bare for at least a few hours in that tweet the enormously bad blood, paranoid, distrust at the highest levels of this white house. tone comes from the top. for this to spill into public so early into scaramucci's term is a bad sign for everybody. >> let's thicken out the record a little bit because there's a lot to unpack. first, anthony scaramucci says this was a wrong reckoning. he put reince priebus on there to show his consolidated effort to go after that. why is that scene as suspicious? there's a ton of reporting that priebus has been out to do scaramucci wrong for a while,

david sanger saying the climate decision was a strategic gift to the chinese who are egg eager to fill the void on everything from selling the rules of trade and environmental standards to financing the frain structure project to give beijing that influence. back to your calls. michelle on the republican line in maryland, good morning, michelle. caller: hi, good morning. mr. trump has taken the united states' reputation and dug a commole buried it. he has made everybody look like idiots. his leadership skills are for the billionaires. everybody on the world stage, his back billionaires, they do not understand the world. only in their -- only in the higher -- hierarchy of money, money, money, money drives this man. when he said staying fair and watch as turkey ambassador stand on the steps in our country and send his thugs out to beat on our citizens that are demonstrating against them, and he says nothing, he says nothing, he thinks it's ok for these governments to control the press, to beat up people who are against them, who demonstrate against them, because that's what he would like

ron brownstein, cnn global affairs analyst, tony blinken, and cnn national security analyst, david sanger. he is in hamburg, germany, where the g-20 is being held. tony blinken, the stakes. we know we've had the first handshake. we're getting in there today. there's a lot of muscling up in advance of this. is that the right posture for the american president in this meeting? does he want to go in there to call out vladimir putin? to flex, as he has suggested he would in the past? >> chris, i don't think he has any choice but to call him out, particularly on the election meddling. >> in a first meeting? >> in a first meeting. because this is the elephant in the room. if he doesn't do it, he's emboldening the russias to continue doing what they've already done. >> but if he calls it out, hasn't he already set himself up for failure on that. if he comes along and strong, i know what you did, i don't like that you kid it, i'm not obama, you try that again, you're going to have trouble, hasn't he set himself up for putin to say, what did i do? i didn't do anything. you have admitted yourself,

we talk to david sanger of the new york times. >> the united states goat out to build a nuclear weapon, it is to highly precise specificses. these guys do not plan to be in a nuclear exchange. this missile is for one thing. it is to guarantee that kim jungun stays in office. so they're not actually thinking operationally about how they might do this. and launch missiles on the united states am they know that is the end of their regime. it is the end of everything. if this entire weapons program is all about survival for kim junkun. >> we conclude this evening by looking at the conflict between qatar and some sunni arab states and also the growing power of iran. we talk to michael morell, former deputy direct o