[Kellyanne Conway, Counselor To President Trump:] I was just in Tennessee last Thursday again on the opioid crisis. This is the scourge of our times. This is no state has been spared. No demographic group untouched. You want to come along sometime and report on it? You want to go listen to the people?
[Chris Cuomo, Cnn Anchor:] We have a documentary coming out this fall about the opioid crisis
[Cuomo:] Manchester, New Hampshire, where the president was, the firefighters there still hoping for help that was promised during the campaign.
[Conway:] So you know what? So you know what? The opioid you want to talk about Russia. I want to talk about the opioid crisis. We talk about it on this show. I have a documentary coming out this fall. I want you to talk about the women's empowerment initiatives that Ivanka Trump is leading. I want you to talk about ISIS in retreat. I want you to talk about the 10 bilateral meetings that the president had on this foreign trip and the three pull-asides. I mean there's so much because what about the speech in Poland that tells them you are survivors. We share your spirit, your love of freedom, your love of personal responsibility, your love of this is just such a beautiful speech where the President of the United States appealed to people in Poland. We will stand with you. And then went to the G20. Here, for a couple of hours, practically a couple of days. He will go back to Paris. There's so many things to cover. Please connect America with the information they need. You're in a great position to tell veterans they've got help. They've got new hotlines. They have new ways to access care. You can tell people about the jobs that are being created, the fact that we
[Cuomo:] We do.
[Conway:] define every type of work.
[Cuomo:] We do. And I let you make your pitch to the American people. I'm happy you did. The opportunity is always here.
[Conway:] Tell your panel
[Cuomo:] The opportunity is always here. Hold on. Don't worry about the panel.
[Conway:] six versus one anti-Trump panel we're sorry we cut into their time.
[Cuomo:] Tell the American people something else while you're here, that they shouldn't believe all of the White House and the surrogates and your alt-right friends that want to destroy the responsible media. Tell them that they shouldn't listen to that stuff, that the media matters and that they should judge stories on their face and that they shouldn't think that there's some type of agenda out to get the president on the behalf
[Conway:] I know you're trying to go viral here so let me just do this
[Cuomo:] I'm trying to go viral?
[Conway:] watching this in your pajamas or writing about us
[Cuomo:] But I'm just saying that matters, too because you're saying I have a great opportunity.
[Conway:] respect the First Amendment.
[Cuomo:] But you compromise my ability to reach people with information
[Conway:] No, I don't compromise your ability.
[Cuomo:] when you say whatever you don't like is fake. That matters, too, Kellyanne. If you're going to tell the American people what to think about
[Conway:] I never used that word.
[Cuomo:] they should think that, too. Well, but many around you have.
[Conway:] Chris, I believe
[Cuomo:] You don't have to say the word without meaning the word and attacking CNN every time you don't like what they report.
[Conway:] You're doing an infomercial now.
[Cuomo:] I'm doing an infomercial? What were you doing? What were you doing, making your witness? What were you doing?
[Conway:] Oh, excuse me, excuse me. It wasn't an infomercial. It was actually telling people information they should have about jobs and apprenticeships and health care
[Cuomo:] And that's relevant information also. The media matters. We shouldn't disrespect each other. We should give each other the benefit of the doubt. First of all, it's my show. This is what I do. I talk through the television. And if it's not me, then it's Alisyn talking on the television. That's the show. But listen, I think we've spent enough time on this stuff today.
[Conway:] You asked me about the media. First Amendment, we, of course, believe and respect the First Amendment. We believe the press has a great role in this country. You've got to treat this guy more fairly. You've got to treat him more openly and honestly. The snarky looks, the furrowed brows, the rolling of the eyes from so many people on your panels and you know it. You've made a business decision to be anti-Trump. OK, the country
[Cuomo:] And you guys have also made a decision. You've made a decision to be antagonistic toward the media, to lump us all together, to rally your followers to think that we're bad people.
[Conway:] That's not true.
[Cuomo:] And attack us online and talk about our families and come and try and jump us and try to embarrass us. Look, it comes out from the White House all the time. I'm saying it all matters. That's all. It all matters. Everyone can do better. That's all.
[Conway:] You don't want to have said you don't want to have said that we rally people to attack. OK, you don't want to have said that. I don't want this to be about me. I know you like to say the word "I" a lot. I'm a 247 Secret Service protectee, not because it's fun or not because they flipped a coin.
[Cuomo:] And you know how I feel about that. And you know how I feel about that as your friend. And you know how I feel about that as your friend.
[Conway:] privately
[Cuomo:] You know publicly also. I do nothing but show respect to you and I give you lots of time on the show. Yes, I do think that everybody can do better. I agree. I agree.
[Conway:] But, look, this with a free press comes a fair press and a fully responsible press. And the rush to judgment, the fact that you go with one source on things and then have to retract it
[Cuomo:] That is not how we do things, by the way. First of all, whatever CNN has done wrong, it has owned
[Conway:] I know.
[Cuomo:] in a way that is a symbol for accountability to this country, by the way. It would be nice if everybody who is wrong handled it the way CNN did. I was very proud of what this organization did. I know a lot of other news organizations and a lot of political people wouldn't have done it.
[Conway:] Think about what happened. It's the rush to judgment, it's the rush to be negative. Think about why it happened. That's all you need to do.
[Cuomo:] All I know is how it was owned and how it was handled, how it was owned and how it was handled is a model for accountability. Everybody should handle
[Conway:] Be more fair. Why aren't your panels more balanced? Why are there sometimes no
[Cuomo:] I think are plenty balanced. On this show they're mostly journalists. All right, we got "Washington Examiner." We got everybody from all over the place.
[Conway:] Let me repeat my question then.
[Cuomo:] Yes.
[Conway:] They have to be more balanced. You need somebody who's reflecting the
[Cuomo:] If you want flattery there's another channel that can give you that. We try and keep it straight, we go with both sides and we test power. Kellyanne, I got to go. We have got to get to a health care we have to get to a health care debate. You are welcome whenever you want.
[Conway:] Health care reform is coming.
[Cuomo:] Thank you for making time.
[Conway:] Take care.
[Cuomo:] You were awfully quiet.
[Alisyn Camerota, Cnn Anchor:] I went to work out. I don't often have time to have work out, but I just did now.
[Cuomo:] But, listen, you know what, hopefully a good conversation for you guys to hear. It was actually not that unlike conversations that we have off camera.
[Camerota:] It was fascinating. It was fascinating. I mean Kellyanne states her case quite plainly the way she sees it and, you know, obviously, you tackled it as best as anybody ever could and so I think we just see
[Cuomo:] But the points are all real. And they are echoed out there. But, look, I think the the headline, you know and this won't be the headline, but it should, is, there's no question that this has to be a dynamic of people trying to do it better because I don't think this is sustainable. I don't think that this
[Camerota:] The overheated vitriol?
[Cuomo:] This hostility
[Camerota:] Ys.
[Cuomo:] And not so much look, Kellyanne and I have known each other literally a very a very long time.
[Camerota:] No, that wasn't overheated.
[Cuomo:] But this idea that the media, if they're doing things that are critical of the president is bad, that's bad. That is dangerous and it's not helpful to the president. And I think that you've got to be fair to the president. The president has to be fair to you. Both of them may sometimes fall short, but it's got to change.
[Camerota:] Yes. Let's discuss it with our balanced panel. We have CNN's senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, as balanced as they come, CNN political analyst David Drucker and associate editor and columnist for Real Clear Politics, A.B. Stoddard. David, I don't know where to begin.
[David Drucker, Cnn Political Analyst:] Me neither.
[Camerota:] What what did you hear that you'd like to talk about?
[Drucker:] All of it, but let's hone in on a couple of, I think, important things here. I don't even know if they all go together. But but I think that, as a matter of U.S. foreign policy, Kellyanne Conway did comment on how this White House views Russia and its ability to work with Vladimir Putin. And its it's confusing because the president's national security team, General Mattis, General McMaster, Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations, seemed to recognize Vladimir Putin for what he is, a U.S. adversary that you cannot trust. And a lot of the actions that the administration has been taking that they don't talk about have recognized Putin for what he is and work to counter his influence in Europe and the Middle East. But the president and his leadership here, his rhetoric is so important. And we saw that reflected in how Kellyanne Conway talked about the president's meeting with Vladimir Putin does not seem to recognize that Vladimir Putin is an adversary that cannot be trusted. And it appears, possibly, that the president is about to try his own Russian reset. And and I mention that because she brought up that ridiculous Staples button that Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state to try and symbolize the reset.
[Cuomo:] Right.
[Drucker:] And, if so, it means that the president doesn't recognize the lessons that Barack Obama, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican, should have learned from dealing with Putin. That, I think, is one key thing to come out of the interview. The carping about the media and the need to be fair, look, I will just say this, everybody has opinions about the media. I know a lot of Americans aren't always happy with what we do. The whole point of having a free media is really the freedom to be unfair. And if you don't like it, you go to another source and there are many sources. The point isn't to be the point is to be accurate and the point is to be fair, but the point is also for the judgment on that to not come from one central place, particularly the people in power that we're reporting on.
[Cuomo:] Right. All right, look, I mean you have to give Kellyanne the benefit of making a good point with that Russian reset. It didn't work and
[Camerota:] But aren't they doing a Russian reset right now, just without a big red button?
[Cuomo:] Right, but I think her point is in general that, look, it didn't work before.
[Camerota:] Right, but they're trying it now.
[Cuomo:] It's it's yes, it's good if you're going to try and work with somebody. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. It was that choosing cyber security was an odd thing given the inimical nature that Russia has with the United States on that issue.
[Camerota:] Yes, but I think I I get I hear you, but I guess my point about being confused by what Kellyanne said is that they're trying a Russian reset. Every administration wants a Russian reset and then decides that maybe it won't work.
[Cuomo:] There's nothing wrong with a reset. It's that the last one didn't work and she was suggesting this one is working better. That remains to be seen.
[Camerota:] Yes.
[Cuomo:] But the big story of the morning, A.B., we also heard about. Kellyanne was arguing that because the meeting amounted to nothing again, amounted to nothing in the to the reckoning of Donald Jr., and his credibility is an issue, therefore the meeting doesn't matter. But that's not true, I would submit, because it is about the solicitation by this attorney with connections. It is about his acceptance of that solicitation on the basis of potential negative information about Hillary Clinton. That's why it's relevant to the investigation, not what fruit came out of the meeting. Your take?
[A.b. Stoddard, Associate Editor & Columnist, Real Clear Politics:] Right. And you argued that pretty well, that it was the it was the intent of an operative for the Kremlin to get a meeting and to try to interfere by promising some damaging information about Hillary Clinton and, you know, Donald Jr. accepted that pretext for the meeting, as he says, and accepted the meeting. And actually Kellyanne did not have a good argument or defense of that. She just tried to say, like, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus did it. It was a nothing-burger. That since nothing came out of the meeting, it's meaningless. And as you said, the entire point is that the Russians could have made associates of the Trump family or campaign unwitting participants in some sort of collusion that the Russians had planned and were attempting. And so because she couldn't make a good defense of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting, she did what I understand, and she does so well because I, too, have known Kellyanne a long time and she is as articulate and unflappable as they come. And she and she has the frustration that many people who have worked for presidents before President Trump have had, which is they don't think their good news get out and so they believe that the free press is not being fair because they only cover the corners that the administrations are cutting, the untruths that presidents are telling, the things they're trying to cover up and, you know, potential scandals. And so that was true of Obama. He felt that the press was out to get him. He went after the press very hard. And so, you know, it's not something new that she's sitting here on NEW DAY trying to use it as a platform to talk about the positive things he's done because that's a frustration that they that they hold. But she also just could not make an explanation for your argument, which is why Robert Mueller and the investigators are looking are going to look into this. It's because it is evidence of how aggressive the Russians were at trying to penetrate the Trump campaign.
[Camerota:] OK, Ron, free choice, whatever you would like to discuss from our entire morning.
[Ron Brownstein, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Well, you know, it certainly that was that conversation kind of blurred the line at points between interview and therapy session about the relationship between the media and the Trump administration and Chris still hasn't had a glass of water. It's pretty impressive. Look, every administration, as A.B. says, wants to work the refs. And we heard a lot of that from Kellyanne in the in the first half hour. But there's another piece of that, which I think is actually even more revealing, where, yes, she wanted to work the refs and she said we're not the media is not covering the good news the administration is producing. But mostly what she was doing was bashing the media in a way meant to rally the president's base and his core supporters, basically arguing that he's under siege from all of these hostile forces in the media. And that, to me, is indicative of a much larger truth about this presidency. If you if you look at everything they are doing, both in style and substance, the agenda on health care, the agenda on taxes, even the way they are doing infrastructure, this is not designed to be a presidency that is a 50- plus one presidency. There is no vision here about expanding the base that he came in with. There is really nothing here about kind of growing who supports them. It is about rallying and mobilizing and stoking what was 46 percent of the electorate last November and in polling is probably somewhere now closer to 40 percent. It's a very kind of targeted and consistent approach, you know, that reflects in everything from the way they talk about the media to the decisions to try to do health care and taxes without even having perfunctory talks with Democrats on The Hill. And I think the way you heard Kellyanne talk about the media in the first half hour here is indicative of a presidency that is more about mobilization than persuasion and is really giving up on the idea of speaking to a broader country I think in almost everything they do.
[Cuomo:] Also, you know, Kellyanne kept trying to use the "in a courtroom" context. I don't know why she would use that. It's not a good metaphor for the administration. She should want to keep this as far away from any courtroom scenario as possible. But I only have one piece of proof, nobody would give Kellyanne Conway the amount of time that we just did. We didn't have to. She didn't hijack the show. We had plenty of other things that we are prepared and produced to do on this show. We gave her the time because we care about the conversation. And I know a lot of people on the left don't want Kellyanne Conway to have that kind of time. They say, no, no, don't give voice to it. That's what we do. You're not here to curry favor. You're not here to curry rancor from the White House. We had the discussion. That's the proof. She got the time to make the case. That's what CNN does.
[Camerota:] A.B., Ron, David, thank you very much for the perspective and being with us this morning.
[Drucker:] Thank you.
[Camerota:] So, let's talk about health care. Congress is back to work today. But senators, of course, are bitterly divided over the health care overhaul. Even Republicans cannot agree. So, what's next?