[Dianne Gallagher, Cnn Correspondent:] But because much of this could be important to the special counsel investigation, it's hard to predict just how far he will go. One thing we do know, though, it doesn't appear the president is going to stand in his way.
[Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Deputy White House Press Secretary:] President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey's scheduled testimony.
[Gallagher:] And the senators are ready to grill James Comey on Thursday.
[Question:] What's the big question that you have for the FBI director?
[Sen. Joe Manchin , West Virginia:] The question that's being asked by West Virginians is, if you knew or if you thought there was obstruction of justice, why didn't you act on it?
[Gallagher:] Looking for clarification on a memo written by Comey in which sources say the former FBI director recounts that Trump allegedly urged him to go easy on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, while a source with knowledge of Comey's thinking tells CNN Comey was quote "disturbed by his interactions with the president," but he felt that he had the situation under control. Everyone is waiting to see if Comey reached the same conclusion himself.
[Sen. Susan Collins , Maine:] The tone, the exact words that were spoken and the context are so important. And that is what we lack right now. And we can only get that by talking to those directly involved.
[Gallagher:] In the meantime, the White House isn't commenting on the Russia investigation itself, now referring questions to outside counsel, but the Trump team certainly has no problem talking about Comey.
[Kellyanne Conway, Trump Senior Adviser:] People should also look at the Rod Rosenstein memo again to see what the problem was in the department with FBI Director Jim Comey. Rosenstein clearly points out that the integrity and the morale were down. And he clearly points out said that Comey had tried to usurp the power of the attorney general.
[Gallagher:] Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will likely be asked about the man he recommended be fired on Wednesday, when he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss wiretapping authority. Now, Rosenstein told the Associated Press Friday that if he became the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Rosenstein would recuse himself from oversight of Mueller. Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the election is expansive and could look at the firing of Comey. Senator Mark Warner telling Jake Tapper on CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" that, while Comey may seem like the headliner, there's a full docket of key players to be questioned this week about their interactions with the president.
[Sen. Mark Warner , Virginia:] One of the questions we will have, not only for Director Comey on Thursday, but on Wednesday for Director of National Intelligence Coats and NSA, National Security NSA Director Admiral Rogers, I'm going to want to ask them, because there have been reports that the president also talked to both of them in terms of asking them to downplay the Russian investigation.
[Gallagher:] And that's not all. Tomorrow is the deadline for former NSA Michael Flynn to start turning over the documents and records in response to a set of subpoenas from the committee, so quite the to-do list for Congress this weekend in regards to the Russia probe Jake.
[Tapper:] All right, Dianne Gallagher, thank you so much. Lots to talk about with our panel today. Let me start with you, Alice Stewart. This morning, Kellyanne Conway pointing to Comey having to quote "scurry" to correct his testimony last time having to do with Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner, part of the strategy, it seems, to try to discredit, to undermine Comey's credibility.
[Alice Stewart, Cnn Political Commentator:] I think that's a mistake, because while Republicans and Democrats alike can disagree on how Comey has handled the situation, no one is really questioning his honesty or his character and integrity. And that's what's going to see him through this. I think it was very wise on the part of the White House to say that they are not going to try and exercise executive privilege with this case, because that makes it appear as though they have something to hide. So, I think it's good. Let Comey testify and get the facts out there, get the full information, and let's get this Russia probe behind the administration and get them back on offense driving their message.
[Tapper:] How aggressive do you think we're going to hear criticisms of Comey from the White House and its allies?
[Margaret Talev, Bloomberg News:] I do think you can see it's starting already and it seems that the calculation that they have made is, it would be a bad move strategically to try to stop this, but we can try to undercut it and talking about things that he's done in the past, revisiting some of these issues, the Democratic opposition to him and such and forth. So, even before we see him testify, I think there will be a questioning of kind of his past and his background.
[Tapper:] And we will hear that a lot, Karen. We're going to hear a lot about how Democrats lambasted Comey all throughout the summer and fall of 2016.
[Karen Tumulty, "the Washington Post":] Yes. I suspect the Democrats are going to be pretty quiet here, and they are going to let Jim Comey just spin it out as he intends to. And don't forget that he is a very, very practiced, very experienced at testifying in front of Congress. We have seen him up on the Hill over and over again. He always gets his message through, and he's a very effective witness.
[Tapper:] One of the things, I suspect a lot of the Russia testimony will not be shared in open hearing. I think it will be probably for the closed hearing, but the obstruction of justice questions, I think will probably we will hear a lot about that, the meetings that Comey had with President Trump, whether or not in retrospect he feels that maybe it was obstruction of justice, even if at the time he did not.
[Stewart:] Well, it's kind of hard to question whether or not those conversations were had, given that we know that Donald Trump has mentioned them and even referred to them in writing, talking about I appreciate you telling me three times I'm not under investigation. So, unfortunately, again, this is another situation where it's a self- inflicted wound on the part of the president. But we will see. We will see what Comey has to say, but more than anything I think the more information on this probe we can get out there, the better.
[Tapper:] Go ahead.
[Tumulty:] Well, I think though that what they are going to come after him with is they're going to say, well, if you felt this way at the time, they why didn't you say something at the time? Why didn't you resign at the time? But judging from what we have heard from Comey's allies, his version is going to be, I thought I had brushed it back, and certainly all of that changed when he got fired.
[Tapper:] Yes. It seems from a conversation I had with a Comey friend, it seems that they think that the act of firing him is part of the obstruction in itself, not just the conversations. But I want to change the subject a bit, speaking of self-inflicted wounds, which Alice just brought up. Let's talk about the president's teams which none other than George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband and a respected conservative lawyer in town, pointed out in a tweet it undermines the president's own legal argument before the U.S. Supreme Court by calling it a ban, by saying that the watered-down version is politically correct, et cetera.
[Talev:] George Conway's tweet, I'm assuming you felt this way, too, was incredibly surprising to a lot of us who follow this sort of thing. And he's since come back and expressed his ongoing support for the president, but you see it in everything from the president's treatment of the mayor of London to all of the Comey-related issues and now to the travel ban as well. I got an unsolicited e-mail from a group that does like online betting or whatever today talking about what the odds are already for whether the president tweets on Thursday and whether he uses a word like fake or Comey or whatever. So, this has become an entire like separate cottage industry. Is President Trump going to step on his own message via Twitter? This is something we will all be watching, whether it deals with the travel ban on the path to the Supreme Court or what we hear and see from the president on Thursday outside of official events.
[Tapper:] It's not surprising that George Conway would reaffirm his support for the president. But that's the whole point of why it's important. George Conway supports the president. He wants him to succeed. And it's almost like an act of intervention for him to send out a tweet like that.
[Tumulty:] Right, and George Conway was up for a very big job in the Justice Department at one point. He's a skilled lawyer, and, by the way, he's not exactly a frequent tweeter either.
[Tapper:] No.
[Tumulty:] So the fact that he would go to the very medium that the president uses to voice it...
[Talev:] Beg him to stop.
[Tumulty:] And, again, "The Washington Post" had a story today saying that this you know, these tweets could really undercut the president's legal arguments, and George Conway retweeted that had with "Good analysis."
[Stewart:] George's comment is one that you would expect to hear in a meeting, an attorney-client privileged confidential meeting, but people realize the best way to communicate with Donald Trump is on Twitter, unfortunately.
[Tapper:] And this is one of the issues that I tried to get into at the top of the show, which is there are a lot of people who love admire and want President Trump to succeed, and they are so frustrated by his inability to control his impulses to send out tweets about every negative emotion he has at that very moment.
[Talev:] The problem is, to some extent, is that the tweets are not consistent. In one of them, he will have a tweet explaining what really happened with Jim Comey, and then, you know, weeks later, it will be a tweet that completely undercuts the previous tweet or what he sent the administration out to say. Travel ban is an obvious example of that. It's a ban. It's not a ban. It's a ban again. It's not just going public with things that maybe would be better left unsaid, but it's the inconsistency about those messages that's created some of the legal, you know, concerns about either building a case for something affirmatively or bolstering against an accusation that you have done something.
[Stewart:] And I think more than anything, what this does, it takes away from their ability to drive their message. When they do have legislative accomplishments today, they had great announcements with regard to electronic, with regard to the VA and also with air traffic controls. Those are great messages. Drive that.
[Tapper:] Right. It's infrastructure week.
[Stewart:] Certainly, and reinforce that on Twitter. Unfortunately, again, he takes the communications shop off-message.
[Tapper:] And the other thing, Karen, the great piece by Susan Glasser in "Politico" magazine this week about how President Trump surprised members of his own national security staff by going before NATO and not affirming his belief in Article 5 of NATO, which is an attack on one is an attack on all. The European allies wanted to hear that from him, because he had said things to the contrary. And you have this report in Politico suggesting top people thought he was going to do it and were surprised that they didn't.
[Tumulty:] It was in the speech, according to Susan Glasser, a really terrific reporter at Politico. And he did not say that part of the speech. This not only this contradicts actually what they were saying in real time during the trip as well, and I think it really undercuts the credibility of the president's national security team, which really has been seen as kind of the single strongest part of the administration. It's a very important story.
[Tapper:] People really respect General Mattis, H.R. McMaster. Rex Tillerson gets a lot of plaudits. And for them, not only to be disobeyed, but maybe even in some way out of the loop on this decision is a big deal.
[Talev:] Yes. At the time, I was on this nine-day trip. And at the time that his speech occurred, that NATO speech, we all noticed it. I remember, we were like an audible gasp that the speech is over and we're all in this filing center saying, he didn't say he didn't actually reaffirm Article 5, did he? Nobody heard it. Nobody could hear it. Everybody calling the NSC for clarification, what happened? And the messaging at the time from the communications shop at the White House was, no, absolutely, that was an affirmation of Article 5. So, to see...
[Tapper:] Right, his presence.
[Talev:] Yes, his presence there.
[Tapper:] No, that's what they were actually saying.
[Stewart:] They didn't deny it. They didn't...
[Talev:] And the sort of brief messaging like after the 2001 attacks, you know, Article 5 was invoked.
[Tapper:] Right.
[Talev:] But there was the obvious not the rest of it you would expect which is, and, you know, you can always count on the U.S. to be there for you. That's the part that never happened, right? And at the time, it was like don't make such a mountain out of a molehill. It's not a big deal. But maybe it was.
[Tapper:] Yes. Yes. Tell our allies in Europe. Alice Stewart, Margaret Talev, Karen Tumulty, thank you so much, one and all. Be sure to tune in Thursday CNN for special coverage of James Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. It all starts at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. Coming up, amid alleged ties to terrorism, five Arab nations cut ties with the Qatar, home to one of the largest concentrations of American military personnel in the entire Middle East what this diplomatic rift might mean in the fight against ISIS. And then terrorists can't recruit if people can't see the propaganda. The computer scientist who claims he's invented a system to wipe extremist content from social media, but do social media companies want to hear it?