[Dana Bash, Cnn Anchor:] Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Dana Bash. John King has the day off. President Trump and the first lady are about to board a plane together to go to Ohio. But they'll go their separate ways when they hit the ground to sell different parts of the Trump agenda. And if you thought the memo drama was over, think again. Tonight, the House Intelligence Committee is facing another big vote, this time it's the Democrats' memo. And Republicans are pushing back on the president's claim that the GOP memo undermines the special counsel's Republican excuse me Russian probe. But how far are Republicans willing to go to challenge Trump?
[John Brennan, Former Cia Director:] I wonder when the Republican leadership in the Congress is going to come to their senses. I had a lot of respect for Paul Ryan. I thought he was taking these matters seriously. But the things that I've heard him say and do over the past several months really question makes me question whether or not if there's going to be a removal of Rod Rosenstein, as well as Bob Mueller, what will the Republicans do? Will they allow that to happen? It cannot because, to me, that clearly would be obstruction of justice.
[Bash:] We begin this hour counting down to a vote in the House Intelligence Committee on another potentially explosive memo, this one from Democrats hoping to discredit Friday's Republican memo. Democrats say Republicans cherry-picked facts to fit a narrative, that the FBI acted in bad faith when seeking a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign official. Democrats are arguing that their memo puts the underlying evidence into better context and knocks down GOP talk of a bias-driven conspiracy at the upper levels of the FBI. Test one, likely today, a vote inside the House Intelligence Committee, making the Democrats' memo public. Test two, whether the president will sign off. And that may well be the stickiest of sticking points. And the reason is because the president insists that the Republican memo vindicates his argument that the Russia investigation is a partisan witch hunt. The only problem he has is Republicans on Capitol Hill spent the entire weekend on TV saying just the opposite. Well, here with me to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Manu Raju, "The Daily Beast's" Jackie Kucinich, John McCormack of "The Weekly Standard" and "Bloomberg's" Margaret Talev. Hi, everybody. Happy Monday. Manu
[Manu Raju, Cnn Senior Congressional Correspondent:] Yes.
[Bash:] What's your sense of give me the latest. I know you've been doing reporting all morning long on this vote impending vote.
[Raju:] Yes. We expect it probably will get approved tonight. 5:00 the House Intelligence Committee meets behind closed doors. It will be the opportunity for them to send Adam Schiff's memo, the one rebutting the Nunes memo, to the president's desk. We've been talking to Republicans all morning. We expect the Republicans to vote in favor of its release. This after last week Republicans opposed doing just that because they said they had just been presented with the Schiff memo. They needed time to review it. And they moved ahead with the Nunes memo, allowing for that to go ahead publically. Democrats, of course, complained about that saying, why not wait for the Nunes memo, to send this out at the same time as the Schiff memo, so both the country gets both sides of the argument. So after the vote tonight, the question is going to be, what does President Trump do? He'll have five days to decide whether or not to agree to its release, redact anything he may want to redact, or object to its release. And if he objects to it, then the full Republican House could vote to override him. We'll see if it gets to that point, though.
[Bash:] Wouldn't that be unbelievable. Jackie, Manu's talking, of course, about the thing they're waiting for, the president and whether he will say, OK, fine. This is something that Democrats on the committee are already expressing their concern over. Listen to Mike Quigley of Illinois and what he said.
[Mike Quigley , Illinois:] My concern isn't with what the Republicans will do at a business meeting that I'll be part of this afternoon, it's what the president will do. This is a president that we have seen would do anything to obtain power. I can't imagine why anyone would imagine that he won't do anything to retain that power. Yes, I'm concerned he won't sign off. I'm concerned that he will try to redact or change the memo.
[Bash:] What are you hearing from your sources, Jackie?
[Jackie Kucinich, Washington Bureau Chief, "the Daily Beast":] Yes, I wouldn't be I mean these are these seem to be valid fears. I mean look at what the president was doing today, he was attacking Adam Schiff, who is the Democrat on the panel, as someone who isn't telling the truth, who is saying who is saying as is leaking information classified information. So it seems like he's already setting up kind of an adversarial relationship to give himself an excuse to say, well, listen, this is classified information and he was trying to put it out there. This is not beyond the realm of possibility when you talk about this president.
[Bash:] Which, you know, so was the Republican memo based on information that was previously classified
[Kucinich:] Sure.
[Bash:] Which is why he personally had to declassify it, but maybe I'm getting to far into the facts.
[Kucinich:] Well, and I think
[Bash:] Never mind the
[Kucinich:] I think what this does, I mean take a step back from it, having both these if the other memo comes out, you do have these two opposing viewpoints, and it makes this it muddies the water and it clouds the Russia issue even further, particularly when talking about the House probe and how they can move past that. It doesn't seem like they're going to be able to.
[Bash:] So you mentioned the president on Twitter this morning. Let's look at some of what he was doing and the response that the got. Here's what the president said this morning. Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper. Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally break confidential information. Must be stopped. Then Adam Schiff had a response. Mr. President, I see you had a busy morning of executive time. Instead of tweeting false smears, the American people would appreciate if you turned off the TV and helped solve the funding crisis, protected dreamers or really anything else. Now, this is, you know, kind of the 7th grade side show that I say happens with a lot of very important things in Washington these days, but it does expose a very real question that Jackie and Manu are bringing up about what the president is going to do and whether he's going to use Adam Schiff and the partisan nature of how the Democrats are acting in some ways as an excuse not to release this memo.
[John Mccormack, Senior Writer, "the Weekly Standard":] You know, I don't know exactly what he'll do. I think that we probably will get the Democratic memo. We've got the Republican memo. What you'd really like to have is the underlying FISA application, because people on part on both sides do tend to leave certain facts out or they do mislead at times. So what you'd really like to do is, if it weren't if it wouldn't compromise sources and methods in a significant manner to actually let the American people see for themselves
[Bash:] Can you imagine if that happened? I mean already what we saw with the Republican memo, giving information about a FISA application, was unprecedented.
[Kucinich:] Right.
[Mccormack:] Well
[Bash:] Do you think that's even really possible, to get the underlying FISA application?
[Mccormack:] I think that, you know, in general, you want to protect sources and methods. And if that could be compromised, obviously you can't do that, but, I mean, we're already past such a point where I think that is necessary. Transparency is necessary that you actually get this out. I mean the Republican memo doesn't even allege wrongdoing, I don't think, because it says that, you know, the dossier was essential to getting this warrant. We don't know if that's true. But it also doesn't say whether the specific information in the dossier about Carter Page was true or not. And that's the most important question in my mind, is this information true? The fact that it comes from a partisan source raises concerns. But, again, if, you know, if the Republican National Committee dug up true facts of criminal wrongdoing among Democrats, I think that people would say it's OK to investigate as long as the information was substantiated. And we still don't know that.
[Margaret Talev, Senior White House Correspondent, "bloomberg":] This is about the court of public opinion in a really difficult midterm year. There are already, obviously, processes in place if there are real concerns inside Congress about the FISA process. And as half a dozen or so Republicans now have pointed out, certainly not a majority, but it is an interesting minority because they all have ties either to military service or to having worked in intelligence or having been prosecutors. But as they've all pointed out, this actually has no bearing at all on whether or not the Mueller investigation goes forward and how it goes forward.
[Kucinich:] Right.
[Talev:] So to a large extent, I'm not sure it makes a difference whether or not the Democratic memo is released intact or with some redactions or with the whole preface on Twitter because, really, it seems to be, at this point, about shaping the way voters perceive all of this and perhaps applying a little bit of pressure or support if President Trump decides he wants to make kind of like a hail Mary move on justice and FBI officials. But, for the most part, this is about shaping public opinion.
[Bash:] I totally agree with you, it is about shaping public opinion, but it just was really striking this weekend how the way that Republicans who were on television were at odds with how they wanted to shape public opinion with the president of the United States.
[Talev:] Absolutely.
[Bash:] And you mentioned it, that Republicans who came on television said, this has no bearing on the Mueller investigation. Let's listen to some of that.
[Jake Tapper, Cnn Anchor, "the Lead":] Do you agree that it that it vindicates Trump?
[Unidentified Male:] I think this is a separate issue.
[Chris Wallace, Fox News Anchor:] Does the GOP memo vindicate the president? Does it end the need for the special prosecutor's investigation?
[Unidentified Male:] No, it doesn't.
[George Stephanopoulos, Abc Anchor:] So you don't agree with President Trump when he says this vindicates him in the entire Russia investigation.
[Unidentified Male:] I don't. The memo has no impact on the Russia probe?
[Rep. Trey Gowdy , Intelligence Committee:] No not to me it doesn't, and I was pretty integrally involved in the drafting of it.
[Bash:] But when you have the president of the United States, who has a bigger megaphone than all of those people combined saying the opposite, even again today, does it matter?
[Raju:] I mean that's this has been the common theme throughout his presidency, him saying one thing and oftentimes his party on Capitol Hill saying the opposite. But the members are correct. I mean the what the Nunes memo does is it goes after one specific FISA warrant, one specific effort to get surveil one Trump campaign foreign policy adviser when the Russia investigation is much broader, when the obstruction probe is completely separate from how the Carter Page surveillance warrant was obtained. So it doesn't vindicate him in any way because we know the investigation is much, much broader and any fair reading of that, even if you agree with the facts of the Nunes memo, which we know have been disputed by the Democrats, if you agree with the facts, it still says that there's a lot more to this investigation.
[Kucinich:] Right.
[Bash:] And are the Democrats going to run into the same buzz saw as Republicans did, releasing a memo that is partisan, that was put together just by one party?
[Kucinich:] Sure. And we've seen this pattern, right? And they're going to dispute this is what I mean. I think it devolves. I don't think it matters what's in their memo, frankly, at this point. As Margaret said, this is about shaping public debate. I mean there could be facts in them, but partisans will look at that and dismiss them. Not that that matters. But, you know, when as things have been going back and forth in Congress, it seems like once you go down this path where it's Republicans versus Democrats, the information sort of gets lost in the shuffle.
[Talev:] But the Democrats' view has always, I think, has been that they didn't see the need to release it anyway. But if it was already going to be released and if the sensitive information was going to be considered declassified, they might as well get a crack at the same information. I'm not aware of entirely different trenches of classified information that would have to be declassified in order for the Democrats' version of this to be released. So I think like on the merits, you're looking at the same fact basis and two different memos. But the point is that the water the waters already have been muddied, as we say.
[Kucinich:] Right.
[Bash:] And as we discuss this, I just want to point out to our viewers what they're looking at on the screen. The president and the first lady departing on the South Lawn of the White House to board Marine One. They're heading to Ohio today. Certainly a very standard scene of a president and a first lady walking together. It's just not something that we've seen in a while, in a month or so, the two of them together. And we're actually looking at a live picture, that they are actually at Joint Base Andrews and the two of them are going from Marine One about to board Air Force One to go on to their to go on to their trip to Ohio. John, you were about to say something and I interrupted you.
[Mccormack:] Oh, on the on the memo, I think that one important point is that the memo itself undermines this claim from the president, that it discredits the entire Russia investigation.
[Bash:] Right.
[Mccormack:] I mean the last point is that the investigation began back in July with Papadopoulos, and we're talking about a potential allegation of FISA abuse that took place in October. So I think that's the biggest point to make on the Schiff memo.
[Bash:] OK. Everybody stand by as we watch the president and soon to be the first lady going up the stairs. Actually, let's just take a beat and wait for him to give the wave before we go to break. The president and the first lady getting on Air Force One, about to go to Ohio. The president will be making a speech to promote the tax reform legislation, now law, that the Republicans have been begging him to go out and tout. And, meanwhile, the first lady is going to go and talk to people at a children's hospital in Ohio about the opioid crisis. Up next, another month, another deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown. That's just a few days away. Stay with us.