[King:] Remind you, we're standing by. That's just outside the West Wing at the White House. You see the marine at the door. The podium set up there for Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. He's on his way back to the White House from Capitol Hill. He's just given question and answer session with the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. We are told he will make a rare public statement. We're going to keep our eye right there as we continue the conversation here about related issues. Forget that ironclad conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community or the certainty voice by every leading member of Congress. The new White House communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci disclosed just yesterday to CNN's Jake Tapper that he has a secret source. All those hacks and other election meddling, well, this big source says, it was too amateur to have been orchestrated by the Kremlin.
[Anthony Scaramucci, White House Communications Director:] Somebody said to me yesterday, I won't tell you who, that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those, those e-mails, you would have never seen it. You would have never had any evidence of them. Meaning that they're super confidence in their deception skills in hacking.
[King:] Wow. Oh, never mind.
[Scaramucci:] How about it was the president, Jake?
[Jake Tapper, Cnn Anchor:] OK, it's the
[Scaramucci:] I talked to him yesterday. He called me from Air Force One and he basically said to me, hey, you know, this is maybe they did it, maybe they didn't do it.
[King:] Today is Mr. Scaramucci's first full day so maybe we can help. These guys run the big U.S. intelligence agencies and the first two hand-picked political appointees by the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
[Mike Pompeo, Cia Director:] I am confident that the Russians meddled in this election as is the entire intelligence community.
[Dan Coats, Director Of National Intelligence:] There is no descent and I stated that publicly. And I stated that to the president.
[Adm. Mike Rogers, National Security Agency Director:] No doubt at all and I stand behind the intelligence. The intelligence community assessment that we produced in January.
[King:] Why?
[Perry Bacon, Fivethirtyeight:] I think Anthony
[King:] I mean, just, why? Look, I understand, he has an audience of one especially in these early days. I'm not going to be contrarian and say maybe he's going to use this platform, maybe this early appearances to impress the president. I'm out there fighting for you Mr. President,
[Laura Meckler, The Wall Street Journal:] Well,
[Michael Bender, The Wall Street Journal:] And Anthony Scaramucci is definitely confident in his own abilities. And you're right John, we'll give him some time to see if that plays out and that can affect this White House. The fact is he's a brand new to government, coming in from business, and he's going to have the same problems that Kushner and that Donald Trump has seen as well here. You know, he's made his mark. He's made his sort of first mandate here to get rid of the leakers. You saw on the Jake Tapper show, he just blurted out what he and the president talked about on Air Force One. To say nothing of what we saw all day long on Sunday of the mixed messages coming from his shop, including him. I mean, he was asked about the Russia sanctions bill, say the president wasn't ready to sign it. Almost the same time Sarah Sanders was just saying that the White House favors it. You know that and there are several examples of this throughout the day.
[King:] And that I was going to get to that early in program and the chaos on Capitol Hill took time away from us. That's important though. There was as whether you know, you could say, Anthony Scaramucci not fully up to speed yet. He said he wasn't sure, he would have to talk to the president. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president will sign a very important bill. He may have no choice in the sense that Congress is going to pass a sanctions bill this week. Looks like overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate, veto approved majorities in the House and the Senate. The president could have picked this fight. It appears, we'll see if the story changes. Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggesting he will sign it. On that issue of leaks, the president just complained repeatedly about leaks and a lot of times the Team Trump has suggested they come from holdovers or they come from people in that so-called deep state. People out in the agencies. A lot of leaks come from people who work for the president. Anthony Scaramucci seems to understand that. Listen to this about day one on the job today.
[John Dickerson, Face The Nation:] What happens to leakers on your watch?
[Scaramucci:] They're going to get fired. We're as strong as our weakest leak. So if you guys want to keep leaking, why don't you guys all get together and make a decision as a team that you're going to stop leaking. But if you're going to keep leaking, I'm going to fire everybody. It's just very binary.
[King:] That is his right and it's one of the reason that president brought him up. But again, we are six months and a week into this administration. Yes, they've done some things through executive power. Yes, the economy is going at a pretty good pace but no ObamaCare repeal and replace. Tax reform is nowhere, at least sitting at the starting line. Infrastructure, and you still have an administration that appears to be trying to figure out how to manage itself. [Off-mic]
[Mj Lee, Cnn National Politics Reporter:] One, I'm curious to know whether Anthony Scaramucci spoke with the president on full record or on background because he certainly give away the source. Look you know, he spent the weekend, you know, walking back some of his earlier criticism of the president from during the campaign. And he did that because he clearly is now working for the president. But I think he's about to find out that that awkwardness is going to be nothing compared to how impossible this job is to be a spokesperson for the president. The president is constantly off message. He's constantly veering from one thing to another and sometimes even erratic and, you know, going back and forth in what he wants, and what he's expressing. So what he has faced this weekend in trying to explain his earlier criticism of the president is not going to be anything. And I think the Jeff Sessions thing was a perfect example that as the president said today that the attorney general is beleaguered. Remember, a couple of days ago, Sarah Huckabee Sanders went out there and told the press, look, the president clearly has confidence in the A.G. These two things do not go hand in hand.
[Bacon:] I'm not sure if Scaramucci was lying or clueless, but the idea that leaks are from
[Meckler:] You know, one thing that President Trump and President Obama have in common, not a lot in common. One thing they have in common when things weren't going well, blaming the communications. That's the problem. As how we're talking about is the leak. It's the messaging. As opposed to the actual policy itself, or actually in the case of
[Bacon:] Lack of policy.
[Meckler:] Trump's lack of policy or the congressional investigation. I mean, this is not a communications problem primarily.
[King:] And consistency in the sense that the president candidate Trump then President Trump, President-elect Trump
[Jay Sekulow, President Trump's Personal Attorney:] We have not and continued to not have conversations with the president of the United States regarding pardons. Pardons have not been discussed and pardons are not on the table.
[Scaramucci:] I'm in the Oval Office of the president last week, we're talking about that. He says he brought that up, he said, but he doesn't have to be pardoned. There's nobody around him that has to be pardoned.
[King:] Depends on your definition of "we."
[Bacon:] It looked like
[King:] But one of the things that was troubling and I don't think you can put the idea that he considered the president, the president told him still, maybe when it comes to the issue of Russia meddling. If you work for the president of the United States you want to help him through that. You don't want to enable that because look at every again, every intelligence agency, every leading member of Congress, people appointed by President Trump who have access to this intelligence believe it to be true. The other was in his debut performance at the White House last Friday, he was asked, does he agree with the president that the president would have won the popular vote if there were for 3 million to 5 million undocumented in this country illegally voting?
[Unidentified Male:] 3 million people voted illegally and
[Scaramucci:] OK. So, if the president says it, OK, let me do more research. My guess is that there's probably some level of truth to that.
[King:] I mean, if you say 3 million to 5 million and you can find a couple thousands, there's some level of truth to that. But again, why?
[Bender:] Yes, this is the he's speaking from the White House here. This is the podium. He's speaking for the White House, for the president here. And it's going to come back here quickly that this is not, you know, this sort of the sort of P.R. that Anthony is used to and he's going to have to he's responsible for what he says here. And if the issues at the White House, leaking is one of them. Among but a bigger one I believe is credibility and Anthony, I'm not sure he did much to sort of solve that this weekend.
[King:] We'll give him some time to get settled. This is his first full day at the White House. We'll see if things change going forward. Again, we're showing you that live picture just outside the West Wing because Jared Kushner due to make a statement after his return from Capitol Hill. Key Q&A with the Senate Intelligence Committee about the Russian election meddling. We'll bring you that as soon as that happens. And, when we come back, Democrats hitting the reset button, rolling out what they call a better deal for America. Their plan for winning back crucial blue collar worlers who voted for Donald Trump.