[Stelter:] Hey, welcome back. Did something feel different about the news cycle this week? It was kind of weirdly calm, right? Maybe that's because while President Trump was on his high stakes trip in Asia, he stayed on script and his Twitter feed pretty much just promoted his trip. It was pretty calm. But then this happened. Look at these brand new 280 character tweets. This was the real Trump coming out. Shocking tweets about Kim Jong-un and other topics and, of course, his troubling comments about Russia's attempts to interfere in last year's election. Trump was asked on Air Force One if he trusts Vladimir Putin's denial of involvement and here's what he said to the press pool. There is no audio or video, but we have the transcripts. He said, every time Putin sees me, he says, I didn't do that and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. Now, before leaving Vietnam, Trump held a news conference and I don't know maybe he was trying to clean up his off the cuff remarks. Let's watch.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership.
[Stelter:] So he eventually said what he could have said originally. Let's take about it with Jeffrey Greenfield. He's back with me. And here in New York, John Avlon, the editor in chief for "The Daily Beast" and a CNN political analyst. Jeff, first, your reaction?
[Greenfield:] Well, here's what's so, I don't know, mind-boggling about this. There were a couple occasions on this trip where the press was unfair to Trump. The picture of him dumping the fish food into the pond, that was not a mistake. And he really didn't say that he thinks Japan should put more factories in the United States. It was kind of a garbled transcript. But then you have something like this which is logically inconsistent. He cannot simultaneously believe that Putin believes he didn't do anything but that in fact his agencies say they did. Unless you believe that Russia was doing this behind Putin's back. It makes no sense. And what's so confounding about trying to convey what Trump says and who he is that the very use of his language, which is to be polite confusing, sometimes makes it possible to assume the worst things about Trump and when you realize, gee, that was a mistake, you then see him doing something that says, well, yes, on the other hand, he really does say some really bizarre things. It must drive the people covering Trump on a daily basis completely crazy.
[Stelter:] John, does it drive your staff crazy?
[John Avlon, Cnn Political Analyst:] Sure. I mean, look, this is an ultra marathon we're in and you got to find exhilaration in the challenges rather than exhaustion. But we also have to stay focused on the facts. And the fact is that Donald Trump sees himself as a tough guy truth-teller in every circumstance except when it comes to Vladimir Putin. And then he will contort himself in any manner of forms just to avoid direct confrontation or questioning the man's integrity. On Veterans Day, as John McCain pointed out, you know, he made this statement. There is nothing America first about taking the word of a KGB colonel over our intelligence services, and trying to clean it up in back end and to saying, well, I sort of take our intelligence service's word, but I still believe his sincerity. It doesn't make any sense, it's contradictory to the best interests of the nation and the way Trump projects himself. So, that's why there's some rotten and
[Stelter:] Well, it doesn't make sense unless you believe I mean, let's be honest about this, John, right?
[Avlon:] Yes.
[Stelter:] What do reporters talk about behind closed doors when they are in the newsrooms? They wonder if Russia has compromising information on the president. That's what's at the root of all this speculation.
[Avlon:] Well, look, again, Trump will criticize anyone about anything on the slightest drop of a dime except Vladimir Putin, who he has refused to take the opportunity to criticize over the course of campaign and even as the president, despite the overwhelming evidence and opinion of the intelligence services that Russia meddled in our election. There is no anger about that. Instead there is anger at the investigation. There's anger at the Democrats. So, it doesn't make logical sense and it is something deeply troubling if you're taking American interest to the heart, if you're thinking really ironically about America first.
[Stelter:] Another quote from that gaggle on Air Force One that's worth showing on screen, this is another comments from the president taking questions from reporters on Air Force One. He said this artificial Democratic hit job gets in the way of trying to have better relations with Russia, and that is a shame because people will die because of it. Jeff Greenfield, these kinds of quotes, they almost sort of miss the media radar. They don't get a lot of attention when they happen, but isn't that a profoundly shocking thing for the president to say? People will die?
[Greenfield:] One of the things that actually Trump has benefited from is that on a daily if not hourly basis, there are things he says that you could never have imagined any other American president left, right, up or down of saying, and they kind of bleed into each other. And you sort of forget, oh, yes, 72 hours ago, he said this. But I think this comes down to a fundamental fact that the way the president argues is, if something is potentially harmful to me or my political interest or to my standing, it could not have happened. And therefore, my definition of reality is this whole Russia story is a Democratic plot and it's all about Hillary Clinton who, by the way, have I told you how many electoral votes I got against her. This the people who covered Trump from back decades will tell you that the way he is behaving as president is totally consistent with the way has behaved since he first became a tabloid figure in the '80s.
[Avlon:] But that's why our job is more important than ever, because in the midst of sort of reality distortion field emanating from the Oval Office, facts do matter, staying focused on what actually happens, insisting that we impose perspective, i.e., presidential history, what is normal in the case of the responsibility of the president, against the Twitter tirades and the somewhat unhinged statements. That's really important. We'll meet resistance and we'll meet fury and pushback for all sorts of partisan reason, but it's absolutely essential to not giving in to normalization.
[Stelter:] And one more challenge for the president is trying to keep up with the drip, drip, drip of Russia news. Let's put on screen just four of the dozens of headlines from this week about the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation and the congressional investigations. John, how does your newsroom at "The Daily Beast" try to keep up with the daily drip, drip, drip?
[Avlon:] Well, we try to pick our angles. We've got a great team of reporters, you know, Betsy Woodruff, Spencer Ackerman really focused on the story. We think about it strategically as we come. We push into individual leads we've got and try not to say simply have the tail wag the dog and follow the pack. Each news organization needs to have original angles it pursues and the cumulative effect is that we keep advancing the ball in this incredibly important story.
[Stelter:] Jeff, thanks for being here. John Avlon, please stick around. Up next, what we know and what we don't know about President Trump and the AT&TTime Warner deal. And most importantly, why it matters to you.