[Camerota:] President Trump will get a full briefing on Hurricane Irma later this weekend. But there's a different storm brewing in on Capitol Hill. The president shocked GOP leaders by cutting a short-term deal with Democrats on the debt ceiling. CNN's Joe Johns is live at the White House with more. Hi, Joe.
[Joe Johns, Cnn Correspondent:] Hi, Alisyn. The president getting three important agenda items off of the list, very pressing agenda items including hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast. But in the process, he aligned himself with Democrats leaving the Republican leadership in the Congress shell-shocked.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] We had a great meeting with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the whole Republican leadership.
[Johns:] In a stunning move, President Trump bucking his own party, cutting a deal with Democrats to provide disaster relief funding, extend the debt ceiling, and fund the government for three months. According to a senior White House official, Republican congressional leaders cautioned the president a day earlier that his tax reform plan would have to wait, given other legislative priorities in September. But President Trump, eager for a win, struck the deal to clear the busy GOP September agenda by knocking off three major issues. House Speaker Paul Ryan blasting the proposal just hours before, pushing for a more long-term solution.
[Rep. Paul Ryan , Speaker Of The House:] I think it's ridiculous and disgraceful that they want to play politics with the debt ceiling at this moment.
[Johns:] A senior Republican source described Trump as being in "Apprentice" mode, making the deal on the spot. A second source saying he cut off Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin mid-sentence. At the height of a tense meeting, sources say, first daughter Ivanka Trump entered the Oval Office to pitch her agenda on the child tax credit, throwing the meeting off topic. Republican leaders visibly annoyed by her presence and then left to answer questions on the president's unexpected deal making.
[Sen. Mitch Mcconnell , Majority Leader:] His feeling was that we needed to come together, to not create a picture of divisiveness.
[Unidentified Male:] I will tell you that I gasped when I heard it. I think he felt like this was the best deal he could get.
[Trump:] We walked out, and everybody was happy, not too happy because you can never be too happy. But they were happy enough.
[Johns:] Seemingly also on the president's mind: opening the door to working with Democrats on a DREAMers' bill as more than a dozen blue- state attorneys general threatened to file suit on his decision to rescind DACA. Trump denying he's sending conflicting messages about his plan after tweeting that he would revisit the issue in six months.
[Trump:] No mixed signal at all. Congress, I really believe, wants to take care of this situation. Chuck and Nancy would like to see something happen, and so do I.
[Johns:] The president is planning now to return to Camp David with his entire cabinet to sit down and talk about a range of issues including tax reform, and the growing crisis in the Korean Peninsula. This comes at a time when his son, Donald Jr., is headed to Capitol Hill for a closed-door meeting to answer questions before Congress about that mysterious meeting June of 2016, last year, with the Russian lawyer Chris.
[Cuomo:] Joe, thank you. Joining us now is Senator Angus King. He is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We'll talk to you about the Russia investigation. Let me take get your take on a couple other headlines. One, the president going directly to Democrats, getting a deal on the debt ceiling and Harvey relief. Good move?
[Sen. Angus King , Maine:] Well, I think you've got to put it in a little bit of context. This wasn't going directly to Democrats. The Democrats were in the room, but so were the Republicans. It was a discussion and a negotiation. I can't read the mind of the president, but I think he wanted to clear the debts. He said, "Let's take care of these three things this the next four or five days, and then we can move on to some of the other important issues like DACA, like tax reform." And I think that was what his thinking was. And, you know, there's I think perhaps we're over-thinking this a little bit. And the president is a pragmatist. And I think in this case, he just said, "Let's make something happen here that we can clear three things and then move on." Well, then, Senator, what do you make of the Republican leadership telling, you know, reporters in abundance that they didn't like this?
[King:] Well, you know, whenever there's a deal, one side or the other isn't going to like it. I think that's that's the situation. But it enables us now to try to get these three items off the table literally, if not today, in the next two or three days, and then we can start talking about some of the other issues. There are also some bipartisan talks going on on health care. So there's plenty to do. And clearing the table on these on these three issues, at least at this moment, because of the deadlines looming we've got four or five deadlines in September. The FAA reauthorization, the Children's Health Program, the funding of the government. I mean, September 30th is a big day, and I think what the president has done has enabled us to work in a more orderly way through September and then into the fall.
[Cuomo:] All right. You bought three months on the debt ceiling. He's given you six months on DACA. What do you think of that move, giving it to Congress and saying you've got six months to save the DREAMers?
[King:] Well, you know, I think the fact that he tweeted what he did yesterday indicates that he was actually having an awfully hard time with this decision. I don't like the decision that he made. On the other hand, he has said to us, "Here is the time. You have time to work on this." He's clearly indicated that he wants to work on this. You know, Chris, there's an interesting opportunity here for him. This could be Nixon goes to China. If anyone could make a deal on comprehensive immigration reform and make it work nationally, it would be this president. And I think he's setting us up to try to get something done. Now, the question is what do we have to add to the DACA bill, to the DREAMer bill that's already pending that Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin have in order to make it work on a bipartisan basis and sell it to the president? I suspect it's going to have something to do with border security. I suspect it's not going to have something to do with a wall.
[Cuomo:] Well, but that's not what we're hearing, right? We're hearing that it may involve the wall, and that's certainly what the president would want. Senator Markey said yesterday any bill that has DACA and the wall in it is a non-starter. How do you feel about that?
[King:] Well, I think that's probably the case. I mean, the truth is...
[Cuomo:] But why, Senator? Why is the wall so important to the left, you know, that it's just a non-starter, no matter what else is in the offing?
[King:] I don't consider it important to the left or the right. And for me it's not an ideological issue. It's a practical issue. It doesn't make sense. There are ways to secure the border. In some places, a wall may make sense. We already have a wall. I've seen it, down in McAllen, Texas. There are places where you have fences. There are places where you have sensors. There are places where you have guards. Just building a 2,000-mile wall is not practical. It's expensive. And there are a lot of there are a lot better ways to achieve the same goal, which is to provide border security.
[Cuomo:] So why don't you like the decision that the president made with DACA in the initial instance to to cancel the program, if that's the way to get Congress to act?
[King:] Well, the unfortunate part is, it's thrown hundreds of thousands of people's lives into absolute chaos, fear, uncertainty. These are people who have been here literally all their lives or since they were 6 years old. They were brought here. They had no choice in the matter. They think of themselves as Americans. They're working; they're paying taxes. And it's created this enormous uncertainty. I think, you know, there are other ways that he could have handled it. But I'm not I think Congress ought to step up and deal with this. I think the pattern of the last I don't know, you could say 30 or 40 years, has been for Congress to abdicate its responsibility to the executive. And so I don't think it's a bad thing that we have to deal with it. But the uncertainty that's been created in those people's lives is really is really unfortunate and unnecessary. But I think the good news is, I sense that there's a real opportunity here and some bipartisan interest in in solving this problem.
[Cuomo:] Well, I'll tell you what. It would be political kryptonite to anybody who is on the wrong side in terms of getting this done in six months, because if these people fall into ISIS hands, you know, we all know how that process goes. I know people is saying they're not an enforcement priority now, but if you're a law and order person, you're going to be in a tough position six months from now if you don't create law to protect the DREAMers.
[King:] And that's exactly why the decision was so so hard, because it's going to put people in that in that shadow situation, which is which is just not right.
[Cuomo:] And Senator, give us an update on the status of essential items within the Russia investigation. You've got Don Jr. before Senate staffers today, obviously being questioned again about the meeting where he went to this open solicitation to get bad news about Hillary Clinton. You have news about Facebook, saying that I guess it inadvertently sold ads to sites that wound up forwarding Russian propaganda attempts against the United States. What do you make of these two headlines?
[King:] Well, they're they're both very significant, I think, and they're both representative of what there may be more to be learned. First on that meeting, we know from that meeting that Donald Trump Jr. was anxious to have that meeting, was anxious to try to get dirt on Hillary. He knew where it was coming from. That's that, in itself is disturbing. The real question is, were there meetings? Were there follow-up meetings? And was that part of the beginning of a relationship? And we're not yet ready to determine that. But that's got to be examined. On the Facebook thing, that's also a big deal, because that verifies what we had been told by the intelligence community as far back as October of 2016, and this is that the Russians were actively trying to intervene in our election by disinformation, by fake news, by planting stories, by trying to undermine people's confidence in the election and in the candidates. Here it is. I mean, we know they did it. My suspicion is that there is going to be a lot more to that story. There are two pieces. No. 1, were there more of this kind of ad buying by these by the Russians? And No. 2 and this is the question, obviously, that our committee is going to be digging into, was there some relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russians in terms of where they planted those ads, where they put them, who they were targeting? Did the Russians have their own political consultants saying, you know, do this in a certain county in Wisconsin? Or did they get that information from somewhere else? That's an important question we've got to dig into.
[Cuomo:] The president says it's a witch hunt, and there are people saying, "We haven't heard anything about the Russia investigation. They haven't come to any conclusions. It proves that there's nothing there." What do you say to critics?
[King:] Well, No. 1, it's not a witch hunt. We know that, and we know that from the unanimous opinion of the Intelligence Committee in October. We know it from their opinion again in January. We know it from voluminous data that the Russians were involved in our elections, that they were trying to defeat Hillary Clinton, help Donald Trump, that it went all the way up to Putin. I mean, that that is well- established. What isn't well-established is whether there were indeed contacts and cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The other thing we know, Chris, is that the Russians were trying to get into state election systems and registration rolls. It appears they were unsuccessful, but they're going to come back. And I think that's the point that people are missing about all this. By focusing so much on Trump and the Russians, we're missing the fact that the Russians were doing this. They've done it in the past, and they're going to keep doing it. And we've got to be prepared for it. That's what I consider our major mission in this investigation, is to prepare the American people and things like our voting systems for what will inevitably come in 2018 and 2020 and beyond.
[Cuomo:] Regardless of the involvement with the Trump campaign, these issues matter, and they're going to matter in the upcoming elections. Senator Angus King, as always, a pleasure. Thank you for being on the show.
[King:] Thanks, Chris.
[Cuomo:] Alisyn.
[Camerota:] OK, Chris. Back to Irma. The Caribbean already seeing the power of Hurricane Irma firsthand. Look at these pictures. We have a live report for you from Puerto Rico next.