White House Working on Having Two Classified Briefings; Trump Firmly Believes People Spied His Campaign; James Comey Firing Back; Mike Pompeo Contradicts President Trump.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: We also extended an offer to House Speaker Paul Ryan to join us for a town hall. We hope he accepts our investigation. Thank you for being with us. "CNN TONIGHT" starts right now.</s>DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. An important and informative town hall with Nancy Pelosi tonight. But I want to go to the big picture now for you. Take a moment to do that. And this is really important. Our country is in the middle of an extreme crises, a crises that threatens our foundation, a crises that threatens the values we all hold dear, a crises created to blind us to the truth. Indeed, to destroy the very existence of the sheer truth in this country. The president of the United States is lying to us over and over and over and over again. We've all seen it with our very own eyes and we heard it with our own ears. He relies on our airwaves to play the lies to you and uses the airwaves of other networks to amplify those lies and pile more and more upon them. He uses Twitter to recklessly tweet them out to you, to all of us, telegraphing his every thought including to those who mean this country harm, undermining our nation's traditions and norms in real- time. But, what we've seen and heard from the president in the past five days may be the biggest lie of all. Repeatedly and with no facts to back him up, making the outrageous claim that the so-called deep state spied on his campaign, he did it again today.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When they look at the documents, I think people are going to see a lot of bad things happen. I hope it's not so, because if it is there's never been anything like it in the history of our country. I hope, I mean, if you look at Clapper, he sort of admitted that they had spies in the campaign yesterday inadvertently. But, I hope it's not true but it looks like it is.</s>LEMON: It's not true. It's a lie. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence did not -- did not in any way admit to the false charges, spies in the Trump campaign. In fact, he said the opposite. I want you to listen to what he told Jake Tapper today.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Did the intelligence community spy on President Trump and his campaign?</s>JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER UNITED STATES DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: No, we did not. That is a distortion of what I said. In fact, I had an aversion of the use of the term and I thought I made that clear. And the important thing is here what was this all about. What it was about was trying to determine what the Russians were doing. Were they trying to gain access, infiltrate a political campaign. Didn't matter which campaign. It had nothing to do with spying on the campaign per se, it was about the Russians which is what we all should be concerned about to include President Trump.</s>LEMON: And then there is the president telling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Listen to what he said today when asked if there was a so-called deep state at the State Department.</s>REP. TED LIEU (D), CALIFORNIA: Do you believe there's a so-called criminal deep state at the State Department?</s>MIKE POMPEO, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: I haven't seen comments from the president, I don't believe there's a deep state at the State Department.</s>LEMON: And yet, President Trump doubles down on his baseless claims of spies and a deep state. This is not just an angry president popping off, this is a deliberate and coordinated effort to save his presidency. To cast doubt on the Russian investigation by repeating a lie. Repeating it every chance he gets. And that repetition is a key part of the strategy here. Because if you hear him say the same thing over and over and over it gets into your head. You may even start to wonder if there's some truth to it. And that's exactly what the president and his allies want. To put that question in the back of your mind. It is a strategy he's used since he first stormed into the national political stage with his utterly false and racist birther claims that President Barack Obama was not born in this country.</s>TRUMP: I want him to show his birth certificate. There's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like.</s>LEMON: That was a lie. A lie he told for years. A lie he reportedly still clings to today but it served Trump's purpose, he rose to prominence on it. Do you think he regrets it in any way? I doubt it. What lesson do you think he learned from it? I wonder. And you may wonder. You may have been wondering through all of this why doesn't his own party stand up against this blatant disregard for the truth. It's telling that few Republicans who are speaking out against the president are leaving Congress. Like Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. In his Harvard Law School commencement address today here is what he said. This is a quote, "Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works." "I do not think that the founders could have anticipated that the beauty of their invention might someday founder on the rocks of reality television and that the Congress would be such willing accomplices to this calamity." Very strong words. But this is not just about talk, this is about facts. Facts do matter, the truth matters, and the truth is under daily assault from the president of the United States and that is a crises and that is the truth. We're going to begin though with some breaking news tonight. The White House now saying they are working on having two meetings, two classified briefings tomorrow. One, the White House Intel Chairman Devin with White House -- with the Intel Chairman Devin Nunes -- excuse me-- the oversight chairman, Trey Gowdy and DOJ officials, the gang of eight in the next couple of days. I want to get now to the folks who are here. John Dean, Max Boot, and Charlie Dent. Thank you so much for joining us. Charlie, I'm going to start with you, the breaking news tonight, we're learning the White House is working on this bipartisan gang of eight, this briefing before Memorial Day, initially we heard it was going to be after. This is a separate meeting from the former colleagues Trey Gowdy and Devin Nunes than the one that they are attending tomorrow. Why not just have one briefing for everyone?</s>REP. CHARLIE DENT (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, Don I would certainly have one briefing for everyone. I was chair of the House ethics committee. It operates in the similar way to the intelligence committee and everything is done rather secretly and quietly. And I'll tell you one thing. I never would have met with witnesses, conducted any interviews or done anything of substance on sensitive information without the minority members or at least the ranking member present with me. You should always have to work together in these types of matters, otherwise the other side will question the integrity of the investigation. So I think it's a mistake to have a partisan only meeting. Everybody should be brought in.</s>LEMON: So, everybody wants to be on the same page when it comes to this intelligence. But I mean, you have the president consistently putting out false information. The truth is going to survive. I'm wondering if it's going to survive this presidency, what do you think about this, Max?</s>MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, unfortunately, I think that Donald Trump strategy is being all too effective. I mean, as you completely rightly said, and I think I commend you for calling him out, Don. I think more journalist need to do that. But nevertheless, his strategy is working with the Republican base. I mean, if you look at the polls the numbers are pretty shocking. CNN just had a poll showing that only 17 percent of Republicans have confidence in Bob Mueller's investigation. And 71 percent, 71 percent of Republicans think that Donald Trump is telling the truth about Russia, even though he has been caught in lie after lie as you've pointed out. And so this strategy of trying to run down the special counsel, much in the way that the O.J. Simpson defense team tried to run down very successfully the prosecutors in that case, unfortunately, what I see it is it's working for Donald Trump. This is an unethical strategy, it's a threat to our democracy, but Donald Trump doesn't care about that, all that he cares about his political survival and he is helping to ensure his political survivor by convincing the Republican base that he is in fact, the victim of this imaginary deep state plot.</s>LEMON: OK. So, but on that again, everyone wants to be on the same page when it comes to this intelligence. Why not have one meeting, a bipartisan meeting instead of having two meetings back to back?</s>BOOT: This is not a -- this is not an impartial inquiry, Don. This is a partisan hit job designed to acquire information that will help the president to defame the investigators who are looking into his own campaign. That's what -- that's what Devin Nunes is all about. I mean, he has destroyed the reputation of the House Intelligence Committee. He has continued to destroy the House intelligence committee reputation his own reputation by acting as essentially a partisan henchman for Donald Trump instead of upholding his duties as an independent a member of Congress sworn to oversee the intelligence community.</s>LEMON: John Dean, is this just to save face to say well, we try to make it bipartisan even though you don't have the two groups meeting in the same room?</s>JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You mean the consent subsequent meeting?</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>DEAN: That's what it appears to be, that they got pressured into having that. I think Max has just nailed it, he's out to do this to have a private meeting with the sort of his co-conspirators on how to defend themselves and getting the help from the people in Congress who are sort of leading the fight. You know, what's interesting though, I think that there's a limit to how far these people can go on Capitol Hill. Legislative immunity has a limit. And if you start interfering with witnesses or disrupting the process in some way, these people could be charged with obstruction of justice. There is, they can't just push this too far. And this is going to play later, if this is ever tried the president will hear about his behavior and these kinds of meetings.</s>LEMON: Yes. So, John, let's -- I want to talk again about sort of the gas lighting that's going on and what I said in the opening especially about--</s>BOOT: That's the right word.</s>LEMON: Yes. You heard the president destroy Clapper's words. But, I mean, it has a cost. Here's more from Clapper then we'll talk.</s>TAPPER: What do you make when they suggest that you committed a crime of some sort?</s>CLAPPER: Well, I take umbrage of that. I didn't commit a crime. I was trying to explain my understanding of what this informant was doing. It wasn't spying on the campaign, you know, I take exception to it. And I don't particularly want to dignify it by talking about it too much.</s>LEMON: Wow, that was a great answer. I mean, this president, he lives, John, and breaths in conspiracies and distorting the truth. And you watch that and you realize that he's attacking people whose served this country all their lives and he's attacking the broader institutions as well. To what end?</s>DEAN: Well, I don't know what end. Clapper's got a book out there now, he may trying to be discredit it. I happen to share editors with Mr. Clapper, I don't know him personally, but I know the wonderful reports I have from my editor of what a fine man this was to work with, how candid and open he was as he was pulling together the story of a book he hadn't plan to write. And he wrote it only because of the way this presidency was won.</s>LEMON: Yes. The president is also still attacking James Comey, watch this.</s>TRUMP: I think James Comey has got a lot of problems. We're not undercutting, we're cleaning everything up. This was a terrible situation. What we're doing is we're cleaning everything up. It's so important, what I'm doing is a service to this country. And I did a great service to this country by firing James Comey.</s>LEMON: Charlie, he says he's cleaning things but undoubtedly he's making a bigger mess and putting his own interest above the country's.</s>DENT: I have to say I agree with you. And I'll tell you what. Look, he had the right to fire James Comey but when he fired James Comey that's what got him a special prosecutor on his back. That was a mistake. And I just want to say something as a political matter from my Republican colleagues, in the House especially, I got to tell you, you know, they need to exercise serious oversight. And if they didn't get that message in the election in western Pennsylvania, where the Republican candidate says he was going to be Trump's wing man. He was Trump before Trump. In the district where the president won by 20 points and voters out there wanted somebody to be a little bit of a check on the president in a safe Trump district. So I keep telling my colleagues they have to be serious about their article 1 powers not only when there's a Democratic president but when there's a Republican president. And we have to act that way, otherwise we can end up in the minority.</s>LEMON: Yes, go ahead.</s>BOOT: Really quickly, Don, I mean, the thing that jumps out at me from hearing this tirade from President Trump against the so-called criminal deep state, he doesn't seem to have any awareness that he is actually the head of the state, that he is the president, that all of these people report for him, that he is tearing down the FBI, he is tearing down the Department of Justice. He is supposed to be the person who is their boss and he doesn't seem to be any -- he doesn't care about the cost of defending himself which is diminishing public confidence in law enforcement which is going to make their job much tougher. He is making this country less safe by getting people to believe that the FBI is part of this nefarious conspiracy. They're not going to cooperate with the FBI in the future and this is, you know, a pretty clear violation I would say of his oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution.</s>LEMON: The deep state is him and the people who are--</s>BOOT: He is.</s>LEMON: -- right.</s>BOOT: And the conspiracy is really him and Nunes and Sean Hannity and all these people who are out there pushing this crazy conspiracy theory to defend Donald Trump.</s>LEMON: I want to keep you guys. We're going to continue to talk with the breaking news, is that the Justice Department says that there are going to be two classified briefings tomorrow. There was only going to be one, remember with only Republicans. The second is going to be with a gang of eight. The first one is going to include the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein the FBI Director Christopher Wray, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, Nunes and Gowdy along with the additional FBI and DOJ are going to be briefers and staff. And the second one would be Kelly, Rod Rosenstein, Wray, Coats, and members of the gang of eight, Gowdy and FBI and the justice staff members. We'll continue one and we'll talk about that. Everyone stick with me. We're learning more tonight about exactly what kind of questions as well that Robert Mueller's team will ask Jared Kushner. And those questions don't sound one bit like a witch hunt as the president consistently claimed.