N. Koran Foreign Minister Accuses Trump or Declaring War; Obama Warned Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg about Fake News; Jared Kushner Used Private Server; NFL Stars Defy Trump with Anthem Protests.
BLITZER: Breaking news right now. North Korea's foreign minister says President Trump has declared war on Pyongyang by tweeting over the weekend that North Korean leaders wouldn't be around much longer if they continued their rhetoric. U.S. military officials are now responding. Let's go to our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr. Barbara, what are you learning about this dramatic escalation in the rhetoric?</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: One of the key things the North Korean said, Wolf, is this mounted, as far as they were concerned, to a declaration of war by the United States. The State Department rapidly pushing back, saying there is no declaration of war on North Korea by the Trump administration. The Pentagon also taking the opportunity to, one more time, trying to impress upon the North Koreans, if they can, that there are options for dealing with them and their weapons program. The Pentagon chief spokesman, Colonel Robert Manning, saying, and I quote, "The military will take all options to make sure that we safeguard our allies, our partners, and our homeland, so that if North Korea does not stop their provocative actions, we will make sure we provide options to the president to deal with North Korea." Again, sending that message that there are options the U.S. military can take if the North Korea continue down this path and threatens the U.S. and its allies -- Wolf?</s>BLITZER: A dramatic escalation in the rhetoric. Thank you, Barbara Starr, at the Pentagon. Other news we're following, we're now learning that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was warned about the danger of fake news and its role in the 2016 presidential race. That warning came from no other than then-President Barack Obama. A source confirms a "Washington Post" report that Zuckerberg and Obama had a discussion last fall about Facebook and fake news. Zuckerberg, apparently, shrugged off the then-president's warning. Let's bring in our panel to discuss this and more. CNN chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, is with us, our CNN political analyst, Margaret Talev is with us. She's a senior White House correspondent for "Bloomberg News," and Rachel Bade, congressional reporter for "Politico." Gloria, what do you make of the initial reaction from the Facebook owner?</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: I think when the president of the United States goes out of his way to warn you about Russian infiltration into your organization, you ought to pay attention to it. And I think what you see Zuckerberg doing now is realizing that he should have paid more attention to it at the time, and so they're sort of playing catch-up. But what else would inspire an outgoing president to talk to a CEO like this unless it were really, really serious?</s>BLITZER: And as you know, Margaret, the House and Senate investigators, they're saying the 3,000 or so Facebook ads sold by a Russian-linked -- bought by a Russian-linked account may just be the tip of the iceberg, that there potentially were a lot more that we don't know enough about yet, and that there are serious ramifications going down.</s>MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. I know I'm still struck even though this is all news how under the radar President Obama tried to stay under the election season probably because he didn't want to look like he was trying to intervene on Hillary Clinton's behalf. That was a mistake. And President Trump and his team now are faced with kind of a different, but a similar set of problems which is the president does not want to legitimize criticism or doubts about his election. But this is a major problem, and not just in terms of the private messaging and policy, wo, but in terms of the public face the president puts on this. So far, he's been more than understated and almost shrugging it off and this is a pivot point for the president to decide what he want his public message is today.</s>BLITZER: Rachel, I think you agree that from President Obama on down, including the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, they just assumed she was going to win, and why create this huge uproar and this huge issue if he were to more dramatically, for example, talk about Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.</s>RACHEL BADE, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: It was certainly political calculation at that point in time. I think this whole Facebook phenomenon we're seeing with the Russian ads is with the broader fall from grace, which was always put on a pedestal in Washington. You have the Facebook ads on Russia, fake news, et cetera. And you have conservative accusing them of suppressing conservative voices and opinions. And you have investigators on the Hill going after the tech industry about child sex trafficking. For a long time, I would say Washington had a light touch with the tech industry and now we're seeing that change. And the Facebook fake news will rev that up.</s>BLITZER: Another sensitive thing, Gloria, involving the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the president, all of a sudden, we are learning that he was using a private e-mail account to send some Trump administration business to some colleagues and associates, this after the uproar involving Hillary Clinton's private e-mail.</s>BORGER: I would have to say oops to that, as his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, points out these are 100 e-mails and none of them involve classified information which is the key, I know, we're all laughing. None of it involved classified information which was the whole thing for the Hillary Clinton brouhaha. So I think that they have to be careful. This is the president who is leading rallies of lock her up because of her private e-mail server. Nobody is accusing Jared Kushner of using a private e-mail server. Nobody is accusing him of sending classified, mails. His lawyer says he was sending mostly clips and he was responding to people who e-mailed him on his g-mail account, but when you run a campaign that is based on "lock her up" about private e-mails, you open yourself to the charges of hypocrisy, I would say, at the very least and they understand that.</s>BLITZER: Getting to the other very sensitive story, an issue that's unfolding right now, the president's decision Friday night at that rally in Alabama, speak out about NFL players who are kneeling during the national anthem and then continue it all through the weekend, including today, and continuing to tweet about it. Why is he doing this?</s>TALEV: I think we'll hear a ton of questions about this at the briefing coming up shortly. Look, it may have seemed like the right message for that audience and kind of a Friday night lights crowd and it's always been the president's instinct to double down and it may be more strategic a few days out of this, it's obvious from the White House team to the policy folks that had has become this cloud that's obscured everything else. The debate on taxes and healthcare, if that's not by design then they have an opportunity now to pull back, but it is, you know, across the board has been the divisive issue across racial groups, across sports teams and turning the president's own political allies away from him.</s>BLITZER: Because some are suggesting there may be a political logic here and he wants to change the subject from defeat on health care and maybe his candidate in Alabama will lose, so he's trying to change the subject. You've heard that suggestion.</s>BADE: Obviously, we've heard rumors on that right now. I can tell you most of the Republicans on the Hill, yes, they're bracing themselves to fail this week and they probably don't want their noses rubbed in that at this point in time, but this is supposed to be a big week on tax reform and the president is supposed to go out and campaign for it and I can tell you from talking to Republicans on the Hill, a lot of them are banging their heads on the wall right now that the headlines are looking at this and they 100 percent blame Trump for this. I had a Republican source say to me a couple of hours ago, before this weekend there were just a few players doing this and most of these headlines had sort of faded. Trump came out attacking predominantly black players, right, and just a couple of weeks after Charlottesville, and now you have the culture war taking over the front pages. And that's not what we want to talk about right now.</s>BORGER: This is how Donald Trump thrives. He thrives on division. He's not a president interested in uniting the country unless he's reading from teleprompter. This is someone who was in Alabama giving a speech and knew exactly what he was saying to that audience. He's somebody who viscerally feels the audience in front of him. And what he's done, instead of uniting the country, is he's created another culture war, as you say. And maybe, in the end, as Lebron James was saying earlier that this starts the conversation and that people can actually continue it in a more civil way.</s>BLITZER: All right, guys. Thank you very, very much, Gloria, Margaret and Rachel. Moments from now, the White House will face reporters in the briefing room, the first time since the president's attacks on NFL players. Will White House officials double down? Stand by.