President Trump Cleaning His Mess; From Beer-Fueled Brainstorm To Life's Work Of Helping Others.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. Sources at the White House acknowledging to CNN that President Trump messed up in his interview with ABC News that he bungled his answers when he said that he would accept dirt on political opponents from foreigners. Those clips have been playing over and over for the past 48 hours with one Trump advisor saying last few days have been tough. The president tried walking back his comments today but he never out right acknowledged that it's illegal as the Federal Election Commission flat out says it is. But Trump's sides -- Trump's aides, excuse me, say that they don't believe the fallout will be significant. That his supporters likely don't care. That as White House staffers appear to be ready to throw Sarah Sanders under the bus as she's on her way out the door. She's being blamed for giving ABC access to the president. Though they admit the decision to grant the interview was ultimately the presidents. A lot to discuss tonight. Susan Glasser is here. Peter Wehner is here as well, who by the way worked in the last three Republican administrations. And Juliette Kayyem joins us. Good evening to all of you. I appreciate you being here. Very interesting news week. So, let's discuss. Susan, the big picture, OK. Your latest piece in the New Yorker helps to, helps us to do that and to understand that. And here's the headline. It says, "Forget no collusion, Trump is now pro-collusion." Is that the message after the president's stunning comments this week?</s>SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, you could say that was the message after his comments now. That was before his effort this morning on "Fox & Friends" to walk back his comments. I'm frankly confused as to where we've landed. But I found it particularly kind of comical the idea that White House sources are saying that the president bungled his answerers because he clearly said what he thinks. So, it's a classic kind of Washington gaffe of saying what you actually think and getting in trouble for it, it seems to me. You know, the president was very off the cuff and direct and sounded very much like Donald Trump, didn't he, when he said well, you know, sure, I'd listen to them and you know, I wouldn't bother to call the FBI. Of course, he did lie about the fact when he said I've never called the FBI in my life. It turned out he actually was an informant for the FBI earlier in his career. So yes, it's all very confusing, right, Don.</s>LEMON: My God.</s>GLASSER: It's Friday night. And -- can you remember it was just Monday that president had his secret deal with Mexico. Doesn't that seem like an eternity?</s>LEMON: Yes, it does. I mean, it does. And if you -- at the top of the last hour we played what he said on ABC News and juxtaposed to what he said on Fox and Friends in subsequent interviews and none of it makes sense. It's like a Saturday Night Live skit. I mean, listen, you also write this, Susan. You say "Trump is a political octopus squirting so much diversionary black ink at us that diversions is the new normal now." A political octopus?</s>GLASSER: You know, I wasn't sure if I should say squid or octopus but I wanted to say octopus because I thought that seemed more like it with all of many different tentacles. Right? Like on every given moment there's at least eight different Trump arms throwing a story at us, right? And so, I don't even know which story we're talking about half the time because it's all just sort of, one big blob.</s>LEMON: OK. So, Susan and I are going to stop pretending that we're the only people here and we'll bring in the other guest. So, Peter, listen, CNN -- a CNN source says that White House aides are frustrated with Sarah Sander over her handling of the ABC interview. Why is she being thrown under the bus when the president should be able to say no, you know, I would not accept foreign dirt. Yes, I would call the FBI. Why would they throw her under bus when it was actually him who answered the questions?</s>PETER WEHNER, FORMER ADVISER TO GEORGE W. BUSH: Because in Trump world he's never wrong. It's always somebody else's fault. You know, he said what Susan indicated which was he was revealing what's in his mind and in his heart. It was striking. I mean, when I heard the interview, I thought this is a moral narcissist. This is a person who has no objective moral standards. He's a person who believes that whatever helps him is by definition right and whatever hurts him is by definition wrong. And that's a kind of moral anarchy and it's a person who doesn't have any moral guardrails. And when you see it, you kind of stunned by it and it's hard to follow, right, from day to day and week to week what he says. But there is something consistent about him. And it is that sense that everything revolves around him and there's no outside objective sources of morality or ethics. And that's just a very, very dangerous thing. In the human life it's problematic enough. In a president, it's corrupting to a country and it can be outright dangerous.</s>LEMON: Juliette, I mean, isn't it also clear the president meant what he said the first time because he is now thanking --</s>JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes.</s>LEMON: -- the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is blocking legislation on election security. Where he is like, you know, don't fall for the Democrats' hoax or whatever. It's clear he meant what he said the first time.</s>KAYYEM: Yes, I had no doubt. And I know we know he meant what he said because the whole team had been hinting that this was where the strategy was going to go for a couple of months. Remember, we're a long way from there was no interactions with the Russians to we were talking about adoptions to well, the help we got didn't really mean anything. And now to we actually welcome the help in 2020. And you know, just to pick up on both point because I just couldn't agree more with the other panelist. I think, you know, the White House believes that there's never any consequences for anything that Trump does. If they could just sort of try to fix it and maybe put the genie back in the bottle because of the reaction. I'll tell you, two people, two groups said that we have longer memories. One is the agents and the lawyers and the FBI agents and the CIA assets who hear that know exactly where they stand in the pecking order for Donald Trump, which is he will throw them under bus. He does not want to protect the United States. The second is of course our allies and our enemies who, whatever the White House tries to spin this will know what the president meant and will react accordingly. Our allies, knowing that this is a president with of course no moral code and our enemies trying to figure out ways to assist the president in his, you know, flirtation to get bad -- to get bad information about whoever is the Democratic nominee.</s>LEMON: Yes. You know we were just talking, Juliette, you know, in the other show about -- he said well, there's no collusion. And if you are to interpret any rational person interpret the words that he has said in the interviews, it seems like he's willing to collude. This is collusion.</s>KAYYEM: Yes. And I want to be clear here. The president is actually inaccurate -- I mean, he's wrong to say that there was no collusion. Volume one of the Mueller report is rampant with evidence of collusion between this family and the campaign and the Russians. But the way that Mueller --</s>LEMON: Can we show all the heads nodding? Everyone. Wait, hold on.</s>KAYYEM: Yes.</s>LEMON: Say that again so we can --</s>KAYYEM: It is rampant with evidence of collusion. What Mueller did not come to was a criminal finding of conspiracy. But the collusion, the interactions between the Trump campaign and the Trump family and the Russians is clear. All you need to do is read volume one. You just read it and it's -- I've always said it's like, to me, that is the most important piece. It is mind boggling. But also, just to raise, we don't know if collusion is happening now. The reelect campaign is in place. It's mostly the same people and I do wonder if Donald Trump was trying to sort of not throw what's going on. Now I don't can know what the Russians are doing. I don't know what other countries are doing. So, the president wants to collide. Whatever the White House says he meant, you know. He is the president of the president of the United States, he's an adult, right? I mean, what he meant what he said.</s>LEMON: Yes. And then he brings Norway. He's always -- Norway is always on his mind. But Susan, listen, the president is saying that he'd accept foreign dirt. He also, he is standing by Kellyanne Conway despite an agency saying -- a government watch dog agency in which he appointed the head of the agency. They're saying that she violated the Hatch Act. Do all these examples show that there was an ethical vacuum at this White House?</s>GLASSER: Well, Don, I'm glad you brought that up. Because I've been thinking a lot about that today. There's a very striking comment that the president made actually when he was asked about the allegations about Kellyanne Conway. First, he said well, I don't know anything about it but it sounds like they're trying to infringe upon her free speech. But then he said I don't like that act. It's really not something that I'm in favor of. I don't like it. You don't get to pick and choose which laws you're going to obey if you're the president of the United States. And I think for me that comment really crystalized an overall attitude. It's the same attitude that you've seen on the part of his White House when it comes to congressional subpoenas, well, I don't like that. I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to pick and choose. And I think that is actually their attitude toward the law, that it's something fungible, it's something negotiable, it's something that depends in anyway upon the personal whims of the president.</s>LEMON: It's like saying the FBI director is wrong. Right?</s>GLASSER: Yes. Well, there's that, too.</s>LEMON: Right.</s>GLASSER: But you know, you can, even that is an arguably in the realm of opinion. Saying I don't like the Hatch Act.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>GLASSER: Right? It encapsulates the idea of why we have a system that is a rule of law and not of men. And the president essentially deep down is antithetical to that.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>GLASSER: So, the idea that the White House is not only going to flout it but look, read the statement that the White House counsel put out. I found that to be also a remarkable document. I'm not a lawyer. But just as a document it's a remarkable document. First of all, it's ad hominem, a very partisan attack on someone that the president himself appointed to the position and saying that actually it's somehow this Republican-Trump-appointed official is acting carrying water for Democrats for the media, you know.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>GLASSER: So, it's a very telling incident.</s>LEMON: Peter, you want to say something on this and then once you say your piece, can we talk about your book? Go on.</s>WEHNER: Sure. I just wanted to say that my sense of it is that Donald Trump is brought in his ethical or unethical universe to the presidency. This is how he's lived his entire life. And a lot of people supporters, Republicans thought well, when he becomes president, he's going to grow in office and he'll be a changed man. That wasn't going to happen. He's changed the presidency. The presidency hasn't changed him. And when we have these discussions about ethics, I'm telling you he doesn't understand it. It is a foreign language to him. It's like trying to describe color to a person who is color blind. I think he's genuinely baffled when he gives an answer like he to George Stephanopoulos and says, of course, we would take dirt from a foreign country. Everybody would. And then it takes a day or two for people to say, you know, that's actually not how the world works, that's not how ethics works and then they're left to scramble to try and clean it up.</s>LEMON: So, let's talk about your book. All right.</s>WEHNER: Sure.</s>LEMON: "The Death of Politics: How to Heal our Frayed Republic After Trump." You know you just talked about, you know, him and you know, about ethics or you feel lack of understand of ethics. But you're offering some hope in this book it seems like.</s>WEHNER: I am. You know, I mean, it's "The Death of Politics" because I feel like we're at a critical juncture and a lot of what we care about in politics is dying. At the same time, I argue that politics is really important. Because while politics is about a lot of things, it's ultimately about justice and justice always matters. And there's a tremendous human cause to getting politics wrong. I just like that there is human flourishing when you get it right. And I think one of the biggest things that I try and argue against in this book is fatalism and despair and a sense that we can't do it. This country has a remarkable capacity for self-renewal and we have it within our power to write wonderful new chapters in the American story. It doesn't mean it's going to happen, it's not fated to happen. But this is a self-governing country. Last thing I'll say on this is a lot of times in the life of an individual or life of a nation, there's certain qualities or virtues that you take for granted. And you forgot why they were important to you. And when they're stripped away from you, you remember why you cherish them to begin with and then you're willing to fight for them and make the case for them and stand up for them. And I have a feeling the Trump era is -- think of the as a virus that may create its own antibodies. And I have a feeling that by the time we get to 2020, people are going to be arguing for certain things that they took for granted that they'll now understand is really central to being a good a decent country.</s>LEMON: Listen, you just gave a message to the country and I have -- do have say -- and I'm sure you know him and you heard what historian John Meacham said about your back. Right? He says conservatives need your book. I think all of America need your book as well. So, good luck with that. Thank you for coming on and thank you for writing the book. Thanks, everyone. Have a great weekend. OK. It's called "The Death of Politics" by the way. Peter Wehner's book. Elizabeth Warren has a momentum in a new Nevada poll but Joe Biden is still the front runner. We're going to dig in to how the 2020 race is shaping up. That's next.