Trump Attacks Nordstrom; WH: Trump Has "Every Right" to Slam Nordstrom.
TAPPER: Welcome back. Our money lead now. A new tweet from President Trump is the subject of today's conflict of interest watch. Last week, the department store chain Nordstrom announced it is dropping the clothing and shoes line of the first daughter Ivanka Trump, citing declining sales that came after boycotts such as the "grab your wallet" campaign which asks consumers to avoid brands owned by the Trump family. Today, Nordstrom repeated this was strictly a business decision. The product wasn't selling. Earlier today, however, the president tweeted from his own account and then retweeted from the official POTUS account that you pay for, quote, "My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by Nordstrom. She is a great person. Always pushing me to do the right thing. Terrible." Let us place to the side for a second the president of the United States has now spent more time dressing down a clothing retailer than he has Vladimir Putin. Several ethics experts worry about President Trump using the power of his office to go after any company that made a fiduciary decision simply because it impacted his daughter and he doesn't think it's fair because she's a great person. Today, the White House responded saying the president had every right to slam Nordstrom.</s>SPICER: This was less about his family business and attack on his daughter. For someone to take out their concern with his policies on a family member of his is just -- is not acceptable.</s>TAPPER: Even though the brand still carries her name, Ivanka last month announced she is taking a leave of absence from her apparel and accessories brand and the Trump organization. Oh, and by the way, Nordstrom stock today was up 4 percent. So, let's talk about this all with our panel. Alex, let me start with you. The White House said President Trump had every right to do this. I suppose in the sense of the First Amendment he does. But there are certainly ethical concerns here.</s>ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: There sure are. And, Jake, actually, this is sort of the rare Trump action where you can't say this is exactly what he said he would do during the campaign. That's what the White House has defended virtually everything he's done since taking office, is that the voters knew what they were getting. This is what he promised them. He actually promised them over and over on the campaign trail, if I become the president, my business, my family's business, that is all peanuts by comparison to what I want to do for the country. And so, the shift there, I think it's really alarming both to ethics experts and to people in his own party who do just see this as an ongoing source of tension and drama that will just drive them away from the policy goals that they want to move on.</s>TAPPER: Charles?</s>CHARLES COOKE, EDITOR, THE NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: I agree with all of that. And it does show that he's as petty as he ever was. I think I dislike it more than anything else is just the ongoing politicization of everything. I really wanted a president after Obama who was a little quieter, a Calvin Coolidge type, just so that we could calm down a few years. But now, we're dragging every single pop culture, every single business question into politics. It seems to be getting worse, not better.</s>KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, EDITOR & PUBLISHER, THE NATION: I mean, I think there is a serious issue of conflict of interest here. He walked into the administration a walking conflict of interest. We've learned about the Emoluments Clause and he's in violation of the Constitution. But what saddens me is less what Charles said. But this country has serious problems. We're looking at a world aflame. We may go to war with Iran. You know, we may have a new Cold War. You know, this -- an escalating arms race. We need jobs, we need health care. And instead he's spending time doing something by the way which I guess his daughter has separated from her own business. But why can't a woman stand up for herself? Why does her father need to do that? So, I think it's a politicization in a terrible way which distracts us from the real politics.</s>TAPPER: One of the things that every president says is the moment they start getting the national security briefings as the nominee of their party, and even more so when they become the president, you find out about a whole bunch of things that you can't even imagine. You couldn't have even imagined how great the threat is in terms of terrorism. President Trump addressed that today. Take a listen.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Believe me, I've learned a lot in the last two weeks, and terrorism is a far greater threat than the people of our country understand.</s>TAPPER: Now, he's using this, Katrina, to make the argument that his travel ban on seven countries as well as the refugee ban and on Syria are all needed and necessary.</s>VANDEN HEUVEL: Right. And he's also using it to, again, delegitimize the media and saying that the media has not given adequate coverage to terrorist incidents, which is ludicrous. In fact, one could argue that the media has overplayed terrorism.</s>TAPPER: That's what we always used to get, yes.</s>VANDEN HEUVEL: Which is the saturation coverage. And as you pointed out the other day, this administration had no use for the white supremacist incident of terrorism in Canada. But I think this is an administration that unlike Roosevelt and we're in the first 100 days, thrives on fear. So, they have everything to fear if fear declines. But the delegitimization of the media, Jake, I think is a very serious issue and, of course, he's doing this preemptively, as you said, to justify a travel ban which is in fact alienating allies, possibly hurting our very fight of counterterrorism fight which should be recalibrated anyway.</s>TAPPER: I've heard, Charles, that a lot of legal experts think the president's lawyers have a pretty good case to make, that he actually might have the authority to impose this travel ban given especially that the longest one in it -- well, except for the Syrians -- is 120 days.</s>COOKE: I think there may be a good case. I mean, constitutionally, Congress, the executive branch, has been given plenary power over immigration. There is a statutory question. Is he acting within the laws from 1965? And I think it was 1952. I'm not quite sold on that, but I'm open to being so. And today, he stood up and read the law out which was I thought quite a good move. He's quite the show man. Unfortunately, he's accompanied that with attack being judges, with criticizing the court. Now, Obama criticized the court, too. He was no angel in this way. I think Trump went a little further because he singled out the judge and essentially said he was incompetent. To me, that was a mistake. The idea that this is prima facie illegal is not convincing to me at all.</s>TAPPER: And you heard Jeff Zeleny earlier in the show saying the president's own lawyers both in the White House and at the Justice Department are cringing when he does this because this doesn't help him win the case.</s>BURNS: No. And we've seen this sort of over and over again with Trump. I was talking to one of the state attorney generals who is suing him over this ban and they were saying, look, the last time he attacked a judge he paid $25 million for the privilege in that Trump University case.</s>TAPPER: Right.</s>BURNS: This is not -- no lawyer would advise someone who is a party to litigation to behave this way towards the judiciary, let alone the president of the United States, let alone on an issue like this. And to Charles' point, I've certainly spoken to lawyers who said there is probably a version of this ban, a version of this order that would, you know, pretty quickly stand up to scrutiny. It doesn't happen to be the one that they actually issued. That they got this one out so quickly they probably left themselves more vulnerable than they needed to.