GOP Struggles to Avoid Shutdown After President's Vulgar Remarks; H: Focus Should Be On Immigration Policy, Not Vulgar Remarks; DACA Deal In Peril; President's Doctor Gives Him a Clean Bill Of Health
COOPER: As we said at the top, the government is just days from a shutdown. The standoff is over immigration and the controversy, not to mention the dishonesty, is what the president said about certain countries -- vulgar, racist, confirmed by people who heard it. And now, what the administration is at best blowing smoke about. CNN's Jim Acosta had tough questions today for the president and his press secretary. He joins us now. So, you were in the White House today. You asked the president about his comments last week, about immigration. What happened?</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, I was less concerned about these comments that the president made last week in which he described countries in Africa as a shithole mainly because we have been through that over and over again. The White House is really denying it and hanging that on Senators Perdue and Cotton, who say they didn't hear that, they don't recall it. And I was more interested today in following up and asking about this remark the president made that he would prefer to see people come into the United States from countries like Norway, which is obviously predominantly white. And so, here's what happened when I tried to ask the president that in the Oval Office earlier today.</s>ACOSTA: Mr. President, did you say you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people to come in from Norway? Is that true, Mr. President?</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want them to come in from everywhere. Everywhere. Thank you very much, everybody.</s>ACOSTA: Just Caucasian or white countries, sir, or do you want people from other parts of the world, where there are people of color?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jim, thank you.</s>ACOSTA: And, Anderson, I don't know if you saw that at the end there, but the president of the United States in the Oval Office, in the White House, ordered me out, essentially ordered the press out. Typically that is not something the president does. The wranglers as you hear will say, thank you, please go. Eventually, we will go. But to have the president point at you and say you're out I think goes beyond what the president really should be doing in the Oval Office in my view in terms of dealing with the press. The other thing that I think caught my eye as the day went on is just a few moments later, we were escorted into the Roosevelt Room, where he gave some remarks with the president of Kazahkstan and at the end of those remarks we tried to ask more questions about these remarks the president made last week. On that occasion, Anderson, it was -- it was pretty startling because two press aides for the president basically stood right up in front of me, right in front of my face and started shouting so loudly that I couldn't ask my question of the president. They essentially blocked his view of me and blocked anything that I could be saying, trying to shout me down. And so, it was just another episode here at the White House that reminds you that at times here, it just doesn't feel like you are covering the president of the United States. You feel like you are covering the president of just some other country that is less democratic than this one.</s>COOPER: Jim, Sarah Sanders was pressed today about whether the president made those racist remarks. Her answer was complicated. She didn't deny it. Instead, she said that she chooses to rely on those who have denied it, shifting explanation of what happened there. I mean, are these people just lying? It seems like what Cotton and others came out this weekend sort of quibbling about what was said. I mean, it's the difference between the word house and hole.</s>ACOSTA: Exactly. As if there's a difference. I would remind people there's plenty of indoor plumbing in Africa. But getting back to what Sarah Sanders was saying in the briefing room, she was saying she would side with people who were in the room. Well, Senator Dick Durbin was in the room. He said he heard that remark. Senator Lindsey Graham was also in the room. He's not denied the remark was made. And as a matter of fact, he told Senator Tim Scott that's exactly what happened. And so, the White House is choosing to rely on the word of Senators Cotton and Perdue, not from Graham and Durbin, bipartisan senators who were invited over to the White House to try to craft some way out of this immigration impasse. They just haven't been able to do that at this point. But, Anderson, it just goes to show you when we try to ask for straight answers over here, it is just extremely difficult. They can filibuster. They can move on to the next question, they can go around us. At one point, Sarah Sanders described the president's remarks as strong language and not always politically correct. To go after countries, to talk about countries in that fashion, that's not going against political correctness. That is really just being discriminatory towards people coming in from those countries.</s>COOPER: Yes. Jim Acosta, appreciate that. Thanks. Earlier today, "THE LEAD's" Jake Tapper spoke with Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. He was in the room, as you just heard from Jim Acosta, with the president. Remember, Senator Durbin says he heard the president utter racist remarks. He also told Jake that walking into the Oval Office seemed to him like walking into a setup.</s>SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: We call him two days later, Senator Graham and I, and say we have done it, we met your criteria, we have a bipartisan bill, we are ready to go, then to be called into the president's office to explain it to him and find that we have been sandbagged. General Kelly, Steve Miller as I understand it invited five other members of Congress who were not in favor of immigration reform or in a very harsh sense, and they were there to refute any assertions we made that this was a good policy. So, you asked me where we are today, I will tell you where we are. We are finding that more Republicans are willing to step up now, distancing themselves from those outrageous comments by the president, and really I hope join us in a bipartisan effort to solve this problem.</s>COOPER: So given that the question is how open is the president to compromise, remember how agreeable he was the last time he met with lawmakers, saying he would go with whatever the lawmakers in the room came up with because he respects them. Remember also in the same meeting how some of his fellow Republicans staged a kind of in the moment intervention. As the president seem to backing the position of the Democrats on DACA, in conference (ph) of the immigration reform, Republicans intervening immediately to bring the president back to a harder line. So is that what happened this time, a White House intervention? Joining us now two David, to have been on the room when deal were made, David Gergen and David Axlerod. David Axelrod, I mean you hear Senator Durbin, is that anyway for a president or Republican or Democrat to operate and negotiation on something as fraud with tension as DACA?</s>AXELROD: No, I mean look, David Gergen and I have been both in the room as you mentioned. But generally with presidents who have some sense of what they want to do. Last week, literally one week ago the president was in a room with cameras talking about a bill of love, that's what he called this immigration bill that he hoped to sign. And urged for a bipartisan bill, but they're clearly is a group within the White House that doesn't want to see that done and they staged an intervention before Senator Graham and Senator Durbin got over there. What it really speaks to is, that this president doesn't really have a lot of grounding in any of this. And, you know, I've said before, you know, the hat during the campaign said make America Great Again. The hat now should say rent this space. Because he just doesn't seem to have firm moorings. And that is -- that is concerning. What he said in that room, and I've know Senator Durbin for 40 years. So I have great faith in his veracity. But what he said in that room was deeply disturbing. But this is another piece of the story that's also disturbing which he doesn't seem to know exactly what he wants or where he stands. And therefore, he's being buffeted between various factions.</s>COOPER: You know -- I mean David Gergen, we saw that -- I mean just clearly on camera in that DACA meeting when he agreed with Senator Feinstein, saying, oh yes, you know, that's what we'll go with, just DACA first and then, you know, other stuff after, we're comprehensive immigration reform using a phrase that I'm not even sure he understood how that's commonly used. And then, you had, you know, McCarthy -- Senator McCarthy jumped in and said well actually, you know, Mr. President I think mean is this. Congressman McCarthy</s>DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. This is all very peculiar, it is question that lead to my experience going back sometime. Anderson, listen, typically, you will have in any White House factions. And usually there's a moderate versus a more hard line or more extreme group in the White House and they pit off against each other and they try to present, you know, they try to bring in different people representing their views to influence the president. What was unique about this in my experience was that the president himself said I'd like to talk to these two guys. He seemed to be in and, you know, Durbin had a conversation with him, president called Durbin around 10:00 in the morning and Durbin called, you know, Lindsey Graham and said I have had the best conversation I've ever with the president and a long, long time, I am really optimistic we're going to get this done. He wants just come down to the White House right away. And it was the White House staff, not a faction within the White House, but the White House staff which then apparently invited then five hard line conservative opponents of this plan that was emerging to as David said to sandbag it. Or as we heard from Durbin to sandbag it. And in effect to what the White House staff did was sabotage prospects before getting this bill done. And persuade the president by the sort of in effect -- manipulating him by rounding up all these hard liners. So that is extremely unusual. I just not -- I'm not aware of that, I think it does support David Axelrod's valid point on many issues like this. The president is not anchored and he an be buffered by the various forces in politics.</s>COOPER: Right, which what the DACA has always been as sort of influence by whoever the last person in the room is. David Axle rod if you were advising the president, would you say to him, let's sir maybe if you, you know, offer even with a whiff of apology or a regret about your words in the Oval Office meeting, that might help this -- get this DACA deal back on track or is that just anti ethical to who the president is, that it wouldn't be worth suggestion -- suggesting.</s>AXELROD: Look, I think first of all, they need to decide what it is that they want to accomplish. This bill that was presented to them really was a compromise. There were things in there that Democrats wouldn't like, there were things in there that Republicans wouldn't like. That's the nature of compromise. And so he has to decide how much he is willing to match his words that he wants an agreement, you know, with his actions and/or how much is going to get jerked back by this group in the White House and his, you know, activist base which really believes that giving these any sort of status to these DACA young people as amnesty. Which is, you know, betrayal on their part. He -- but I must say this, Anderson, I do believe that they are going to get something done and the reason I believe it is because it would be a political calamity for the Republican Party at the end of the day not to do something. I watched this really moving video of this gentleman being shipped out yesterday after 30 years here.</s>COOPER: Yes.</s>AXELROD: And back to Mexico and it just tore you apart. They don't want that multiplied by a million on television going into 2018.</s>COOPER: Yes, we saw him being separated from his family at the airport saying goodbye to them. David, David, thank you very much. Coming up just ahead, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders again, says her boss is not a racist. This time using "The Apprentice" defense. We'll explain what that means. We'll also explain and talk with author Cornel West about that and a whole lot more.