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"Great Move" By "Very Smart Putin"; Trump Takes Credit for Economic
Uptick; Obama "Confident" He Could Have Won Again. Aired 8-9a ET - Part 1>
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[08:00:09] NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN GUEST HOST (voice-over): 2016 goes out with a bang. The president makes a controversial claim that sets off his successor.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.
HENDERSON: Could Obama have taken down Trump?
Trump says that question will stay unanswered.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: He called me. We had a very, very good talk generally about things. We talked about it and smiled about it, and nobody's ever going to know.
HENDERSON: And the Obama administration isn't leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue quietly, including a hard-line with an old ally.
JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Here is a fundamental reality. If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both.
HENDERSON: And payback for Vladimir Putin's election year meddling, but will a President Trump reverse all of Obama's December decisions?
INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters, now.
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HENDERSON: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS on the first day of the New Year. I'm Nia-Malika Henderson, sitting in for John King.
Who could have predicted we would begin 2017 with a throw back to the Cold War or President-elect Trump praising a great move by a very smart Vladimir Putin. It all started when President Obama hit Russia with sanctions in what the U.S. government calls cyber attacks and meddling in the presidential election. On Thursday, the U.S. ordered 35 Russian diplomats to leave the country, demanded the Russians close two compounds and sanctioned Russian spy agencies, individuals and companies the U.S. government says were involved in the hacking.
In a statement, President Obama also said that his administration will do more and all of those puts punishments might be made public. But that's only the beginning of the saga.
Here to share their reporting and their insights: Matt Viser of "The Boston Globe", "The Daily Beast's" Jackie Kucinich, NPR's Domenico Montanaro, and Karen Tumulty of "The Washington Post."
President Obama's move to punish Russia for meddling in the election aren't only a two-sentence written statement from President-elect Donald Trump. "It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
Trump made similar comments the day before sanctions were announced.
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TRUMP: I think we have to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated our lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on. We have speed. We have a lot of other things. But I'm not sure we have the kind of security you need.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: Karen, remarkable to see an incoming Republican president seeming to reluctantly want to have an intelligence briefing in seeming so far to say there's nothing to see here when it comes to Russia and Putin. How did we get here?
KAREN TUMULTY, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, he talks about moving on to bigger and better things. I don't know how you get much bigger than this. This is a new form of warfare.
It is something -- how did we get here? One question is why we haven't gotten here sooner. This is something that's been going on for at least nine years since Russia hacked Estonia. It is sort of where things were headed and I think it's going to be a major geopolitical issue going forward.
Now, Donald Trump deciding after these sanctions that he's going to hear from intelligence community is significant in two ways. It's possible that this will give him a way to sort of recalibrate on this, to say he has new information to sort of quit pooh-poohing the intelligence. The other thing is it could be a reset with his relationship with the intelligence community which he has also been sort of dismissing.
HENDERSON: Right. And if there's any doubt about how he feels about Putin, at least, he tweeted on Friday, Trump did, "Great move on delay by Vladimir Putin. I always knew he was very smart." Because, of course, Putin, the expectation was that Putin would respond in kind, maybe eject some U.S. diplomats. He didn't do that.
Matt, what's your sense of how long Trump's stance towards Putin, some might call it a bromance, how long can he maintain that?
MATT VISER, THE BOSTON GLOBE: It's hard to tell. And I do think we're setting up for a clash very early in President Trump's administration with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, people on the Hill ready to challenge Trump on some of his rhetoric on Russia.
[08:05:11] So, I think that they are setting that up as a test of powers, really. Within the Republican Party, too.
The other thing going back to his intelligence briefings, is that he has been briefed on these things, you know, for a while. He's had the opportunity to be briefed even more. And he -- the way that his statement came across, it was as if he was doing us a favor by taking those briefings when it's an obligation of the president to take those briefings. So, I think that's another thing that he'll be challenged more with in his respect of the intelligence community.
JACKIE KUCINICH, THE DAILY BEAST: Well, it's not even going to wait until he's inaugurated. John McCain this week has a hearing that is going to begin looking into this. Rex Tillerson is going to have his confirmation hearings. And you know one of the first questions he's going to get is about this issue of hacking and because he has such a close relationship with Vladimir Putin.
So, before Trump even takes the oath of office, there's going to be a debate within his own party and this isn't a partisan issue. Let's make that clear. But in terms of what he's saying and what you heard Republicans saying last week, saying that there were too few sanctions, too little, too late.
HENDERSON: That's what Paul Ryan said.
KUCINICH: Yes, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, most Republicans who were hawks were saying that. So, they are talking past each other and at some point, they are going to have to meet.
HENDERSON: And Lindsey Graham, he has been very much out front, John McCain as well. Here's what Graham had to say.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Ninety-nine of us believe the Russians did this. We're going to have hearings and we're going to put sanctions together that hit Putin as an individual, and his inner circle, for interfering in our elections. And they're doing it all over the world, not just the United States.
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HENDERSON: Domenico, it will be hard for Trump to maintain this idea that this is a partisan witch-hunt, if you will, that is what he's said, that's what some of his aides has said when it's Republicans who are leading the charge and certainly Democrats are going to join.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, NPR: Yes. First of all, I love the phone behind Lindsey Graham. It was amazing.
But, you know, I do think, though, the idea that the Trump transition team goes to politics first -- you know, I heard Kellyanne Conway earlier this week say that it was politics -- you know, she's hoping it's not politics from President Obama but has seen that before.
You know, there are ways to win elections and there are elections, but there are also things that are facts. And as Matt was talking about with President-elect Trump, being able to take daily intelligence briefings and kind of setting those aside, saying they are repetitive and now saying he'll meet with them to be updated on facts. You know, there are only two people right now who could push back against the intelligence community and say open up the documents, show me everything you got.
If you're skeptical between Donald Trump and Barack Obama the only two people who could do that right now and passing up that opportunity seems strange.
HENDERSON: Yes, and one of the things we also saw this week in terms of the contrast between this administration and the incoming administration, on foreign policy, was on Israel and John Kerry the outgoing secretary of state commented on two state solution. Here's what he had to say.
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KERRY: Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths and friendships require mutual respect.
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HENDERSON: Matt, you have covered John Kerry. Why did he give this speech? Some people saw it as in some ways a eulogy for the two-state solution and also about his legacy as well, John Kerry's legacy.
VISER: Yes, I interviewed him two weeks ago and it was very clear even then that this was very much on his mind, exiting the administration, sort of seeing tends of his career really in office.
And I think what led him here feeling the two state solution was slipping away and they wanted to do something to put this back on the agenda and he got ridiculed bipartisan, you know, in terms of in Congress. But talking to the State Department this past week, they do feel comfortable they put this back on the radar where Israel and its settlement policy is very much in the news. In Israel, there's a fierce debate going on right now and internationally there is.
So they are about to give up the reign reins of the State Department and Rex Tillerson if he's confirmed will go in a different direction with Israel, but they've set it up.
TUMULTY: And they certainly signaled that Trump's nominee for ambassador to Israel is very pro-settlement.
HENDERSON: David Friedman.
TUMULTY: It is. Yes, I think the word, a real kind of hinge point of U.S.-Israeli relations and also of U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process, and that speech is the hint.
[08:10:10] MONTANARO: Yes. I mean, maybe you wouldn't have seen as strong a comment from Secretary Kerry if Hillary Clinton had won election, let's say, because you have such a stark difference as Karen is pointing out in policy between what Barack Obama has done and what Donald Trump wants to do as far as a two state solution or Mideast peace that I think the Obama administration and people like John Kerry want to point out this has been fairly consistent 40 years of policy to say that they are against settlement expansion, you don't want to -- and that Jerusalem should be, you know, is up for some negotiation for who runs which parts.
You know, I think the Obama administration wants to put a stamp on that and go out legacy-wise to say, you know, this is breaking with U.S. precedent over the last 40 years.
KUCINICH: But you have to say, I mean, you know John Kerry better than I do, but this also was very personal speech. This was a very emotional speech for John Kerry. So, as much as it was a legacy play, this also was Kerry's legacy in a speech he wouldn't have had to give had Hillary Clinton won and if I'm remembering correctly, he wanted to give this speech earlier and they said no, no, they put it off because they thought Hillary Clinton was going to win.
So, you're kind of seeing this in real-time calibration from the Obama administration because trying to rush and hurry to get everything done that they thought would be golden.
HENDERSON: You'll see, Matt, like in Congress some efforts to undo Trump's -- Obama's legacy even on this U.N. resolution, right? Congress stepping forward to maybe slap this down and sort of say that they don't agree with this U.N. sanctioning or U.N. vote on Israel.
VISER: Yes. I think that's very much in play. Funding for U.N. and things like that are already sort of under threat.
To Jackie's point, I do think there was a personal aspect about this for John Kerry. He spent the first year in office as secretary of state trying to get these two parties together, you know, Don Quixote- like, to his critics.
HENDERSON: Right.
VISER: You know, just chasing the windmills. But he put a lot on the line to try and get them together. And the last couple of weeks, he's talked a lot about diplomatic, the ripeness of diplomacy and he was very frustrated that the conditions were there, that he felt like to give these parties to talk but he couldn't force them to come to the table.
HENDERSON: Jackie, Trump has talked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resolving it and it would be his ultimate deal, if he was able to do that. What would that look like? Do we know?
KUCINICH: No. It wasn't too long ago he said he was neutral in the dispute which obviously can you not be, particularly when you're a world leader. I don't think we know that. I don't think we know that yet. A lot depends on his ambassador.
But what his ambassador is supporting right now sort of negates -- if he decides to support settlements, if they move the embassy to Jerusalem, this is going to be a nonstarter on the other side. So, we'll have to see. There are a lot of open questions on what his policies will be because he didn't start with any. It was sort of went along -- kind of made it up as he went along.
HENDERSON: Up next, Trump's economic mantra. I did that. The good news the president-elect says belongs to him and why he claims there's much more to come.
But first, a "politician say the darndest thing" flashback. When then candidate Trump met toddler Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: What's your name?
UNIDENTIFIED TODDLER: Name.
TRUMP: Now, he's supposed to look like Donald Trump but he's actually much too good looking. You are really handsome.
Where's your daddy? And your mommy, right?
You want to go back. Do you want to go back to them or do you want to stay with Donald Trump?
UNIDENTIFIED TODDLER: Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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HENDERSON: President-elect Donald Trump hasn't even taken office yet, but he claims the country can already see and feel what some of his aides have called the Trump effect on the economy.
There was this tweet Monday, "The world was gloomy before I won. There was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10 percent and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars."
And then this on Tuesday, "The U.S. consumer confidence index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, the highest level in more than 15 years. Thanks, Donald."
On Wednesday, the president-elect announced he was personally responsible for bringing 5,000 jobs back to the U.S.
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TRUMP: I was just called by the head people at sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They're taking them from other countries. They are bringing them back to the United States.
And also, OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3,000 people. So, that's very exciting.
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HENDERSON: So, Karen, if you look beneath the headlines and beneath what he's saying there in that press conference, this was a deal that was made in October. It really doesn't have anything to do with Trump.
TUMULTY: He had already announced -- it was basically based on a Japanese bank's financing that he had already taken credit for once. He was double counting.
HENDERSON: But it seems to be good for the companies to get these kinds of headlines and certainly good for Donald Trump even if it's not quite true.
TUMULTY: What it really speaks to is he's promised change. He's promised progress. He's going to be under a lot of pressure to produce it in very tangible ways. It's going to be his effort and I think we're going to see this every day, him getting up and sort of pointing to something tangible, however small, however, you know, tangential to whatever he's doing.
And just to sort of give people the sense that things are changing, that they are moving in a way that these big broad economic statistics as Barack Obama learned the hard way don't.
HENDERSON: Don't really tell the story and Obama was never very good at selling even when there was relatively good economic news he would sort of say there's still more work to be done.
MONTANARO: I mean, this approach makes a lot of sense from a brand marketing standpoint. Like we were talking about, when Barack Obama took office, you know, they pointed to a lot of economic statistics to say how things have improved or changed. People don't really feel or get that. They understand Carrier because they might have heating or air conditioning unit or they understand a bank name because they might be there or not.
So, that's what Trump is trying to do.
[08:20:00] It's incumbent on us to look below the surface, make sure that those things that add up whether or not they go to real statistics and do wind up going to make real improvements. I think it's important to have a set of benchmarks from 2009 when Barack Obama took office to 2017 when Donald Trump takes office and maintain some consistency for comparative sake.
HENDERSON: And what kind of bench marks, Jackie, for Trump should we be looking at. He doesn't come in promising a certain number of jobs. He's only said that he would be the best job creator that God ever created I think is what he said. He's talked about growth as well, promising maybe as high as 6 percent growth.
I mean, what are the metrics here?
KUCINICH: I mean, I think checking the facts carefully, it's going to be very important. You mentioned Carrier. He was inflating the numbers of Carrier and we know that because I spoke to a worker who said that's not the number that's coming.
So, that's going to be critical. But in terms of benchmarks and he's talked about manufacturing, manufacturing coming back. He's talked about infrastructure. He's going to need Congress' help with that.
HENDERSON: Bringing the coal industry back as well.
KUCINICH: Yes, bringing the coal industry back, exactly. You can look at the industries that he's spot-lighted which a lot of this is gone because of globalization.
HENDERSON: Right.
KUCINICH: But again, we've been wrong in the past. Maybe he can do it.
TUMULTY: By the way, beyond globalization, which he has spent a lot of time blaming that on trade, the real reason that a lot -- the majority of manufacturing jobs that have been lost have been lost to automation.
HENDERSON: Right.
VISER: Productivity has gone up --
HENDERSON: Which is difficult to reverse.
KUCINICH: But also some of the trade policies that he's talked about could actually hurt some of his goals. Things like auto parts. They're not manufactured in the United States. American cars -- American cars are put together here, but the parts come from somewhere else. He could be shooting himself in the foot with some of these other policies he's talking about implementing.
So, he's going to have to find a balance.
HENDERSON: One of the things he's talking about and he Instagramed this on Thursday, kind of a slogan, I guess. He said, "My administration will follow two simple rules, buy American and hire American."
Matt, what do we think that actually looks like in terms of a policy? Is it about, you know, he only has American products in the White House or in these different agencies, American TVs, whatever it is?
VISER: He won't have Ivanka Trump's products in the White House. His own things are made overseas. As a businessman, he made decisions and his daughter whose businesses are successful by some standards have, you know, relied on overseas manufacturing, overseas labor to make those products.
So, I think, you know, he's talked about Apple, for example. Apple has huge manufacturing facilities in China, you know? And does he penalize Apple somehow and force them, to you know, levy some tariffs.
TUMULTY: Some of his businesses, I believe it was his vineyards, that filed for permits to bring foreign workers here.
MONTANARO: And hire American, buy American both sound like great slogans but how does he deliver on that. That's what we're talking about. And that I think is something that you have to, you know, hold him to account for. How do you bring those jobs back that you're suddenly promising and how do you get people then to hire folks.
You know, is it non-union labor, for example? That's one thing that Democrats have been worried about when you watch the increase in car manufacturing, for example in a place like Alabama.
HENDERSON: Right. And one of the things we're also waiting for him to talk about is his businesses, how he's going to extricate himself from those businesses and be more transparent. Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's not a big deal. You people are making it a big deal, the business, because -- look, number one, when I won they all knew I had a big business all over the place. In fact, I reported it with the, as you know, with the federal elections. It's a much bigger business than anybody thought. It's a great business. But I'm going to have nothing to do with it. I don't have to. Because, as you know, I wouldn't have to do that bylaw but I do want to do that because I want to focus on the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: Jackie, what's the hold up in terms of this press conference? It was promised I think December 15th and then his aides said, oh, it was complicated. Even though in that clip he said it's simple.
What's your sense? What's the hold up? When might we hear from him on this?
KUCINICH: You know, what Sean Spicer has said is they want to make sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed. This is complicated. Hopefully, they will have a press conference. I mean, there's a lot of questions.
HENDERSON: And he hasn't had a press conference. KUCINICH: Yeah.
He's taken questions, but that's very different than a formal press conference.
HENDERSON: Up next, a presidential spat. President Obama says if it came down to him and Trump, he'd win. What the president-elect had to say about that right after the break.
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[04:28:23] TRUMP: He called me. We had a very, very talk about -- generally about things. He was in Hawaii, and it was a very, very nice call. And I actually thought we covered a lot of territory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: That was the president-elect Wednesday night talking about his brief chat with President Obama. But it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies between these two. It all started with this on Monday.
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OBAMA: I am confident in this vision because I'm confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it. I know that in conversations that I've had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would say the vision, the direction that you point towards is the right one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: What's Obama really saying there? If he ran against Trump, he thinks he would have won. It's not every day that a sitting president, Matt, makes a comment like that. This was essentially trash-talking, right? Some people say it wasn't necessary, it was sort of professorial shade, but shade nonetheless.
(LAUGHTER)
VISER: It's a lot of what Obama -- when he throws shade, it's professorial. But, yeah, I mean, I think it is largely academic. But for Obama, it's about his legacy. He does not want this election to be seen as a repudiation of him and his last eight years. He sort of subtly wants it to be seen as a repudiation of Hillary Clinton and the campaign that she ran.
TUMULTY: That wasn't subtle.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
[08:30:01] VISER: So, I mean, I think that that is where we're seeing a lot of the trash-talking. And it's striking really the way that, you know, Trump seems to be undermining Obama a lot or trying to from the sidelines. And you wonder whether in a couple months, whether it's going to be role reversals, where Obama is going to be on the sidelines trying to undermine Donald Trump once he takes the oath of office.
HENDERSON: And Trump did not take too kindly to this. He tweeted out, "Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition. NOT!"
In some ways, Karen, this is like a reversion to form.
TUMULTY: I know.
HENDERSON: I mean, these folks didn't like each other initially. Then they sort of were friends. And then -- so what's your sense?
TUMULTY: Well, if that was the best he could do at disregarding, it's not very good. And I think it's a preview of what lies ahead. I mean, Donald Trump always is reacting to what is the last thing that was said about Donald Trump.
But Barack Obama seems to have a pretty good talent for getting under his skin. And it would be a very unusual role for an ex-president to play. They usually kind of just fade off. But given that the Democratic Party is sort of leaderless at this point, this may be the preview of a buddy movie not.
HENDERSON: But Obama did seem to know, right, that if he just called Trump and maybe said, "Bruh, chill out," or whatever he may have said, and this is what Trump had to say about that phone call.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Our staffs have been getting along very well, and I'm getting along very well with him, other than a couple of statements that I responded to, and we talked about it, and smiled about it, and nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other in that way. So, but he was -- it was a great conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENDERSON: Domenico, where are things now between these two?
MONTANARO: This is a very delicate thing for President Obama to try to figure out. I mean, he knows that he is probably best, you know, used if he can get in Donald Trump's ear. So you know that if you -- as Karen said -- you know, nice to him and -- to say something complimentary as the last thing that he's heard, then he's more likely to take your call.
At the same time, Donald Trump really doesn't like kind of wusses, right? He doesn't like people who just sort of always are kissing his butt, so to speak, you know, getting him food and just bowing down. He likes people who can sort of mix it up a little bit. You saw that, you know, a little bit of the twinkle in his eye there, a little bit of a smile when he said, you know, other than a couple of statements here and there.
So, I think it's an interesting line to walk. As long as it doesn't get too personal, I think President Obama, you know, is trying to figure out a way to show that he's --
(CROSSTALK)
HENDERSON: But -- but, Jackie, this is personal, right? I mean, because here is Donald Trump who ran as the anti-Obama and is poised to roll back much of what Obama has been able to do.
KUCINICH: Of course, it's personal. But this quickly becomes not about President Obama and how Trump reacts to other people, to world leaders that might not like him, to members of Congress who don't like him. How he reacts to them and how he just sort of like takes a punch and moves on, this could be a major distraction during his administration if he doesn't kind of get a handle on this need to punch back for every single thing, because this could cause an international incident.
