day, you asked about optics. i talk to people inside the white house, and the reality is that they don t really care about optics. if they did, then they would be approaching this in a very different way and it doesn t really square with the notion of a president who is all about perception. as you said, despite tweeting he doesn t watch tv, he does watch tv. he understands it. but they, a, didn t go very well when they had a series of on-camera briefings from their perspective at the beginning of the administration. b, don t really want to answer the questions right now, don t want to feed the notion that reporters who are in the white house briefing room have, you know, sort of legitimate questions to be answered. also, the other thing i will say is that members of the white house say that they do go on television. they do answer questions in other ways, maybe not for the white house press core. and the last thing to remember is twitter. the fact is that donald trump believes that
if he had an answer, he would have given it to you. the reason he insulted you is pause he can t answer the question. and my strong advice to him would be, well he said, i don t know, maybe he s doing the right thing for his own career. there was reporting in april, may, and june that he was on his way out. yet here he is in july. my suspicion is because he gives interviews like that and insults us the way donald trump lakes. it s like don rickles, that s h his sctich. when he did answer questions, he said this lawyer was completely independent and had nothing to do with the kremlin. now, he has no actual knowledge of whether this lawyer is connected to the kremlin in any way. there s a lot of reporting by the new york times that she is, in fact, she denies it, the russian government denies it, but he doesn t know, and yet he s on television stating factually, she s independent. it is interesting that it s him, and maybe there is no one else who wants to do this,
may, and june that he was on his way out. yet here he is in july. my suspicion is because he gives interviews like that and insults us the way donald trump lakes. it s like don rickles, that s his sctich. he s like the hungarian don rickles. when he did answer questions, he said something that was factually incorrect. he said this lawyer was completely independent, had nothing to do with the kremlin. now, he has no actual knowledge of whether this lawyer is connected to the kremlin in any way. there s a lot of reporting by the new york times that she is, in fact, she denies it, the russian government denies it, but he doesn t know, and yet he s on television stating factually, she s independent. yeah, so it is interesting as paul s pointing out that it s him. and maybe there is nobody else who wants to do this, because this is very difficult to defend. so it says a lot that this person who really has no connection to this is coming out and saying things and not really making any
donald trump saying a lot of nice things about theresa may. nic. reporter: absolutely. this has become the format with president trump. it was noticeable yesterday. he mentioned this wonderful meeting he had with vladimir putin and u.s. secretary of state tillerson. it was no provided on camera follow-up to it. no opportunity on camera for journalists to ask questions. this has become the format now. rex tillerson did answer questions, but it was on audio tape. in these environments, you hear so many shouted questions on the pressing issues of did president putin really did you really accept president putin s no meddling. he did not answer that, but he was clear on the british issue. this was an important meeting for the british prime minister
president s national security advisor about korea. unlike some other people in this investigation, he has said he will go answer questions. not from us, from investigators. we re going to get to the staff shake ups in the white house in a minute. but jim is back with us. also joining us is our cnn global affairs analyst, and cnn contributor. the white house responds this is yet another round of false and unverified claims by anonymous sources in an effort to smear the president. that s their take. for the russians, based on all this reporting from jim and pamela, what is their mo in terms of using this type of information, if indeed it does exist? how would they use it? as jim reported, we have a couple different possiblies. maybe this was one intelligence officer bragging to another that