White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, House Majority leader nancy pelosi, and senator untrained senators took part. Hosted by the Washington Post. [applause] hello everybody. Thank you for being here. Excuse my appearance. I fell and broke my arm a couple of weeks ago so im just getting by but we are eager to talk with Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president at the white house and key advisor in helping shape the president s policies and his message and we will start by talking about the state of the union tomorrow night. Its a big speech and a year ago the president gave his first speech to a joint address to congress and talked about american renewal and got pretty good reviews. It went pretty well and lasted a short while because in the days that followed there were number of controversies including some by him that created a more polarizednd environment on the hill and im wondering looking to the speech tonight what can the president do to set that bipartisan tone to try to achieve those deals that he wants to democrats in Congress Without getting kicked off the script, so to speak. First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for the Washington Post and any other sponsors. We appreciate from today. The president is working on a bipartisan forwardlooking speech that positive in tone and content and what that really means is working on the speech its a reflection of the past years accomplishments but also those compliments not just checking a box or a to do list but what is the next this o between what has happened in your own life or your own business withh your own aspirations. And then how is that a framework for working together in 2018. I would point out a few things that are pay recent. One is about twothree weeks ago the president held a 55 uninterested, undeterred, unscripted with a bipartisan bicameral groupte of legislators and the cabinet room and it was quite unexpected. I think mainly by the media and the press were covering it and by all accounts they were pleased to have that transparency and live again unfiltered and unscripted exchange between the president and the legislators. That is good for transparency, accountable, and democracy and his second conversation we need to keep happening. That particular issue was about that particular meeting about immigration and you see an openness and flexibility by this president very recently on the Daca Recipients and the dreamerp that he will address that tomorrow in his speech. Immigration be one of the major five or six i but its covered. I would also go back to august 201st when the president came thereabout with his afghani policy speech about afghanistan, a little diversion from where he was during the campaign having consulted with those on the ground and his generals initial security team. I know you wrote about it at thc time and were criticized forne saying the new president and new strategy and indeed, it was. I would like to share those as examples of openness and stability. It will be bipartisan in terms of content because of the only way to function in this town as a democracy. We saw during the Government Shutdown, very unfortunate, but you saw it to me of the government you need 60 votes and you need bipartisan cooperation and we were happy to Many Democrats came around the Party Leadership and voted to open the government a few weeks ago. Kellyanne conway you talk about immigration which speech tomorrow. The white house is framework that has been in the last couple days that includes something for the dreamers. Is that a redline for the gopresident as is he committed o seeing legal status for the hundreds of thousands of kids were here without duck mutation . The president has said that and as you saw, the framework currently includes resolution for 1. 8 million so it would include those who never avail themselves of that after president obama took action in 2000. It would anticipate and include those who never took the action in addition to the roughly seven or 800,000 who did. That iso there but also the 25 billion for enhanced security at the border. We are an the president willav talk about how a sovereign nation much have physical borders. We as a nation have spent billions of dollars over many decades helping other countries secure their borders and protect their sovereignty and he believes and has successfully one on in his governing on enhancing security at the border and that includes the wall and other security measures. But that also i would say that is his redline and hes always made that clear. Again, it is a great symbol of how cooperation and discussiong can be had on the same issue with two very divergent priorities. Ii think if you look at the conversation in the past several months is not a year the democrats talk about immigration they basically talk about the dreamers in the Daca Recipients. Thisis president without a 70point plan a few months ago. You can read it. He talked about immigration and in entity migration and into the visa lottery system and obviously, Border Security and now Daca Recipients make as his political counselor, how do you help manage to navigate the current in the Republican Base right now . Breitbart has taken to calling his amnesty don because of the immigration framework and how does he manage being compassionate with the dreamers and coming up with some sort of legal status for them while satisfying his base that its a very hard line . That is not a conversation we have frequently. Of alle president americans including the millions who didnt vote for him and that is something he said on novembef november 9 on election day. He changed it and added that when were up in the residency. He said at the hilton that imn the president of all americans even those who didnt support me and there are more than a few, t believe those were his words were something thereabout. You have to take it seriously as president because its just like the tax cut in jobs act. People rely and they said it wouldlk only help the wealthy ad people now see it is helping folks and its helping upwards of 3 Million People already, 274 companies employers taken action as of this morning was the last count i saw in you talking about a direct investment in your workplace, your workforces, raises, obviously bonuses but also Capital Investment and skill training and education for your employees. The broader communities being invested in an even some benefits that have long been seen as problems of the other party. I think that is the biggest because everyone thanks about child care and everyone thanks about wellness of their employees but you got Many Companies and many job creators now employers taking action because of this tax cut in they are saying because of the tax cut we are doing x, y and z. There are plenty will benefit from support the president and i hope part of his base and the president bases the entire country because hes president of the United States. Here is the best example. I have many good examples but in addition to working on the big issues of the day like tax reform in them for structure in immigration i tend to have some things in my portfolio that i can legitimately referred to as nonpartisan issues in search of bipartisan solutions. When i go around the country meeting with grieving families are talking to lawenforcement officers or Health Professionals or faithbased leaders i dont ask them how did you vote for are you registered. You cant care when youre serving the country and i do think people are that way are the ones who should serve the government. Well, todays a busy tuesday as every day is or has been for the last year. The Deputy Director of the fbi, Andrew Mccabe, has stepped out. He will be formally retiring in a couple of months but he step down immediately from his position and i am wondering is the present celebrating customer i mean, president happened so much to say about mccabe over the last few months in his and other comments criticizing his leadership at the fbi and im curious how the white house is responding. Im not personally seen the president asked one way or the other. I know the secretary was saying during her breathing in the press Briefing Room that the white house had nothing to do with that decision and that you have to refer your questions to mr. Mccabe and the fbi. Yeah, but the president has criticized his leadershipad personally. And also read in the paper c maybe even the Washington Post that mr. Mccabe planned on retiring at some point so i would again its not a surprise move, i guess, if you wash the Washington Postgt and we seen t before but in any event, thats what Sarah Sanders has said and that is what is occurring right now as the news is breaking. N another story, todays Senate Health out of the House Intelligence Committee put together a memo suggesting the fbi may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources to justify one of those early requests for secret surveillance in the Russian Investigation. This is obvious is something the House Committee will have to decide in the next couple of hours but should that memo be publicly released and you think has the right to see it and showed it necessary to date other changes in the doj . Let me be clear, the president went to to go in december and he has Great Respect for the rank and file of about 5000 those at the fbi and youre talking about people who were in charge of investigation and will we see that they made public and i dont have any special knowledge obviously on that. Some very disturbing statements about the now president and we expect people have political point of view they support the support in the bell box and some of them give money and at least one attended the president s political opponent Victory Party on Election Night but that aside we believe in transparency and accountability. This person would air on the side of transparency and i hope with a legion of people including the media have been covering russia and thea investigation for over a year now and the president has made very clear that there is no pollution and there is absolutely no collusion and he calls ite a hoax and an excuse for losing an election but more importantly is the transparency and accountability piece of this that if those who are in charge of this memo and i have not seen obviously but those who would charge feel that it is ready to be released to the public andis im not sure what we need to be rejected or not then they should make that decision. To pick up on that point is the president does he think that the message is that is that evidence of the launch the community was working against his campaign . Is a very large group of people we should never generalize as such and as i say what has been revealed now after the fact and ironically to the course of investigation that was targeted with him in his campaign which i was manager for the winning part and i can tell you that the idea that i would ever have to go to moscow rather than to Mecklenburg CountyNorth Carolina or Macomb County in michigan is foolish and to think that you have to do that otherwise or on this particular discrete matter lets those in the committee decide what they think is best based on what they know. This is a president who was talked about prosperity, security in transparency and accountability of being his top priority said he will talk about this night in the state of the union. Hell talk about a safe, strong, proud america and i think workout is america is important because whether this president telling the country to dignify all clear types and to have invested millions of dollars ton the department of labor and skills training so that we are not as a nation telling everyone you must go to a Fouryear College and you must get a degree where we hear from employers andee governors frome both sides of the aisle all the time that there is a labor shortage supply of carpenters, welders, and those i grew up out of philadelphiaa and most people i graduated with went for a skilled certificate and were able to support themselves the next day practically. This is someone whos trying to say to america be proud regardless of what your choice of career or job is. We want to find things that bind us together as a nation and he will talk about that in tomorrow state of the union. Yeah, and he probably i would assume will not talked with the Russian Investigation in the state of the Union Address but thats the shadow that hangs over the work he is doing is present. Sarah sanders said today at the press briefing its about time everyone washed russia fever out of their systems. Its real desire to pass that and the president himself last said he was looking forward to testifying under oath Robert Mueller if indeed he is asked and im wondering is one of his advisers considering his history and pass as a businessman exaggerating details and saying things that are not true and there isio this one deposition that he gave in 2007 where he w had 30 misstatements. The worry that he could be putting himself in a position where he might perjure himself . The question of whether or not the president testifies in mr. Mullers investigation a question for his attorneys of which i am not an attorney for him. I know that one of his attorneyr did say that he is not decide whether the president will testify and he will let everyone know when that decision is made. I know his other attorney also said publicly that that decision will be made at another time but we have also set from thema beginning and i will repeat it here today that the president has said in the white house is that we have all said that everyone is operating that we have turned over those of documents and people have testified for many hours and so everyone is complying and cooperating but when my colleague Sarah Sanders says today time to wash russia fever are your System People are going back to the promises that were made that this presidency wont last and you find collusion and the election will be notified and we were promised that we would see those 70000 votes in three states that donald trump one is president fairly and squarely that somehow youll se that there was a serious activity in those will to be turned around somehow and you go back to what everyone was saying a year ago and its a little praised. Now that has come to pass. We do have an investigation and everyone sees it and everyone knows what is happening so sometimes i guess we get details that maybe shouldnt be made public from whatever source is, i dontly know, but the fact ise are fully cooperating as white house in the president s attorneys, his personal attorneys, said hes fully cooperating. He is also said he looks forward to coming to an end. In the meantime were cooperating. There is inherent risk for anyone in talking to the fbi. In recounting details and especially for the president of the United States where a lot has happened and to be able to recall all of that he doesnt know what other people have been telling muller and his interviews with him. Is there not concerned at all about whether he could be caught up somehow in intentional saying something not true . You are asking me questions for his counselor. His counselor is happy to wake up every morning and see more americans benefit directly from legislation and to a be frank wh you, phil, in the span of onect for months i dont understand why and someone can ask former Speaker Pelosi when shes here but i dont understand why the democrats voted against max tax cut that is benefiting their constituents now. I dont know why they voted to shut the government down. These are the kind of things i were gone and i dont understand it and maybe someone will ask iy i dont know what the strategy is other to say that its we want to stop the president who is saying he wants to work across the aisle with you on immigration and work with you on and structure and other big piece of the president of the union tomorrow where he will talk about he is a builder. Want to rebuild this nation but you do that in a bipartisan fashion you do that by saying roads and bridges and are of the structure in our technology and these are the fact that we dont make anything more or billed as a countrytu is a major big publc works projects. That is bipartisan and the air Traffic Control system is designed for time when we had roughly 100,000 passengers a year and we now close to 1 billion. I dont know what is partisan about that but the idea that the president will commit to investing at least for 20 and in the structure and bring the permitting process from eightten years to about two is you get to comment publicly and you can criticize the proposal that you dont have ten or 20 years to do it. Will get to the democrats in the second but i want to pick up one thing on russia before weti change topics such as that reports over the weekend first New York Times confirmed by the post and fox and others are that person trump ordered the white House Counsel to fire muller as a special counsel back last summer in june. You are number of white house Officials Say he has never contemplated that includi