House live for us. Jeff, what are you hearing about why the president is so angry with Sarah Sanders . Reporter well, brianna, certainly another day here when many people inside this white house would prefer to talk about trade. Of course, there is enough drama surrounding that decision, but more on that in a minute. There is certainly tension inside the west wing about the whole Stormy Daniels situation, that it has indeed reached the white house for the first time. This is the first time really that this is drawn in. The white house, for more than a year, has been trying to keep this controversy outside, saying this has been asked and answered. Of course, yesterday in the White House Press briefing when i was asking the press secretary Sarah Sanders about this, it opened up this can of worms. This is what she said. The president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true. This case has already been won in arbitration. You said there is arbitration . That already has been won . By whom and when . The president s personal attorneys and for details on that i would refer you to them. But youre aware of them, so what more can you share with us . I can share that arbitration was won in the president s favor. So certainly we do not hear the president accepting personal responsibility very often for roles that he plays in me bit of drama here, but he and his lawyer Michael Cohen certainly have been deeply involved in this and Sarah Sanders trying to clean this up and answer questions yesterday, certainly complicated the matter. But as all this is going on here, were still keeping an eye on the announcement this afternoon at 3 30. As you said, it could be a symbolic signing of the trade agreement or it could be the signing of policy. Were hearing now that lawyers are working furiously behind the scenes so get a real document for the president to sign about the tariffs. It would exclude likely mexico and canada, which is something the industry was looking for, and others were looking for, not necessarily going to avoid a trade war here, though. Other allies furious about this. The president wants to keep a campaign promise, a pledge, to help Steel Workers. So look for Steel Workers to be flying into washington today to be at the president s side for some kind of a signing this afternoon. Jeff zeleny at the white house, thank you, sir. I want to bring in our panel now, cnn senior political analyst mark preston, tony blanken, cnn Global Affairs analyst and former deputy secretary of state under president obama. Okay, so this is a lot of confusion that were seeing, mark, coming out of the white house today about what the president is going to sign, is it going to be a real legally binding document, is it just going to be some sort of symbolic document . What does that tell you about the details of what is going to be in the tariff and just the state of things of this rollout at the white house . It tells you there are no details, right . The fact is from what we learned from our reporting, overnight, they were furiously working overnight to try to get something together. There are two things troubling about President Trumps decision to move forward on the tariffs. The first is the process and how he does it and the second thing is actual the results. So if you look at the process and how he does it, what were told is that he wants to go to pennsylvania on saturday, and he wants to announce that he saved the steel industry. Something in hand, right . To say i told you i would do this. Thats bad policy. And thats bad politics. We should note there is a special election in pennsylvania next week as well. The second thing is, well, hes going to meet with his cabinet including the transportation secretary and agriculture secretary. Will they say, you know what, if you impose the tariffs, all of our agriculture exports, were in a lot of trouble. Were talking about building an infrastructure creating a huge infrastructure bill putting that in place. Is she going to say to him, the Raw Materials dont all come from the United States. So what were talking about for a sticker bill is going to be twice that. He is ready for that . Are they ready to tell him that . Sort of one of the opening salvos of a trade war. You heard jeff zeleny talk about exemptions for canada and mexico. So one of the big hangups when it comes to getting legally binding language, the president signed, according to cnns reporting is the white houses legal rationale for why these tariffs are important. Theyre saying it is about national security. But then you have the white house, you have trump talking about exemptions for can did ad mexico, using this as leverage to get canada and mexico to renegotiate on nafta. Mark is right, the process should have happened on the front end, not the back end. All of the folks with equities and should have been sitting around the table before the president made this decision instead of after the fact. Now it is hard to recover this with these exemptions trying to carve things out, explain them. There is a Bigger Picture here. We wind up on the losing end of the stick at some point in time. As mark was saying, prices for products, that every american relies on, whether a can of soda or automobile, they go up if the price of the inputs goes up. On the other side of things, 95 of the worlds consumers live outside the United States f other countries start to raise barriers on our products, it will be harder to sell them and well lose out. So this is opening a big can of worms that substantively over time does not make sense for the United States. The president made a promise, mark, on the campaign trail, a lot of folks looking at this and say hes delivering on that. That said, it may have been a prom this is a sounded really good. But to the very people who agreed with him at least conceptually on why this would be a good idea, they might be then consuming products, wondering where the price is increasing, wondering why thats affecting their tight household budget. Do you think the president recognizes that . Is he surrounded why doesnt he care . First of all, we said this from day one, it is not necessarily about the policies, about the victory, right . He wants to be the winner, the one who delivers. Does he really care what it is . I dont think he does necessarily. That doesnt necessarily mean hell go forth and do something absolutely crazy and ludicrous. But the people that hes listening to now are very rightful shot in their vision. Peter navarro, very interchina, for instance, and big china is a tiny sliver in the tariffs. China has nothing to do with it. But navarro is the one who is really pushing behind it. Hes not looking beyond the scope of the rightful shot of him trying to get the tariffs and getting the president to he gets the benefit in making the announcement right away. The negative consequences play out over a long period of time. It accumulates. So politically, sometimes it is a move that actually works in the shortterm. Does it always, though . I think of obama, im not these are very different policies, but obama care, you can keep your doctor, and then it turns out that actually a lot of people could not. They started to realize that as you change things, youre not it is not all positives, right . There are some promises that were going to be broken and that was something that even though now obamacare is all level high popularity, it was a long ark, tony. So is that something that could even be affecting him going into reelection . The trade, chickens always come home to roost at some point. Again you start down this road and if you have other countries that start to retaliate, the retaliation is smart when you hear the european who may be affected by this, talking about retaliation, it is harleydavidson. Urban. Levis jeans. This is not good for anyone. Now, the fair thing is that the president is right about, for example, china, when it comes to lack of reciprocity in our commercial relations. Something needs to be done about that. Starting a tariff war is not right way to do it. Thank you so much. And right now on capitol hill, President Trumps one Time Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is facing questions in the russia investigation. Hes appearing before the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors. I want to go live to cnns manu raju there on the hill for us. Manu, the Ranking Member of the House Intel Committee just spoke about someone different, right . Erik prince, a trump associate who testified back in november, and the argument here is that he may have misled them during his testimony. Tell us about this. Yeah, thats right. The one of the big reasons why erik prince came before this committee was questions about this meeting that he had attended in the Seychelles Islands in january of 2017 and whether or not he was sent by anyone associated with the Incoming Trump administration to set up a back channel discussion with the kremlin, something that prince denied furiously before this committee. And when he was asked about that seychelles meeting in his november testimony, he said he met with some uae officials, and met separately with a russian banker at the request of someone at the uae. And said it was just a discussion about business opportunities, nothing about the Trump Administration and certainly no back channel discussion. Well, a couple of developments on that front. One, were lrning thearning tha muellers team is investigating if that was a back channel discussion and were also learning about another p participant in that seychelles meeting, george nader, a businessman, someone who has ties to the Trump Administration, was at least in one of those meetings in the seychelles and now adam schiff, the ranking democrat, says there are a lot more questions about erik princes testimony. Do you think erik prince lied to the committee about the seychelles meeting . I dont know whether the public reports of what mr. Nader may be saying are accurate or not. All i can say is if those reports are accurate, there is clearly a significant discrepancy between that version and what we heard in erik princes testimony, which is accurate. I dont know. We should find out. But clearly both cant be true. It either was a back channel or it wasnt, it was either a meeting arranged as a result of other discussions in december in trump tower or it wasnt. And we need to get to the bottom of it. Reporter now, schiff wants both nader to come before the committee who has not testified before this panel, even as hes cooperating with Robert Muellers investigation. And he also wants prince to return to this committee, provide more documents and records and answer more questions. Thats something that republicans are not committing to yet. Mike conway, the republican leading this investigation, declined to comment about this matter. And when we asked yesterday, erik princes spokesperson, about whether or not george nader was, in fact, at one of these seychelles meetings, he also declined to comment. Said, look, the public transcript released on the testimony and in that transcript, brianna, no mention of george nader as he denied this was any effort to set up a back channel discussion with russia. Interesting, manu raju. I want to ask you, the New York Times is reporting about Something Different here, the president s conversations with people who have been called as witnesses in the special counsel probe. Tell us about this. Reporter at least two discussions at this report reveals that president had with some key witnesses. One involving reince priebus, the former white house chief of staff, who testified before Robert Muellers investigation, he had asked if muellers team was nice to him according to the report. In addition, he did raise some questions about another New York Times report from january, saying that Robert Muellers team had learned that trump had wanted to fire mueller as special counsel and asked don mcgahn, the white House Counsel to deliver that message, something that mcgahn resisted. Now, according to this report, trump wanted mcgahn to issue a public denial of that report, but mcgahn reminded him that the president did in fact call for muellers dismissal, and thats another sign of this investigation continuing to remain on the president s mind as he talks to all of at least two witnesses we know of who have gone before this special counsel investigation. Manu raju, thank you. Coming up, much more on the porn star payoff controversy gripping the white house, including allegations from her lawyer, that the president s attorney is threatening Stormy Daniels. And soon we will hear from the president himself when he holds a Cabinet Meeting at the white house. Stay with us. Hey julie, i know todays critical, but i really need. A sick day. Dads dont take sick days. Dads take dayquil severe. The nondrowsy, coughing, aching, fever, sore throat. Stuffy head, no sick days medicine. These are the specialists were proud to call our own. 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Sanders admitting for first time that a nondisclosure agreement involving the president did exist. You said there is arbitration that already has been won by whom and when . The president s personal attorneys and for details on that i would refer you to them. Youre aware of them. What more can you share with us . I can share that arbitration was won in the president s favor and i would refer you to the president s outside counsel on any details on that. Cnn National Politics reporter m. J. Lee has more details. That was a response from Sarah Sanders that reporters perked up at because it was news to hear it yesterday and something that really angered the president. Thats right. The way that Sarah Sanders handled questions about Stormy Daniels was both kind of fascinating and puzzling. This blanket statement, first of all, that President Trump has answered these questions about Stormy Daniels, i just want to be very clear, that is simply not true. President trump has not answered questions directly about Stormy Daniels. And then what she said, when she was asked, did President Trump know about the payment that Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels, Sarah Sanders answer was not that im aware of. Youre right, the newsi