Conversations are part and parcel of the russian collusion investigation, and that takes precedence. Stay with me. Gloria borger, and let me bring you in this and we can comment on the bizarre nature of the briefing here in a second, but to hear sean spicer refer any question on, you know, the next weeks testimony with mr. Comey and the investigation, and referring to outside counsel, and this the beginning of the new norm . Yes. I think it is. And mark casowitz is someone who has long remitted donald trump, and he is going to have a supervisory role, and other lawyers hired, and he is going to be the one who communicates with the president most frequently. Clearly, there is a Comfort Level there, and this is clearly a very different world, because i think that what you are going to be finding in this white house as you have found in the clin ton white house is that you have to kind of wall people off from this investigation. Sean spicer doing his job, and not answering questions that the president s personal attorney ought to be answering. Okay. And eric lishblou, and if you are just tuning in, gives your news . What we are hearing is that c comey the fired fbi director and bob mueller the named special investigator a few weeks ago have a talked and met and worked out an agreement, and the parameters for comey to testify publicly which is a big deal. There are some questions since mueller was named about whether he would essentially allow that go forward or not, because of the concerns of could it bleed into the investigation if you have a fired fbi director, and so what we are hearing is that comey is going to testify as soon as next week before the senatele intelligence committee, and they wroshg it out, and it is they are going to work it out, and he is publicly, and he is eager to get into discussions with the president which are becoming so notorious about the investigation you remember as you referenced the oneonone conversation where trump allegedly told him to drop or let go of the Michael Flynn investigation, his former National Security adviser, and another one where he allegedly asked comey if he had the loyalty if he were to stay on as director, and comey as we are hearing has taken meticulous notes about these conversations, because they were awkward to put it mildly. And we expect from whating toda going to get into the conversation, but not the detail of the investigation itself of whether there is collusion between russia and the campaign and that he is going to leave to bob mueller. And i was talking to the political drirector david chalin and he said, brooke, grab the popcorn. He says that nation has not seen a hearing like this since au knee ta hill, since anita hild where are your expectations . Well, david may be right, and what eric said, he wont talk about much on the day that he was fired as fbi drirector, and think about what President Trump may have unleashed by firing him. If you are serving the president , the statement that you always can make, and that gets around every question is, im terribly sorry, i dont speak about the personal conversations that i have or the policy conversations that i have with the president , and the advise i give in, and the instructions that i received and the president ial conversations are considered off limits, but what has happened here is by firing comey he has, the President Trump has essentially freed up mr. Comey to gout and begin discussing at least those conversations. So, since it has already appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere that he had taken the notes and felt pressured, the leaks almost assured that he would be asked about it, and it sounds like if the reports are true that he is simply going to plan to explain those conversations. And as you say, that could be pretty riveting television. Gloria, what else . What else will you be listening for . Look, we want to and we want to know the details of the memos, and that is what we are going to be listening for, and that may be the only thing that he can talk about in open testimony. Because, he is not going to, and he is not going to try to talk about what bob muellers case is anymore. There is now a special counsel. So, if the special counsel is going to prosecute, he is going to prosecute. I think that members of congress are going to want to know, and maybe they will ask him this question, did you consider it to be obstruction at the time. Because, we know from our sources, and i have spoken with one source who said, look, he, i dont think that he did at the time, and he kept these memos, because it made him uncomfortable, but he felt that he could educate or school the president in the right way to talk to the fbi director. So i think that until the day that he was fired, perhaps, he didnt think that it was obstruction, and now, of course, he could change his mind the day after he was fired when the president told lester holt, he was thinking about russia at the time. But i think that it is a question that, that members of congress are going to want to ask comey. Quickly, david sanger, back over to you, on the nature of the briefing. What did you make of that . Well, it is interesting, because what the not so subtle message out of mr. Spicers reference to the outside counsel is that this has moved outside of the political realm and into the legal realm. That is why they are leaving all of the answers to the counsel. I think that mr. Spicer has concluded that he doesnt want to be responsible for saying anything that could affect the legal case against the white house staff, ultimately against the president if there was one, and i can understand why he would not want to be in that position. It does remind me a little bit of what happened in the Clinton White house though where they have successfully walled off the questions of impeachment from the policy operation, and it enabled the Clinton White house to actually get back on track, and get reengaged with policy. On the agenda that they keep trying to bring up, and have those accomplishments despite all of the noise from the outside, and all of the very, very pertinent questions being asked of the administration. And let me say that we have more news on the briefing from the paris climate deal, and lets go to the White House Correspondent sarah murray on, that and it is clear to me that sean spicer could not say if the president has decided. It sounds like he has not yet, but we will know soon. And he could not say much at all. Because he was not straight forward on any of the questions including paris. He did not say that the president has not made a decision, and sources have been telling cnn that the president is prepared and is expected to withdraw from the paris climate accord, and what he did say is that i dont know whether he has made up his mind, and when he does, he will announce it publicly. And so it is a bizarre briefing, off camera, and extremely short, about 12 minutes long, and sean spicer looked dejected as he was fielding the questions. He got the paris question, as you would expect a number of time, and he could not give us the texture about who the president has been speaking with in recent days about this, and what factors he is weighing throughout the decisionmakings process, and he said wait and see. And the other thing that was telling is that as you were discussing is the fact that this is an administration that was not willing to talk publicly about the fact that the president has brought on outside counsel aed on theday, sean spicer at the podium saying if there are questions about the russian investigation, they have to go to the outside counsel, and the staff does not want to get in front of the president and embarrass themselves or get themselves in trouble. And to all of us who have been in the briefings and we take them just about every each and everyday, and why audioonly . What is beside that decision . It is a great question as to why it was audioonly. We know that they have decided that they do not want to put sean spicer out there in front of the camera for several days, and the white house feels like he is taking a beating from the reporters, and President Trump oftentimes feels like the message is not getting conveyed in the way that he would like to suggest, and you have to remember that this is a president who is the spokesperson for his own life essentially, and somebody who is attuned to the media and the pres eence is on television, an so nobody would do as good as he does on tv. And so we know that President Trump is an avid consumer of sean spicers briefings and he was tickled that they were rating blockbusters and now soured on that, and that is why we are seeing the sort of the different mix of the briefings. We saw the other officials briefing on camera, and we saw it a little bit in the runup in the last couple of weeks leading up to the foreign trip, and another Administration Official briefing on the camera today, but not sean spicer. All right. Sara at the white house, and also joining me are frank sutton, and Christine Todd whitman, the former governor of new jersey, and nice to have you on here, but john, i read your piece on cnn. Com can, and this is the line that struck me. That you say that you dont want to quote sound alarmist, but there is no simply overstating the stakes here, the Paris Agreement is important to the life on earth as we know it. And as you are talking to the climate sign pitses, it is more and morel alarming without ending fossil fuels, and we know it is us, and we are causing the warming that we are observing and sthat going to be really bad. This is things like the rising sea level which threaten the viability of lowlying island nation, and as well as cities like new york and shanghai and new orleans, and disease increases with more warming, and heat waves are deadlier, and the droughts are more intense, and climate migrations that are happening in certain parts of the world, and the stakes cannot be overstated here, and the Paris Agreement does not everything, but it sets a north star goal of limiting it to 2 degrees selcelsius, which is th especially danger zone. A and so it is critically important, and if the Administration Pulls out, it is the second biggest polluter on earth saying that we dont want to be a part of the global pact which is a promise to globe and the future that we will do something about this massive existential problem. And let me turn to you, because this is your former home turf in epa and you speak this language, governor. And so how do you see it as john cease it if the u. S. Decides to pullt of the agreement . Well, the good news for the climate is that the ship has left port. We have a number of our Big Companies that are, have made aggressive goals set for reducing the climate impact, and their carbon output. It cedes leadership and certainly puts us on the back row of the International Negotiations of this, and this is an enormously important situation for the United States and the world, and i would hate to be sean spicer since the president has said nobody can know what i am thinking. And i have had famed economists who have advised the candidates, and Stephen Moore argued that it would be great for jobs which is one of the reasons why, you know, President Trump is in the white house. Would he have a point . I mean, somebody on the other side saying, no, no. Getting out of the Paris Agreement . Yes. No sh, i disagree. And we have proven it again and again, and from 1998 to 2009, we have seen the population decrease, and the electricity use more than double, and we have omore than doubled the gdp and increased the key criteria pollutants, the worst offenders by 67 . This idea that you cant have a clean and green environment, 57 healthy growing environment is just wrong, and in fact, you cant have a healthy growing economy if you dont have a Clean Environment for people to which people can live. And on the point on World Leaders, and let me pose that to David Chalian, no, david sanger, and so we have just seen the president on the world stage and even meeting with the pope of all people who would like for him to, you know, stay n and it would be going against the popes advice, and what would the consequences be to the u. S. . Well, brooke, the long term consequences for this may be environmental, but the short term consequences are mostly about American Power an influence. The United States would actually find itself isolated and the europeans as made incredibly clear to President Trump in the trip last week are unified on the issue, and even when they disagree on other issues around and the chinese are emerging as leaders and as secretary whitmans point, you can create jobs and Economic Opportunity out of it. But more importantly, we will have ceded the high ground on this to the chinese and to many others. Our other main allies the japanese, the south koreans, and i have already pointed tout europeans, and they are all going to keep moving in the direction they are moving. The question is that when the historians look back at this, it is a brief blip in which the United States took out of the leadership and comes back or one of the points where we separate ourselves from everybody else. That is part of why you have seen the Business Executives arguing with President Trump on this point. And what about though, and also, forgive me, David Chalian was on my brain as he should be at all times as the brilliant political advice, but i was thinking of the point he made this morning, but gloria, one thing that if you have had a president with a successful honeymoon period, and done a lot to appease the base, and legislative accomplishments and then decided to go against the grain, and then have the u. S. Pull out of the Paris Agreement, but he needs the base, and this is the political imperative and so why would he do something that is so politically dangerous . Well, you know, his base, you know, the concerns of his base voters are not the paris accord. The concerns are jobs. If the president is going to be using the argument that Stephen Moore used to you before that this is a job creator, that is what he is going to be talking to the base about. Look, he has not withdrawn from nato for example which is something that he said that he was thinking of doing in the campaign, and he has not gotten the health care reform, and tax reform and on and on, and so, he has been lobbied by everyone from the pope, and i presume to his daughter, and to cabinet secretaries about this, and i think that it is clearly a difficult decision for him. But in the end, if he decides to withdr withdraw, he has to do it in terms of jobs, and this is an issue that resonates with the core constituency. Thank you, sh, Gloria Borgerd john sanger, and Christine Todd whitman and john lichtblau. And also, the explanation that sean spicer gave in the midnight tweet, and you laugh, but he inadvertently invented a new word. We will go there coming up. You will find out very soon. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you vemuch. It is an honor to have the Prime Minister of vietnam at the white house in the oval office. The Prime Minister who has done a spectacular job in vietnam. He led so many different c categories in trade and other things. We are going to be discussing trade. And we will be discussing north korea, and we have many things to talk about, and we look forward to being together. Very much so. [ speaking Foreign Language ] translator thank you, mr. President , for inviting me to pay official visit to the United States. I bring with me the warmest greetings from the vietnamese people and the greetings to you all. The relationship between vietnam and the United States have undergone many upheavals in history, but today, we have become very good partners. Translator i have are the great pleasure of having a phone conversation with the president last december and also the exchange of letters. I was very impressed with the friendliness and openness of the president and confident that the meeting today will be equally candid and open. I would prefer to set out major directions for our vietnam and u. S. Corporations on the basis of Mutual Respect and equality in the interest of peace, stability and cooperation and development in the asia pacific and the world. We very much look forward to welcoming you, mr. President , to vietnam to attend the meeting of leaders as well as to pay an official meeting to vietnam in november of this year. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. We have been hearing are from a lot of people both ways, thank you. Can you tell us i have been hearing from at love people both ways. Thank you, everybody. Can you shake hands again . The president of the United States with the Prime Minister of vietnam, and just that ending point that we wanted to lean in and hear, because you heard from sean spicer say that he was he has not made up his mind whether to stay in on the paris climate deal, and you heard the president saying that he has been hearing from people both ways, so that decision is looming. A and so now what will go down in history and not what it says, but what it revealed. Shortly after midnight, the president said despite the constant press covfefe, and then after the white ho