Now. I think the white house has said ten times maybe more that they are not going to fire Robert Mueller. They want to finish the investigation. Cnn newsroom starts now. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining me this sunday. Im fredricka whitfield. We start with a red line in washington. Cries from both sides of the aisle with a clear message for the president , do not fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Are you worried that the president is prepared to order the firing of mueller. Sure looks that way from his tweets. Well, as i said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because were rule of law nation. This would undoubtedly result in a constitutional crisis and i think democrats and republicans need to speak out about this right now. Dont wait for the crisis, but i would hope that that would be the result that we would affirm our system of checks and balances and appoint an independent counsel. This as the president is escalating his attacks unleashing a slew of tweets denying collusion, calling out mueller by name, and slamming fbi, fired fbi Deputy DirectorAndrew Mccabes claim that he kept memos of his conversations with the president. Spent very little time with Andrew Mccabe but he never took notes when he was with me. I dont believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying james comey. Can we call them fake memos . Mccabes lawyer just responded tweeting this, we will not be responding to each childish, defamatory, disgusting and false tweet by the president. Also says, the tweets confirm this by mccabes attorney the tweets confirm that he has corrupted the entire process that led to mr. Mccabes termination and has rendered it ill legitimate. White house correspondent Boris Sanchez with us now. Lot there, boris. Reporter thats right, fred. President trump spending the morning on the offensive on twitter, going after members of his administration, current and former. He also launched a new line of attack against the special counsel. We really havent seen President Trump go directly after Robert Mueller and his team the way that we have this morning. I want to show you the tweet im talking about now. The president writing why does the mueller team have 13 hardened democrats, some big crooked hillary supporters and zero republicans . Another dem recently added, does anyone think this is fair . And yet there is no collusion. A couple of points there about the president s tweet. Hes trying to argue that the investigation is biased against him because there are no republicans on muellers team. Thats simply inaccurate. Robert mueller himself is a registered republican, someone who served under both republican and Democratic Administrations. Further, some of the attorneys on muellers team have prosecuted both republicans and democrats. Theres no real partisan streak there, and perhaps most importantly, Robert Mueller has a vote of confidence from ron ros rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney general who repeatedly said muler is acting appropriately, that hes carrying out this investigation in pursuit of facts and not allowing personal political views to interfere in the pursuit of those facts. So the president is sounding alarms not only with his own comments but with his attorneys comments. Yesterday john dowd saying he was praying for an end to the russia investigation the way that he worded a Statement Released yesterday led many to believe that the administration was inclined to perhaps fire Robert Mueller, and so today youre hearing a number of lawmakers comiing out saying tht that would be a constitutional crisis. Heres jeff flake, senator from arizona, on state of the Union Earlier today with jake tapper saying that would be a red line the president shouldnt cross. Listen. Do you think Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan will say no, mr. President , you cant do this . I hope so. In talking to my colleagues all along, it was, once he goes after mueller, then well take action. I think that people see that as a massive red line that cant be crossed, so i hope that thats the case, and i would just hope that enough people would prevail on the president now. Dont go there. Dont go there. We have confidence in mueller. I certainly do, and then i think my colleagues do as well. So i hope that the pushback is now to keep the president from going there. Though the cloud of the russia Investigation Continues to hang over the administration, fred, there is some good news for the president this weekend. His job approval numbers have ticked up since january, this according to an nbc news wall street journal poll, showing that his Approval Rating is now at 43 , disapproval at 53, down four points from the start of the year. Finally the president is set to travel to New Hampshire tomorrow. Hes going to give a speech outlining his plan to combat the opioid crisis. Interesting timing on all those fronts. Boris sanchez at the white house, thanks. The big question remains on everyones mind, is the president laying the groundwork for the firing of special counsel rob mueller . Joining me to discuss this is cnn Law Enforcement contributor and retired fbi supervisory special agent stephen moore, former white house ethics czar, norm eisen, analyst David Drucker and commentator ana navarro. David, with the growing attacks by the president , what responsibility do republicans have in defending the Intelligence Community . Well, look, i think what republicans are trying to do is stay out of the line of fire. Theyre approaching a Midterm Election where theyre already in bad shape and one thing that could make it worse, getting into a public spat with the president. The president fires back at them, and their base, in terms of electoral turnout just disappears because they get mad at republicans for fighting with the president and the Republican Base is still with the president , even though many more Republican Voters have issues with the president. So its a very delicate matter for republicans on the hill. In talking to them over many months, they have always expressed publicly and on the record concerns about the idea that the president would fire mueller. One, by having the special counsel on the job it absolves them of the responsibility to do much in terms of looking in to russian meddling and the possibility of collusion. Number two, if the president were to fire mueller, which is in his power to do legally, they would feel compelled to act, and they have told that to me and other reporters over many months, and this is the last thing they want to be involved in as a Midterm Election approaches. So trumps personal lawyer had two statements yesterday, john dowd, saying that he wants muellers probe to end, and then of course the tweets started coming in, the Mueller Probe should never have been started, that there was no collusion, and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a fake dossier paid for by crooked hillary and the dnc and improperly used in fisa court for surveillance of my campaign, witch hunt. Republican congressman trey gowdy weighed in on this. To suggest that mueller should shut down and all he is looking at is collusion, if you have an innocent client, mr. Goud, angt like it. Russia attacked our country. Let special counsel mueller figure that out. If you believe theres no evidence of collusion you should want special counsel muler to take all the time and have all the independence he needs to do his job. Steve, are you in aagreement . I am. Hes not going to get a better deal from anybody besides mueller. Mueller will let the facts take him where they take him and if they prove no collusion, then mueller is now this administrations best friend and they should thank god for him. If there is collusion, if there are other things like gowdy said, then mueller will go there and america should thank god for mueller. Nobody should want mueller out right now, no rational person. Turner to former fbi director Andrew Mccabe fired hours before his retirement. Senator marco rubio reacted this morning with this. I dont like the way it happened. He should have been allowed to finish through the weekend. That said, theres an Inspector General report thats due and work thats being done and after he had retired, that report would have indicated wrongdoing or something that was actionable there are things that could have been done after the fact, but 48 hours to go before retirement, i would have certainly done it dempb differently, given the fact theres still that report that hasnt come in. Norm, we heard from mccabes attorney voo hevia were not go respond back and forth with the president. How else, in your view, could this have been handled . Fred, thanks for having me back, and the Mccabe Firing was handled the wrong way. You ought to have let the Inspector General report come out, let all the facts settle and then make a decision, and the stream of invective from trump that has been targeted at mccabe for months now, theres no way we can be confident, whatever the merits may be, that we can be confident this was a fair decision and the spectacle of having his job pulled in order to deny him his pension, less than 48 hours before he was to retire, is just more evidence thats not to say that the report will exonerate him, but it should have been done in a proper way. Right, because apparently the Inspector General report either indicates there were wrongdoings or things that were suspicious allegedly, you know, by mccabe, thereby potentially justifying his firing. Rand paul did not mince words on the way in which this firing took place, and this is what he had to say this morning. I really think general flynn was treated unfairly. I think Andrew Mccabe did worse than general flynn, frankly. Andrew mccabe lied about doing something illegal. He leaked classified documents. General flynn apparently did not state the truth about something he did that was legal. So you wonder, how are we going to make this fair . How are we going to make this just . Again, ana, we dont know if it was an issue of leaking, if it was justifiably talking to reporters and talking about mccabe. Again, we dont have the details of that Inspector General report, but is there kind of a common sentiment across the party in terms of mccabe was deserving of being fired, maybe its just the issue of when that is bringing a lot of consternation . Look, i think youve heard today from people like Lindsey Graham, marco rubio saying they dont like the way that this happened. So i dont think there is a Common Thread within the party. Where there is a Common Thread is in the complicity and the silence they have held as donald trump plucks person by person who stands in the way of him firing mueller. I think the Republican Party is in for a deep, deep reckoning come november, and in large part its because the voters of america have seen time and time and time again that they are not performing their duty of checks and balances of being a coequal branch of government and holding this executive, Holding Donald trump accountable. They keep looking the other way, because it is a guy from their party, and he throws bones at them here and there, and keeps them happy. The republicans have a real problem on their hand, because if they get into a fight with trump over this, they have a short term primary problem. If they dont get into a fight with trump with this over this and stand up for american principles and the constitution and the rule of law, theyve got a longterm problem, like we just saw in pennsylvania today. They learned nothing from a 20point turnaround in a state republicans should have been able to nominate a bag of mulch and that bag of mulch should have been able to win in that district. This new nbc news wall street journal poll looked at the most popular and unpopular political figures and institutions and just like a look, look where the fbi and Robert Mueller stand compared to figures like paul ryan, the president , both major parties, so david, trumps attacks on the fbi and the special counsel is this fueling greater support from him . We just heard our own reporter boris reporting his Approval Ratings got a bump recently. What potentially is behind that . Well, look, i think that the president s rants and attacks on the Intelligence Community definitely have impacted the opinion of the Republican Base, which weve seen now the opinion of intelligence agencies and Law Enforcement agencies sort of change with where the president is, and this sort of fight is what his base likes to see out of him. It keeps them very motivated. To them its about him fighting against the power in washington. Thats how they look at it, and so for the does it look like its starting to backfire if you look at the pennsylvania race, however . I think that it can and potentially will backfire against the president , when you look at battleground house districts in 2018 Midterm Elections where youre competing in upscale, suburban educated enclaves, where you have voters inclined to vote republican but dont like the president , personally dont like his rants and dont like his attacks on the institutions of government, even though theres a good chance theyre going to enjoy many of the president s policies that hes pushed through at least up until now, and this is the problem for republicans, and in particular its a problem with educated white women, and if this continues, then the republican majority in the house is in deep trouble, no matter how you parse out all of these polls, who is more popular than that person, at the end of the day, mitt terms are about the president , and at 43 , its a nice bump for the president compared to where he was, but its still 43 , and in that same poll, we saw a tenpoint disparity in the generic ballot three points outside of where republicans feel confident or comfortable that theyd have a chance to hold the house. Ana, i did see you agreement, your way of adding in. Stephen moore, norm and David Drucker and ana navarro, appreciate it. Breaking news in russia as polls are closing right now, Vladimir Putin most assuredly cementing power for another six years, with polls closing there. Lets get right to Fred Pleitgen outside moscows red square and putin had, what seven opponents, but everyone kind of expects what the outcome will be. Reporter yes, its not much of a surprise, fredricka. We just received the first equity poll from the russian election. Vladimir putin is at around a little less than 74 of the votes that have been counted so far. I think its about 21 of the votes in the country counted so far but as you maybe can hear behind me, theres been Election Party going on, of the Vladimir Putin supporters, about 35,000 are expected here outside the kremlin, as you said, seven people running against Vladimir Putin. Seems the closest runnerup is around 11 so from what we can see so far, seems assured Vladimir Putin will spend another six years in office as the russian president. If anyone in america is wondering who the u. S. President will be dealing with the next couple of years most certainly will be Vladimir Putin. Fred, one watch dog group received more than 2,000 reports of potential irregularities in todays vote. What can you tell us about that . Reporter thats certainly true. There are groups say there were voting irregularities in several places including ballot stuffing, other irregularities as well. Its interesting because russian state media is reporting about that. There is an ombudswoman for the russian government says she does not believe that would make the election void or influence the election. The reports are out there. The russians are looking into those reports but certainly that is something that International Organizations will be looking very clearly at, as well, fredricka. Fred pleitgen in moscow, thanks so much. Mounting pressure on a data firm tied to the Trump Campaign. Cambridge analytica accused of improperly obtaining voter information from facebook. New details of this growing scandal, next. And a teen abducted in pennsylvania and taken across the Mexican Border found safe. Police say her abductor was a member of her church. Details straight ahead. Money managers are pretty much the same. All but while some push High Commission investment products, Fisher Investments avoids them. Some advisers have hidden and layered fees. Fisher investments never does. And while some advisers are happy to earn commissions from you whether you do well or not, Fisher Inv