Anybody would present me with anything then because they know how much i love this country. Number two, if i was, and of course you have to look at it, because if you dont look at it, youre not going to know if its bad. How are you going to know if its bad, but of course you give it to the fbi or report it to the attorney general or somebody like that. Of course you give it to the fbi. Let go to abby philip. Today is the president s 73rd birthday and he decided to phone up his favorite tv network, and in that interview, in that clip that we just heard, we tried to walk back, try to clarify his early comments. How do you think he did . Well, it seems like he was trying to have it both ways there. He both walked it back and then also doubled down on it claiming that hes gotten so much support for that comments when it seems the opposite has been true, when the condemnation was fast and swift and the right answer is you do not accept information from a Foreign Government, but the president seemed to be saying something a little bit different today, just listen to it first and then if its bad you take it to the fbi or to the attorney general. Thats a little bit different from what he had to say to george stef luce in that interview with abc when he made it clear that he thought going to the fbi was not something that normal people did. He claimed he probably in his ever life had gone to the fbi with information and thats no how the real world works is how he described it. There seems to be an acknowledgement theres been political blowback to his original comment. Wants to make it clear in this interview that hes a patriot. That nobody would even come to him with this kind of information because he understands that he loves this country. Those were his own words and clearly i think the attempt at a cleanup didnt quite do the trick because i think in some ways the president created more problems for himself by making it clear that he would actually sit down, listen to the information and then determine whether it was bad enough to warrant calling the fbi. Alex . Right. Further mudying the waters. Abby philip on the north lawn. White house, thank you. President trump also took the opportunity to blast house squeaker nancy pelosi for remarks she made about his moral compass. The speaker saying that the president doesnt know right from wrong and took part in a, quote, criminal coverup citing examples in the Mueller Report. Cnn senior congressional reporter manu raju. More salvos in this deepening and ongoing feud and this time president not really holding back in his response. Reporter no. Hes not. He was last week in normandy all right. Im sorry, well have to cut you off, manu. We cant hear you. There are technical difficulties, and well try to get back to him in a little bit. But lets dig deeper on more of what the president said today with our panel. Phil mudd, a cia counterterrorism, Julie Hirschfeld davis, Congressional Correspondent for the New York Times and mike moreno, a former department of justice prosecutor. The president as we just heard from the president trying to walk back what he said this week, that he had no problem taking dirt on opponents from a foreign source, and in this interview with fox today he said of course you have to report it to the fbi. So same question to you. How do you think hes cleaning this up in. Not that well. This is not very complicated. Its not about opposition rest i used to be in the spy business. If you go into a campaign in 2020 and you have we saw this in helsinki, a Foreign Government that favors a candidate and in helsinki putin says i favor the president and have you a Foreign Government, lets say russia or china who favors a candidate they might have an interest based on what the president said if the in the past couple of days to steal your financial data, maybe your credit cards arent paid and to steal your emails and maybe theres information in there about an inappropriate relationship that you have. Its not on the candidates to vet that information. They need to place had a phone call. Theres no question. Thats espionage. Joe, the president is saying that before he places that phone call that hed have to look at that information to determine whether its bad or not. Is that the way the law looks . Absolutely no. Thats nonsense. President trump likes to exude this idea that he is the map, right, that he gets to decide what laws he does and does not at here to so for him to say im going to filter decision and ill decide if i notify the attorney general or fbi thats absurd. Its not up to him. Its not. The president has repeatedly also tried to insinuate that the rules are different for him because hes the president. Lets take a listen. One thing thats different with the president is i had dinner with the queen. Hi i met with the Prime Minister minister of the uk. I was with the head of france and was with the head of all of these nations and im constantly talking to hem, and, you know, that puts us in a we have many, many conversations. Im just thinking, gee, if they say we dont like your opponent and i supposed to put the president of france, am i supposed to report him to the fbi . Queen elizabeth slipping Opposition Research across the table and the other example he used with Emmanuel Macron of france. Can you engage in anyone engaging in that kind of behavior . I used to meet Foreign Government officials all the day. I used to have to fill out a form which half the time i didnt do, i violated a rule, but theres a fundamental difference obviously and lets make sure. This is funny but not. Lets make sure we understand it. You have dinner with a foreign official and say what should our policy be in iran . Thats what the president is talking about, dinner with the queen, for example, or lunch with the queen. You have a meeting with a foreign official in don jr. s case, a russian lawyer offered dirt, presumably stolen information about an american candidate, this is apples and orange and the president is the trying to suggest to us that an apple is like an orange. It is not. They are different. Julie, the president also turning his sights as he so often does on speaker of the house nancy pelosi. He called her comments fascist and disgraceful which seems farther than hes gone in the past. Pelosi, of course, saying that trump doesnt note difference between right and wrong. Who is goading who here, and and who is coming out on top . Well, i think they are both goading each other, but i would say that it seems like nancy pelosi really has gotten under President Trumps skin, and weve seen this happen time and again. She made had a comment last night during an interview, you know, he does a lot of projecting. He used the word mashist. When he says nancy is nervous, that means hes nervous and when nancy is a mess, that means hes a mess and thats her way of throwing it back on him, and i think what youre seeing sheer a president who feels very threatened by the speaker, and a speaker who is trying to sort of hold off a group of democrats in the Democratic Caucus on capitol hill who are real el calling for much more aggressive action against President Trump potentially opening an impeachment inquiry, and one of the ways shes doing that is by showing solidarity by making these increasingly critical comments about him. She made a private comment that he belongs in prison last week and made these other comments about him not knowing right from wrong. Its pretty clear that she and the president are going to continue to be engaging in this kind of war of words against the president. And someone not leveling any criticism at the president is the Senate Majority leader mitch mckofnlt he was asked about this question on dirt from foreign sources. He responded that democrats just cant let it go repeating this line that after the Mueller Probe that the case is closed. Do you think we should be surprised that he wasnt willing to engage more on that . Not at all. Mitch mcconnell has been, you know, in the exact same position i think throughout all of this saying that the Mueller Report, its case closed now that we know that its out and that we need to move on. We didnt really hear a whole lot of criticisms from the president s conduct. It was interesting yesterday after his comments about accepting Foreign Campaign dirt that many of them said, okay, we part ways with him on that. We would call the fbi, but they didnt criticize the president for having said it. None of them really voiced any concern about whether that might have opened the door or been a dangerous thing in terms of inviting that kind of foreign interference in the coming or current election cycle, so republicans are willing to go up to a line in terms of breaking with the president , but they dont want to be critical of him and certainly Mitch Mcconnell wont be in that situation. This was all sparked because of this interview that the president gave to abc news, and in a new clip that was rolled out today we also heard President Trump talking about his former white House Counsel don mcgahn, and he responded to the lines in the Mueller Report that mcgahn stopped trump multiple times from firing Robert Mueller. Take a listen. I was never going to fire mueller. I never suggested firing mueller. Thats what he said. I dont care what he says. It doesnt matter. That to show everyone what a good counsel he pass. Why would don mcgahn lie under oath . Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer or or he believed it because i would constantly tell anybody who would listen including you and including the media that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Joe, what do you think of that . Was mcgahn lying to make hemp self look good . Doesnt make sense at all. This is so interesting because normally when you have a client under investigation or in this case possible impeachment you want to move things past. You want to do what the republicans are saying case closed. The president seems to relish in bringing this up, hand not only that. Don mcgahn holds a really vital position in terms of what he knows, so for the president of all people to be calling him out and effectively calling him a liar, terrible strategy. Any defense counsel would go craze fetheir client was doing this sort of thing. If he thinks that don mcgahn lied, why doesnt he let him testify . I cant figure this out. Keep hearing this phrase, i left government years ago. If the cia told me i couldnt testify, if the white house tells don mcgahn he cant testify, if i were him i would say you just impugned my integrity and thats really importantly. I have to sit there and say to a client ill represent you honorably. I think mcgwyn is going to appear publicly at some point and it wont go well for the president. Weve yet to hear from mcgwyn. Phil mudd, Julie Hirschfeld davis and mike moreno, thank you very much. A Watchdog Agency says Kellyanne Conway broke the law and should be fired and why the president is not going to do that, and the u. S. Central command releasing this video saying it proves that iran is responsible for the tanker attack in the gulf of oman. Well go live there next. Stop fearing your alarm clock. With zzzquil pure zzzs. A drugfree blend of botanicals with melatonin that supports your Natural Sleep cycle so you can seize the morning. Zzzquil pure zzzs. 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I guess they dont know that we have things that we can detect in the dark that work very well. The video of the president was referencing there was released by u. S. Central command last night. They say that it showers, as you can see right there, an iranian boat retrieving an unexploded mine from the hull of the japaneseowned ship. The president of the company who owns the tanker denied that had a mine was used in the attack because it happened above the water line. Meanwhile, iran is rejecting allegations that it was behind the attacks, and our Senior International correspondent Fred Pleitgen is in the capital of tehran. Cnn military and retired admiral john dishy is here with me in washington. First to you, fremptd we now have this video that the u. S. Says is evidence of irans attacks on the tankers. I understand that iran hasnt addressed that video directly, but how have they responded . Well, they continue to say, alex, that they didnt do it, and they say theres not even, in the words of the irans foreign minister, not even circumstantial evidence that they did despite the fact that this video is out there. Youre absolutely right. Ive been watching iran tan tv and so far i havent seen that video on iranian news media so far, so clearly they are not that you canning very much about that. However, you were already saying that the company that owns the ship had said that its sailors dont believe the ship hit had a minute. Not only because the hits were above the water line and because apparently the sailors said they believe projectiles were fired at ship so what exactly happened there, we obviously still dont know. What the iranians are saying from their point of view, they obviously had nothing to do with this and in fact now are verbally attacking the United States, particularly secretary of state mike pompeo after he came out yesterday and also point the finger at the iranians, the iranians coming back and saying that secretary of state pompeo is essentially trying to prevent deescalation here in this area because alex, as youll recall, this attack took place while Irans Supreme Court leader was meeting the japanese Prime Minister so the the iranians are saying the u. S. Is essentially trying to prevent any sort effort to deescalate things here generally in the greater middle east. As far as President Trump is concerned, you know, i saw some of what he said earlier in this interview. Apparently he said that iran is now in big trouble, but it certainly doesnt seem as though the iranians really feel that way. Certainly when you listen today to friday prayers here in tai rarngs the main speaker there saying he believes that Irans Supreme Court leader, quote, humiliated President Trump when he rebuffed President Trumps offer and suggestion to start entering into some sort of dialogue or talks with the United States. That, of course, was brought by the japanese Prime Minister to the supreme leader. Alex . Centcom was very quick to put out this video last night after the incident, and its very clear it was taken from an aircraft, so how can, as fred just explained, the iranians continue to deny any involvement . They will continue to lie and obfuscate. Thats sort of their modus operandi. I applaud the administration for getting that out there. Im sure that thats not the only peeves evidence that they have that iran was behind these attacks and most likely looking at it, a small boat of the ir xw c navy and not the Iranian State navy, and theres a difference there, a whole different chain of command and a whole different mission set. Aim convinced that theres more intelligence that they have beyond that video that leads them to the conclusion that iran was behind them. Fred, can you speak a little bit more to that, that there are essentially parallel tracks. You have the foreign minister zarif coming out and saying iran wasnt behind this, but its possible that the head. Irgc carried this out on his own with direct leaders from the supreme leader, is it not . Reporter well, that certainly is the case, alex, that there are different strengths here in iran and Different Power Centers in this country that may do things independent of one another. President rouhani doesnt