Transcripts For CNNW CNN Tonight With Don Lemon 20171129 04:

CNNW CNN Tonight With Don Lemon November 29, 2017 04:00:00

Candid views of this president. You talk to them one on one, theyre pretty up front about the fact that they dont take all the president s words to heart. That they are kind of getting used to how he conducts himself and his disregard for the facts. And thats a remarkable thing for an american president , members of his own party, in the congress to say. Its where we are. And im kind of used to it too now, because you talk to members of the congress. And in private, they dont even bother offering a defense of this president. They acknowledge he says things that are not true. Look at what bob corker told us a few months ago in that interview, where he really broke with the president. He said the president tweets things that are not true, you know it, i know it, he knows it, damage to the fabric of american democracy, and thats an extraordinary thing for them to say. Yeah. But yet they wont say it publicly. Heres what i have to ask you, and one of the main reasons im asking you. In are other reasons im asking you about this. Im not sure if you heard the conversation i had just before you, with the military folks. Talking about possibly going to war with north korea. Do they question this president s grasp of reality. This is a person who can declare war. Who has the military codes, but is lying and admits he does, and doesnt have a grasp on Reality Opinion do they voice concern about that . Senator corker mentioned this to me a few months ago, hes uneasy about it i think what these lawmakers comfort themselves with is the fact they believe a lot of what the president does is mere bluster, he is blowing off steam, he doesnt follow through with his threats. I think they reassure themselves that hes not going to follow through with the comments he makes, theyre merely words. They look at people around the president like john kelly. And they believe there is some restraint around a president if he does act impulsively, for the most point theyve gotten to the point where 11 months into this administration, they dont believe hes going to follow through with what he says and does. They do discount his public tweets and threats. What was it, the new word of the year was complicit . Theres a good reason for that. Jonathan, i want you to stand by, i want to bring in david now. Werent you hear the night that access Hollywood Tape were we on the air that night . We kept waiting for the apology to come the president apologized. Ive said and done things i regret. And the words released today on this more than a decade old video are one of them. I said it, i was wrong and i apologize. I said it, i was wrong and i apologize. Now i want to send investigators, its not me, it doesnt sound like me, its what . Yeah, don, so what. As you said, that day that that tape came out. My Washington Post colleague reported this story, we were on the air later that night. Waiting for the president to come out and make that statement you just played. Now that were a little more than a year later, you probably would expect the president at this point still love him or hate him, to not acknowledge the many allegations against him. You wouldnt expect him to acknowledge things that he could be in jeopardy for, you would expect anyone especially the president of the United States to acknowledge a tape weve all heard with our own ears and for which he apologized in a videotaped address you played. That is the lengths President Trump will go to rewrite history on these cases, whether its on that, whether its on President Obamas Birth Certificate, on a whole host of issues. But you just dont expect the president of the United States to lie as my dad would say, flat foot in your face. Apparently now we do. For everyone who reads that story, what i took away from those quotes, from those Members Of Congress who were speaking on background was this idea that theyve already priced in that you can only sort of take everything the president says to them in private with a grain of salt, you talk to the president. Im going by my take from these quotes. You talk to the president , he says some thenks, some of it is probably not that true. Some of it maybe is true. You move on and work with members of the administration. But not not taking the president fully at his word. That is the gift of what some of those folks were telling jonathan in that story. A year into a fouryear term, thats where a lot of people are, its unfortunate. We all expect politicians and political operatives to spin, its another thing, to just flatly go against what people know very well from their own eyes and ears. I want you to. Remember this i want to play this for you. Its a strange Press Conference the president gave during the campaign. Where he walked back from the birtherism. Although it was tepid, he was like barack obama was born in the United States, period now we all want to get back to making America Strong and great again. I just as a black person, seeing those people behind him. Really . Come on. The former president who he made up those bogus claims about said that all along i cant believe how ridiculous this is. We have Better Things and much more important things to deal with. Its clear he didnt believe it, he didnt want to say it, and he doesnt believe that now. Or maybe he does, maybe theres some reason hes saying it, he just doesnt like the president who he inherited a great economy from. A great job market from, who he continues to say, you know, the stock markets doing great, doing great for years under barack obama. I wonder what he would have said if he inherited from barack obama what he inherited from the president before him. Theres something particularly loathsome about the way President Trump glommed on to the Birther Movement as a way to crawl his way to the top of the heap in president ial politics. Leaving that aside for a moment. The president part of this is about President Obama, and part of it is about President Trumphimself. Its about obama to the degree you feel like hes still in competition about President Obama. He brags that the stock market is up 20 since hes been president. It was up 150 over obamas eight years. He knows that, i think his behavior suggests hes in competition with President Obama. The part of this thats about President Trump. And regardless of President Obama. Is that our president s from George Washington to President Obama, you have to have a healthy ego to run for president , to say, i can be the leader of the free world. Most president s come to the job with an agenda, and trying to accomplish something for their legacy. For history. The ethos of President Trump so far, hes daily seeking the affirmation of himself. Hes often saying behind the scenes, he cant accept the results of the election. Or cant accept President Obamas Birth Certificate or cant affirm what he said on the access Hollywood Tape. Those Things Dont Redowned to the image he wants to have. So much more to talk about. I only have so many hours in the day, and so many hours in this broadcast. Thank you, david. Appreciate it. Wonder what youre going to be reporting tomorrow, or in the next couple hours. I want to bring in now, a New York Times columnist who has been standing by patiently here, what do you make of this . You know, president s always exaggerate, they spin, theyre always at least tethered to reality. Sometimes with a long tether. President trump is the first president ive seen who is untethered, and hes been this way not only for the last year, but for decades, and i think what is also unusual is typically, when we elect a flawed person, that person grows into the presidency, President Trump has had a remarkable ability to stay the same as hes always been. Youre being kind saying flawed . Yes, i am. The thing that people dont want to talk about, this is not rational, this is not sane. This is crazy. There are two aspects here. One is the degree to which this demeans the u. S. , degrades the presidency. Its hard to call the president a liar. Its hard to question the president s grasp of reality, as a journalist, i feel i have more respect for the office he holds than he does. Saz a person whos supposed to call into question, supposed to hold the president s feet to the fire i feel an obligation to say this is nuts, this is insane. I do think we i think youre absolutely right. We respect the office by holding the people who hold that office accountable. I think our job as journalists has to be to try to continue that true squadding, and this raises obvious questions about what this does to american soft power, to the to the role of the presidency, also to the degree to which decisions are made based on facts, as opposed to some sort of alternative reality. This is what the reporter in the piece, Maggie Haber Man tweeted. It was one of the rare moments he felt public humiliation in his life, people who know him say hes trying to will it away to some extent when he talks about it. What is going on . Is he gaslighting himself . What is that. I really do think there is a continuous pattern here, what hes doing now with that access Hollywood Tape, is the same thing he was doing in the late 1960s, when he was caught denying blacks access to his Apartment Buildings in new york city. And he absolutely dede nighed what was crystal clear, what was proven in documents. And this has been a continuous pattern throughout his career, a lot of other countries do this too. I spent five years in china, where political leaders routinely if they dont like a reality, they construct an alternative one. And any connection with reality is largely coincidental. I think thats what President Trump is doing. If a situation doesnt work, he invents a new one. We used to have the luxury of saying it happens over there. Now those sort of dictatorial behaviors and is being used on American People. And it has a real cost. Speaking of, north korea, i want to turn to north korea now, the president is now reacting, this is the frightening part, north koreas launch of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile earlier today. As you probably have heard, and some of you have reported a missile was launched a little while ago from north korea. I will only tell you we will take care of it, we have general mattis in the room with us. We have had a long discussion on it. It is a situation we will handle. That was toned down, and it should be. Do you think he realizes the seriousness of the moment . I hope so. I think theres a lot of nervousness in congress and in the pentagon that theres a growing recognition that our strategy has failed, our strategy had been to get china to apply pressure to north korea through sanctions to get north korea to change its behavior, i dont think anybody thinks that is working, its also clear that our strategic aim was to get denuclearization of the korean peninsula, was not feasible. We have a strategic aim that is not feasible. We have a tactic and policy that is not working, and so theres a lot of anxiety that whats left that President Trump may as he has promised, talk about military options, and president s have thought about this since president nixon in 1969, theyve always pulled back, because those options are so awful. I know you know the power of your words, and i can feel you weighing them every time you come here, i always appreciate your candor, i think when you come on this show, youre always honest, and i think youre even more honest, i appreciate that. Good to be with you, don. President trump continuing to push false Conspiracy Theorys from the access Hollywood Tape, does a president really believe all this . Does he expect us to believe it. Meals on wheels reaches so many people. 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You have to wonder that in the face the president has made over 1600 false or misleading claims since taking the oath of office. Which according to the Washington Post, works out to be more than five per day. Does he believe what he is telling us . Is he gaslighting himself . Or is he gaslighting us . That provocative question from vanity fair. Gaslighting according to Psychology Today happens when a person causes a victim to question reality. That could certainly apply to the president , who regularly denies the things that we all know to be true. Things we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. We remember when he was caught on tape saying this. Im automatically attracted to beautiful i start kissing them, its like a magnet. And when youre a star, they let you do it, anything you want. They let you do it . You can do anything. Before his inauguration, trump told a republican senator, he wanted to investigate that recording, even though he himself admitted he said those words and apologized for saying them. I said it, i was wrong. And i apologize. So which is it, mr. President , should we believe your apology then or your apparent denial now . I want to bring in tina nguyen who wrote that article. Julia yaffe who is a staff writer for the atlantic. When Donald Trump Tells a half truth or all out wli, he does so with assurance that it is often impossible to tell whether the president is deliberately disassembling, creating more comfortable depictions for himself give us examples . The one that comes to mind is the feud he had with jeff flake who delivered a blistering indictment of him when he announced his retirement. When asked to respond, he said, i dont know who jeff flake is, hes never met me. They met months before he was even elected. I could go on and on and on. Gop tax cut zm. Yeah, he claims hes not going to get any sort of benefit from the tax cut, which is pretty incorrect honestly, the entire history of covering donald trump has been what hes saying matching up with the truth. What about the fake renoir painting . He has a painting in his house that he insists is real. And the real one is hanging up in chicago. Thats been debunked for a long time. But he still insists he has the real one. President trump continues to insist the voice on the access Hollywood Tape isnt him. And hes questioning the authenticity of Barack Obamas Birth Certificate behind closed doors. He also claims he lost the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud. Does he possibly believe these things . I think its something that he decides on a moment by moment basis. So his pattern is to establish many different claims about the same thing. So he could at one moment say that President Obama was not born in the United States. Then he could say im sending detectives to honolulu to investigate, and then say oh, theyre finding amazing things, and none of those things are true. But its a great story to tell he can fall back on, and then i think he really does imagine that were all buying this. That we only are aware of what hes saying in the moment. Its almost as if hes living out he declared would be his life. When he was much younger he said his life is a comic book, an

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