Pot shots at the west. What the u. S. And its allies are about to answer by activating a powerful defensive weapon. And princes pills. Were learning more about the pop stars last days amid new searches of his home and new clues that all was not well in the time leading up to his death. Im wolf blitzer. Youre in the situation room. Were following breaking news. The former gop nominee, mitt romney, drops a bombshell saying Donald Trumps failure to release his tax returns must mean hes hiding a, quote, bombshell. Romney says its disqualifying for a modern day nominee to refuse to release his tax returns, warning that could conceal, and im quoting him now, conflicts of interest and inappropriate associations. All that comes as a badly divided gop is pinning its hopes for party unity on tomorrows crucial meeting between trump and the House Speaker paul ryan. Ryan is one of many mainstream republicans who so far have not been able to bring themselves to back trump, and trump may be making it even more difficult by making it clear he has no plans to release his tax returns until an irs audit is complete. The multimillionaire insists theres nothing to learn from his returns. Also, russias slavladimir putin is using a military parade to take a swipe at the United States and its allies, but the u. S. And nato may give putin something to complain about. Theyre just hours away from inaugurating a brand new Missile Defense system in europe. Ill speak with shawn duffy. Our correspondents, analysts and guests will have full coverage of all the days top stories. Lets begin with jim acosta. Jim, trumps tax issue threatening to overshadow his meeting with paul ryan. Whats the latest . Thats right, wolf. So far donald trump and House Speaker paul ryan are saying all the right things ahead of their facetoface meeting tomorrow here in washington, but the man who ran for president with ryan on his ticket four years ago, mitt romney, is ratcheting up the pressure on trump to release his tax returns. Romney just posted a scathing message on his Facebook Page saying the audit trump keeps talking about should not stand in his way. And donald trump just moments ago tried to clarify the issue with a tweet. One day before what some in washington have dubbed the paul ryan primary and Donald Trumps meetings with top republicans, the speaker of the house is preaching party unity. We have to be at full strength so that we can win this election and that is why we have to go through the actual effort and process of unifying. But trump just gave gop lawmakers a new reason to worry, telling the Associated Press he will defy campaign tradition and refuse to release his tax returns before the november election, citing an ongoing audit, saying theres nothing to learn from them. Its a shift from his earlier comments when he seemed to leave the door open to making his Tax Information public. I will absolutely give my return, but im being audited now for two or three years so i cant do it until the audit is finished, obviously. But last week, trump started to dig in his heels, suggesting the irs could be out to get him. I say to friends of mine, how often are you audited . Very wealthy people. Do you think its political . I would say yeah. I would say yeah. The irs is doing this . I dont know. Trump has deflected the issue for years. Consider how he answered the question in 2011 when he was considering a White House Run then. Well look at that. Maybe im going to do the tax returns when obama does his birth certificate. If he sticks to his guns on his taxes, trump would become the first president ial candidate to fail to release his returns since 1976. Even Richard Nixon released his taxes while he was under an audit. Mitt romney, who faced pressure to make his Tax Information public four years ago posted a message on his Facebook Page telling trump to tear down that tax wall. Saying it is disqualifying for a modern day president ial nominee to refuse to release his tax returns to the voters. I predict that there are more bombshells in his tax returns. Trump is also standing his ground when it comes to his past comments on john mccain, whether being a captured p. O. W. Makes you a war hero. After i said that, my poll numbers went up seven points. No, i understand all that. Some people liked what i said. But i like john mccain. In my eyes john mccain is a hero. And trumps plans to temporarily ban muslims from entering the u. S. Im thinking about setting up a commission, perhaps headed by rudy giuliani, to take a very serious look at this problem. Just some of the reasons why republicans like paul ryan want to get to trump better. I dont really know him. Id rather have a conversation in person than through the media, no offense. Just a few moments ago, donald trump posted a tweet on twitter trying to clarify this issue. Well put it up on screen. In my interview with the Associated Press, i told the a. P. To my taxes are under routine audit and i would release my tax returns when that audit is complete, not after the election. So donald trump, wolf, trying to say in that tweet that he was never really saying he was not going to release his tax returns until after the election, hes saying its because of this ongoing audit thats under way. The Clinton Campaign has only begun to seize on this issue. Just today Hillary Clinton said she and former president bill clinton have released 33 years worth of tax returns. The last eight years are on her website. We should point out, donald trump is not legally precluded from releasing his tax returns while theyre under audit. He can legally do it right now. Although he says his lawyers have advised him not to do so. They say that could complicate the audit, thanks very much, jim acosta, for that. Lets bring in our cnn political reporter sara murray. Sara, trump had previously said he was looking forward to releasing his tax returns. When i spoke to him last week i asked him about his tax returns and he said i look forward to doing it but im under audit. Im going to wait until that audit is complete, citing what his attorneys have told him. What else are you hearing on this . Wolf, i think the interesting thing about this and what we saw from donald trump tweeting today, he said he would release his taxes when the audit is done. There is nothing that indicates that the audit will for sure be completed before the election, so its still possible we wont see his tax returns until after the election. But the other interesting thing is we have asked donald trump and his campaign a number of times why they dont release tax returns for prior years, years that arent being audited, and they have dodged this question. Even though, as you were hearing from Hillary Clinton, she said shes made three decades of tax returns available, trump could potentially go back five years, three years, lets say, and release returns from those years and so far his campaign has made no effort to do that. I think its likely hes going to continue to face scrutiny over this issue. As you know, sara, he also indicated that in the general Election Campaign thats now beginning from his perspective, now that he is the nominee, he will continue to rely on big rallies which helped him a lot over the past year instead of some of the more targeted turnout operations. What are you hearing on that front . Well, this is sort of vintage trump, isnt it, wolf. This is really the strategy that sort of brought him to victory in the primaries was this idea of touching down in every state and getting free media and not paying for polling, not paying for the analytics we saw other campaign use, for instance, the Cruz Campaign or president obamas campaign. He actually said in this Associated Press interview that obamas data structure was overrated. Now, i do think we are going to begin to see somewhat of a shift in the general election. Dana bash has already been reporting that the Trump Campaign is working with the rnc to do a little bit of voter modeling. I think the rnc has a lot of this infrastructure already in place so that means the campaign has to do less of it on their own, but it will be interesting to see if they really do stick with this belief that you can go essentially light or have no analytics and still eke out a victory, wolf. Well see what happens on that front as well. Sara murray, thank you. Joining us now, republican congressman sean duffy of wisconsin, a former marco rubio supporter. Hes been sharply critical of donald trump in the past but now says hell support trump in the general election. Is that right, congressman, you are now onboard the trump train . Listen, donald trump won my district. Hes our nominee. I think its important to unify around our candidate. Listen, i dont like all that donald trump has said, but i know that donald trump will be better for the economy and better for our National Defense than Hillary Clinton will, so im going to work for him and support him. Do you think he should release his tax returns even though theyre still being audited in recent years . I dont know the specifics of his audit. All the same, i think that Hillary Clinton should release all of her emails and the transcripts of her speeches to big banks and wall street. Transparency with all these candidates so American Voters know who they are and where they stand on issues is incredibly important on both sides of the aisle. You saw the mitt romney statement that was just posted on facebook. Among other things, romney said it is disqualifying for a modern day president ial nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters. He then says the potential for a hidden, inappropriate situations with foreign entities, criminal organizations or other unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore. Thats a pretty strong statement from mitt romney, who has made it clear, by the way, he has no intention of supporting trump. I have the utmost respect for mitt romney, hes a great guy. But thats like nancy pelosi calling on Hillary Clinton to release her emails and the transcripts to wall street. I dont know what hes doing. It seems a little like sour grapes. This is indicative of the fact that a lot of republicans across the country didnt like the tactics that donald used to win the nomination. He went nuclear, donald did, on a lot of republicans that a lot of conservatives have a soft place in their heart for and i think theres some residual frustration and anger at donald. I think thats coming through with mitt romneys comments, not just today but also in the speech he gave several weeks ago about donald trump. The key to all this, though, as republicans is you have to recognize that this is your candidate. Donald trump is your candidate and you only have a choice between Hillary Clinton or donald trump. You have to decide who will be the best candidate to lead america forward. And i think for conservatives, the only choice that you have is going to be donald trump. And so i think there has to be a healing and a unification. Wolf, you talked about this meeting thats going to take place tomorrow here between paul ryan and donald trump. Im hopeful that its going to be a positive meeting. But the good sign is that both of them are on the same page saying they have to get to know each other, number one. Number two, we have to unify the party. Number three, we have to beat Hillary Clinton. That is a great first step in getting paul ryan on board and through paul ryan i think you get a lot more conservatives, at least in the punditry class, to get on board for donald trump. Thats a big issue right now. Congressman, do you understand why senator marco rubio, the man you once supported for the republican nomination, now says he still doesnt have confidence in donald trump as commander in chief of the United States having his fingers on the Nuclear Codes, but still, because he made a commitment, because he made a promise during one of those debates, he will go ahead and support the republican nominee. I guess the question is, how can you support someone that you dont have confidence would be a good commander in chief with his finger on those Nuclear Codes . Yeah, you know, i didnt understand that analysis either. I think obviously marco rubio thought that donald is better than hillary. But what i know about donald trump is the guy is a winner. Whether hes a winner in business, hes shown he can win in politics. I think hes going to do everything that he can to win as president. One, keeping us safe, keeping our economy growing, making sure we secure our borders. And so its that history that donald has that gives me more confidence that he is going to be a sound commander in chief an bring more prosperity and deal with these threats overseas, whether isis, iran, russia, china. I think that hell navigate them well because he likes to win. And dealing with these issues will be a win for donald trump and a win for america. Speaker ryan, who like you is from wisconsin, you know him well. Hes meeting with trump tomorrow morning as we pointed out. How do you bridge the gap, though, between what speaker ryan is saying and what trump has to say. For example, on issues like immigration, you know, deporting 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, trade, the wall with mexico, the temporary ban on muslims coming to the United States. Can you can these two guys work those kinds of issues out . Yeah, i think so. If you look at 30,000 feet, you might see some division on those issues but if you look a little closer, there is a lot of unity. Republicans believe that we should secure the border. Paul ryan believes in that and so does donald trump. Now, it might be do we do it with a wall or some other means. I dont think paul ryan believes that you can legitimately deport 11 Million People but you should be able to identify who they are and decide whether they get to stay or go back home. None of us agree that you should make people citizens, but theres a conversation after you secure the border that you talk with whether you give them some form of legal status. So theres a lot of agreement there. We dont want to see folks from parts of the world that dont like america, that breed radical extremist views come into america without being vetted. I think theres unity on that point but theres not a complete ban on muslims. I think that donald trump has walked that point back. And on trade, paul ryan is a free trader. But donald trump also believes in trade. What donald has been saying, though, is you need to do good trade deals. Good trade is good for america and i think paul ryan would agree with that. So theres more in common here that these two guys as they meet tomorrow, maybe its our republican beer summit in the capitol, can come out closer to being on the same page and unifying the party and that will be a good thing for, i think, conservatives and republicans around the country. Theyre going to be meeting around 9 30 tomorrow morning. It might be a little bit too early to have a beer, even if youre from wisconsin. A little too early to have a beer. Congressman, stand by. Were going to talk about the economy, the national debt. Is donald trump abandoning some conservative traditional policies. Much more with congressman sean duffy right after this. You know mom, i will change you. Change your body, and what you call love. 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How does the Republican Party resolve a Statement Like that . You and i might have heard that statement differently. When i hea