Woolsey: Trump keeps the North Koreans off balance

close

Video

Woolsey: Trump keeps the North Koreans off balance

On 'The Ingraham Angle,' former CIA director says the president put the North Koreans under a pressure they didn't expect.

This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," June 12, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: Good evening from Washington, I'm Laura Ingraham and this is "The Ingraham Angle." What a fantastic show we have tonight. From Trump's Singapore sensation to big news we are breaking here tonight on the DOJs relationship with Congress. Tonight we're going to break down how Trump baffled the experts going from the brink of war to a stunning diplomatic triumph. We'll also show you some hilarious moments of the big summit that might have gone passed you, Raymond Arroyo will break it all down for us. Plus exclusively on the Angle, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan are here to break some major news, as I said on that DOJ document production and what may be coming for Rod Rosenstein. But first pride, bitterness and the refusal to give peace a chance. That's the focus of tonight's Angle. Remember when the left was all about love, peace and understanding?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

"All we are saying is give peace a chance"

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh come on you remember all those great musical numbers at those no nukes concerts back in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s by Jackson Browne. This is awesome times. Well the left thought we should stop being so belligerent toward the Soviet Union. We should engage with the Soviets, all for a better world. Now some even admired the Castros in Cuba and they flirted with Marxist ideology here at home. So one would have thought that many of those same people and their ideological offspring would view President Trump's Summit and Kim Jong Un as a moment to savor, a real chance at creating a more peaceful planet. But no, and you know why? Because the man doing the outreach and negotiating is Donald J. Trump. Before, during and after his whirl wind trip to Singapore for the Kim meeting, his critics in both parties kept revealing themselves. Their narratives, if you noticed, kept shifting, six months ago it was this,

(BEGIIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The lack of a diplomatic insurance engagement strategy, in my view, has us sliding toward war by next summer.

CHIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Trumps comments about nuclear weapons have experts worried he could literally, inadvertently trigger a catastrophe

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: Warning that his reckless behavior could launch the nation on the path to World War 3.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: You were all wrong, every one of you, we don't have time to list you all, were wrong. But this tyranny of being wrong by the experts is nothing new, because after all, they were wrong about the election of Donald Trump, the economy of Donald Trump, the prolife commitment of Donald Trump and the trade policies of Donald Trump, just to name a few. So naturally as the summit began, the error caucus offered this election tension analysis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald Trump can relate to authoritarians. As a former businessman he likes absolute control and-

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is he a wannabe despite?

FEMALE: I've conceded that for years now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really interesting because the more we're talking about North Korea, the less we are talking about Russia.

NICOLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: This is not just a meeting about foreign policy. This is about Donald Trump's political survival, that's their midterm message, that's all they've got.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Wait a second, that's all they've got? Says the woman who brought us the winning campaign of John McCain in 2008? Oh okay, so I guess record low unemployment, a thriving economy, tax cuts, obstruction of Isis and now a foreign policy coup that has eluded multiple administrations is, "all they've got". But even after Trump brought Kim to Singapore, even after he squeezed concessions and at least a commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, the left still will not give him a shred of credit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC HOST: For Donald Trump, the real estate developer and he doesn't realize that this dictator doesn't want beach condos, he wants nuclear weapons.

JOHN MITCHUM, AUTHOR: Empty words, potentially empty words and lots of flags and lots of ceremony don't necessarily lead to the consequences that we hope for.

ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN HOST: Are we going ahead with just some hopeful, wishful fools and I find that incredibly worrying, incredibly depressing

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: There's no knowledge of history. It's staggering every day to realize how un self-aware and the lack of knowledge

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: The lack of knowledge. I don't recall these same media leads griping about embracing dictators when Barack Obama restored ties with the Castros in Cuba. Or when he gave hundreds of millions of dollars to the dictators in Iran for a bogus denuclearization deal. Or when he held a state dinner for the Chinese dictator. The selective moral outrage here is galling, predictable and oh so blatant. When Trump talks tough, they say he's a war monger, taking us right to war. But when he gets bad guys to sit at the negotiating table and begin to hammer out a peace framework, he's savage for embracing a dictator, so which is it guys? They beat him up for saying that he trusts Kim, that Kim actually wants to make a change. But Trump himself said, listen carefully, he could be wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Honestly, I think he's going to do these things, I may be wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Well he said, "I'll have to come back and apologize, I wouldn't like it though" Let's face it, even with the thigh stakes involved here, really serious, possibly deadly consequences of failure, President Trump makes geo-politics fun again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I may stand before you in six months and say hey, I was wrong. I don't that I'll ever admit that but I'll find some kind of an excuse

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh come on, even some of the doubters had to laugh a little bit. Have some fun, this is a great time to be an American, who else could have gotten us to this point?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And he said openly and he said it a couple of reporters that were with him that he knows that no other President ever could have done this

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Well okay so he's got a big ego, what president doesn't? Big deal. Isn't Trump's path better than the alternative that the elitists were warning us about six months ago? I mean a North Korea that is so isolated that it might think to do the unthinkable, hit an American city with an ICBM? So I say let them distract us all they like, let them keep going, flapping their lips about this. Let them lie and contradict their own analyses while their audience and readership shrink and they basically just tine them out. More Americans, I think, are seeing through the media manipulation and Trump, both at home and abroad, is undeterred by their static. He's too busy winning. And that's the Angle. Joining me now for reaction in Washington is Christian Whiton, he's the former state department senior advisor in both the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, and the Washington Examiner's Byron York, who is also a Fox contributor. You were both swaying back and forth at the "Give peace a chance", Byron I remember seeing you at those Bic lighters, the Jackson Browne at the '79 RFK Stadium Tour, come on--

BYRON YORK, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I tried to destroy all those pictures.

INGRAHAM: I've blurred you out, Christian you were there too. Isn't it wild that this is the "Give peace a chance crowd", we've got to lower the temperature with the Soviet Union. They didn't like Reagan's tough talk with the Soviet's, they didn't like Bush's evil empire but now you have a guy who, we'll see how it goes. This is an amazing first step that will never, ever, ever get an ounce of credit for and I think he shouldn't expect it at this point Byron.

YORK: He should not. I think what they failed to recognize, you played these sound bites with them reacting to back when he was talking really tough, talking about Little Rocket Man, he's talking about fire and fury. I think what they have not recognized or maybe won't acknowledge is that that kind of provocative talk led to this summit. As a matter of fact the President even talked about it in the Sean Hannity interview. He said in the past when North Korea did something provocative, the Presidents were too silent. He felt that was the wrong way to do it. He said sometimes he felt a little foolish going over the top with some of this stuff but he wanted to get to a place where the North Koreans felt they had to talk.

INGRAHAM: Christian, Hannity asked him about the rhetoric. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well I think without the rhetoric we wouldn't have been here, I really believe that. We did sanctions and all of the things that you would do but I think without the rhetoric you know other administrations, I don't want to get specific on that, but they had a policy of silence. If they said something very bad and very threatening and very horrible, just don't answer. That's not the answer, that's not what you have to do. So I think the rhetoric, I hated to do it, sometimes I felt foolish doing it, but we had no choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Christian to hear him admit that he ripped up the old diplomatic playbook and he decided to it a totally different way. And all the elite says, "Counsel on foreign relations crowd, the Brookings Institution". They have all their educational pedigrees. Trump comes in there and says, "This can't be that hard, I know it's complicated but this guy has got to want something from us. What can we give him? What can we give up that won't be detrimental to US interests in the end? We'll see how it goes".

CHRISTIAN WHITON, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISRATION SENIOR ADVISOR: That's right, so many Liberals just think that diplomacy is telling foreigners what they want to hear and actually telling the truth like Donald Trump did. Also Reagan got a lot of heat for that for saying that the Soviet empire was an evil empire and calling for Gorbachev to tear down the wall. The experts, the bed-wetters up at the council on foreign relations and the Harvard Kennedy School all sad "You can't say that", he did, and it gets through, dictators understand that. Truth can actually play an important role in diplomacy.

INGRAHAM: Byron Dana Bash today at CNN had an interesting analysis. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: There would be a call for impeachment and it would be the worst thing in the world if a Democratic President, not just sat down, but gave all of the pomp and circumstance, the sort of diplomatic bells and whistles that President Trump gave to Kim. Not just rhetorically but the flag, placed an equal footing to the American flag, things like that

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Byron

YORK: I don't buy that, I just don't buy that. And by the way, President Obama opened up relations with Cuba and he was not impeached. I think on the rhetoric there's another thing that we need to remember which is, the rhetoric was actually backed up with a credible threat of force. Remember how we've heard so many people say war in the Korean Peninsula was not an option, that it was unthinkable. Well the Trump team was thinking about it. They were going through military options and they had to have Kim Jong Un believe that they were seriously considering those military options before Kim would move to the this point.

INGRAHAM: They made a calculation. And wasn't it important Christian, in the end, for this President to make it clear that he wasn't bound by the old way of doing things. And I think a lot, that's why I called in the Angle, a lot of it is about pride. Pride is one of the sins that we all have to work on, but the pride of these experts, being shown up by a guy that they thought he so unsophisticated, he's so uneducated as we are, he's plenty well educated. He doesn't read, you know he hasn't studied the Peloponnesian wars and Sung Soo and what not and it turns out he has a street smart sense that is unlike frankly anything I've seen in politics. Maybe Reagan probably would be the closest one, Clinton had a good sense. But he has an uncanny ability to read someone and he said, "I read them pretty fast". It's wild but it brought us to this point and it's far superior to the alternative.

WHITON: Right he's brought common sense into the equation. Something any American who's bought a used car understands in negotiation. If the person whose selling it to you knows you can't take no for an answer, you're going to buy no matter what, then you're not going to get a good deal. Donald Trump's willingness to walk away, remember the expert says that he should meet with Kim then he scheduled the hearing and he shouldn't cancel it. But that move where he was willing to walk away, that anyone knows if you're getting a bad deal, walk away. He did that and that he's still willing to do that. That's the key difference between this set of negotiations and the Clinton era and Bush era negotiations that failed.

INGRAHAM: There are few people, Donna Brazile said, this is a good moment. She tweeted out something, there a few Democrats, we've got to give them the due. Chuck Schumer today was not impressed on the Senate Forum, they're not giving him a moment. I think they do think it's going to be a plus for him come the midterm elections.

YORK: Well he also had a very simple insight that's hard for people to come to, which is he saw that North Korea was an intractable problem. Presidents of both parties have not been able to figure this out and he had this amazing idea that perhaps he should try something different. Doesn't mean it's going to work and I do think that there a lot of questions after this, we don't know if Kim is going to do what he says he's going to do. There's evidence that suggest he's not going to do it, we'll see what happens. But it was very clear with this problem you had to try something new.

INGRAHAM: I'm just going to keep saying I still can't believe, it is a stunning development. Everyone's throwing a wet blanket on it, again we're cautiously optimistic but it's better than the alterative and they said he would do the opposite, the so called expert class. Fantastic guys. And let's get some insight now from someone with a unique perspective on this, Jim Woolsey. He was the CIA Director in 1994 when President Clinton struck deal that was supposed to end North Korea's nuke program. So Jim, it's great to see you first of all, what might be different this time. Given everything you've witnessed over the last seven or eight months. This President's style, his approach and what you saw from Kim Yesterday.

JIM WOOLSEY, FORMER US DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE: I think President Trump has put the North Koreans under pressure in a way that they did not remotely expect. He sort of played good cop, bad cop and then he's taken both roles. Sometimes he's a good cop and he's saying friendly and laudatory things about Kim Jung-un and other times he's talking about fire and fury and so forth. He keeps them off balance and I don't think they, I don't think, have a very good idea of how to deal with his style of negotiating which, I must admit, did not initially attract me, but a lot of people who were not initially attracted to it are beginning to see it work and kind of scratching their heads and saying, "Hey, maybe I was wrong on this and maybe he was right".

INGRAHAM: Jim Leon Panetta was very concerned about a month and a half ago in mid-April about what he viewed the President to be in terms of provocative, way too provocative in dealing with this dangerous power, let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON PANETTA, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: The words from the administration are creating even higher volume in terms of the provocations that are going on. I think we've got to be careful here, we shouldn't engage in any precipitous action. There is a reason no US President in recent history has pulled a trigger on North Korea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: That was in April of 2017 just to be clear but, it is a year after plus a month or so, month and half. And here we are at the beginning of a framework that was reconfirmed in another brief message that came out a few hours ago that they are committed to doing this. What are the pitfalls for this administration going forward? The ability to obviously do inspections and so forth. How do we verify?

WOOLSEY: Verification is tough on undertakings like this. We'd probably do it if we have the right kind of cooperation from Kim Jung-un and his people. Because they have side-swiped the effort to undertake serious inspections before, the North Koreans have. The Iranians we exquisitely duplicitous in steering everybody way from anything that was interesting to look at under their agreement that was signed then happily taken apart by President Trump. I think the one situation that I'm most concerned about, not because I'm really worried about, but because it's so important is China. With cooperative China, we'll work this out but with a China that believes they have to stand up to us in the South China Sea or what, we could stumble here. But so far I've got to say that my wife's prognostication that President Trump was going to A, get elected and B, reign and rule the way he has, I couldn't believe and she had it right and I had it wrong.

INGRAHAM: Well that's a man, all we women like to hear that Jim. Thank you so much for your thoughts. So important to get them tonight. And in the wake of yesterday's summit, Trump's critics of course they won't give the President a break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: We had this debate this morning in our meeting. Is American exceptionalism dead in the air of Donald Trump?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Oh my gosh, a history lesson for Chuck and many other critics next. Oh some say Democrats are in full blown denial over the Singapore Summit. They're refusing to concede that President Trump actually did something kind of good, or any success at all, much less a potentially historic breakthrough with North Korea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y., SENATE MINORITY LEADER, What the United States has gained is vague and unverifiable, at best. What North Korea has gained, however, is tangible and lasting. We have legitimized a brutal dictator who has starved his own people.

SEN. BOB MENENDEZ, D-N.J.: I have to be honest with you, this is the weakest statement I have ever seen come out of any engagement with North Korea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Bob it's called the beginning of the process of peace. Let's just look at Reagan and Gorbachev, I actually worked in the Reagan administration when Gorbachev came for the first time, I remember seeing the car pull up, it was unbelievable. Well they held four summits during Reagan's second term so let's get some big picture perspective with Reagan Biographer, Craig Shirley, former Hillary Clinton advisor Richard Goodstein and Republican Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, great to have all of you on the panel. Richard, your take on this, there's a lot of concern on the part of the Democrats. My theory is the concern is they're worried that the guy who they said is going to blow up the world is perhaps actually maybe save the Korean Peninsula?

RICHARD GOODSTEIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: So I think every Democrat, worth their salt gives the President credit for trying to do something here. The problem that they have is not for trying, it's for what he's done. He's basically got a nothing burger of a deal, something that Korean leaders have agreed to for decades and in exchange, and he's called Kim who starves and murders and puts his people in labor camps and so forth, he's called him very talented and funny and trustworthy. The problem is that hurts the US around the world when the President can't observe and call out what somebody is, right. That's the problem.

INGRAHAM: Did Obama do that with the Chinese President? He literally rolled out the red carpet, literally. Hundreds of thousands of children in re- education camps in China, see what they do to the churches in China? You know what they do to the women? They rip babies out of their wombs. We had him for a state dinner, Richard. We rolled out the red carpet for the Chinese President. I didn't hear Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Democrats, most Democrats, a few did, but not most Democrats, they didn't give a whiff about China. It's money, money.

GOODSTEIN: I don't know if you were in the punditry field where you make the same complaint--

INGAHAM: No, I was in junior high, not even junior high, elementary school.

GOODSTEIN: Exactly so Republicans, whether it was Nixon, Ford, et cetera, Reagan, they weren't trying to cut in a deal with China as well. So that blame is on Obama, is a bit much.

INGRAHAM: It's a double standard.

GOODSTEIN: The problem is that we're suspending our military exercises, something Kim and father and his grandfather, all, and the Russians and the Chinese were pleading to get done.

REP. SEAN DUFFY, R-WIS.: But look I think we have to look at the hypocrisy coming from the Democrats right now. Barack Obama goes to Cuba and has a baseball game with Raoul Castro and woos this dictator. Not only that, he sends billions of dollars and palettes full of cash to the Iranian mullers, opens up American banking systems to them, you can't get that money back, Richard. But you can't so the double standard here, Donald Trump, you mentioned here Laura, this is of nine innings. This is the first fora in the peace and by the way, Democrats when Donald Trump said, "Hey listen, fire and fury and my button is bigger than yours", they were like he's a war monger, but all of a sudden he has a peace summit and they're freaking out that he's going to give the star way, come on.

INGRAHAM: He tried to get to it back. Well we've tried a lot things and we're going to get Craig Shirley into this. Craig you are a Reagan biographer extraordinaire and anyone that wants to understand Reagan has to read your books, all of them. Susan Glasser of the New Yorker today was on, I believe it was MSNBC if my memory serves me right, and she was talking about the Reagan comparison. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER FOR THE NEW YORKER: Reagan didn't exactly the opposite of what we're talking about with Trump. He was able to find a way to negotiate with the Soviets, to be extremely tough with the Soviets and also to preserve a line and a vision of human rights and democracy and what America is about

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: So Trump obviously--

CRAIG SHIRLEY, REAGAN BIOGRAPHER: She exactly wrong.

INGRAHAM: Tell us why.

SHIRLEY: She's exactly wrong because both Trump talked tough and then engaged the enemy. Ronald Reagan talked tough about the Soviet and engaged the enemy, is that they understood is that you have to deal with it from a position of strength but that doesn't mean you don't negotiate or don't talk. Reagan and Gorbachev had four summits, two of which were just basically photo ops and the substantive one was in Moscow when Reagan actually met with human rights dissidents there and gave an important speech at Moscow State University. And then of course in Washington where they signed an agreement to limit the intermediate range nuclear missiles but sometimes you have to just talk to reach an achievement, reach an agreement.

INGRAHAM: Well a lot of people Craig, and Sean and Richard were upset that the President didn't spend more time on Human Rights. Let's watch what the President said to Sean Hannity about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Did humanitarian issues come up in the meeting?

TRUMP: Yes, it did and one of the things that I will tell you I am most happy about, and that as you know is a big sticking point, is bringing back the remains of thousands of soldiers that were killed--

HANNITY: This came up last minute, this wasn't?

TRUMP: This was sort of last minute, yeah. I said would it be possible because I get letters all the time from families who lost a son, lost a brother, lost a father in Korea, that's was a rough fight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOODSTEIN: The President said in a different interview talking about human rights abuses in North Korea. He said, "Well there's human rights abuses in other places", which is reminiscent of the time he said about Putin who is a thug, "Oh other people do bad things", or frankly his equivocating on Charlottesville. Why can't he call out, "There's a problem here" I'm not saying he should supersede, nuclear is an existential issue, no question about it and if can solve it, kudos to him, he deserves Nobel Prize, although frankly what he did to the Western Alliance to undue that, frankly kind of will hurt his Nobel Prize application.

DUFFY: Listen, human Rights are important, but first things first, nuclear threats to the world is incredibly dangerous-

INGRAHAM: How many people would die if an American City was hit by a long range nuclear missile? Hundreds of thousands at least.

DUFFY: Millions of people. So let's deal with the first threat, which is nuclear weapons. Let's go to the second issue which is human rights. But you can't say that we've dealt with human rights in Iran or anywhere else with Obama and no one ever complained about that so. Again I think, let's take this thing off the table and deal with the bigger issues and human rights later.

INGRAHAM: Craig, you can't do everything at once although it's tempting. We all want to get it all done, we're like yesterday, yesterday and Trump's very impatient for change, I say this all the time. I mean that in a good way. He's extremely impatient. But he also sees you have to give someone a way out, a graceful way out. Even if it's a horrible person, you have got to give them a way of going back to his people to saying I wasn't completely humiliated there. I think that's what he's thinking. Your reaction? Close it out.

SHIRLEY: Laura, don't you find it ironic that the left is berating Donald Trump for showing good matters in Singapore? That's screamingly hilarious to me. When Reagan gave his speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987, it kind of fell with a thud. None of the three networks lead with it. The New York, the Washington media did not report it. "Der Spiegel" wrote a couple months afterwards it a speech written by amateurs. It only became important in the context of history because three years later the Berlin Wall did fall.

What Trump did today or what he's done over in Singapore might not be historically important in the long run, but it depends on what happens now in the succeeding days, weeks, and months ahead, is that if North Korea denuclearizes, if trader is opened up, if a new era of freedom is ushered in there, or something like that, then people will look at this and say this was historic.

INGRAHAM: The sweep of history will reveal all. All of you, it's great to have you on, spirited and great conversation.

In just a moment, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan are join me to break major news on their effort to make the DOJ turn over documents to Congress. And we'll bring you the funniest, yes, funniest moment of the summit with Raymond Arroyo. Stay right there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: A stunning report from Fox News' Catherine Herridge tonight. Documents showing that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to subpoena emails, phone records, and other documents belonging to members of the House Intel Committee. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Rosenstein's defense earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF SESSIONS, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm confident that Deputy Rosenstein, 28 years in the Department of Justice, did not improperly threaten anyone on the occasion. But we do believe that we have tried to be cooperative with them and made progress as the months have gone by, and in fact have had some good relationships with members of Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: With a war between the DOJ and Congress heating up, two lawmakers join us tonight to make a major announcement exclusively on "The Angle." Here are Oversight Committee members Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. Jim, what do you think about what you just heard from the attorney general?

REP. JIM JORDAN, R-OHIO, HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: I'm almost flabbergasted. What is the attorney general saying? Rod Rosenstein hasn't complied with Devin Nunes' subpoena, hasn't completed with Chairman Goodlatte's subpoena. We've caught them hiding information in the Strzok-Page text messages, redacting the fact that Peter Strzok was friends with Judge Contreras, one of the FISA court judges. They tried to hide that from us.

And today we learned in Catherine's report that in essence the head of the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, was threatening members of the House Intelligence Committee for doing their job, for trying to get answers to the American people, and the attorney general says that's OK? We are doing just fine? I didn't know he had said that. When you just played that, I'm like, are you kidding me? This report of Catherine's is unbelievable. When you have the head of the Justice Department Rod Rosenstein say he's going to go after staff members, emails and communications.

INGRAHAM: He wants your BlackBerry.

JORDAN: We are doing our constitutional duty. That's scary.

INGRAHAM: Mark, Congressman Meadows, what I think he's saying is that if you guys hold him in contempt, he's going to have to defend himself. And part of the defense will be he wants discovery. He wants to know who you've been talking to, who you've been talking to. He wants to know your text messages. Maybe they won't redact your documents like they did the Page and Strzok texts.

REP. MARK MEADOWS, R-N.C., HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: There's two problems with this, Laura. One is that we're a separate branch of government. They don't have the right to do that unless we are coming under some kind of criminal investigation. And for the attorney general to say he is confident Rod Rosenstein did everything right. I'm confident he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm here to tell you we are fed up with it. We've been working on a resolution. We have got a resolution here tonight that we're putting the finishing touches on. We plan to file that tomorrow. But the really --

INGRAHAM: What is it?

MEADOWS: It's all about compelling DOJ to turn over documents so that we can do proper oversight. If they have nothing to hide, turn over the documents. Jim is exactly right. This is just inexcusable.

INGRAHAM: OK, so what happens? A resolution to compel the production of documents, haven't you already --

MEADOWS: We have subpoenaed them already.

INGRAHAM: What is that resolution? Tell us what it is.

JORDAN: We're putting together a resolution we would frankly like to bring to the full House and have the House vote on. It's one thing for us to say. It's one thing for the chairman to subpoena. It's another thing if the House of Representatives would actually go on record and say Mr. Rosenstein, we as the House, a majority of the House say you're not giving us the information we need. And frankly, now that we have found out you were threatening members of the committee staff, a standing committee in the House of Representatives.

INGRAHAM: He's going to defend himself against your threatening to call him in contempt. How does he defend himself?

MEADOWS: Laura, let me just say, if he wants to defend himself, let's come on tomorrow night. Let's let Rod Rosenstein come on with Jim and I. We'll lay out the facts. He can lay out his talking points.

INGRAHAM: I have invited them on the show many times.

MEADOWS: You know why he doesn't come on is they would rather do private press releases to spin the narrative at midnight and try to act like they are complying. We've had a document out since November 3rd of last year asking for documents. We still don't have it. We have less than 60 percent of those documents.

INGRAHAM: Is this draft that you have, is it going to call for his removal? What is this?

MEADOWS: No. It just calls for them to really produce the documents.

INGRAHAM: What if they don't release them? What if they give you --

MEADOWS: Obviously.

JORDAN: They've been doing that all along. So if they do it again, then you've at least had the House spoke and say we want this information.

INGRAHAM: Then what? What are you going to do?

JORDAN: Then everything is still on the table. The same issues are still on the table. Contempt and those remedies are still on the table. But look, let's have the House take a vote and send the message that a majority of the House agrees with us that you should give us information. We as a separate and equal branch of government are entitled to get answers.

INGRAHAM: Are we talking impeachment?

MEADOWS: Obviously that is still something we have in our toolbox. But we will have a vote. I'm here to tell you tonight Laura and tell your viewers, we are going to have a vote on the House floor. One way or another we are going to have a vote, and we're going to make sure that we get those documents.

INGRAHAM: Rod Rosenstein last month called this extortion, basically. He will not give in to these demands.

JORDAN: How about extortion when you're threatening members of a standing committee of the House of Representatives for doing their job. We know these individuals. I know who these guys are. They have worked their tail off. These are the guys who helped put together that memo which talked about what went on at the FISA court and the fact they didn't the FISA court who paid for the dossier, they didn't tell the FISA court that Christopher Steele had been fired by the FBI for leaking information. These are the guys who put that together and they are being threatened by Rod Rosenstein. This is as wrong as it gets.

INGRAHAM: What is your general thought of the constitutionality of this whole investigation? We've talked about this generally before. There are a lot of scholars who believe, and Dershowitz and a bunch of us have been talking about this for months, that this entire Special Counsel seems like an unconstitutional undertaking. There is no real oversight. They essentially have a limitless budget, even though Congress appropriates, it seems like they have a limitless --

MEADOWS: They do have a limitless --

INGRAHAM: And the president really can't remove him supposedly because it's bad for politics, so is there really any executive branch oversight if Rod Rosenstein himself is conflicted? He's a witness?

MEADOWS: He should recuse himself. I can tell you just based on some of the facts we've seen, he should recuse himself. But that aside, in this country, you investigate crimes. You don't go in and start to investigate and see what you can find and hope to come up with a crime after you've investigated. And that's not the way this Special Counsel is doing it, and I think it's wrong.

INGRAHAM: Didn't he say he was going to make the documents available to the so-called gang of eight?

JORDAN: That's supposed to happen tomorrow, but we'll see. Every time they say they're going to do something they wind up not doing it or partially doing it.

MEADOWS: Their press release that they were going to do today.

INGRAHAM: Today, it's Tuesday.

MEADOWS: Now it's going to happen Thursday.

INGRAHAM: What are Gowdy and Ryan saying? Are they supporting you? McCarthy, were are the leadership?

MEADOWS: We had discussions with the speaker and Gowdy.

INGRAHAM: Where are they on this? They're nervous.

MEADOWS: Well, I think they want more time. But the facts are on our side is how long is long enough? And I am saying today is long enough.

INGRAHAM: Justice delayed is justice denied.

JORDAN: Well said. Well said.

INGRAHAM: Thanks for coming on.

JORDAN: You bet. Thank you.

MEADOWS: Thank you, Laura.

INGRAHAM: Appreciate it.

Hey guys, at least the DOJ is doing something encouraging. We're going to tell you the new rules that are going to stop illegal immigrants from gaming the asylum system. It's about time. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Attorney General Jeff Sessions is making sure asylum-seekers are actually escaping persecution, not just gaming our system. Sessions announced a new DOJ policy that requires immigrants seeking asylum to prove that they are not just fleeing crime or gang violence.

Let's debate this crucial change to our immigration policy with Allen Orr, an immigration attorney, and former immigration judge Art Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies. All right, let's go to Allen first. Allen, I know there are a lot of people who are waving their arms, like, oh, my gosh, this is a persecuted people. They are not going to get any relief. They are going to be shut out of the system. But I think what he's referencing is an 872 percent increase in applications for asylum since 2009 in the United States. That is a massive increase with not I think a correlating fact banner that would indicate that we have that many more thousands of people who have legitimate claims.

ALLEN ORR, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: Right, but I don't think the number should affect due process and justice. That's not how we handle due process and justice by numbers. It's a process. And so what Sessions has done goes with the narrative you just said about making wrong decisions because he basically undid 20 years of precedent law of other judges within the immigration system.

And I am happy to be here with Art today because he's one of the outliers who basically said this is a good decision whereas there are 16 others that say this is the wrong decision for the reasons you've enumerated, and that each case is a case by case judgment. And so what it doesn't do is clear the backlog. What it does is send a message to the current officers at the port of entry to say please start denying these claims for persecution. But what it doesn't immediately do is give us a remedy to the numbers that you've discussed.

INGRAHAM: Art?

ART ARTHUR, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: In 2005, Congress made it clear that in order to be granted asylum the persecution that you allege has to be at least one central reason for the harm you fear. And that's a huge change, and quite frankly it's taken 13 years for the Department of Justice to actually apply that to these crime-based --

INGRAHAM: Let's go through that again. It has to be one central reason.

ARTHUR: At least one central reason for the harm that you fear has to be one of the five characteristics for asylum, race religious, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. In this particular instance it's membership in a particular social group, and that particular social group in the attorney general's decision was people who were fearing crime in their home country.

INGRAHAM: So that's not what you traditionally think of. You're the expert here, I'm not, but when you think of persecution, having a horrible husband who is beating you up or a wife who is beating you up, that doesn't seem like persecution. That seems like regular, old, garden-variety crime.

ARTHUR: Persecution is generally hart that's inflicted on you by the government.

INGRAHAM: For your identity or your belief system.

ARTHUR: Or your belief system. But unfortunately the membership in a particular social group is completely amorphous. And there have been many years of law, and that law was actually applied properly by Jeff Sessions to individuals who had feared crime in their home countries. Quite frankly they don't have asylum fear. They have a crime fear. And their home country needs to address that.

INGRAHAM: Allan, another thing I've heard of -- Allen, just one question. The other thing I hadn't heard of before is the defensive use of asylum claims. I talked about this this morning on the radio, that when people are about to be deported, sometimes, well, oftentimes they then say, oh, wait a second, I have an asylum claim. And so now it's defensively used against the government in those situations, which is also -- numbers don't matter, but it's some kind of empirical proof that someone is getting information from some very smart lawyer to make this kind of claim when you're already a deportable alien under U.S. immigration law.

ORR: Really that's part of the problem. A lot of people are robbed without having lawyers. So therefore they might have heard things from people across the way, but many of them arrive without a lawyer and are sort of handling these cases on their own and really talking about their experience. And if you are a battered female or battered woman or battered mother with your kids and you're having this intense legal conversation with a CBP officer to discuss that your level of fear is you can see that problems that they're mostly going to discuss about how many times they were beaten, how many times they were struck, how many times they've been harmed.

And that's why it's a case-by-case analysis. And what Sessions has basically done is he's removed the whole case by case analysis and said, look, I don't think anyone who is coming here, if it's a private actor, then this isn't persecution. And that's not what the case law says because what we say it's the inaction, right, it's the governments who are not stepping in to protect their citizens. It's the governments who are allowing this to happen that also participate in the system.

INGRAHAM: That's a lot people around the world.

ORR: If we are talking about the number of cases. It's about 0.2 percent of the total population.

ARTHUR: I disagree with what he's talking about. The attorney general is not completely closing the door to these claims, but what he's saying is these claims need to be assessed the way that every other particular social group.

INGRAHAM: How do you assess it? When someone comes from Guatemala and says my brother beat me up or my husband, how do you go to the local sheriff in Guatemala? I've been to Guatemala many times. You can't get records all that easily there.

ARTHUR: You can rely on the statements of the alien in order to establish the claim.

INGRAHAM: All right, gentlemen, thank you so much.

ORR: And the information we about countries.

INGRAHAM: We'll have you back. Love both of you.

And by the way, they were making history in Singapore yesterday as we were talking about earlier. Finding some hilarious moments of comic relief, yes. Stay right there and we'll share them in just a moment with Raymond Arroyo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

INGRAHAM: Even high-stakes drama can have some laughs and give us some tee-hee giggle, giggle, and that was the case in Singapore yesterday. From the president's candid quips to a reporter making a fool of himself, we spotted a number of lighter moments. Here to share the summit's entertaining side is "New York Times" bestselling author and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo. All right, Raymond, comments about physical appearance.

RAYMOND ARROYO, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the president gets up and they are taking photographs, and he says this to Kim Jong Un. Watch closely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Very nice. Getting a good picture everybody so we look handsome and thin, perfect?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: He looks thrilled.

ARROYO: Kim Jong Un is thinking did he say this to Theresa May and Justin Trudeau? Does this Mao jacket make me look fat? Trump doing the thin look was probably not a good idea. Look at that puss. But it is an example of Trump very gently throughout this entire back and forth dominating Kim Jong Un. He did it in the handshake. He did the way he embraced him, he showed him the way. And there you see it again.

INGRAHAM: Hilarious. There was a lot of convo about the luncheon menu.

ARROYO: I am delighted to see CNN, even with Bourdain's passing, they have a culinary sensibility, Laura. Just look at their analysis of the summit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So by releasing the details of the menu, this is again legitimizing Kim Jong Un.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The poor North Korean people. If they knew what is being dished out, they can't even imagine the types of foods that you've rolled off your tongue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, because it's a poor country, and because of Kim Jong Un himself and his family, again, you're right. Beef short ribs, combination of sweet and sour crispy pork, and fried rice, soy-braised codfish. That sounds really yummy and very expensive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: What are they supposed to serve at the summit?

ARROYO: Ramen noodles or P.F. Chang's frozen TV dinners?

INGRAHAM: No, no, I actually told them to bring In-N-Out burgers. I'm sorry, but that would be really tasty.

ARROYO: How did it turn into a "Parts Unknown" segment? I don't understand.

INGRAHAM: Don Lemon, I like Don Lemon. I like how Don Lemon takes his glasses off like there's quail eggs on the menu.

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: Body language, we love the body language.

ARROYO: Remember, their body language expert used to a regular right here on FOX. Well, CNN dragged their own out. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS ULRICH, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT: The person who is left of picture, Brooke, Kim Jong Un that particular moment, has the position of power. The person who is on the left, left of picture, will always be seen as the person in the power position. So for Trump, as their shaking hands, it takes 13 seconds for them through that handshake, he will ultimately then grab and do an upper arm grab over here on Kim Jong Un.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ARROYO: I want to point out, Laura, I want to point out I am on the left side of the screen and I am more dominant and I'm going to give you the arm. What does being on the left or right have to do with dominance? This is ridiculous. I get that grabbing and then you control by grabbing somebody's arm. But why --

INGRAHAM: I would have just done this.

ARROYO: Just arm wrestle.

INGRAHAM: Ow, you're hurt me.

ARROYO: But how does the left suddenly become a more powerful position? I don't know what it means.

INGRAHAM: Raymond, OK, you're going to stay there because Robert De Niro, are we going to have the special, "The Ingraham Angle" hotline? Well, just find out when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT DE NIRO, ACTOR: I'm going to say one thing -- Trump.

(APPLAUSE)

DE NIRO: It's no longer down with Trump. It's -- Trump.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: He looks like Burl Ives. I mean, really.

ARROYO: Laura, you know what's heartbreaking about this Academy Award winner Robert De Niro, great actor, this was about tolerance and inclusivity at the Tonys. That didn't look like tolerance or inclusivity. A great actor.

INGRAHAM: Now he's apologizing to Justin Trudeau. Is he going to apologize for "Meet the Fockers Part II"?

(LAUGHTER)

INGRAHAM: All right, that's all the time we have. Shannon Bream takes things from here. Shannon?

Content and Programming Copyright 2018 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2018 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.