Mainstream media hysterics over Helsinki meeting
President Trump reaffirms his support for U.S. intelligence; panel debates on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," July 17, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: All right that's all the time we have left for this evening. We'll always be fair and balanced, we're not to destroy Trump media. Let not your heart be troubled. Why didn't you come to Helsinki? Me and Tucker flew to Helsinki, you didn't fly to Helsinki.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I could have been your interpreter. I'm not special, you boys are the special ones.
HANNITY: Special ones? All you got to say is I want to go to Helsinki and we would have brought you.
INGRAHAM: You're the special ones. Well I could have given the Russian translation for you, I could have gotten you better service to the Russian translation. But Hannity I got to say your show was great and the point that Trump made yesterday when he said, he was clearly annoyed that the Mueller investigation has hamstrung the relationship with Russia. It has.
HANNITY: Bingo.
INGRAHAM: It has and we've been saying that from the beginning. It's been killing our attempt to rebuild our relationship.
HANNITY: You know Laura, there's one point in it. When the president said to me that up to five hours ago it was atrocious. The way he was explaining it was it sort of let the air out of the room because they're reading everything that's being said about them now. Do I think they're bad actors? Of course. Is he a bad actor? Yes, they're a hostile regime and they've done it before but it happened on Obama's watch.
INGRAHAM: Yeah and President Xi has just our best interests at heart. We roll out the red carpet for at every administration so come on. Every time they say Russia, I say China. Hannity fantastic reporting from Helsinki, really enjoyed it and great show tonight.
HANNITY: Right, yeah. Have a great show tonight.
INGRAHAM: All right good evening from Washington, I'm Laura Ingraham, this is 'The Ingraham Angle.' We have a pretty stellar show if I do say so myself tonight. Barack Obama is trying to turn President Trump's summit controversy into, of course, his own personal gain and perhaps electoral gain for the Democrats, that's the focus of tonight's Angle coming up in just a bit.
Plus Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may not be a Democrat savior but a razor line wedge in her own party, unbelievable story, we're going to explain. And you will not believe who's suing the victims of that Las Vegas massacre at the Mandalay Bay, a survivor joins us details. But first, firestorm around the president's meeting with Vladimir Putin. Today the president moved to clarify his comments that cast doubt on the Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the president's support of U.S. intelligence services.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have never been in a worse relationship with Russia than we are as of a few days ago and I think that's gotten substantially better. I think it has gotten the possibility of getting much better. I accept our intelligent community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. It could be other people also, there's a lot of people out there.
It should have been obvious, I thought it would have been obvious, but I'd like to clarify just in case it wasn't. In the key sentence in my remarks, I said the word would instead of wouldn't. The sentence should have been, "I don't see any reason why I wouldn't, or why it wouldn't be Russia."
President Obama along with Brennan and Clapper and the whole group that you see on television now are probably getting paid a lot of money by your networks. They knew about Russia's attempt to interfere in the election in September and they totally buried it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Bingo. That last point, of course, is lost in the media's frothing hysterical coverage of the controversy these past two days, I've never seen anything like it. But can President Trump successfully quell the rage from his critics? Some on the right, one of the neo-Conservative never Trumpers and on the left. Joining us now with reaction Matthew Rajensky he is a Russian expert, director of the Wilson Center's Kennan institute. Don Bramer former Intel officer along with Dr. Walid Phares, a Fox News foreign affairs analyst, great to have you all on.
Don I have never witnessed a purposeful meltdown on the left and some on the right, after this summit in Helsinki. The president comes out to clarify his remarks today and it wasn't good enough. It wasn't good enough for the media, it wasn't good enough for Democrats and as we'll get to in a few moments in my Angle, it wasn't good enough for President Obama, well he spoke before the clarification. Your reaction.
DON BRAMER, FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Well is it ever going to be good enough? As the president said, he could part the Red Sea and it would never be good enough. You know, it was a gaff, he messed up, who hasn't made a gaff on the global stave? I mean President Bush he got sick in Tokyo. And we forget President Obama, he bowed before the Saudi King so it was a missput.
INGRAHAM: Oh JFK cruise ship as our friend Craig Shirley pointed out last night. Walid the idea that the president of the United States is like working as a secret mole for Russia on the world stage in Helsinki and it really trying to conspire with Putin to undermine Americans interests as he's hitting the Nord Stream Two pipeline, as he kicked out 60 diplomats, as he continues sanctions, as he sent lethal weapons to the Ukraine. His actions against Russia have been tougher than Obama's across the board and yet all of this is lost on the Trump hating media and also of course the Democrats. I've never seen anything like this, honestly.
DR. WALID PHARES, FOX NEWS FOREIGN AFFAIRS ANALYST: Laura the problem is that we have a president that needs to handle his mission. Any president of international security, that's what the summit was supposed to address. Ukraine, the Baltics, Syria, many issues in Africa in addition to the nuclear issue which is extremely important. And on the other hand, we have our American politics being displayed in Helsinki, that's shouldn't have been the case.
The debate about our U.S. politics should have been in Washington, not addressed there. But my concern now is that many of the countries with whom we are going to be partnering or containing are looking at us as undecided. If they cannot decide with Russia and the other powers as to how to solve this crisis, we're going to lose.
INGRAHAM: Matthew, your reaction.
MATTHEW ROJANSKY, DIRECTOR OF WILSON CENTER KENNAN INSTITUTE: Yeah my sense is that the Russians from the very beginning, obviously they're muffed around in American politics but they're goal here was to weaken the United States and when you look at a president who faces almost certain opposition from Congress on anything he tries to do in his view to advance the American national interest vis-.-vis Russia, he's not going to able to get it done in Washington because he's going to be blocked by congress. That's mission accomplished for the Russians if they're goal was to tie the hands of the president of the United States.
Now I think this is going to back fire on Russia because in the long term because the United States is the leading world power and to get the status and the recognition that they need, they need to be able to cut deals with the United States. So they have in effect hamstrung, yes, the president but also their ability to cut the deals that they need to cut whether it's on what Walid very correctly says, Ukraine, Syria or nuclear.
INGRAHAM: That's a good point. I want to share with all of you this series of hysterical reactions on the part of the usual suspects claiming that now we're at a quote, "national security crisis" because of what happened in Helsinki, let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK WARNER, D—VIRGINIA: The fact that the president in his very weak performance couthoused to Putin and accepts his version of the facts, I frankly think that's a national security risk.
CARL BERNSTEIN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: We now have a real national security emergency in this country.
MICHAEL MCFAUL, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA: This is a national security crisis and the president of the United States flew all the way to Finland, met with Vladimir Putin and basically capitulated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: What substantive issue Don did the president capitulate on? We stopping sanctions? No longer arming the Ukrainians? Are we doing any other things with bringing back diplomats that we've expelled? What did he do?
BRAMER: No and not one thing did Putin walk away with. He walked away with a few good minutes of press that he can go home and build his propaganda machine. You're absolutely right, those 60 diplomats, they're still gone. That Washington consulate still closed. We've increased lethality with the second brigade in Germany, we've put 30 millimeter weapons right on the front lines to go against his machines. So what did he get? He got a few good minutes on press.
INGRAHAM: Walid.
PHARES: I think that the national security threat that we're going to be facing are really what's happening now in Syria. The Iranians are taking the borders all the way to Israel. Iraq tonight is fallen apart to all these demonstrations. Iran is moving across--
INGRAHAM: They talked about that, they addressed the issue of Iran behind closed doors.
PHARES: We need to make a distinction, Laura. Let the two presidents and all other leaders address national security or the international security issues and then at home we have a--
INGRAHAM: The left doesn't care Walid. You're acting like this, I'm sorry but the left does not frankly care about that. It's get Trump, kick him out of office and impeach him, whatever you can do. That's what they're focused on and you're making this really good cerebral argument about geopolitics. What's going on and what you're hearing from these senators is outrageously irresponsible, there are serious issues at hand and to claim that the president is the poodle of Putin because a few verbal missteps is.
As if Obama didn't make missteps, how about his disappearing red line which we are going to get to in a moment. That was a substantive misstep. Matthew your reaction to that, it's a national security crisis that we spoke with Vladimir Putin after Obama spent eight years trying to do a reset that never happened.
RAJENSKY: I think that the starting point for this debate is really partisan politics in the United States and the genius of Russia's meddling, whatever it is exactly that they targeted our weakest point. They knew that this was stirring up a hornet's nest and it puts the United States in a position where instead of driving bargains on, for example Syria, we've got to Iran out of southern Syria.
Russia is very interested in seeing Assad regain control so if Russia just gets the part it wants, we don't get Iran out of southern Syria, we can't advance the security of the state if Israel in that region then we lose. And again a president who has got his hands tied in foreign policy and who's got the Hill out to get him is going to have a very hard time doing that, that's a win for Russia.
INGRAHAM: Yeah. And by the way, despite the president's verbal snafus missteps, the last 24 hours have seen these dangerous hysterics over Russia and astounding hysterical illiteracy at the same time, here's just a sample, the Washington Post blared, ' It's not wrong to compare Trump's America to the Holocaust, here's why,' How about this from Politico, 'Putin's attack on the U.S. is our Pearl Harbor' and then this gem last night on MSNBC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILL WINE-BANKS, FORMER WATERGATE PROSECUTOR: I would say that his performance today will leave an infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I keep saying I don't have words for this. Walid Kristallnacht or Pearl Harbor 2,900 Americans died at Pearl Harbor. I'm sure many Jewish Americans will have something to say about Kristallnacht.
PHARES: Unfortunately when our domestic politics that deeply divided what we are going to have is in a much more dangerous situation. This whole file will end in a few months, let's say a year, but the results that we see on the ground internationally we're going to pay for that if we are not united against them.
INGRAHAM: Don.
BRAMER: Well look, I completely agree with Walid and we've got to move forward from this. You know as long as we stay divided then all of our adversaries continue to win--
INGRAHAM: But is the Intel community demoralized, crippled, upset about what Donald Trump did in Helsinki? I mean I know that's hard to say and generalize but that's what you hear from the left, "He's destroying the morale of the intel community" as if the intel community is perfect. We screwed up a lot along the way, for decades we've gotten things wrong, cataclysmic intel failures but a lot of successes too, I mean that's the way life is.
BRAMER: The Cold War wouldn't have decreased had it not been for the intel community and professions we had. Sure mistakes are going to be made and you're going to have people that are netter at their job thank others in the intel community just as you have in any profession. But I think at the end of the day, most Intel professionals, they move forward they know their job, they do it right. Whatever happened in the world stage of politics, they put that behind them because they've seen this before.
INGRAHAM: Yeah and it's the heads of the intel agencies and the things that people like Brennan are saying, traitorous, treasonous. When a former CIA chief is going to that level of rhetoric about the current president of the United States, no wonder President Trump thinks that when he was running for president, this guy was working to try to prevent him from being president. I mean we're going to treason?
Honestly that and my old friend George Will had a very unfortunate column today. It was called I think, do we have full screen of it? I think we do. It's called, 'This sad, embarrassing wreck of a man.' It's always personal too, "America's child president had a play date with KGB alumnus who surely enjoyed providing day care" Blah blah blah, again very personal, Matthew close it out for us.
RAJENSKY: Listen Laura, it I had the president's ear what I would tell him to do right now is he's got some really smart people advising him. Have his senior national security officials' work a good deal with Russia, whether it's on getting Iran out of Syria, whether it's getting a renewal of nuclear arms control which we have to do. Russia is the world's other major power, we have to do that.
INGRAHAM: They're doing that I understand.
RAJENSKY: Call everybody's bluff by bringing that deal back to Washington and saying to the senate, "Look, are you going to rectify it or not?" And then it's on everyone's record, did they support or did they not support a good deal for the United States of America? And they can't play politics with it or they can but they pay the price.
INGRAHAM: Right and that's a substantive determination, everybody can put their cards on the table and I think they are working on that.
PHARES: Strategic maturity, that's what we need.
INGRAHAM: Exactly. Excellent panel guys, thanks so much. And with President Trump under attack from his critics, guess who's trying to capitalize on the moment? We'll tell you in a moment on the Angle.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Obama to the rescue, that's the focus of tonight's Angle. Before President Trump could even clarify his statements in Helsinki, President Obama pounced. Speaking in Johannesburg, he hit the sitting president, populism and attempted to breathe life into his own sad legacy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look around, strong man politics are ascendant, suddenly, whereby elections and some pretense of democracy are maintained, the form of it, that those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Okay well the people and their will give democracy it's meaning. Don't you love how Obama attempts to write Trump off as some Putin-like dictator and for good measure, he tries to lend credence to the line that Trump, of course, is siding with the old KGB and Putin over all our intelligence agents and services. A point the president clarified and batted down today as we just played in the previous segment. And let's not pretend that America, by the way, hasn't had a history of making convenient alliances with unsavory strongmen.
We do so when necessary to achieve greater objectives for our country. I'm thinking for instance Mubarak and Saddam Hussein, just to mention a few. And remember Obama himself abruptly cut short a big meeting with our key democratic ally India to attend a memorial service for King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a bit of a strongman don't you think? Maybe some strongmen are better than others, when Obama's involved with a strongman they're fine.
The former president also makes the mistake of assuming that Trump and the millions of people who turned out to vote for him just came if of the ether, just dropped from the sky. Well Trump was elected in part because many were fed up with the weak man leadership of Barack Obama, the president who drew red lines in disappearing ink. Voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and beyond had had it with globalism, had it with open borders and had it with trade deals that gutted our manufacturing and gave an upper hand to China.
Trump voters were also tired of endless wars and they still are. That's called common sense conservative populism. But of course many in the bipartisan establishment that Trump ran against will never admit the failures of globalization and instead like Obama, they choose to denigrate the sceptics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: In the west you've got far right parties that often times are based not just on protectionism and closed borders, but also on barely hidden racial nationalism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: When in doubt, play the race card. Well this is pure identity politics, that's what Obama's really good at and on the global stage no less. All to help rescue Democrats in the midterms, and by the way could that be interpreted as criticizing America on the global stage in a foreign country? I think so. Whipping up racial divisions is a typical Democrat tactic and one we've already seen deployed by, for instance Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the new bright light of the Democrat Party, Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters the list goes on and on.
Obama there is Johannesburg just makes it sound slightly more erudite with all those poignant pauses. Then of course he couldn't resist the launching the internationalist tired old refrain against populism with a few lines that could have been written by George W. Bush himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: The fact countries which rely and rapid nationalism and xenophobia and doctrines of tribal, racial or religious superiority as their main organizing principles, the thing that holds people together, eventually those countries find themselves consumed by civil war or external war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I hope he's not talking about our country. Well I could think of Japan for instance which has strong nationalistic streak, it prizes their culture and has a very strict immigration policy. Are they on the verge of civil war? I don't think so. Look Obama's star turn today was designed to seize on the opening that's the globalists feel that they have after Helsinki. But as usual they overreach and they have this really convenient case of amnesia regarding their own role in the rotten state of affairs with Russia.
These are the facts though, Obama did not reset a relationship with Russia even though he bragged about it all the way through 2012. And Obama consistently underestimated the challenge posed by Putin's regime. And this is the assessment from the Brookings Institution, no fans of Trump. Writing 'at the end of Obama's two terms Putin had elevated Russia to a credible revisionist power on the international stage. Russia annexed Crimea and occupied much of Eastern Ukraine. By successfully propping up the degenerate Assad regime, the Kremlin gained veto on any possible political solution to Syria and got a meaningful foothold in the broader region. Fueling both anti-Americanism and illiberalism and most damning of all, it managed to meddle almost unopposed in U.S. politics, all on Obama's watch.'
I just read that in the makeup room earlier. The bottom lines is this, the two biggest nuclear powers in the world should have an open and frank line of communication. That's better for America's security and guess what? It's better for global peace. It's what Liberals used to be for, more talk less war. Trump has a realistic and a pragmatic view of the post-Cold War era, the most serious threat to America militarily and economically is not Russia, by the way, with an economy basically the size of Italy's. In fact the biggest threat to America is China.
Trump is the first president to make this plain and act accordingly. With tough talk and tougher actions, including terrorists that the globalists are all against. And the globalists are obsessed with Russia of course, they say precious little about China's incursions, China's cheating and China's threats. Why? Because they make gobs of money on arising China.
Remember back in 2014 when the Chinese military hacked into the federal government's office of personnel management? China has home addresses, social security numbers and family information on 22 million current and former government employees, including mine. This was Barack Obama with President Xi after the news broke, looked very friendly. Did Obama confront Xi on the world stage then about that hack, huge intrusion? No he did not. And did the media make a big deal of that? No they did not. Did pundits on MSNBC and CNN claim that Obama was in Xi's back pocket for not calling him out? No they did not.
But back to Russia. Trump said yesterday that both sides deserve blame for the state of the relationship. Now I might have not said that while standing next to Putin but in a 2016 BBC piece quoting Paul Pillar, a former CIA officer and foreign policy expert he said, 'The relationship went wrong when the west did treat Russia as a nation that had shaken of Soviet Communism. It should have been welcomed as such into a new community of nations. But instead it was regarded as the successor state to the USSR, inheriting its status as the principle focus of western distrust.'
Now you can debate whether that was the right thing to do but we opted to expand NATO, he said, and failed in our attempts to turn Russia into an ally, albeit a cagey one. Now that got Russia's back up and it boosted Putin's popularity in his homeland. The truth is lots of people have said what Trump said yesterday, that we should have a better relationship with Russia where we can. Guess who said it? Clinton, George W. Bush and yes Barack Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia. That's why I have called for a reset in relations between the United States and Russia. This must be more than a fresh start between the Kremlin and the White House. It must be sustained effort among the American and Russian people to identify mutual interest and expand dialogue and cooperation that can pave the way to progress.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Sounds pretty good so why is that thought now suddenly so subversive? Oh because we have a Republican president in the White House. And by the way a Republican president who's backing up the conciliatory talk, building bridges, with tough sanctions as well. Well the Democrats have the midterms ahead of them they're coming. And Barack Obama and the Democrats clearly fear that Trump might succeed where they failed. And that's the Angle.
Joining me now for reaction is Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of the Intercept and a deep sceptic of the Intel communities. Glenn the hair-on-fire commentary by the former Intel chiefs yesterday and today is quite something. I want to play for you something that John Brennan said this morning and get your reaction. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BRENNAN, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: It is a big question first of all for those who are on Mr. Trump's security team whether they can continue to serve in good conscience an individual who basically betrayed his nation. What Mr. Trump did yesterday was to betray the women and men of the FBI, CIA, NSA and others. And to betray the American public and that's I use the term that this was nothing short of treasonous because it is a betrayal of the nation. He is giving aid and comfort to the enemy and it needs to stop. And Mr. Trump needs to understand that there are going to be consequences for him too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Threatening the president there Glenn, your reaction.
GLENN GREENWALD, FOUNDER OF 'THE INTERCEPT': So I have a lot criticisms of Trump. There were parts of Obama's speech as well that you referenced today that I thought were good in terms of criticizing global institutions. But the rhetoric that we just heard on the from the director who also was part of the CIA who also was part of the CIA under George Bush as well was incredibly not just unhinged but remarkably dangerous. We're not really at war with Russia which is the prerequisite for treason.
And he actually said that Russia is our enemy which is something that the president that he served for right years vehemently rejected even after all the allegations of hacking. If you look at all the nuclear weapons on the planet that can extinguish the human species, 90 percent of them reside in the hands of two countries, the U.S. and Russia. And to create this climate where we declare Russia our enemy is remarkably reckless and dangerous and it's shocking to hear.
INGRAHAM: Glenn isn't it the case that there are many on the right, the old neo-Conservatives who I mean there a lot of them who want to keep the Cold War mentality going, Russia's the big threat. We're going to go to war in Montenegro or we're going to go to war in Crimea. They don't like the idea that we have a Republican president reaching out to try to find some areas of common ground. They say they don't mind it but I the end I think they do mind it because it upsets their apple cart, their entire world view post-Cold War.
GREENWALD: Look Dwight Eisenhower 60 years ago when he left the White House, no radical he, he was he five star general and the two term Republican president warned that there was this permanent military faction in Washington that would benefit financially ad in terms of power by having the U.S. on a permanent war footing. Something that our founding fathers never wanted. That was before Vietnam, before the Cold war really got underway in a hard core manner and obviously before the war on terror when it's grown and grown and grown ever still.
So there's huge factions in Washington that are very vested in always having an enemy that Americans are scared of and right now what Democrats and Republicans, the leadership of each party as sort of a foreign policy lead are working in unison to do is to try and convince Americans to be sufficiently afraid of Vladimir Putin and Russia that they are willing to essentially acquiesce to everything. Interestingly, Obama resisted that bipartisan pressure for eight years. He was a believer that Russia was not a threat, that we ought to try to cooperate with them. It's the Democrats in the post-2016 era looking for an explanation of how Hillary Clinton lost who are trying to essentially find a foreign villain to escape accountability and blame for themselves. And it's a very reckless political game that they are playing.
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: What's interesting is to hear that old Obama from 2009 about the need to reset, his comments to Romney, the cold war is over, that sounds like Trump. I mean, that is really what Donald Trump I think thinks. He doesn't think Putin is a close friend. He would like to get along better. He thinks maybe if they had a better personal relationships they could figure things out in Syria, or do better stuff for denuclearization. But the core of what he said there in 2009, I don't think there's much daylight between that core idea and what Trump is trying to do, and he is really, really frustrated that the Mueller investigation called all of his efforts into question. And that spilled over I think into Helsinki.
GREENWALD: Yes. There is something that is a political fact that makes people on both sides of the spectrum very uncomfortable to talk about, which is that there is a decent chunk of the populace who voted in 2008 for Obama, and then voted in 2016 for Donald Trump. And the reason is that both of them positioned themselves as outsiders to the Washington establishment. They ran against the orthodoxies of both parties on the grounds that endless war and globalization were destroying the future of the American worker, were destroying the American dream. They promised to radically overhaul what happens in Washington.
And it is true that even though Trump and Obama are posited as these polar opposites on a lot of issues, trade being one, but Russia being another, they actually sound a lot more like then it they do different. And it is true that Obama repeatedly refused to do things that Trump did, like sent lethal arms to Ukraine, like bomb forces in Assad, because Obama didn't want to promote tensions with Putin because he thought it would be better for both countries to get along, which is very similar to what Donald Trump is saying.
INGRAHAM: You are just not going to hear that analysis anywhere else on television tonight. Glenn Greenwald, thank you so much. Great to see you tonight.
And so I have a question. Why did President Trump use the language he did yesterday? Dinesh D'Souza, Byron York have some interesting theories, and all the craziness, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Now, why did the president to use the language he did yesterday that cast some doubt about Russia's election meddling and then kind of revising that today by saying he accepts the findings of the U.S. intelligence agencies?
Joining us now with their own theories, Byron York, columnist at the "Washington Examiner" and Fox News contributor, the Dinesh D'Souza is the author and filmmaker of the new film, going to be out on August 3rd, everyone has to go see it, called "The Death of a Nation." Great to see both of you.
Byron, for people who somehow missed this huge uproar, let's play a part of what was said in Helsinki and then go right to what the president's clarification was today. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: People came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it is not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be.
The sentence should have been "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia." It's sort of double negative. So, you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Byron, everyone says he was in a great mood when he got on Air Force One, then he started watching the television coverage and he's like, what, what happened?
BRYON YORK, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": It wasn't good. First of all, the president has expressed doubt for a long time about the intelligence community.
INGRAHAM: As many of us have, yes.
YORK: A long time. And last year, remember he met Putin briefly at a summit in Asia and he came out and did exactly the same thing. Putin said -- he said Putin told me that we didn't interfere and I believe him. It was a huge uproar, and then the next day, Trump came out --
INGRAHAM: Let's play that so people know what you're talking about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I believe that he feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. As to whether I believe it or not, I'm with our agencies, especially as currently constituted with their leadership. I believe in our intel agencies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: That's interesting. Good catch on that. I forgot that he said that.
YORK: That was the next day cleanup. Now he has done it again. He said today, I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. So this is something he has learned that he just can't say without causing a huge reaction.
INGRAHAM: Is he trying to flatter Putin to get what we want strategically from Putin? Maybe he thinks he doesn't lose anything by saying he feels strongly that he didn't do it.
YORK: There are theories about this. That could be one of them. He really wants better relations with Russia, two, he just doesn't believe it, or three, he has never really accepted there are kind of two parts to the Trump Russia investigation. One part is the what Russia did part, which is a legitimate investigation into what Russia actually did. But the other is the get Trump part, which is the part about using the findings to try to remove Donald Trump from office, and he feels like if he gives even an inch to these people, then they are going to take it and try to remove him from office. It is something along those lines.
INGRAHAM: Dinesh, you've keyed in on that in examining the theory here. As we see the utter, complete case of the vapors on the part of John Brennan and so forth by calling him a traitor. It's reprehensible what they're doing. They want Trump out of office. Your reaction to these events?
DINESH D'SOUZA, FILMMAKER, "DEATH OF A NATION": I think on the face of it, it should not be surprising that the Russians tried to influence our elections. It is not surprising at all either that Trump would be skeptical of intelligence agencies that seem to of been institutionally mounted against him.
So the left's apoplexy here I think has a deeper explanation, and the expedition is this. They are desperate for Trump to ratify the premise of the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation is given a boost if Trump himself, in a sense the very target of the investigation, were to basically say, yes, the Russians are the bad guys, because then Mueller can then push forward and simply try to close the loop by saying, and you are part of that group.
So I think Trump's natural aversion to doing that is based upon the correct perception that the left's concern here is entirely domestic politics. They don't care about Russia, per se. These are people for whom election integrity have not exactly been a leading issue. But what they're looking for Trump to do, to force them to do, is ultimately to ratify Mueller's attempt to eject him from office.
INGRAHAM: Interesting. I was reminded of Schumer's warning back in January of 2017, he warned Trump about taking on the intel agencies. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, D—N.Y., SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Let me tell, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you. So even for a practical, supposedly a hardnosed businessman, he is being really dumb to do this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: He seems to be in many ways in saying that confirming Donald Trump's reason to be skeptical. I thought the intelligence agencies exist to protect us. Apparently, they are just to get back at us if we question them. He said that, not Trump.
YORK: Absolutely. And there is another part of Trump's skepticism which is that he believes this is sort of a plot by Obama holdovers. This all happened during the Obama administration. He feels that there are certain elements in the intelligence community that are out to get him. We should say on the left, they believe the theories are much simpler, that Trump really did collude or that Vladimir Putin has something on him.
INGRAHAM: Dinesh, before I let you go, Bill Kristol, George Will, all of these old Republicans, some of them neoconservatives, they are enjoying this moment, right, because they hated the fact that Trump proved them all wrong and won the election.
D'SOUZA: I think it's funny. At the left has these people on a leash. It simply has to shout Russia and with Pavlovian response, all these guys will go into a patriotic flair. Here's the point. We know that Obama colluded with Russia when he basically told him, hey, when the American people are out of sight, I'm going to make a deal with Putin. We know Hillary colluded with Russia. She took money in exchange for the whole uranium ideal.
The one person who has not colluded with Russia at least as far as we know is Trump. As so the fact that they intelligence agencies are mounting their investigation of Trump whereas they look the other way with the other two guys who we now who have proven to have had Russia ties, this is actually what makes the whole thing so comical.
INGRAHAM: How much money did the Clinton Foundation get from Russian interests?
YORK: I've forgotten.
INGRAHAM: Millions. No problem.
YORK: And Bill Clinton got huge money.
INGRAHAM: It's only $500,000. Dinesh, you get that for a speech, right, $500,000, no problem. There's nothing out of the ordinary about that. All right, guys, thanks so much.
And she is being hailed as the new face of the Democrats, but there are signs that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be ripping the party apart. Oh, goody.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: In a new article on of "The Hill," several House Democrats are criticizing 28-year-old Democratic wunderkind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They are charging that she is attacking fellow Democrats from the left and wrongfully accusing a Democratic leader of mounting a third-party challenge against her.
Congressman Bill Pascrell of New Jersey said she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Congressman Lacy Clay calls her patty, it's a lack of maturity on her part. And liberal Congressman Alcee Hastings offered this warning, "meteors fizz out."
Joining me now for reaction is Chris Hahn, a former aide to Chuck Schumer, and Democratic pollster and strategist Mark Penn. Great to see both of you. Mark, this is kind of an interesting turn. Five seconds ago she was the future of the party. She was like a huge promotion, cover of magazines. And now it's look out.
MARK PENN, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: She hasn't even been elected yet. She hasn't served in office. She hasn't actually done anything in politics. So I think there is of course a split here between the left and the center of the party. And there is going to be a big fight over that, and you can see that fight building now.
INGRAHAM: Chris, there was a moment at this, I don't know where this was, but she was talking about the Palestinian question. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARGARET HOOVER, PBS HOST: You use the term, the occupation of Palestine?
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-NEW YORK CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I think what I meant is the settlements.
HOOVER: Do you think you could expand on that?
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I awm not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I'm sorry, Chris, God bless her, she's 28-years-old. She seems like a very interesting person. She's interesting. You know, she's like a nice person. She doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Go ahead, you can react to this.
CHRIS HAHN, FORMER AIDE TO CHUCK SCHUMER: Her campaign was about local issues, and they are asking her about global politics, and she's can have to get up to speed on that. And you are right, she's 28. She's got no experience on the national stage.
But I see these articles on, who is sniping at her. I think they are a little jealous. She's a rising star, her name is everywhere, people want to get to know her. And of course she's going to make a few people mad. She's an insurgent. That's what happens when there's an insurgency. And people still have a little bit of hard feelings after the primary. But you know what, incumbents need to work their districts or they are going to face the same fate. That's what happens in America. We have elections for a reason, and people have to pay attention to the issues that matter to their constituents. Her issues were health care, child care, and affordability of schools and other things.
INGRAHAM: All free. Chris, no one is going to have to pay for it, money is going to fall from the sky, it's going to be like lollipops in every Bush, pick them off and lick them.
HAHN: Again, again.
INGRAHAM: It's all going to be perfect. I'm sorry, you're right, you're right. The incumbents have to work hard. I agree with you on that. Mark --
HAHN: And one other point, one other point, Laura. Whether or not the party is going to accept her depends on how big their majority is come January. If it's a one-vote, they're going to accept her with open arms. If it's 40 votes, she's going to have to get along
INGRAHAM: That's true, and she has to learn a little bit. Mark?
PENN: Oh, no, you see, first of all, if it's a very tight Congress, it's the moderates who are going to hold the power, because it's the moderates who really will be able to bring across Republicans, get a majority. It won't be the left. And, also, it's also not a question of stopping bills the way that it was. It's really quite a different power dynamic.
So I think this is all overblown. She really doesn't command anything other than media attention, and in fact the right likes to hype her to say that she is the representative of the Democratic Party because she's a socialist. And trust me, 86 percent of Democrats reject socialism. So right now she won an election with 25,000 votes --
INGRAHAM: But we have a poll, this YouGov poll that came out, that 57 percent of Democrats want candidates to be more like Bernie Sanders, 16 percent said less, 27 percent not sure. Bernie Sanders and she are kind of joined at the hip on a lot of these issues. So the left is the future of the party. You are kind of like the old dinosaur, not to be, too personal here, Mark, but you are like this reasonable, moderate, third way kind of Democrat. She is on those posters looking like Eva Peron. Come on, that's exciting.
PENN: These moderates have a way of coming back because every time the Democrats wind up in the wilderness, it's the moderates who bring the Democrats --
INGRAHAM: It's not that she makes people mad, Chris. It's that she has some warped views on economics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OCASIO-CORTEZ: I do think that right now we have this no holds barred, wild west hyper capitalism. What that means is profit at any cost. Capitalism is not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Chris, apparently she wants another system other than capitalism. OK, but explain how that's worked and where that has worked. Tell me, where.
HAHN: I didn't hear her say she wanted something other than capitalism. I heard her say she might want reasonable bank reform, like Dodd-Frank, things like that which I think most Americans after 2008 wanted. So look, she's 28, she's 28, she has never had this kind of experience before, and she's going to learn. She seems very smart, she seems to have very good political chops, Laura. I think we can both agree on that.
INGRAHAM: I think she's an attractive candidate, I think she's young, she's hungry, and she wants to make a difference. And I think that's a good thing. I don't agree with her on pretty much anything, but if you're a Democrat or kind of a liberal living in a loft in Williamsburg, you're like wow, this is cool. Let's hang out at the coffee shop and talk about socialism. She calls herself a socialist.
HAHN: I think she's an exciting candidate, she's got a lot of big ideas, and I think she's going to learn in a Congress that we have an incremental system of government and I think she'll work within that system. And I think she will be good at it.
INGRAHAM: Mark?
PENN: She's out of the main stream as a socialist. Democrats, as I said, the recent Harvard-CAPS poll, very few Democrats believe in socialism over capitalism. So don't kid yourself. Democrats haven't moved as far left as the activists who are running these campaigns would make you believe.
INGRAHAM: Chris, Joe Lieberman has an op-ed coming up tomorrow apparently that says that Democrats should vote for Joe Crowley, vote in Joe Crowley, because she's a threat to the party. So, Lieberman, an old Democrat, vote for Joe Crowley for working families. The old guard is stepping in saying, who, slow down. Don't try this at home.
HAHN: He's another one of those guys who got out of touch with his state and was voted out of office or lost a primary in his state. Joe Crowley is not running.
INGRAHAM: Oh, my God Joe Lieberman is more in touch with Connecticut than the governor, Malloy, or whatever his name was.
HAHN: Now he is. He's been home now.
PENN: So that's not happening. Let her be in Congress.
INGRAHAM: All right, guys, and by the way, the victims of last year's Las Vegas massacre are facing an unconscionable new indignity. We are going to tell you about it, and an attorney for the victims will react. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: More than 1,000 victims of last year's Las Vegas massacre are now facing a new injustice they probably never thought possible. They are actually being sued. The lawsuit is being brought by, of all places, the MGM Resort which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel from where Stephen Paddock committed the mass shooting.
Joining us to explain how this is even possible is Brian Claypool, survivor of the Las Vegas shooting and an attorney representing a number of the victims of the massacre. Brian, this is so wild on so many levels. We've already gone through, frankly, the lack of security, lack of responsiveness, officers standing out in the hallway, they should've gone in when Paddock was up to his evil act. But now they are being sued? What is the legal theory? I'd sanction the lawyers filing this suit, by the way. What is the legal theory?
BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Thanks for having me back, Laura. How deep in the swamp does MGM want to jump? How far in the gutter to they want to go? And how low do they want to kick victims like myself and other survivors?
So what they are trying to do is use what's called the safety act, there was a law put in place by our federal government, 2002, that basically said if companies hire out a security company that's rubber-stamped by the Department of Homeland Security, that basically, what MGM is saying they are immune from any liability that results if there is a terroristic act.
The problem with that theory is, number one, remember our old friend Sheriff Lombardo? He's come out and proclaimed a million times on TV that this was not a terroristic act. That is their first hurdle. They has to prove this was terrorism. They said it wasn't terrorism.
The second hurdle they have that nobody's talking about is even if a judge somehow says this was terrorism and this safety act applies, they have to prove that the security system they had in place was effective and had social utility. Gee whiz, guess what, 58 people died and hundreds were injured, so it wasn't real effective.
INGRAHAM: I still don't think we know very much about this attack, this mass killing. We've seen videos released sporadically, Brian. Why did it take so long to release the hallway video? That hallway video that came out a couple weeks ago, that just is wild to me. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if I were, that would make me think, that's odd. Why didn't we see the check-in video earlier? Why didn't we see anyone coming and going into his room earlier? What took so long?
CLAYPOOL: It's pretty simple. They don't want you to know. They don't want your viewers to know. They don't want the world to know how hapless their security was leading up to that shooting. So what did they do? Instead of spending money on shoring up their security and making sure this doesn't happen again, they spend millions of dollars hiring out thousand dollar an hour lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits to get out of the case on a legal basis so that the whole community and a set of jurors will never hear the evidence that we all want to hear to make positive change.
INGRAHAM: Will the judge in pretrial motions allow for discovery on whether or not this was a terrorist act? He's going to have to, right? These judges are always really lenient on discovery.
CLAYPOOL: That's a great question. But here is my theory. I think MGM filed the wrong kind of lawsuit. They should not have filed -- they filed what is called a declaratory relief action. What that is, Laura, is --
INGRAHAM: You just lost the entire audience. I'm just kidding. Brian, we are out of time, but I will have you back on radio. Unbelievable story. And we will be right back
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Oh, don't cry, but that's all the time we have tonight. So tell us your thoughts on the show @IngrahamAngle, tune into radio tomorrow morning. I always love to read your tweets. Not the mean ones. But sometimes they are really funny. Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" team are up next with a fantastic show examining all the histrionics over the last 48 hours. Shannon, take it away.
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