This is a rush transcript from "Fox News Sunday," January 29, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I’m Chris Wallace.
Federal judges temporarily blocked part of President Trump's travel ban on people coming to the U.S. from Muslim countries.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEMONSTRATORS: Let them out! Let them out!
WALLACE: Protests at airports as courts barred deporting travelers affected by the new executive order.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We’re going to have a very, very strict ban, and we’re going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.
WALLACE: As tensions rise with Mexico over plans for a border wall.
TRUMP: The American people will not pay for the wall, and I’ve made that clear to the government of Mexico.
WALLACE: We’ll talk with Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, about his controversial executive actions and his ambitious agenda.
Then, where will Democrats try to block the president? And what about his Supreme Court nominee this week?
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY, MAJORITY LEADER: What we hope would be that our Democratic friends will treat president Trump's nominees in the same way that we treated Clinton and Obama.
WALLACE: The number two Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durbin, on the fight ahead and why he says Trump’s executive orders make the country less safe.
Plus, we’ll ask our Sunday panel between the escalating battle between the president and the press.
TRUMP: They’re very dishonest people. The media is very dishonest.
WALLACE: All, right now, on "Fox News Sunday."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington.
Donald Trump's first week in office is ending in controversy and widespread protest. Federal judges have now stepped in to temporarily blocked part of Mr. Trump’s ban on people coming to the U.S. from certain largely Muslim nations. Some of the travelers caught in the ban were about to be deported back to their home countries.
In a moment, we’ll have a Sunday exclusive when we sit down with counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway.
But first, let's bring in FOX News correspondent Rich Edson reporting from the White House on a president who is charging full ahead -- Rich.
RICH EDSON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.
And the Trump White House is defending its executive order halting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries, this as a judge has blocked the deportation of those detained in airports as a result of that order. The ruling falls short of letting those immigrants into the country. And in response to the ruling, the department of homeland security says in a statement, quote, "The president’s executive order remains in place. Prohibited travel will remain prohibited and the U.S. government retains its right to revoke visas at any time if required for national security or public safety."
And at the White House, President Trump is responding to that criticism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's not a Muslim ban but we are totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, if you see it all over. It's working out very nicely. And we're going to have a very, very strict ban, we’re going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
EDSON: And the president has also just tweeted, "Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting now. Look what is happening all over Europe and indeed the world -- a horrible mess."
The president also continues conversations with foreign leaders. He's already spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House said the two discussed, quote, "topics from mutual cooperation in defeating ISIS, to efforts in working together to achieve more peace throughout the world, including Syria."
He’s also scheduled to speak with foreign leaders from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. And as week two of the Trump White House begins, we also expect to hear who President Trump will choose to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. That's expected Thursday -- Chris.
WALLACE: Rich Edson reporting from the White House -- Rich, thanks for that.
To discuss what the president has done and where he's headed, we're joined now by Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.
Kellyanne, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday."
KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Chris.
WALLACE: So, we just heard President Trump say it's all working out very nicely. But in fact, as we've seen, there are protests across the country, and now, federal judges have stepped in to at least temporarily block deportation of people who had come in who are banned from coming in under his order. Shouldn't that have been worked out before this order went into effect?
CONWAY: The judge in Brooklyn, the Obama appointee judge in Brooklyn’s stay order really doesn't affect the executive order at all, because the executive order is meant to be prospective, it’s preventing, not detaining.
And so, you’re talking about 325,000 people from overseas came into this country just yesterday through our airports. So, 325,000, you’re talking about 300 and some who have been detained or are prevented from gaining access to an aircraft in their home country. They must stay for now. That's 1 percent.
And I think in terms of the upside being greater protection of our borders, of our people, it's a small price to pay. And I am told by the officials that anyone who is being detained, if there’s no further threat, if they’re not dangerous to this country, they can expect to be released in due course, as most of them have already.
WALLACE: And -- but -- so the ones that are here will be allowed, if they are vetted, to stay?
CONWAY: You’re talking about the people who came on the aircraft?
WALLACE: Yes.
CONWAY: Yes, if they’re vetted. It’s a routine screening process that they’ll go through. If they're not dangerous, if they’re not a threat, then they will be disposed of on a case by case -- their situations will be handled on a case-by-case basis. You know, I was stopped many times, weren’t you, after 9/11. I didn't resemble, or share a name with or be part of any kind of terrorist conspiracy, but this is what we do to keep a nation safe.
I mean, there are -- those whole idea that they’re being separated and ripped from their families, it’s temporary, and it's just circumstantial in terms of whether you are one of those 300 and some who was already on an aircraft or trying to get on an aircraft, as opposed to the over 3,000 children who will be forevermore separated from the parents who perished on 9/11.
WALLACE: President Trump says if we let refugees in, the Christians will be given priority. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you are a Muslim, you could come in. But if you are a Christian, it was almost impossible. I thought it was very, very unfair. So, we are going to help them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: First, that's not true. I want you to take a look at this. As you can see here, in 2016, almost as many Christian refugees were admitted as Muslims. And second, President Trump is barring people from seven countries, the ones you can see on the map, but not included on the list are Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia is where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from.
Why are they not on the list?
CONWAY: This was the seven countries was offered by President Obama and his administration. In 2015 --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But that’s (INAUDIBLE) before.
CONWAY: Well, hold on. In 2015, Chris, Congress passed the Terrorist Prevention Act. And what it essentially did was it identified the seven countries and expanded the list from four, and identifying them as a threat. These are countries that have a history of training, harboring, exporting terrorists.
And one thing that is very important to recognize whether you are -- the Orlando shooter, yes, he was born here, but he went abroad, was radicalized in the Internet. If you are San Bernardino, if you are the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, these are people who traveled abroad, were radicalized, were trained, and then they came back and did their bloody (ph) massacre here on American soil. It's no different really than what's happened all across the U.S.
And so, we can't just keep on looking the other way and pretending that there aren’t people out there, there isn’t a terrorist organization, ISIS, al Qaeda, otherwise, who wants to --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But, Kellyanne, the specific question I’m asking you is Saudi Arabia, for instance, that's where the 9/11 hijackers, most of them came from. Why not block them?
CONWAY: Congress and President Obama's administration came up with a list of seven.
WALLACE: It wasn’t an executive order.
CONWAY: Right. Came up with the list of seven. We are following on that in week one. This president will certainly keep identifying threats and risks.
And, look, Chris, people can't have it both ways with President Trump. They can’t say on the one hand, well, he's not taking his briefing seriously when he is. He has a presidential daily briefing. He is privy to information that the rest of us aren’t, particularly the media. The political media aren't national security and intelligence experts receiving briefings every single day like our president is.
A president will always have information. Congress will always have information. The rest of us do not.
And let me make it very clear, these seven countries, what about the 46 majority Muslim countries that are not included? Right there, it totally undercuts this nonsense that this is a Muslim ban. This is a ban on travel, prospective travel from countries, trying to prevent terrorists in this country from countries that have a recent history of training and exporting and harboring terrorists.
WALLACE: The president also got into a rift this week with Mexico, after he signed an order calling for construction of a wall and insisted that Mexico was going to pay for it. We got this response from Mexican President Pena Nieto. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ENRIQUE PENA NIETO, MEXICAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Mexico does not believe in walls. I’ve said time and time again -- Mexico will not pay for any wall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And then, Pena Nieto, I don’t have to tell you, canceled his visit this week.
CONWAY: That was mutual. The president suggested first on Twitter, about 9:24 a.m. that day on Thursday. That was mutual cancellation.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Well, it’s not -- it’s not a good thing, is it, that one of our closest allies, our immediate neighbor to the south, and they had a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, you don’t -- you think that’s a good thing?
CONWAY: It's a great thing that they spoke for an hour after that.
WALLACE: How about the state visit that --
CONWAY: I’ll tell you what’s not a great thing, here’s not a great thing -- it's not great that we have a $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico. It’s not great that they allowed, because there is no border, there is no -- there is no respect of our sovereignty in this country, Chris. They allow people and drugs (INAUDIBLE) over that border.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But that’s an overstatement.
CONWAY: Well, you know what?
WALLACE: Respectfully, Kellyanne, that is an overstatement to say that we have no border and that there’s no respect for our sovereignty.
CONWAY: Well, is it an overstatement -- well, is it an overstatement to say that there are not illegal immigrants, people, and drugs flowing (ph) over the border?
WALLACE: No, that’s certainly true.
CONWAY: You know who I want Fox News to go interview, go interview all those parents who have lost children to opiate use, and all these family members. It's discouraging our society, the idea that we just allow drugs to flow across our border and we look the other way.
It stops with President Trump. He ran on this, it's been a centerpiece. He signed executive orders this week to do a couple of things. To start construction of that southern -- of that wall, it’s a physical wall. But he also in that executive order, Chris, he has expanded the resources and tools that he will give our brave men and women in law enforcement and our border agents. They simply can't do their jobs. Let’s expand the physical space for detaining and stop this nonsense catch and relief.
WALLACE: But, Kellyanne, you're answering a question I’m not asking. The question is, the question is about -- trying to work out a relationship with Mexico that doesn't so offend the Mexican president that he has to cancel a meeting and where relations with the U.S. become a matter of national honor. And I want to raise the issue of a possible trade war, which is now being raised between Mexico and the U.S.
And I want to put up the practical implications of that. Mexico is our third-largest trading partner. If we slap a border tax on their imports, and 20 percent is the number that's been mentioned by people in the White House, U.S. consumers will have to pay more for such things as cars and fresh food and 6 million U.S. jobs that depend on trade with Mexico will be hurt if they tax our exports to them.
In addition, Kellyanne, if Mexico goes into a recession, then we’re going to have even more illegal immigration. Has that all been thought through?
CONWAY: Well, we’re not going to have illegal -- they may try, but they’re not going to get here the way they’ve just been pouring over the borders in the past because of President Trump. But what you're saying about the 20 percent tariff, that's one possible option. As we have said at the administration, it's one possible option in terms of funding the wall.
But let me go back to the major point about our relationship with Mexico, it was candidate Trump --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: No, no, wait. I’m asking you a question about a possible trade war. Isn’t that a dangerous thing if we are slapping taxes on their imports and they are slapping taxes on our imports, and doesn’t destabilize Mexico both politically and economically?
I’m not saying that we shouldn't build a wall and we shouldn’t protect our border. I’m just saying there’s a good way of working it out and a bad way of working it out.
CONWAY: There's a fundamental fairness that Donald Trump ran on, won on, and will execute as president of the United States. You saw it already this week, whether he’s meeting with manufacturing CEOs, labors, he’s doing the Dakota and Keystone pipelines, and he's telling Mexico that this trade imbalance tops.
You know, this idea that we are always worried about the other country, we’re always worried about its citizens, this president says America first. Sixty-five percent of the polls this week said --
WALLACE: But it is going to affect this country. If consumers have to pay more, it's going to affect this government. If we lose some of the 6 million jobs, it's going to affect this country. If they have a recession and more illegal immigrants come in, it’s going to affect this country.
CONWAY: None of us want that. We want a strong, vibrant, prosperous Mexico. There's no question. That’s why the two presidents spoke by phone this week.
But remember, this whole nonsense that Donald Trump is president does not want a good relationship with Mexico, he's been one of the candidates whose accepting the invitation of this Mexican president to go to Mexico during the campaign.
WALLACE: And now, the visit has been cancelled.
CONWAY: And he did that -- no, they talked by phone. There are many different ways for dealers to get work done.
I mean, look at how many foreign leaders President Trump talk to just this weekend. It's a dizzying number. Russia and France, and --
WALLACE: OK.
CONWAY: -- Australia, and certainly, we had Prime Minister May here. But they will continue to talk.
But, Chris, the other statistic people have to realize is the number one source of revenue going into Mexico are Mexicans in the U.S. spending money back to Mexico. I mean, people feel like things are just unfair here. This man as president will do what he promised all along. He will put America first. That includes its workers, its safety, its people, its interest and its allies.
WALLACE: I want to move to a couple of other issues while we have the time.
President Trump says that he will announce his Supreme Court nominee this week. Can you guarantee that his nominee will favor overturning Roe v. Wade?
CONWAY: I can guarantee that the promise that president -- that candidate Trump made will continue as president. That he is a pro-life president, and he assumes that he will -- what he has promised that he will appoint pro-life judges including to the Supreme Court.
Here's the thing about the Supreme Court battle we’re about to face -- if past is prologue, the way the Democrats in the Senate have treated our cabinet nominees does not bode well for filling that vacancy left by Antonin Scalia. It's just been terrible at the way they try to humiliate and embarrass our cabinet nominees. We still don’t have a secretary of commerce, the secretary of treasury. What are they doing over there?
WALLACE: I’m going to bring that up with Durbin in the next segment. So, I promise you.
But what I want to press on this, you spoke at the March for Life rally on Friday and you said this, "This is a time of incredible promise for the pro-life movement." But I don't have to tell you: they don't want promise. They want Roe versus Wade overturned.
Will the president nominates someone committed to doing that? Yes or no?
CONWAY: That will come up in the person’s hearings. Of course, they’ll be obsessively asked that question, not so much about the Commerce Clause or about extraterritoriality. But they’ll be asked about Roe versus Wade obsessively.
Let me tell you about the action. He --
WALLACE: Well, no, but can you tell us --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: -- for those hundreds of thousands of people who were out there on the Mall who you said, "This president hears you", is he going to appoint somebody wants to overturn Roe v. Wade?
CONWAY: He’s going to appoint somebody who respects the Constitution. And I haven't heard of the word penumbra since 1973. Have you? In other words --
WALLACE: No, it’s a good word, but no, I haven’t heard it.
CONWAY: It's a word you haven't heard because nobody dare use that word.
WALLACE: That was the explanation for how Roe v. Wade got --
CONWAY: Not just the explanation. It’s the Supreme Court decision on how we allowed, but look what’s happened since. We’ve had millions of innocent babies taken from their mothers. We are having a culture that does not respect life from conception to natural death and this president gave the most -- this Manhattan male billionaire, who was pro-choice most of his adult life gave the impassioned defense of life that anybody has ever heard coming from a presidential podium.
WALLACE: OK.
CONWAY: Said to Hillary Clinton, you and your ilk are really extreme on this issue. You’re for partial birth, you’re for sex selection abortions, which basically extinguishes the next generation of girls, not boys. You are for taxpayer funding of abortions.
WALLACE: I don't mean to interrupt --
CONWAY: That’s what’s on the table here.
WALLACE: We are running out of time and I want to ask about one other issue, and that is the president's relationship with the press. Here’s what he had to say about that this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The media, much of the media, not all of it, is very, very dishonest. Honestly, it's fake news. It's fake. They make things up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And chief strategist Stephen Bannon went much further. Quote, "The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while."
But Bannon wasn't finished. "The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence and no hard work. You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party."
Kellyanne, do you understand how offensive that is?
CONWAY: I understand how offensive it was to never be taken seriously that Donald Trump could be elected president. On great days, we were ignored. On most days, we were mocked.
WALLACE: A lot of us -- a lot of us reported on it fairly, and that's a different issue.
CONWAY: No, no, no, it is the issue, because it extends into this presidency, Chris. You can't put a piece of tissue paper between the way Donald Trump was covered as the Republican candidate, the Republican nominee, the president-elect, and the president. It's all the same. It's an anti-Trump screed. It's completely disrespectful to the Office of the President.
Why -- look at what happened this week. Nobody is interested in learning the policies. It’s just --
WALLACE: I’ve been asking about policies today. I asked you about the vetting.
CONWAY: Well, look --
WALLACE: I asked about Mexico. I asked you about the Supreme Court.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Those are legitimate questions, are they not?
CONWAY: Look, not every network and every press outlet is created equally in this. But if you read people’s Twitter feed, that crap would never pass editorial muster in a newspaper or on your TV show and your the network here, nor should it. And so, the idea that tweets are my own, really, at 10:45 a.m. when you’re walking out the place where --
WALLACE: All I would say --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Much to the dismay of some of the people at Fox, I don't tweet.
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Let me get if I may to the real point, politicians complain about bad press. I think you have some legitimate complaints about bad press. The First Amendment protects the press. We are in the Constitution.
And it's offensive, quite frankly, that have folks -- any politician, but folks who have been in the White House for a week lecture us about what we should and shouldn't do and that we should keep our mouth shut.
CONWAY: But no, I think --
WALLACE: That is not the role of the press to keep our mouth shut.
CONWAY: -- what my colleague Steve Bannon is saying is, why don't you talk last and listen to America more. Let me tell you something, I know what he meant. I worked with him everybody. The media failed to learn America. Donald Trump prove something that the media failed to do, which is he understood America. The idea that we were never taken seriously --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: -- we have zero intelligence and zero integrity, and that we shouldn't keep our mouths shut is offensive.
CONWAY: I think it’s called listen more.
And let me just say something else happens. It's the way that everything is cherry picked. Bias media coverage it's easy to detect. It frankly helps us because this was such an elite rejection of election, where the establishment, the elites were all rejected by the voters.
It turns out they’re a heck of a lot more of them than us, Chris. And that’s how we won. Why is that relevant? It’s relevant because people -- who is cleaning house? Which one of the first network to get rid of these people who said things that just weren’t true.
Talk about fake news, talk about alternative facts, what happened last week? I went on three network Sunday shows. I spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said alternative facts, not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for never covering the facts that matter to America’s women, 16.1 million women in poverty as we sit there, the 12.4 million who have no health insurance. Everybody should feel outraged.
The billions of dollars we have spent as a nation on public education, only to have millions of kids trapped in schools that fail them and never really promote and protect their intelligence and prepare them for the world that they all deserve. They shouldn't be restricted by the zip code where they live. They should be lifted up.
This has all been a colossus failure, and nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about it’s always zing. It’s always playing gotcha.
There's no question that when you look at the contributions made by the media, money contributions, they went to Hillary Clinton. We have all the headlines, people should be embarrassed. Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go. They are on panels every Sunday. They’re on cable news every day.
Who’s the first editorial -- the first blogger that will be left out that embarrassed his or her outlet? We know all their names. I’m too polite to call them by name. But they know who they are, and they’re all wondering, will I be the first to go?
The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go. If this were a real business, if the mainstream media were a thriving private sector business that actually turn a profit, which is not true of many of our newspapers, Chris, 20 percent of the people would be gone. They embarrassed, they failed to protect their shareholders and their board members and their colleagues.
And yet we deal with him every single day. We turn the other cheek. If you are part of team Trump, you walk around with these gaping, seeping wounds every single day, and that's fine. I believe in a full and fair press.
I’m here every Sunday morning. I haven't slept in a month. I believe in a full and fair press. But with the free press comes responsibility. And responsibility is to get the story right. Biased coverage is easy to detect. Incomplete coverage impossible to detect. That’s my major grievance, is the media are not -- they’re not giving us complete coverage.
President Trump has signed all these executive orders this week. He's met with these heads of states. He's done so many things to stimulate the economy, to boost wages, to create jobs. Where's the coverage?
WALLACE: Kellyanne, we are going to have to leave it there.
CONWAY: Thanks for having me.
(LAUGHTER)
CONWAY: It's been fun.
WALLACE: And let me say, you didn't rip me a new one.
CONWAY: Not at all. Thanks.
WALLACE: Thank you.
CONWAY: I talk like a Jersey girl sometimes.
WALLACE: Thank you very much.
Up next, more on fallout for President Trump's executive order on immigration. We’ll get reaction from the Senate’s number two Democrat, Dick Durbin, when we come right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Joining me now from Chicago is Dick Durbin, the Senate's number two Democrat.
Senator Durbin, let's start with the uproar over President Trump's executive order sharply limiting the number of people from largely Muslim countries who can come in. Here is what the president had to say this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I’m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don't want them here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Senator, your reaction to the federal judges stepping in and stopping any possible deportation, and your reaction to what you've just heard from Kellyanne Conway?
SEN. DICK DURBIN, D-IL., MINORITY WHIP: Well, thank goodness that this Brooklyn federal judge has tried to stop these executive orders.
Here are three things that are wrong. First, it was an impulsive move by the president, without follow-through to the Department of Homeland Security. When we contacted Customs and Border Protection at the airports, they said, you know, they just sprung this on us. And now, we’re detaining people, some of who are legal permanent residents. So, they didn't have clear guidance from the administration about how to make this work.
Number two, going after these refugees -- these are the most carefully vetted visitors to the United States of anyone who comes to our airports, including this ban on Syrian refugees when we have had no examples, not one, of a Syrian refugee engaged in terrorism in the United States.
And the third point -- and I think this is one that's going to haunt us for a long time -- was the suggestion by the president that somehow we’re going to favor Christians, and in some cases banning Muslims in the future. That is exactly the opposite message we need to send to our allies and to those who, frankly, want to do us harm around the world.
WALLACE: But, Senator, the president points -- there's no question as Kellyanne Conway pointed out that there have been messed up this weekend. But on the larger issue of what he's doing, the president points out that there are Islamic radicals, some of them refugees who have committed terror acts in Europe. There was at least one person who came in on a visa program who was involved in the terror attack in Bernardino. He says, "I’m the one protecting the country."
DURBIN: I can tell you that I can't stand up for any European standard when it comes to refugees. I can when it comes to the United States.
They go through vetting of a year or two. We have one Syrian refugee family that is in Turkey, in a refugee camp, waiting four or five years to come to the United States and because of President Trump's executive order, they've been stopped.
These are carefully vetted. If you meet these people, Chris, you realize why we do this. The United States --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: So, what’s going on here -- since these people are so carefully vetted, what's going on here, Senator?
DURBIN: Well, if you ask me what's going on in Europe, I can’t tell you. Let me explain --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: No, what’s going on here in the United States with the order by President Trump?
DURBIN: Well, I can tell you what’s going on here is that he has established a target of refugees, and I don't think that is our vulnerability. If you want to make America safe, the refugee program is the most carefully vetted program in our government. If -- think of the thousands who come in on visa waivers each day at airports all around the United States. Think of so many others coming into the United States. Serious questions need to be answered.
But when it comes to refugees, these children who are coming from war-torn zones, we’re going to stop them from coming to this country? What does it say about us? And what does it say about our vigilance when it comes to keeping this country safe when we target children?
WALLACE: I want to take you back, swift subjects and take you back to a moment in the White House this week when President Trump met with union leaders and Doug McCarron, is the president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG MCCARRON, UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS: The address on Friday was a great middle-class address. I mean, it hit home for the people that have been hurting. It was a great -- that was a great moment for working men and women of the United States.
TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Now, Senator, McCarron endorsed Hillary Clinton during the campaign, but he now says, and a lot of those other union bosses say it's president Trump, not the Democrats were looking out for workers.
DURBIN: I can tell you this -- the pipeline decision was popular with the building trades. Doug McCarron reflected that popularity. President Obama knew it when he went the other way, that they would be unhappy with him.
But I will tell you this as well, in the long haul, when it comes to the organizing rights of unions, when it comes to the wages paid to union members, when it comes to collective bargaining, it will be the Democratic Party that will be fighting for Supreme Court justices and federal judges who recognize that. Traditionally, that's where we've been, and the Republican Party on the other side.
WALLACE: We are now nine days into this presidency. At the equivalent point back in 2009, 12 of President Obama's nominees had been confirmed. At this point, only four of President Trump's nominees have been confirmed.
Isn't this just obstruction by the Democrats?
DURBIN: Definitely not, and the reason is this -- eight years ago when Obama came up with his nominees for the cabinet, by January 8th, before January 20th swearing in, these nominees had filed the ethics statements they were required to file. In this case, with the Trump nominees, even after the day of the hearing, many of our committees were not receiving the required legal documents from these nominees.
Second, among these nominees are many billionaires and people with extensive financial holdings. When Penny Pritzker was nominated for secretary of commerce under President Obama, it took six months to clear all of the ethical standards that had to be met and filings met before she could be considered. So here come the Trump nominees saying, well, we may have a lot of money and a lot of unanswered questions, but we want to be pushed forward in the front of the line.
WALLACE: But -- but, senator, I mean --
DURBIN: We have an obligation to make sure they answer all the legally required questions.
WALLACE: Senator, I’ll give you that there are some controversial nominees who may need more scrutiny, but let's look at some of the mainstream nominees who would seem pretty uncontroversial. Elaine Chao. She has already been confirmed for a job before. She’s the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell. Ben Carson, Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, who’s been a colleague of yours in the Senate for a long time. Isn't the president entitled to have his mainstream, non-controversial picks confirmed quickly?
DURBIN: You may be surprised to know, Chris, that when it comes to some of these nominees, Senator McConnell has held back calling them. We’re ready to call them. You've mentioned a few. I'll say this, I’ve said from the beginning, I'm voting for Elaine Chao. I've known her for years. We disagree politically, but she's a good person for the job as secretary of transportation. And others on your list --
WALLACE: So why isn’t she confirmed already?
DURBIN: Well, you might ask Senator McConnell that question. We've been ready to take her name up for some time. Rex Tillerson is up this week. And when it comes to Senator Sessions, he’s going to be heard before the judiciary committee this week in the normal course of events like other nominees for attorney general. And can I add that when Loretta Lynch went through the nomination process, after her hearing, Senator Sessions sent her an additional 22 questions and then she was held on the Senate calendar for two months before a vote was actually taken.
WALLACE: OK.
DURBIN: So, we're doing our jobs and we're doing due diligence.
WALLACE: Let’s -- let’s go to one final issue, because you’re going to have another nominee that you’re going to have to consider this weekend, that is President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Now, there has only been one nomination for the Supreme Court that has ever been filibustered in the history of this nation, Abe Fortas back in the 1960s. Are you prepared to rule out a Democratic filibuster of this nominee?
DURBIN: Let me just say, I’m not going to jump ahead and tell you how I'm going to treat any nominee until I know who they are, what they stand for. What we’ve said is that if you’ll bring us a moderate nominee, and I’ve told the White House this directly, one that is not too extreme on the right or the left, you won’t run into (INAUDIBLE).
WALLACE: Well, wait, wait, wait. That’s not -- not -- wait, wait, wait, sir, not all of the -- not -- wait, wait, not all of Barack Obama's choices were moderate nominees. You know there were some pretty liberal nominees there. I mean he won. He’s allowed to have people of his philosophical stripe.
DURBIN: Chris, let me tell you, there’s a different world there. When I listen to your lead-in and Mitch McConnell said, we just want to be treated the way we treated Obama nominees. Does he think we have amnesia? That he refused, for the first time in the history of the Senate, to meet with or have a hearing on vote on a Supreme Court nominee. We’re going to treat this nominee fairly, but we need to know who he or she is, what they stand for, and believe that they’re in the mainstream of thinking when it comes to American political thought.
WALLACE: Senator Durbin, thank you. Thanks for talking with us today. Please come back, sir.
DURBIN: Thanks a lot.
WALLACE: Up next, we’ll bring in our Sunday group to discuss President Trump's extreme vetting plan and that phone call with Russian President Putin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Coming up on "Fox News Sunday," the fallout over President Trump's order restricting people from Muslim nations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD (chanting): No ban, no law, Donald Trump has got to fall.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: We’ll ask our Sunday panel whether this is a good way to protect the homeland, or counterproductive, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What, you think this is going to cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: President Trump defending his plan for what he calls extreme vetting of some people coming -- trying to come to the U.S.
And it's time now for our Sunday group. GOP strategist Karl Rove, Charles Lane of "The Washington Post," Julie Pace, who covers the White House for the Associated Press, and Dana Perino, co-host of "The Five."
Well, Karl, let’s start with you. What do you make of the president's order restricting people coming into this country from largely Muslim nations and the federal judges -- a couple of federal judges getting involved?
KARL ROVE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Well, look, he is -- he promised this during the campaign, extreme vetting. But I think people might have been surprised -- I think that -- that they might have been led to believe that rather than suspending the issuance of new visas, they didn't expect him to turn back people who already had visas, including people who had green cards, and that's how the federal judges got involved and said --
WALLACE: No, no, we should explain that. So you’ve got a green card. You’re a permanent resident in this country. A legal resident in this country. You've gone on a trip someplace else. Now you can't get back in.
ROVE: Or you have received a visa approved by the United States government in the recent past and you got on an airplane and showed up at the airport and suddenly that visa, which had been given to you by the United States government is no longer (INAUDIBLE) and valid.
WALLACE: So -- so Donald Trump would say, too bad.
ROVE: Yes, too bad. Well -- but a federal judge said, you could cause irreparable harm. In fact, one of the first people who had such a visa, who stopped at the New York airport, as luck would have it, is somebody who worked for the U.S. government in Iraq for the last ten years. Not exactly the -- if you want to have a -- this long happy life, a good thing to do in -- in Iraq.
So, you know, look, the president’s following through on his commitment, but it strikes me that it might have been better -- he -- he wants the secretary of the homeland security, the secretary of state, in the next 30 days, to come up with the information that they need and -- and those two plus the director of national intelligence, and the FBI director, in the next 60 days, to come up with a plan for extreme vetting. It might have been better to say, suspend the issuance of any new visas. Rigorously monitor people who come into the country from these seven countries who have a visa, are permanent residents who come back into the country, and then, in 90 days, we have a complete new plan that we can then begin issuing new visas.
WALLACE: Chuck, as we say, this is already -- already in the courts and at this point I guess he got something like 300 people who were in kind of limbo at U.S. airports. What's the fallout both politically and legally here?
CHARLES LANE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Whatever it is, it's entirely self-inflicted. This was all avoidable for the White House. They put this thing together without a full interagency process. They put it together obviously without thinking through the green card angle and all its potential ramifications. And they produced an order that sort of is -- is like a lose, lose, lose for them. It's not even the full Muslim ban he promised at one point. This is the sort of climb down position, and yet he produces something that’s over inclusive in that it brings in all the green card people and under inclusive in that it leaves out, as you pointed out earlier, a number of countries such as Pakistan or Afghanistan from whence terrorists have come.
So the -- obviously there's huge uproar on the Democratic side. That was predictable. But very interestingly, I count at least three Republican senators who voiced concerns about how this thing has worked out. So it's not even entirely clear that he's going to have unified Republican support behind this thing unless they can clean it up very quickly.
WALLACE: Dana, you worked for a president who famously, and very -- in a concentrated way, made the point, we’re at war with terrorism, we’re not at war with Muslims. Do you worry that this ends up changing that message?
DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I do think it's important to point out that it's a moratorium, not a ban, so there is time for them to be able to figure it out. So it's not like it’s a permanent thing. I also think that some of the responses today and the explanation, like from Kellyanne Conway earlier on your show, helped explain a little bit more about the decision-making process. And when they say that this was an Obama administration recommendation, I call that would have been a helpful thing to use initially. So I call that an ounce of prevention. How can you explain things more?
Because what we found, and I think President Obama found it too, is that no one’s going -- you can’t get everyone to agree with a decision, but you should be able to get them to respect the decision-making process. And the -- I think the Trump administration would be well served if it explains things a little bit more on the front end to avoid confusion on the back end so that more of those stories that Kellyanne Conway was talking about, the underreporting of all the good stuff, could get more play.
WALLACE: You know, I'm -- I’m beginning to call these Trump Sundays because I prepare the show on Saturday and by Sunday morning the world has changed. And what I thought we were going to be talking about, and now what I’m going to talk about with you, Julie, is the president's phone call with Russian President Putin yesterday, which was highly anticipated. So much so that in fact President Trump had to lower expectations. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Putin and Russia, I don't say good, bad or indifferent. I don't know the gentleman. I hope we have a fantastic relationship. That’s possible. And it's also possible that we won't. We will see what happens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Julie, have you learned anything, because they -- the White House has not been very forthcoming, at least publicly. Have you learned anything privately from sources about how the call went? And, two, this talk about conceivably lifting sanctions which Kellyanne Conway had said was under consideration.
JULIE PACE, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: You’re right, the readout of this call was pretty brief. Not a lot of details in there.
WALLACE: We actually literally got more information from the Kremlin than we did from the White House.
PACE: Which we often do. The Kremlin is actually quite skilled at putting out readouts, not only that are more detailed, but also that come out faster than the White House. It’s a strategy that they’re -- they’re pretty good at.
I did talk to a White House official who said that sanctions did not come up in the course of this conversation. There was a lot of talk about security issues, particularly the idea of terrorism being what Putin apparently called a common foe multiple times in the course of this conversation. I think that you should look at this 30 day review that the president is doing -- has ordered the Pentagon to do on the ISIS strategies for a possible focus on coordinating more with Russia and Syria, which is something that the Obama administration resisted.
But even the idea that sanctions didn't come up in this phone call doesn’t ease the anxiety that you’re seeing, not just among European leaders, but a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill who worry that the president, when he has to make a decision very quickly on the sanctions involving Ukraine, could look to make a deal with Russia and back off of those and then also back off of the sanctions that Obama imposed for the hacking and --
WALLACE: Dana, your former boss, Bush 43, famously said that he looked in the eyes -- straight in the eyes of Vladimir Putin, got a sense of his soul. As we know, that didn't work out very well. How do you think this relationship with -- do you think Trump can somehow charm or tame Vladimir Putin?
PERINO: Well, I thought that Donald Trump’s probably best moment of his week was his press conference where the U.K. prime minister, Theresa May, where he talked about good, bad or indifferent, I don't know, which is actually true. So he -- he’s not sure. He says he’d like to have a good relationship. So did the Obama administration with the famous reset button. I think --
WALLACE: That didn't work out either.
PERINO: No. So American presidents want to have good relations with countries all over the world, and then it's really up to that president or the counterpart to -- what -- what their actions are. And I think the Ukraine issue or whether there was more interference and -- I think that also that Donald Trump will appreciate that Vladimir Putin had national interests of his own. He doesn't want to be friends with us because he’s a friendly guy. He wants something from us. And it might be something nefarious that’s not in our national interest and so he might have to back off a bit. But I think that his best moment of the week was with that -- that moment when he answered the question in that press conference with Theresa May.
WALLACE: All right, we have to take a break here.
When we come back, we’ll discuss the upcoming showdown over the Supreme Court. Will Democrats use the filibuster to block President Trump's nominee?
Plus, what would you like to ask the panel about the battle over converting that new justice? Just go to Facebook or Twitter @foxnewssunday, and we may use your question on the air.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, FOX ANCHOR: We’ve never had a Supreme Court justice filibustered, but there's a chance that might happen.
TRUMP: Hey, whatever happens, happens, but --
HANNITY: If that happens, would you want Mitch McConnell to use the nuclear option, which --
TRUMP: Yes, I would.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: President Trump telling Fox’s Sean Hannity he's ready to pull out all the stops to get his Supreme Court nominee this week through the Senate.
And we’re back now with the panel.
Well, Julie, there are three supposedly front runners. Let’s put them up on the screen. Three federal circuit court judges. Any sense as to the pecking order of those three, the likelihood, and as soon as Mr. Trump talked about the nuclear option, which would change the rules, it would mean you could -- the Senate would approve with only 51 votes instead of the super majority of 60 votes. Mitch McConnell immediately pushed back and said that the Senate's call.
PACE: Right. Absolutely. I -- I think if you look at the pecking order of those three judges, we’ve seen Judge Pryor maybe fall a little bit to the bottom there. He's one that when you talk to --
WALLACE: Put -- put the picture up on the screen if we can -- if we can.
PACE: When you talk to Democrats and Republicans, he’s one that they worry the most about. He has an extremely conservative track record. But he's been in the mix, certainly. A lot of people who have been talking to Trump from Heritage and The Federalist have been pushing Pryor.
Neil Gorsuch seems to be rising at the moment. And we were talking about this a little bit in the green room, this is actually someone that I think that Democrats might have a harder time using the filibuster against. And so certainly --
CAW: Because?
PACE: Because he -- he e is seen as certainly not a moderate choice, but if you look at his track record, he would be, I think, more acceptable to some people from red states than a Pryor even would. And politics comes into play enormously once you’ve made this pick. And I think given the atmosphere in Washington right now, the anger among Democrats about the way that Merrick Garland was treated, they are going to look to be really aggressive. And so anything that the Trump team can do to put someone in position to actually get approved by the Senate will help them out.
WALLACE: We asked you for questions for the panel and we got a big response on this one. First of all, this on Twitter. "What will happen if McConnell uses the nuclear option? Will there be a price?" But on Facebook, Marilyn, speaking about what Julie was just saying, remembers Republicans blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland to the court last year. "Dems should block any and all Trump appointees. Just like McConnell did to Obama. Or is this different now?"
Karl, it seems like this is going to be an even bigger political fight than usual.
ROVE: Yes. Well, it is different. For the last 80 years, no president of the United States has nominated in his final year and seen approved to the Supreme Court any nominee. It’s not happened for 80 years. So it was to be expected that Barack Obama was going to be no different than all of his predecessors. In fact, Joe Biden and -- and Chuck Schumer opposed the nomination. In Schumer's case, the approval of any Supreme Court nominee in the last year and a half and George W. Bush’s term in office. Said so from the floor. Biden announced it as the Biden rule, no approval in the last year. So this is different.
But will the Democrats trying and obstruct? Absolutely. Is this going to be a bitter fight? Absolutely. At the end of the day, it comes down to two things. One is, are there enough red state Democrats who say, you know what, the person who President Trump has nominated is -- is acceptable enough to the people in my state that I’m going to pay a price if I turn into a blind obstructionist like they’re already making me on the -- on the -- on the nominees to the -- to the cabinet look like.
And second of all is, if at the end of the day are there a sufficient number of them that they can keep in place the 60 rule? If not, I think Mitch McConnell, he is absolutely right to say, this is the Senate's decision. But my sense is, if the -- if Democrats harden the line and they get to 58 or 59, 52 Republicans and six or seven Democrats, but not to eight, then they might -- they might impose the nuclear option and --
WALLACE: And just to explain, it already is the case for lower court judges that -- because the Democrats changed the rules in 2013, you only need a simple majority of 51. The Supreme Court is still the super majority of 60. So a filibuster can still block it. Now the question is, will the Republicans extend that or feel forced to extend that to a -- a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court?
I want to turn to another big subject, and I had a big conversation, as you saw in the first segment. The White House and the media. Here's what the president said this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: A big portion of the media, the dishonesty, the total deceit and deception makes them certainly partially the opposition party, absolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: And, Dana, as I discussed with Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, in an interview with the -- interestingly enough The New York Times went a lot further, keep our mouth shut, zero intelligence, zero intelligence. Does this make sense from the White House’s point of view?
PERINO: Well, it does, because I think that they have effectively used the media against the Democrats, right? So they were able to say to their base, we have an enemy in the media, and the base agreed, and so it helps them a little bit.
But I do think that -- so Steve Bannon’s quote, it’s very quotable, and it’s pretty -- I can understand why a journalist would be offended by it. But the second part of it was, just give us a shot here. And I think what Kellyanne said about the underreporting of some of the good policies that they’re doing or the problems that they’re trying to solve. I mean I've done media relations for a long time and, as a Republican, it would be very frustrating.
But the thing is also this. Human beings are always going to try to eat desert first. If you keep feeding them sugar, they’re going to go with the sugar. So if you give them something to cover that is process oriented or a tweet that seems a little off, they’ll cover it.
WALLACE: The -- the size of the inaugural crowd or that 3 million people voted illegally.
PERINO: They’ll always do that. So I sort of feel like, on the -- if you can just serve the meat and potatoes -- I guess you’d call that message discipline -- then you won't have so much of the sugar that is running (ph), because everyone’s on a sugar high and --
PACE: But I think it's important to note, though, on -- Kellyanne talked about us not wanting to cover policy. On Friday the president signed this order on refugees. It took two hours for the White House to give us the order.
PERINO: Right.
PACE: It took several more hours to get to the list of countries from them that this would actually impact. And then it took another full day to get an actual briefing on the details. We are desperate to cover the policies that this president is implemented. The White House, though, is not helping us do that.
WALLACE: Let me bring Chuck into this. Politicians, as I just said to Kellyanne, complain about bad press all the time. Is this different?
LANE: This is the president of the United States declaring the media, which by the way he's not precisely defining -- he’s, you know, well, we think we know who's he's talking about -- as the party of opposition. And the implication of that seems to be, well, I don't have to cooperate with them or work with them or respect them or treat them.
But, you know, it’s -- in a democracy, the opposition is not the enemy, OK? Even if you identify someone as the opposition, you sometimes work with them. You talk to them. You compromise with them. You attempt to match what you consider there bad faith with your good faith. And so what's astonishing about the rhetoric of a Steve Bannon in all of this is, when he’s saying opposition, what he seems to mean is implacable enemy. And I think that is new.
But I would just repeat that in a democracy, the opposition is not the enemy. So even if it were true that the media is there opposition that would not be a reason to freeze them out and to greet them with complete hostility.
WALLACE: Julie, we’ve got less than a minute here. Do you notice any particular antagonism dealing with this White House? I mean is it different than -- you've been around for a while in the front row of the White House. Is this different?
PACE: It's a little bit different, but I would say that under the Obama administration they also looked at us with some disdain. They also thought that their coverage was unfair. I’m sure Karl and Dana thought that their coverage was unfair when they were in the White House.
ROVE: It was. Absolutely.
PACE: Every -- every White House believes that. I think the difference here is that they don't distinguish sometimes between critical coverage and what actually is fake news. As president, you are going to get a lot of critical coverage. That's not going to stop.
WALLACE: Thank you, panel. See you next time.
When we come back, a final word on next week's "Fox News Sunday."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: A look at downtown Houston, home of Super Bowl LI, which airs next Sunday on Fox.
And "Fox News Sunday" will be taking our show on the road. We’ll be broadcasting from NRG Stadium -- there you see it -- as the New England Patriots take on the Atlanta Falcons. Check your listings for "Fox News Sunday" in your area. That also on Fox News Channel.
And that's it for today. Have a great week. And we’ll see you next "Fox News Sunday."
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