Political fallout from Robert Mueller's testimony on Capitol Hill

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Political fallout from Robert Mueller's testimony on Capitol Hill

'Special Report' All-Stars on key takeaways from former special counsel Robert Mueller's congressional testimony.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," July 24, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SPECIAL COUNSEL: When it came to the president's culpability, we needed to -- we needed to go forward only after taking into account the OLC opinion that indicated that a president - - a sitting president cannot be indicted.

REP. JERROLD NADLER, D-N.Y., HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: So the report did not conclude that he did not commit obstruction of justice, is that correct?

MUELLER: That is correct.

NADLER: And what about total exoneration? Did you actually totally exonerate the president?

MUELLER: No.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: People mentioned exoneration. That was something where he totally folded because he never had the right to exonerate. The Democrats had nothing, and now they have less than nothing. And I think they're going to lose 2020 election very big.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: The president taking a victory lap of sorts today after two massive hearings with the former Special Counsel Bob Mueller. A lot of Democrats weighed in on Twitter and elsewhere. One of them the former senior advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod, who tweeted at one point today during the hearings, "This is very, very painful."

Let's bring in our panel, Byron York, chief political correspondent for the "Washington Examiner," Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," Amy Walter, national editor for the "Cook Political Report," and "Washington Post" columnist Marc Thiessen. Mollie, your take today?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": The whole premise of today was that the movie would be better than the book, that the Mueller report didn't do what they wanted it to accomplish in book form, so if they had visuals that it would help people understand the case against the president.

What I don't think anybody expected was that Mueller would present himself as doddering, as lacking command of anything to do with the investigation, and thereby raising a whole host of questions about who actually was in charge of this Mueller investigation. A lot of people just gave it leeway because they respected him, and seeing today, I don't think anyone thinks that he was in charge. It had been previously reported that 13 of his 17 associates were Democrats, zero were Republicans, nine were Democratic donors, six were Hillary Clinton donors, some were pretty close allies of the Clintons. One attended a Hillary Clinton election rally. So I think you're going to start seeing many more questions about precisely who was running this investigation and to what end.

BAIER: Amy, the question now is what goes forward, and we are going to deal with that in the second panel. But you listen to the Democrats tonight, and there is like a dejected feeling, that they had expectations for today.

AMY WALTER, NATIONAL EDITOR, "COOK POLITICAL REPORT": This is absolutely not the day that Democrats had wanted to be. I agree with the movie. If there's a Rotten Tomatoes rating, I don't know what the good or the bad is, like you're supposed to have more rotten tomatoes or fewers, it was a bad version of that movie.

I do think if you're thinking about -- maybe one of the winners in this on the Democratic side is somebody like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of the moderates in the House who had been pushing back against a rush to impeachment. They really don't want to see this. They'd rather see the House and their colleagues focused on some of these issues like health care, as they did in the 2018 election.

And so what I'm looking for is whether this actually tamps down, put the brakes on. I don't think it's going to change anybody's mind who does believe the president needs to be impeached. They are not going to walk away and say because of the speech and hearing I am no longer in favor of this. But I do think you are no longer going to see the number of Democrats saying I favor impeachment to continue to rise.

BAIER: Byron, one of the big moments, and I was on the set for eight hours, so people told me about the coverage on other channels, was that at the first hearing that dealt with obstruction, this one sound bite really set everybody off, and then was walked back a little bit later.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TED LIEU, D-CALIF.: The reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion saying that you cannot indict a sitting president, correct?

ROBERT MUELLER, FORMER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SPECIAL COUNSEL: That is correct.

I want to go back to one thing that was said this morning by Mr. Lieu, who said, and I quote, "You didn't charge the president because of the OLC opinion." That is not the correct way to say it. As we say in the report and as I said at the opening, we did not reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So there was this thought that it was the aha moment, and then the beginning of the next hearing he walked it back.

BRYON YORK, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": It got everybody excited for about an hour, and then it went away, which actually points to a bigger feature of today's hearings, which is apart from the concerns about Mueller's performance, it didn't have any news in it. When Mueller said that he would have indicted were it not for the OLC ruling, that was a big deal. Then he walked it back.

The thing that Democrats seem to feel is a great accomplishment was Mueller said he did not exonerate the president. We have known that since that day in March when Bill Barr, the attorney general, wrote a letter summarizing the major findings of Mueller's report. He included it there, and we've known it ever since.

BAIER: Let alone the argument about the standard in law and whether exoneration, as the president talked about and I talked about with Congressman Ratcliffe is the right standard to apply here. Marc, your thoughts?

MARC THIESSEN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I agree with Byron. And look, I don't think any of us knew that Bob Mueller was so fragile, and that was a surprise. But other than that, this was a slow-motion train wreck. Anyone could have seen from the day the Mueller report came out, it was clear -- for most Americans this was about a conspiracy with Russia to undermine our democracy. And once that was established by the Mueller report that that did not happen, then the Democrats should have just said, OK, case closed, let's move on.

And there was a poll in May when this came out, Harvard/Harris poll, 80 percent of Americans say they want their congressional representatives working more on infrastructure, healthcare, immigration than investigations of Donald Trump. They decided not to do that and to focus on this, and it's completely overshadowed their agenda.

"Washington Post" reported that the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did focus groups which showed that Americans believe they are preoccupied with investigations and it's completely overshadowing their agenda. That's why Pelosi was the winner today, I agree with Amy, because she's been trying to push them off of this and get attention on the agenda she won on so she can keep the House, and this is taking the wind out of the sails.

BAIER: It seemed like they had planned for something bigger, Amy. They obviously had the Russia stuff, which is serious, and Republicans and Democrats say it's serious. But they went with the obstruction. They planned for it, they practiced for it, there were mock hearings. There were people who were Jim Jordan and Bob Mueller in mock hearings. And then this.

WALTER: And then nothing, right. Look, I think that there are plenty of folks who privately would tell you they knew that this hearing was unlikely to change any Americans' minds. And I think it's still the case that moving the ball on how people feel about Mueller, the investigation, whether they think impeachment is the right thing or the wrong thing to do wasn't going to be changed. The only question was whether there was going to be some more pressure from activists and from their own members to push this forward.

So in some ways like this needed to happen, and now the band-aid has been sort of pulled off, and theoretically Democrats go on and do other things. But realistically, it still going to be part of the --

BAIER: We're going to talk next about where we go from here, including all the questions about the investigation, the I.G., and what's coming next now that the Mueller hearing are over, where do we in Washington go from here.

But first, we are waiting for an announcement from Puerto Rico's embattled governor -- you're looking live there in San Juan -- about whether he's staying in office or bowing to intense pressure to design. We're told the video to the Puerto Rican people is going to be released soon. We don't have a clue what's in that video. We have crews on the ground in San Juan. We'll have the latest when it happens here on Fox.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Over-under whether Democrats continue to pursue impeachment?

REP. JOHN RATCLIFFE, R-TX: They won't pursue it, they can't. I think this was a good day for Nancy Pelosi because she didn't want to move forward with it. It wasn't a good day for those Democrats that wanted to move forward with impeachment.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, D-CALIF.: I do think that we are getting closer and closer there, and it's not just the conduct we saw with the Russia investigation. Again, the emoluments issue still persists. I think the president's -- what he's doing on the border concerns people, the way that he characterizes other people in Congress concerns people. Again, I don't think the president gets better as the days go on. I think his conduct gets worse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Two congressman on “Special Report” tonight. We're back with a panel. Mollie, what does come next? Nancy Pelosi clearly giving the Heisman award to impeachment so far.

HEMINGWAY: Yes. I agree this was a good day for Nancy Pelosi. I'm not sure I agree that they will not move forward with impeachment plans. I might think that because I remember Jerry Nadler saying the day after the election on the Acela train as I sat across from him that he was going to do investigations leading towards impeachment.

BAIER: Watch what you say in the quiet car.

HEMINGWAY: It wasn't even the quiet car. But also I think the facts don't seem to change things, that the big problem Donald Trump did was win the election, and know there was no collusion, obstruction, the idea that being angry about being falsely accused of being a traitor is impeachable, I think that wouldn't sell either. But I think they'll just keep going in some attempt to get something done.

The big change I think is that there were Republicans who really did trust the Mueller investigation on the grounds that Robert Mueller was running it alone. He was the only Republican affiliated with it, and he apparently had no idea what was going on. So I think you're going to see some people -- you're going to see an increase in the ranks of people who think that maybe the investigation was not handled properly and that there were deep problems with it.

BAIER: Let alone we have this I.G. report and the other side of the investigation, which at some point, and Congressman Ratcliffe said just after Labor Day, we've heard May, June, July, but he says just after Labor Day for that.

YORK: Republicans got no answers for their questions. They had questions about the dossier. They had questions about the mysterious circumstances with Joseph Mifsud and George Papadopoulos and starting investigation. They got nothing from Robert Mueller, who said that he wasn't going to talk about it because it's the subject of another investigation. By the way, his investigation went on for almost a couple of years before some of these were started.

But on the bigger issue, there is really always been two parts to the Trump-Russia investigation. There has been the what Russia did part, and then there's the get Trump part. And if Democrats had focused on the what Russia did part, there could have been a lot of bipartisan agreement. Mueller thought it was very serious, Republicans thought it was serious, Democrats thought it was serious, and they could've talked about what to do. But the get Trump part stumbled them. And ask any of them if they are now in favor of impeachment, and they weren't before.

BAIER: Amy, we have a Democrat debate, two of them, in Detroit this week. Meantime, new Fox poll's on job approval for the president, this is FOX poll five, now 46 percent approve, and the disapprove of 51 percent. You can see a tick up from June. Also the president on the economy, take a look at this, 52 percent approve, which is a bump up from May on that number.

WALTER: We've seen this in a number of other national polls, the president getting a little bit of a bump as well as the opinions about the economy and the president's handling of the economy.

BAIER: In the midst of all these investigations.

WALTER: In the midst of all this, that's where voters have been paying attention. There's a reason in 2018, I watched almost every single ad run in that midterm election. Democrats ran on health care. They ran against the tax cuts. They ran on getting rid of special interest money. They did not talk about Donald Trump and they did not talk about impeachment, and they didn't even talk about Russia. Those were the fundamental issues.

And I just want to go back to something Mollie said, which is true. I do think Democrats are going to have a hard time staying on message and staying disciplined on this idea of whether we do impeachment or not. The other issue, though, is the president will not stay disciplined either. If he stayed disciplined on the economy, if he did not send off the tweets, as he often does, he is his own worst enemy, and part of the reason that his approval rating is lower than his approval rating on the economy is because of who he is and how he --

BAIER: But Democrats are not going to spend a lot of time on these hearings in the debates.

WALTER: I think that's true.

BAIER: Marc?

THIESSEN: I think the Democrats, as Amy said, the Democrats won back in 2018 because they flipped Republican districts that went for a Trump by focusing on kitchen table issues, and this impeachment drive has actually put their hold on the House at risk, I think, because those Democrats don't want to focus on impeachment. Americans have been very clear that they don't want impeachment.

But interestingly, what Americans do now want, the polls show, a majority, they think there was bias against Donald Trump and the FBI, and they want an investigation into how this thing started, and that's what's coming. And the reason they want that investigation now is because they were lied to. They were told over and over that Donald Trump was a Russian agent, that he committed treason, that he conspired with Russia, and they want to know how we spent $30 million and came to this moment -- how did this happen? And so I think the Democratic impeachment drive is dead. They may try and keep it alive, but --

BAIER: For impeachment, yes or no?

THIESSEN: No.

HEMINGWAY: I will go with yes.

(LAUGHTER)

YORK: Ninety-five Democrats voted for it in a test vote the other day. They're not going to go away. They felt that way before Mueller showed up.

BAIER: I asked for a "yes" or "no," that's what I get.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. Thank you, panel. That's it for the “Special Report,” fair, balanced, and unafraid. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tomorrow on “Special Report.” "The Story" hosted by Martha starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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