Trump Doctrine in focus as nation remembers 9/11

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Trump Doctrine in focus as nation remembers 9/11

President Trump issues warning at memorial service for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," September 11, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: We do not seek conflict, but if anyone dares to strike our land we will respond with the full measure of American power and of the iron will of the American spirit. And if, for any reason, they come back to our country, we will go wherever they are and use power the likes of which the United States has never used before, and I'm not even talking about nuclear power. They will never have seen anything like what will happen to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRET BAIER, HOST: President Trump at the Pentagon memorial ceremony 18 years after the 9/11 attacks, hard to believe. But if you look at what people care about ahead of elections, here's the polls ahead of the 2004 election, what people were talking about then. Twenty-one percent said the biggest issue, terrorism, tied with the economy as you head into 2004, October, 2004. As you head into the 2020 election, new polls, immigration is the number one issue, the economy is next at 10 percent, terrorism down at four percent in the latest polls.

So what does that mean? Are we safer today than we were 18 years ago? Let's bring in our panel, Fox News contributor Steve Hayes, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," and Charles Lane, opinion writer for "The Washington Post." Are we safer, Steve?

STEVE HAYES, CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I think in many respects we're safer. We've hardened our domestic capabilities. We have chased terrorists and killed them where they live. We've made a lot of progress against Al Qaeda and likeminded groups. So on the one hand, we're safer.

On the other hand you've seen the proliferation of the ideologies that led to the 9/11 attacks in the first place, and you've seen the growth of al Qaeda in significant ways, in territory, in numbers, it ebbs and flows a bit. You've seen the growth of ISIS. You've seen a number of other groups still committed to doing the kinds of attacks that we saw 18 years ago today.

BAIER: It is stark to see those polls and what matters to people heading into elections.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": Right. And it wasn't just that 21 percent named terrorism, but another 15 percent said Iraq. So 36 percent relative to four percent, clearly people feel much safer, but the world is a very dangerous place. I think we learned a powerful lesson on 9/11, that states are people we need to deal with, but sometimes people act apart from states, and that really changed the way that we fought wars. I think now we have a lot of lessons to learn about when we engage in another country having a clear understanding of why we are there, how long we're going to be there, what we hope to accomplish, and how to get out. And this is a lesson that we are still learning.

BAIER: Chuck?

CHARLES LANE, OPINION WRITER, "WASHINGTON POST": The overwhelming impression I have in my own mind from those days just after 9/11 was the tremendous unity that that crisis forged across the board in the United States. From liberal to conservative, Republicans and Democrats, everyone agreed that we were under attack and that we had to do something, and I think that unity lingered for some time.

Today, obviously, that's gone, and we have utter polarization, harsh division in the country, anger suffusing politics. And when you ask ourselves, are we safer, perhaps yes in the sense that our defenses physically and technologically in terms of the military are stronger.

What worries me, what concerns me is the lack of national unity, and whether if we were attacked again, the unity would re-form as it did in 2001, or whether all this division is what would assert itself in our response.

BAIER: I had a little unity on the show earlier with Senators Angus King and Todd Young, a Republican and an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, talking about their recent trip overseas to the Middle East. Here is a compilation of the Iranian president and President Trump on Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASSAN ROUHANI, IRANIAN PRESIDENT: Americans have to realize that warmongering and warmongers are not to their benefit. They should not only abandon warmongering but also abandon their maximum pressure policy.

TRUMP: I do believe they'd like to make a deal. If they do, that's great, and if they don't, that's great, too. But they have tremendous financial difficulty, and the sanctions are getting tougher and tougher.

If they are thinking about enrichment, they can forget about it, because it's going to be very dangerous for them to enrich.

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The president has made very clear he's prepared to meet with no preconditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Meet with no preconditions, that may happen at the U.N. General Assembly, and it may happen in part because he doesn't have his national security advisor pushing back on that issue.

HAYES: We can be sure that John Bolton would have opposed that, as I think he should oppose. But think about how different this is. You have the president of the United States meeting with no precondition with the Iranian regime. I think on one hand the president deserves credit for being forthright about the threat posed by the Iranian regime. On the other hand I think it's entirely appropriate to have preconditions if you are even going to consider meeting the Iranian regime. One of those preconditions would be stop sponsoring terrorists that target Americans, our allies, and our interests throughout the region. Iran has never done that. They have got blood on their hands from numerous attacks in both Afghanistan and in Iraq. And they've shown no sign that they are going to change their ways. It's the nature of the regime. Why reward that with the meeting which elevates the regime --

BAIER: At this table we push back on both sides. If we were having this discussion about Taliban meeting at Camp David, or no conditions meeting with the Iranian president, and it was a President Obama, this table collectively would probably have a big problem with that.

HEMINGWAY: I think in general, actually, we've seen a lot of disruption in foreign policy, President Trump was elected in part because of frustration with both parties' foreign policy. You are absolutely right that people didn't have confidence, if Barack Obama had said some of these things, I don't think they had confidence that he had the nation's best interest, or some people might have had that viewpoint.

But in this case the president has a good trait of wanting to meet with people. With Iran he is right to be skeptical. He should perhaps be more skeptical. It's not just that he said no preconditions. It's that Iran is saying that they have some preconditions, including easing up on sanctions. Our sanctions are doing good work. This policy of maximum pressure is doing good work. So hopefully whatever goes forward, they don't ease up without getting something in return.

BAIER: I've got 10 seconds. This is president meeting casino. What are the chances that the Iranian president and the president meet.

LANE: I'm only going to put $5 on that because the Iranians will keep demanding the lifting the sanctions.

HEMINGWAY: In the near term I will put it at a similarly low level.

HAYES: I think the president wants a meeting, and I think the president will end up getting a meeting.

BAIER: OK, next up, President Trump takes on vaping.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Vaping has become a very big business, but we can't allow people to get sick, and we can't have our youth be so affected.

RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, D-ILL.: We need to look at how they are causing harm, how they are targeted at youth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Flavors should be banned.

TONY ABBOUD, VAPOR TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION: Adults are relying on these flavors to quit smoking. What effectively is going to happen is that you are going to allow those people, the only flavor on the market is tobacco, and that is a product that is sold by big tobacco.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Banning vaping products, flavored e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes illnesses and deaths, 450 possible cases of lung illness across 33 states and the Virgin Islands, six confirmed deaths across six states. Just big picture, more than 16 million Americans live a disease caused by smoking, not vaping in particular, but smoking cigarettes, and they would say 480,000 deaths per year in the United States caused by that, leading cause of preventable death.

Back with the panel. Mollie, the Vaping Association says in a history of the United States prohibition has never worked. Why does President Trump think that's going to do it?

HEMINGWAY: I'm not sure if it's true that it's never worked, but people should think about the consequences of this type of regulation. As you saw, hundreds of thousands of people die from smoking, millions more have smoking-related illnesses. Vaping has been a very effective tool for many people to cease smoking. This seems to be about concerns about underage people developing an interest in nicotine, and also they are talking about this smattering of deaths more as a tool to get people to go along with it.

But these deaths actually have nothing to do with vaping products that are sold in stores. They are about doing things on the black market. So increasing the black market sales that people use where they basically also vape with marijuana and whatnot is not a good way to decrease these deaths.

BAIER: That we know of. We obviously don't have all the studies, and that's one of the pushbacks here, is we don't have all the information. The guess is that it's all coming from stuff on the street as opposed to stuff sold in stores.

HAYES: Yes, this is an area where the Trump administration is going against what I think has been its laudable efforts to deregulate and moving quickly to regulate without the benefit of all of the facts and evidence. And I think there is evidence, to follow up on Mollie's point, there is evidence including, a JAMA article just from July, a study in France that shows that use of e-cigarettes, daily use of e-cigarettes actually contributes to the cessation of smoking combustible cigarettes. That's an important finding. We should stack evidence upon evidence, fact upon fact, finding upon finding, and then draw conclusions. This seems preemptive and it seems unwise.

BAIER: There has been a push for this, what the president has announced today, Senator Durbin from Illinois, Senator Murkowski from Alaska, they both --

LANE: I have no handle on the science, but I feel I have a better handle on the politics of this because I've been to parent meetings at high schools where the topic is people vaping. Parents all over America are freaked out about underage vaping. And I believe that's what is ultimately underlying this. It was only as recently as 2016, Grover Norquist, the famous activists of American for Tax Reform was touting the 9 million vapers as a new interest group in America that was going to have its way. And it's turned out, people are learning, the president is learning, you want to talk about a powerful interest group, it's parents in the suburbs who are worried about the health of their kids, and I think that's what this is all about.

BAIER: I want to get to this other topic. We talked about it earlier with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the policy of asylum, banning the asylum-seekers. The president just tweeting out "Big United States Supreme Court win for border on asylum." Mollie, this is not the merits of the case. This allows it to go forward while the legal challenges continue, but you still think it's significant?

HEMINGWAY: That's why it's significant. We have seen since Trump was elected, a lot of courts issuing nationwide injunctions. And this is an attempt, it's basically a resistance attempt. You see some resistance in the executive, some in the legislative branch. This is the judicial branch's version of it. We don't like who won the election, so we're throwing out the rule of law.

And we saw some indication from Justice Thomas a few years ago, or last year, that this use of nationwide injunctions is getting to be such a problem that it might have to be dealt with by the court. At least five justices have decided to stay here, and it might not just be about the case but about their frustration with overuse of nationwide injunctions.

BAIER: Chuck?

LANE: One reason practically why this is important is that the opponents of Trump's policies on the board have been going to the Ninth Circuit where there are more liberal judges, even though all the action on the border is in Texas which is the conservative Fifth Circuit, and then they've been getting the nationwide injunctions to change of policy all along the border. So this is potentially a real blow to them. And I was struck by the fact that only two justices, Sotomayor and Ginsburg, recorded the sense against this. If that means there were actually seven votes in favor of the administration's policy, that's a very good sign for the administration.

BAIER: Ten seconds.

HAYES: And the politics of this, it's obviously good for the president. He needs to show progress given how central immigration was to his 2016 election. He needs to show progress, and he's not yet able to show it on the border wall and he's not yet able to show it with Mexicans paying for the border wall.

BAIER: That was 12. Nice job.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for this “Special Report,” fair, balanced, and unafraid. And as you look at the New York skyline in the 9/11 Memorial, please never forget. I tweeted today, "Thank you to all of the families who served and sacrificed for the country since the 9/11 attacks and for the families who paid the ultimate price that fateful day 18 years ago. Here's Martha.

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