Trump says he isn't bothered by North Korea's recent missile tests

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Trump says he isn't bothered by North Korea's recent missile tests

President Trump downplays threat from Kim Jong Un; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' all-star panel.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," May 27, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHINZO ABE, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER: On the ninth of May, North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile. This is violating the Security Council resolution.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're not bothered at all by the small missiles?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, I am not. I am personally not. My people think it could have been a violation, as you know. I view it differently. I view it as a man, perhaps he wants to get attention, and perhaps not. Who knows?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE EMANUEL, FOX NEWS: Perhaps some evidence that President Trump was playing good cop with North Korea while John Bolton, his national security adviser, and the Japanese prime minister, were playing bad cop with the North Koreans.

But we'll get to the panel and see what they think. Let's bring in our panel: Chris Stirewalt is politics editor here at FOX News -- and a great roommate; Byron York, chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner; Charles Lane, opinion writer for The Washington Post, and Marc Thiessen, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Gentlemen, welcome.

Marc, your thoughts on North Korea with the president standing next to the Japanese prime minister and having a difference ever opinion?

MARC THIESSEN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I don't agree with the criticism of what Trump said, but I am less concerned with what Donald Trump says than he what Donald Trump does when it comes to North Korea. So he's buttering Kim Jong-un. He's trying to keep the possibility for a deal alive. But he's made no actual concessions to Kim Jong-un. He hasn't lifted sanctions. He hasn't frozen North Korean assets, hasn't ended the Korean War, hasn't granted Pyongyang diplomatic recognition.

In fact, he has done the opposite. He has tightened sanctions on Kim's inner circle, and he actually just seized a North Korean ship that was violating sanctions. So Kim is launching these missiles for a reason because he is frustrated because the playbook is I blow up some cooling towers and you give me billions of dollars, and Trump is not playing that game. So as long as he keeps the pressure on Kim and doesn't make a bad deal, if he wants to butter him up, I am fine with it.

EMANUEL: Chuck, your thoughts?

CHARLES LANE, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, I don't disagree with Marc that that is what the policy has been. I do think that people are entitled to be confused, though, by the atmospherics that the president is putting out. What sort of person takes a state visit -- the Japanese did this huge favor to him by letting him be the first foreign leader to meet the new Emperor, they put him up there on stage next to the prime minister of Japan, and then he just sort of blithely contradicts him on this extremely important and strategic issue for Japan. So if people aren't giving him credit for all the tough stuff he's doing from behind the scenes, he only has himself to blame.

EMANUEL: Byron?

BRYON YORK, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I agree with Marc. This is part of the president's one-two approach to almost everything. On the one hand he keeps up the maximum pressure, and on the other hand he tries to talk nice to Kim. But it does show you how important being able to say that there has been no testing is to the president, because clearly this hasn't worked so far. That's no real slam against the president. Nobody else was able to figure out the North Korea problem anyway.

EMANUEL: Many presidents.

YORK: But when he went to one fruitless summit and then another one, the administration was able to say, look, maybe we haven't gotten a deal, but there has been no testing. So if they are beginning to do things that are against the agreements, that's a problem, and the president is not going to say that.

EMANUEL: To my office mate, Mr. Stirewalt?

CHRIS STIREWALT, FOX NEWS: Look, the key here, just pretend like it's working. Even if it's not working, we remember the president said the Korean peninsula has been denuclearized, success, all is victory. And I imagine if you were to ask a lot of his supporters how things are going with North Korea, they would say hunky dory. Everything is fine. So the president -- I get the good cop, bad cop part, but I think a lot is for domestic political consumption. There's no problem here, everything is fine. I have achieved when all my predecessors failed.

EMANUEL: Fascinating thing, the president has been Japan and he has talked a decent amount about former Vice President Biden Joe Biden. Most recently on Twitter, let's take a look at this, "Anyone associated with the 1994 crime bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular African- Americans will not be able to vote for you. I, on the other hand, was responsible for criminal justice reform which had tremendous support and helped fix the bad 1994 bill. "Super predator" was the term associated with the 1994 crime bill that sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American history, but has sleepy Joe apologized? No." And furthermore, he spoke on camera about Biden. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Kim Jong-un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low I.Q. individual. He probably is based on his record. I think I agree with him on that. Joe Biden was a disaster. His administration, with President Obama, they were basically a disaster when it came to so many things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EMANUEL: So is that a sign that the former vice president is in his head?

THIESSEN: So I just defended President Trump for what he said about North Korea when it came to missiles. The opposite is true when it comes to attacking Joe Biden. First of all, number one, you don't attack your political opponents from foreign soil. You're supposed to be out there as America's chief diplomat. And two, you don't cite the murderous dictator of North Korea as evidence of why Joe Biden is a bad candidate. So I think that that was a shameful thing for the president to do.

However, the reality is that he's got a point on the 94 crime bill. This is one of the problems when you're Joe Biden. He calls him a swamp creature. He's been in Washington for 46 years. And so he has got a long, long record of a lot of things. Donald Trump actually will be able to make a case to the African-American community, he went to them and he said I'm going to fight for you whether you vote for me or not. He went to a church in Detroit during the campaign. He's delivered the lowest unemployment rate for African-Americans ever recorded. He's delivered the goods. The crime bill, he has built empowerment zones to pass legislation in part of his tax bill.

So he's not going to win the African-American vote, but he got eight percent. If he can get that to 14 or 15 percent the Democrats are in big trouble. And also lots of people who are persuadably voters will like the fact that the president is reaching out to the African-American community, which will help them win reelection.

EMANUEL: Chuck, your thoughts on the swipes?

LANE: Well, look, first of all, just on that point about the African- American vote, I'd say Trump has no chance to get to 14 or 15 percent. He has gone out of his way to take Harriet Tubman off the $20 bill. Symbolic politics like that alone will determine that.

But coming back to his comments in Japan, I do agree with Marc that it was shameful. And I will raise him, because it was also unbelievable hypocritical for Donald Trump to go around bashing people for promoting the idea of super predators back in the '80s and 90s. This is a man who took out a full page ad at his own expense in the New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for five young men who had been, it turned out later, falsely accused of beating a woman in Central Park. Donald Trump himself was one of the most tough on crime loudmouths in New York City. So I think once Joe Biden gets in a position to do it, he will find it very easy to parry him on that issue.

EMANUEL: Byron, is this a sign that he feels like if he could take out the former vice president, he'd have fun with the rest of the field?

YORK: It is a sign of the enormous place that Joe Biden is occupying in the president's worldview at the moment. And look, I think he looks at it, he sees Joe Biden's lead in the polls. He remembers his own experience where he led almost wire to wire, which is not really the way it always works. But he looks at this Democratic field and says, who else is it going to be? So he is absolutely fixated on Biden.

And the question you have to ask yourself, he should not be doing this in Japan. It looks bad. And what purpose does it serve for this Japanese trip to have done this?

EMANUEL: Chris?

STIREWALT: If you wonder how can it be that a president whom a majority of the Americans approve of his handling of the economy, you have full employment, you have rising wages, we are headed for over three percent annualized GPD growth. This is great. We are at peace. Crime is low. This is time for an incumbent president where he should be absolutely crushing it. But instead he trails. And instead he is underwater and pretty substantially. Stunts like this stuff in Japan are exactly why. I hear Republican after Republican, they complain, why don't we get enough credit for the good economy? Why don't we get enough credit for this? Because your president misbehaves this way and people don't like it.

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