Political fallout from President Trump's battle with Democrats

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Political fallout from President Trump's battle with Democrats

President Trump says he is through talking with congressional Democrats until they finish investigating him; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," May 22, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: We believe that the president of the United States has engaged in a cover-up.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: Instead of walking in happily into a meeting, I walk into look at people that have just said that I was doing a cover-up. I don't do cover-ups.

CHUCK SCHUMER, D-N.Y., SENATE MINORITY LEADER: To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop. We were interested. We are interested in doing infrastructure. It's clear the president isn't.

TRUMP: I want to do infrastructure. I want to do it more than you want to do it. I would be really good at that. That's what I do. But you know what? You can't do it under these circumstances.

PELOSI: In any event, I pray for the president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Well, it was quite a day here in Washington at the rose garden and the Democratic leaders up on Capitol Hill responding. The infrastructure meeting that kind of fell apart when the president said enough is enough. Senator Kennedy, as he often does, put this day in perspective in his way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY, R-LA: The president, with a genuine reason, feels like the House is devoting all of its time to harassment. If they're going to keep doing it, they need to do one of two things. They need to either urinate or get off the pot and go ahead and impeach the president, because the Senate is not going to convict because he hasn't done anything to be impeached for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: There you go. Let's bring in our panel, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," A.B. Stoddard, associate editor at Real Clear Politics, and welcome back Shannon Bream, FOX News Chief Legal Correspondent, Anchor of "Fox News at Night," and also the author of the new book "Finding the Bright Side, The Art of Chasing What Matters," which we are going to talk about in a bit, and it's a great read. Congratulations.

SHANNON BREAM, ANCHOR: Thank you very much.

BAIER: What do you think about this, and this back and forth today?

SHANNON BREAM, ANCHOR: I think we need to have Senator Kennedy weigh in on everything.

BAIER: Yes, right. It's the soundbite.

BREAM: Because he always just makes you -- hold on just a minute.

You know what I thought about with this today with the back and forth with these two is I thought about the attorney general and the speaker last week meeting up at this event where behind closed doors the two of them sort of chuckled where do you have your handcuffs with you, ha ha ha. Sergeant of arms is here if I need to arrest anyone. That's kind of how Washington works.

In public there is going to be bluster. Everybody knows their roles that they are playing. Behind the scenes they are really sort of friendly. And you have to wonder how much is posturing and how much of it is they'll get something done.

BAIER: Democrats charge, Mollie, that this was all in the cards, this was built out, and the president had plans to walk out of this meeting, and this is the beginning. The White House says that's not the case, that after the speaker came out and said -- charged that he was responsible for a cover-up, he got really livid and said this is not going forward.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": It did seem like it was planned, and it's planned probably because this is a really good issue for him right now. You had years of people spreading a delusional conspiracy theory of Russian collusion, and at the end of that there was no Russian collusion. I think he likes to mention that. I think he likes to talk about it. And Democrats are in a real pickle. They put all their cards on this belief that there was Russia collusion. They have not a single indictment of a single American for anything related to Russian collusion. They're got a good economy. You've got peace time internationally. Think are working very hard to come up with impeachment plan made more difficult by the fact there is nothing to actually impeach for at this point.

BAIER: About impeachment, new poll out today, Monmouth, A.B., that has the question, should Trump be impeached, now 39 percent yes, 56 percent no. This is everyone, Republicans and Democrats. The second question, what should Congress do now that Mueller investigation is over? This is, again, out today. Move on to other issues, 52 percent, continue to investigate. Democrats say they can walk and chew gum at the same time. The president is saying this is his pen and phone moment, and Congress, if you are not going to give me a break, I'm moving on without you.

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: Well, many, many presidents have faced investigations from the separate and coequal body. None of them have liked it, and they've carried on, because that's actually the path to reelection. If you are being harassed, you let the majority in the Congress who is harassing you with too much oversight be voted out. That's the risk that Republicans took trying to impeach Rod Rosenstein. It's a risk they took of Benghazi, with Whitewater, Dan Burton, I have seen it all. It's a risk the Democrats may or may not take.

But it is Donald Trump's path to reelection if he continues to work with the Congress. What he did today, shot himself in the foot. Republicans are laughing it off, saying of course he is not going to breach the debt ceiling, of course we are going to pass disaster relief so we all can get reelected, so flooded military installations in the key electoral states of North Carolina and Florida are going to be repaired. Of course we're going to raise the BCA cap so the sequester doesn't kick in on the Pentagon and reduce military funding. Of course he is going to continue to work. Of course he wants the new NAFTA signed by Congress, the USMCA. Of course the only thing that's going to suffer is infrastructure so we can make the perfunctory joke that we'll have another infrastructure week, but what he is saying is not what he is going to do.

BAIER: Right, but do you believe that Democrats were coming to that table ready to do a deal on infrastructure to give the president, as Nancy Pelosi said today, a win?

BREAM: It's hard to believe going into 2020 that that would be something they would want to get on board with. But the very first time I interviewed the president before he was the president, and I asked him about whether he was serious about running, because I wasn't sure about that, he would not talk about any other topic but infrastructure. He kept saying this is my world. We desperately need it across the country. It's something that's nonpartisan. I'm going to get it done. So I think he knows it's a good topic for him, but you have to wonder if he had been ready to sit there at the table and negotiate if maybe they would have had some roadblocks to finding a deal that would have certainly benefited him going into 2020.

BAIER: The Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney thought said publicly that he thought it was much more likely that the new NAFTA, USMC, would be easier to get across the finish line than any kind of infrastructure deal.

HEMINGWAY: Certainly, anything is possible. The Democrats haven't shown a tremendous amount of interest in infrastructure right now. And so I think, to get back to what happened in the Rose Garden today, I think the president is saying you guys have to either align yourself with the more radical base of yours that desperately wants impeachment, or you have to actually get stuff done. And he is making them make that decision. Either they don't go forward on impeachment and they endure the wrath of a very energized base who was promised impeachment, or they do go toward impeachment and then that alienates a lot of people who thought that when they were electing Democrats they were doing it for some purpose of balancing out Trump or getting stuff done in a more bipartisan fashion.

BAIER: We are going to talk about what the president calls the "I" word when we come back after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF.: I think our members are much like where the American people are on impeachment, and that is there is a variety of opinions about whether now is the time, whether we need to do more oversight work before we get to that point, what the ultimate repercussion would be of going forward with an impeachment.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: The fact is in plain sight, in the public domain, this president is obstructing justice, and he is engaged in a cover-up. And that could be an impeachable offense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: OK, so back with the talk about the "I" word as the president said in the Rose Garden today. Democrats on different sides of this.

And we're back with the panel. Mollie, you know, after this meeting this morning with House Democratic Caucus, Nancy Pelosi came out and said, essentially, they are not going down the impeachment road. They are going to continue the investigations. And then after the rose garden she gave what she just said there, suggesting, well, maybe we are.

HEMINGWAY: Right. It was interesting to watch both of those people. Adam Schiff is someone who claimed in the previous two years that he had evidence of treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election, which obviously is not true because we just finished the Mueller report, and Mueller, who had all the same capabilities and more than Adam Schiff, did not find treasonous collusion.

You have Nancy Pelosi claiming that the obstruction is right in front of us and you can see it with your own ice. And I think what they are really trying to say is we are very frustrated that Donald Trump is president, and we really wish he were not president. And we really have an angry base who would very much like to see him go. That's fine. Impeachment is a political process. If they think they have a political case to make for removing him, they should go forth with that. But, really, this is a difficult situation for them because they have a base that got whipped up into a frenzy through false reports that they participated in, and now they are wondering what happened. They got -- they put all their cards on this Mueller probe and came up with nothing, and it's very difficult for them to deal with.

BAIER: A.B., as these investigations continue, and there are other investigations, including finances and the efforts to get the president's tax returns, where is the political onus? Where does it fall? You are saying the president shot himself in the foot in the past panel. But for middle America and for people who will be voting in eight and a half months, where does it fall?

STODDARD: There are a few things. There is both what Mollie is describing, which is this political pressure from the left of their base, and then there is also this kind of structural, institutional question about whether Congress is a separate or coequal branch, and they are allowed to conduct oversight as they are mandated by Article One of the Constitution, just like the oversight investigations I mentioned in previous panel that Republicans have conducted. And whether it is a political division the voters make, that assessment whether or not have you gone too far. But you are allowed to do that. They are a separate and coequal branch.

BAIER: Listen, I get all this. The Constitution I have got. I'm talking about the political --

STODDARD: The nearly 1,000 prosecutors who said that they believe that the president obstructed justice --

HEMINGWAY: And it couldn't find an example of anyone else that they could point to a case would bring.

STODDARD: The Democrats in Congress, no matter Mollie's opinion, believe that it is incumbent on them to do oversight of this president. And so, in this blockade, which you can call it a cover-up or a blockade, the president is unindicted co-conspirator in a crime that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to that he said he did at the direction of the president. So he has covered up some things, hush money payments, other things. This blockade they're forming against these 20 investigations they believe will be successful, and the Democrats believe these investigations are necessary. The voters will tell us what they think.

BAIER: Right.

STODDARD: But the Congress is allowed to do their oversight. They are actually supposed to be a check on the executive.

BAIER: Of course they're allowed to, but I'm just asking political question, because after two years of investigation where is the mindset -- we know where the left, left is. Where are the independents? And I don't know if they're kind of investigated-out.

BREAM: You cited some polls that show the majority of people think it's time to move on. And it's such a narrow sliver of people who really elect the next president because we know people are dug in on both sides. This is a really tough place for the speaker to be and to try to herd all the cats, because a number of members are constantly going to the TV cameras or holding rallies of their own and saying impeach 45, and it's time, let's go. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who has flirted with running for the presidency, has a million-dollar ad buy out right now where he has all these average Americans saying to Congress you are terrible. We hate the Democrats. If you don't do something, we are going to get rid of all of you.

So I think it's a difficult place for the Democratic leadership to be right now knowing that there is such a split in their own party.

BAIER: So Washington is a difficult place to find the bright side. But your book.

BREAM: Nice segue.

BAIER: But your book does do it. Congratulations.

BREAM: Thank you very much.

BAIER: Give your little elevator pitch.

BREAM: You know what, we get so many questions about what things are really like behind the scenes at FOX, I do at Supreme Court, what it is like to interview the president, what he's like. All of those things are answered in this book. We take people behind the scenes and I take them through some really tough times and struggles, too, because I know we all go there. I just want to offer them some encouragement. My faith is a big part of it, but I'm also willing to laugh at myself. So you can laugh at me and with me in this book.

BAIER: And you've had wonderful interchanges with people out and about when you are going around the country.

BREAM: Yes, we have been out for a lot of book signings, and it's fantastic. By the way, people thank you, they bring you gifts, as you know when you go to book signings. They will tell you their life stories, and they really feel like we are family. And we like that, because we're with them in their homes every night.

BAIER: My mother showed up and brought gifts.

BREAM: She was fantastic. She brought Gatorade and energy bars so I could keep going.

BAIER: She knows. Congratulations. Shannon and panel, thank you. When we come back, special graduation stories.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Thanks to the ladies' night panel tonight. Finally tonight, two heartfelt graduation stories.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the way from Korea, please welcome the U.S. Staff Sergeant Anthony Tillman.

(APPLAUSE)

BAIER: Kayla Tillman was not expecting her father, Army Staff Sergeant Anthony Tillman, to make it to her high school graduation, but he flew 24 hours from South Korea and drove six more for this, to give Kayla the surprise of her life. Fantastic, we can show those all day long.

And the story of one student's strength. Joshua Suarez is graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas Saturday after a long battle with the stage four cancer. Suarez was diagnosed when he was 15 years old. Kept up with the school work during all the chemotherapy. He is now cancer-free. After college, Suarez wants to become an oncologist so he can help other cancer patients. Two great stories.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for the “Special Report.” Fair, balanced and unafraid. We find the bright side here. "The Story" guest-hosted by Ed Henry starts right now.

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