'Special Report' All-Star panel on Biden-Putin summit

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Steve Hayes: Biden meeting with Putin was a 'mistake'

'Special Report' All-Star Panel weighs in on the Biden-Putin summit

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report" June 17, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. 

BAIER: Well, some of the reaction to the president's trip overseas, his
first foreign trip, the fallout from that one-on-one meeting with Vladimir
Putin. What about that? Let's bring in our panel, Ben Domenech, publisher
of "The Federalist," Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief at "USA Today,"
and Steve Hayes, editor of "The Dispatch."

Steve, a lot of media were kind of gushing about the president's trip.
There were critics obviously on the right. Your thoughts?

STEVE HAYES, EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": I think it was something of a mixed
bag. Joe Biden made it pretty clear that he wanted to reestablish
relations, better relations with our European partners, with NATO, with the
G-7. I think he can say that he did that or he took a step toward doing
that, pushing on an open door. They were going to like Joe Biden more than
they liked Donald Trump and his more confrontational style with Europe and
with NATO before. So that -- he accomplished it, but it wasn't a big lift.

I think he can say that he successfully refocused attention on China. I
agree that he could have gone a lot farther, certainly, could have pressed
on the Wuhan Institute of Virology a lot harder than did he at least in
public, what we saw in public.

But I think the big mistake here was the meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Meeting with Vladimir Putin itself, I think, was a mistake. He shouldn't be
giving somebody who is acting like a rogue state, who has made very clear
that he is an enemy, that kind of a platform. And if you look at what
Russia has been doing in recent weeks and months, they are hostile. They
are acting like a hostile power. There are military exercises, there's
ramped up disinformation campaign, there are the cyber hacks that we talked
about earlier in the show. There, of course, was the SolarWinds hack which
was attributed to Russian intelligence services, which had a cost of at
least $100 billion to U.S. public and private sector enemies. This is bad
guy doing bad things, and I think giving him that kind of a platform was a
mistake.

BAIER: Garry Kasparov agrees with you. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARRY KASPAROV, HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION CHAIRMAN: Biden didn't have to be
at this meeting in the first place. So the idea of inviting Putin was a
mistake, and it gave Putin the platform. Putin got a huge platform. What
Biden got was nostalgia. I guess he has been dreaming of being president
since in 1988 and back in the cold war, and that was his dream, looking at
Nixon, Carter, and Reagan. And now he got this moment, that's it.

The good news, the only good news about the meeting, about the summit, it
was shorter than expected. So there was not much damage done. But Putin got
what he wanted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Susan, how does the White House look at this?

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": There was a debate in
the White House about whether it was wise to have a meeting with Vladimir
Putin at this point when, as Steve points out, there are a lot of things
that Russia is doing that we have problems with. And it was the president
who thought it made sense to have this meeting.

The Republicans that you showed in the clip setting up the conversations, I
got to say there is one thing I have been perplexed by. Where were their
voices after the last summit with Putin in 2018 with President Trump that
was much friendlier than the one that President Biden had, much less
critical of Russians then than Biden was. And so this reset is in part a
reset from the previous administration not making things easier on Russia,
not being more flattering to Vladimir Putin, but being considerably
tougher, and making an effort to go to Russia to meet -- not to go to
Russia, but to go meet with Putin with a united western alliance behind
him, which is definitely not what President Trump chose to do in his last
meeting.

BAIER: Ben?

BEN DOMENECH, PUBLISHER, "THE FEDERALIST": I don't see this considerably
tougher dynamic that Susan is talking about. Look in the context of this
situation. We've had multiple terrorist attacks coming from Russian
entities on America's critical infrastructure. And in the context of that,
we have a Biden administration that is offering the Russian was what they
want on the Nord Stream pipeline, overruling, by the way, his own State
Department in terms of advice he was getting from Tony Blinken, from
Victoria Nuland, and others, not informing our allies in Poland. Going over
there and offering something that we get nothing for in return when it
comes to ambassadors going back to D.C. and Moscow, declaring that Putin is
a both adversary, that he's bright and he's tough.

And at the same time, in a sop to Russia opening up the conversation about
reducing sanctions on Iran, getting back into the JCPOA, giving a cold
shoulder to our allies in Ukraine, at the end of it, we have a president
who gave less than 20 minutes of answers to a predetermined list of
reporters, at the end of which he was asked a tougher question about Alexei
Navalny and why his name did not come up in the meeting. And his response
to that was to berate a CNN female reporter and suggest that she was in the
wrong line of work and unqualified to do what she did.

I can only imagine what the reaction would have been if the president that
we're talking about was Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden. I feel like we'd
have a lot of people on the airways using that same phrase that we heard
for a lot of years that the collusion was wide open, that it was right
there happening in front of you. You didn't even need to look for it.

BAIER: I want to turn topics to what's been happening up on Capitol Hill
about infrastructure. And it is clear that there are two tracks here that
some Democrats, Steve, really want to go down the reconciliation road,
including Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader, and this bipartisan effort
to try to get negotiation. The question is, where is the White House? And
are they going to push the negotiated side or are they going to push the
reconciliation side?

HAYES: It's a good question, and you get the sense that the White House
taking sort of a hands-off approach, saying to Democrats on Capitol Hill
you figure it out. You come up with the solution.

The White House is being pinched by progressives, both in the House and in
the Senate, who do not want any kind of a compromise with Senate
Republicans, have been saying this now for weeks, urging the president to
go into reconciliation. But you also have the moderate Democrats in the
Senate in particular, who are saying, look, we don't want to do it. We
think we can get compromise, let's try to get compromise. The White House
seems not to be taking a very authoritative hand in pushing one way or the
other, preferring to let Democrats in Congress work it out.

BAIER: Susan, by not doing that they are doing something. In other words,
they are not pushing the moderate bipartisan approach.

PAGE: Actually, I think the White House has been more patient with this
process, this stumbling, uncertain, up and down process of trying to seek a
bipartisan deal. They have been more patient than I think the Democratic
leaders in Congress might be if they were not dealing with the White House.
I think it's always safe to bet against the deal, but the prospect is still
alive, and that is because the White House has chosen to leave it alive.

BAIER: All right, we'll continue to follow it. When we come back,
tomorrow's headlines with the panel.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel.
Susan, first to you.

PAGE: A decade later it's finally settled -- Obamacare survives. We got a
seven to two Supreme Court decision, the third in a row defending
constitutionality. And when the Republicans controlled the House, the
Senate, and the White House, they were unable to repeal it. Like it or not,
Obamacare is here to stay.

BAIER: Steve?

HAYES: My headline is free everything for everyone. Bernie Sanders
announced that the Senate budget Democrats are on a $6 trillion
reconciliation package. Leaves your head shaking at a time when we are $28
trillion in debt.

BAIER: Ben?

DOMENECH: My headline comes from my former colleague David Harsanyi,
biggest loser of the week, the 17th most important infrastructure element
of the United States. They've got to be sweating a little bit after being
left off that list that John Biden gave.

BAIER: And 16 are protected. All right, panel, thank you very much.

Tomorrow on SPECIAL REPORT, whatever happened to supersonic air travel?
Could it be making a comeback?

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for the SPECIAL
REPORT, fair, balanced, still unafraid. "FOX NEWS PRIMETIME" hosted by Brian
Kilmeade all week long, who has his own headline every night. What do you
got?

BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: Here's my headline, and it just came in a
second ago -- Bret Baier jealous of Brian Kilmeade because he has worked
out negotiations that he can walk during his show and Bret is stuck behind
his desk. Yes, that's right. I'm standing, I'm walking. It is going to be
really exciting. True or false, Bret, will that come true? Are you, indeed,
jealous?

BAIER: I'm a little jealous, but I'll figure out how to walk here.

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