Trump Faith In Kelly; Trump Defends Porter; White House Officials without Full Clearance
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem, 9:00 p.m. in Mogadishu, Somalia. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. Baffled. White House aides telling CNN, they can't understand the president's position on his former aide who is accused of domestic abuse. This, as he defends Rob Porter and seems to defy the entire MeToo movement. Open secrets. Thirty to 40 Trump administration officials operating without full security clearance, including the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner. What this means for America's national security. And getting warmer. The Trump administration indicating it's willing to talk to North Korea but saying it's up to Kim Jong-Un. So, who blinks first? All of that coming up. But let's start with the confusion inside the White House right now as officials try to get their heads around President Trump's stance on Rob Porter, the former aide resigning over spousal abuse allegations. Publicly, the president has defended Porter, saying the accounts are just mere allegations and shouldn't ruin someone's career. But reports say that, privately, the president considers Porter, and I'm quoting now, "sick." Our Senior White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny, he's joining us right now. Jeff, what are you hearing over there on the president's decision to publicly stand by Rob Porter?</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, good afternoon. We do know, at this moment, that, first of all, White House chief of staff John Kelly is still on the job here. And, of course, he is the key part of all of this equation. Rob Porter, of course, a senior aide who resigned abruptly last week, is perhaps on the president's mind, but the president did not answer questions about him and the whole matter of security clearances, just a short time ago here at the White House when he was doing an infrastructure event with governors and others from around the country. But the White House chief of staff was front and center in the room with the president, and he is, indeed, on the job here. Now, this certainly has given an opening for many people who don't necessarily like John Kelly to voice their concern. But we do know, as far as we can tell, at this moment, the president still stands behind him. This is what Kellyanne Conway, the Senior Adviser to the President, told Jake Tapper, yesterday on "STATE OF THE UNION."</s>KELLYANNE CONWAY, SENIOR ADVISOR, PRESIDENT TRUMP: I spoke to the president last night. I told him I'd be with you today. And he said, please tell Jake that I have full faith in chief of staff John Kelly. And that I am not actively searching for replacements. He said, I saw that all over the news today. I have faith in him. And he does.</s>ZELENY: So, that, of course, is the president's words through Kellyanne Conway, that the president has confidence in the chief of staff. But, again, it is the question about Rob Porter. The president, of course, standing by him publicly. But privately, some reports say he was not thrilled at all by what he saw. The question is there has just not been a sense of unified message or clarity here. We've not heard from the chief of staff. We've not heard from other advisers here. So, until some people come forward and answer more questions -- maybe it'll happen at -- happen at the briefing this afternoon. There is still this cloud here hanging over the White House -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: That briefing now has been delayed to, what, around 3:00 p.m. Eastern, is that right?</s>ZELENY: Indeed, around 3:00 p.m. And this is will be the first briefing where Sarah Sanders has the opportunity to answer some of these questions and fill in some of the blanks about what the president said on Friday. He said that Rob Porter is a good man. He tweeted on Saturday saying that, you know, careers and lives shouldn't be ruined because of this. But, yet, you know, there is sense, here at the White House, that the -- you know, they're just not sure where the president stands on this. So, that, of course, is one opportunity for at least the press secretary to speak to some of these questions -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, Jeff, thank you very much. Jeff Zeleny over at the White House. We'll get back to you. Let's bring in our panel. Joining us, CNN Political Analyst Karoun Demirjian; our Congressional Report -- the congressional reporter for Politico, Rachel Bay; our Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger. So, lots of confusion. Some White House officials saying they're baffle by what the president says in private, as opposed to what he's saying publicly. What do you think?</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and they're -- I understand why they're baffled. I'd be battled, too, if I were working inside the White House. They are also concerned about a timeline that was offered by General Kelly that they're not really sure is accurate. Did he lie to his own staff? So, I think there is a -- you know, there's lot of confusion there. The president and -- you know, you heard Kellyanne Conway saying that -- you know, that the president has confidence in General Kelly. I know, from my own reporting, that the president has been calling around to people saying, well, if this job were to become open, would you potentially be interested in it? Someone -- his good friend, Tom Barrack, said, no, I would not. But it was -- it was -- it was not, you know, I want you to do this job. It was, kind of, one of those, well, if I -- if I were thinking about making a change. So, if you're sitting inside the White House, of course you'd be scratching your head about this because it's completely dysfunctional.</s>BLITZER: Yes. And Axios, Karoun, you probably saw that report, they're suggesting that Rob Porter was told to stay and fight these allegations.</s>KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And so, the discrepancy between stay and fight, versus I told him to -- there's the door, 40 minutes after I understood the allegations were credible, is your first disconnect right there. Not to mention the fact this goes back to the beginning of the Trump administration, in terms of the number of times that people in the White House were warned that this was actually a concern. And either they had reason to maybe ask questions or -- about what the substance of this was. And knew, to some extent, that it was about these issues, because Porter was not getting fully approved for his full security clearance. So, I mean, this is just -- it's remarkable that we've been talking about this for a week, at this point. It's not the first time the White House has had difficulty getting its story straight. But to go on for this long is really striking. And indicates that, look, this started out -- Rob Porter -- domestic abuse is a poor -- it's a problem. But, for the White House, this is a management problem and it continues to be a management problem because they can't get their stories straight about what happened and what they decided to do.</s>BLITZER: And the scandal is -- represents a significant embarrassment, a very awkward situation, for Republicans. In general, the Republican Party has basically been silent on these latest allegations.</s>RACHAEL BADE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Yes, it's starting to spill onto Capitol Hill which is where I work every day. And, basically, Republicans are embarrassed by this. They don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. But there is a group of about a dozen Senate Democrats who have pretty much vowed to get answers on this. They want to know who knew what and when and was this on Porter's security clearance? And that's not to mentioned, you know, this is totally drowning out everything that's going out right now this week. I mean, the Senate is getting ready to take on this huge immigration debate this week, where the president's immigration proposal is actually going to get a vote. The president's out there talking about infrastructure. And nobody's really listening to that stuff because Porter, six days later, is still taking up everything and sucking up all the oxygen.</s>BORGER: I know. And, look, the RNC, when it -- when it -- when Steve Wynn had to leave as the finance chair, they're not giving back contributions, at this point, because they say the allegations against him are unproven. And so, you know, you have this whole Steve Wynn scenario playing out on the -- on the sidelines to the Rob Porter scenario playing out inside the White House.</s>DEMIRJIAN: Right. But then, there's the pushing for (INAUDIBLE.) If you want to, kind of, take a middle road, there were all kinds of options over the last 13 months. So, put him on administrative leave while you investigate it. And none of that happened either. So, the fact that we're in this -- it shows you how much turmoil this is for the GOP that we're, kind of, comparing these situations, and they're comparing those situations as well. And that we're still talking about it a week later.</s>BORGER: Well, and you have a president who has not talked about -- in the case of Rob Porter, he hasn't talked about the women. He's just talked about how terrible it is for Rob Porter, publicly.</s>BADE: And he should -- he should probably take a cue, then, from Kellyanne Conway who's actually gotten -- her remarks, yesterday, were very, you know, delicate. She talked about not only these being accusations but also mentioning the police report and these women talking under penalty of perjury to, sort of, emphasize that this goes beyond a mere allegation. And you would think the White House would, sort of, take a cue from that. Not yet so far, at least.</s>DEMIRJIAN: You would, indeed. And also, the other thing that I would just stress is that this is just one person out of over 30 people that don't have their full security clearance yet. And the fact that we're focusing on this one person, I mean, what are we not focusing on for the others? Presumably, they are domestic barriers in all those other cases. And might be things that play in much more closely to the day-to-day business of the -- you know, the government and the functioning of the White House. So, in a way, it's -- the fact that this has continued on is really surprising and shocking and, yet, also means we're not paying as much attention to countless others.</s>BLITZER: You know, it's interesting, Gloria, because I know you look at the numbers closely. In the 2016 presidential election, the president carried 41 percent of the women's vote, 52 percent of white women. What do you think that's going to be now that he seems to be going against the MeToo movement?</s>BORGER: Well, it's -- you know, it's, honestly, hard to predict, Wolf. It depends who the president's running against, et cetera. But noncollege-educated -- noncollege-educated white women, the president won by 27 points, a remarkable number. And the question I have is whether the MeToo movement, if the pendulum kind of swings to the other side, whether these women will be with Donald Trump on this or not. You know, I think that there's a lot that's going to play out before we -- before we really know. I think the women who were not with him are not going to be any more with him, let's put it that way. And maybe the so-called -- well, these women will maybe -- we know more of them are running for political office. We assume more of them will go out to vote. But it's these noncollege-educated white women that he's so powerful with. The question is how this will affect them. I don't know the answer.</s>BLITZER: What do you think?</s>BADE: I think -- so, there was a report in the past 24 hours, saying, you know, Steve Bannon, who used to be very close to the president, obviously not so much in the circle anymore. But saying that exactly, that he is concerned that the women are going to be so opposed to Donald Trump that this could, potentially, swing the midterm elections in 2018. And then, again, in 2020, have a really dire effect on his reelection.</s>BLITZER: All right, guys. Karoun, Rachael, Gloria, thanks very, very much. A stunning revelation. Dozens of White House officials still operating without a full security clearance, including, as we've reported, the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. You're going to find out what classified information they're actually seeing. Plus, a seismic shift in recent days, involving nuclear tensions with North Korea. Why the U.S. may be warming up to the possibility of talks with Kim Jong-Un. And the former president and the former first lady making a rare public appearance for the unveiling of their official portraits. You're going to see what happened.