Trump: "People Have To Behave" And "Practice Decorum" At The White House But Does That Include The President Too?; Trump Legal Team Balks At Mueller's Post-2016 Election Questions
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The program airs tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. Vowed (ph) have done this. "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts right now.</s>ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next, President Trump calling for respect and decorum in the White House. This is reality. Plus, President Trump's legal team pushing back on specific questions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And we're going to tell you what they are. This as Trump says he has written the answers to Mueller himself. And the breaking news this hour, The Washington Post reporting that the CIA has concluded the Saudi crown prince personally ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Not what President Trump wanted to hear. What will Trump do now? Let's go OUTFRONT. Good evening, I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, lashing out after a court ruled against the President and in favor of CNN. A judge saying the White House must temporarily reinstate Jim Acosta's press pass. In response, President Trump speaking aloud, threatening to walk away from all press questions he doesn't like. He says it's all about decorum and respect.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You talk about rules and regulations, what do you mean, sir?</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Decorum. You can't take three questions and four questions and just stand up and not sit down. Decorum. We have to practice decorum. You were there. You understood, and you understand we want total freedom of the press. That's very important to me. It's more important to me than anybody would believe. But you have to act with respect. You're in the White House.</s>BURNETT: Decorum and you have to act with respect when you're in the White House. Like this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump is on his hero journey right now, and he might not expected to have a crazy mother -- like Kanye West run up and support, but best believe we are going to make America great. For me, also as a guy that looks up to you, looks up to Ralph Lauren, looks up to American industry guys, nonpolitical, no -- with the beep on it, so I had the balls, because I have enough balls to put on this hat.</s>BURNETT: Let's just quote again what the President said today. Quote, you have to act with respect. You're in the White House. So, in the President's own words, here's what should have happened to Kanye West.</s>TRUMP: If I think somebody's acting out of sorts, I will leave. I'll say, thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming, and I'll leave.</s>BURNETT: Like this?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I'm standing in that spot. I love this guy right here. Let me give this guy a hug right here. I love this guy right here. Yes.</s>BURNETT: A hug for Kanye, but for reporters he doesn't like, his own lack of decorum is on prominent display.</s>TRUMP: What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions. The same thing with April Ryan. I watch her get up, I mean, you talk about somebody that's a loser, she doesn't know what the hell she's doing.</s>BURNETT: I don't even need words here, do I? I mean, look, this isn't about decorum or respect for the White House, right? It's about controlling the press. The President making it clear that if he can't take away press passes, fine, he'll manipulate other journalists to accomplish his goal of silencing the questions he doesn't want. In fact, he didn't hide his intent. So let me play a little bit more of what he said today so you can hear it for yourself.</s>TRUMP: If I think somebody's acting out of sorts, I will leave. I'll say, thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming, and I'll leave. And those reporters will not be too friendly to whoever it is that's acting up.</s>BURNETT: That's the crucial final line, right? Trump will leave if he doesn't like a question so he's betting that losing access to him altogether will make all the other reporters get in line and silence the reporter who was, quote, unquote, not being too friendly or acting out of sorts. I'm sorry. Acting out of sorts. Look, this isn't about decorum or respect. If it was, President Trump would know that a question a President doesn't like is showing respect for the White House, because that is what a free press and democracy is all about. Maybe he should listen to what a President he says he greatly admires had to stand and take.</s>SAM DONALDSON, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Sir, if I may, the polls show that a lot of American people just simply don't believe you, that the one thing that you've had going for you more than anything else in your presidency, your credibility, has been severely damaged. Can you repair it? What does it mean for the rest of your presidency?</s>RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I imagine I'm the only one around who wants to repair it and I didn't have anything to do with damaging it.</s>BURNETT: He didn't kick him out. Didn't like the question, tried to answer it. Tough questions aren't disrespectful or lacking decorum. Having someone in the Oval Office dropping f-bombs and then giving them a hug is. Jessica Schneider is OUTFRONT. Jessica, the President responding directly to the judge's ruling, right, in favor of CNN's Jim Acosta, which temporarily is forcing the White House to reinstate Acosta's press pass. And obviously what we're hearing today is he seems to be saying he'll find other ways to silence those he doesn't want to hear.</s>JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Erin. And that seems to be the message, really, from every facet of the White House, not just the President. Even Sarah Sanders said in a statement immediately after the judge's ruling that the White House, they plan to develop rules and procedures in their words, and they say that there must be decorum at those press conferences and any interaction with the President. What's interesting is the judge in this case, Timothy Kelly, he's a Trump appointee, he's been on the bench for just about a year, he also touched on that possibility when he read his ruling today. He said, it's quite possible the President may never call on Jim Acosta again. But then Judge Kelly quickly pivoted and he said that that potential decision from the White House to not call on Jim Acosta, he said that wasn't relevant to his decision today. And that decision today, Erin, it was a very narrow ruling here. The judge found that Jim Acosta's due process rights were likely violated when the White House revoked his pass so suddenly. He said that since Acosta didn't have any notice or an opportunity to challenge the decision, and as a result, the hard pass must be instated -- reinstated, which it was.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>SCHNEIDER: You know, but this was just round one, and by all accounts, it looks like the White House is going to move forward with this fight. The Justice Department has said as much, and of course they're also going to try to get a much broader ruling on their broader argument that First Amendment protections don't mean an absolute right to access at the White House. So, this litigation path, Erin, it could take a while, and in the meantime, you heard it there from the President. He's going to tamp down on press availability, maybe not ask -- call on reporters that he doesn't like their questions. He said it today he might limit the number of questions. He might bar them from making statements. So there could be a lot of implications here, Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right, thank you very much. You know, you talk about, you know, penny wise, pound foolish, I mean, this is pretty stunning. OUTFRONT now, former Adviser of four Presidents including Reagan and Clinton, David Gergen, former Staff Member in the George W. Bush White House and Host of PBS "Firing Line", Margaret Hoover and CNN Senior Political Analyst Mark Preston. Margaret, you're with me. You know, no problem calling someone stupid or a loser if he doesn't want to hear what they have to ask but now, fine, we'll reinstate the press pass but we may not hold the availability. We may not allow questions. We may try to get you guys all the turn on each other. Not about decorum.</s>MARGARET HOOVER, HOST, PBS "FIRING LINE": Well, it's all about decorum so long as decorum is a one-way street and that's the deal with President Trump is that decorum is a one-way street. He wants to be treated with respect, but he expects a certain kind of coverage from the press, because this is what he is actually good at in the private sector was branding and marketing himself and he did that by very carefully crafting how the press covered him. And it just turns out that when you're a private entrepreneur and businessman, there's a lot more flexibility to be able to do that with the tools and levers of the press and not when you're the President of the United States.</s>BURNETT: I mean, you know, David, you see how he talks to reporters. Kanye West, obviously, we all just saw that laid out. I mean, have you ever seen anything like that? What do you make of that juxtaposed with decorum and respect being the words of the day from President Trump?</s>DAVID GERGEN, FMR. ADVISOR TO FOUR PRESIDENTS: Well, we haven't seen anything like Kanye West before, and I trust we will never again see a person like that in the Oval Office speaking like that. It's hard to bring your kids in to watch television these days sometimes, isn't it? But it's good to see you back. Look, I think the fundamental issue here is the right of the public to know and hold the President accountable. And parliamentary governments, the prime minister has to go in every day and answer -- and have question time and respond to in a very public way what's going on within the government. We don't have that in this country. There is no question time for Presidents. And the only thing we have are these press gatherings. When the press can ask questions on behalf of the country. So it's really important to maintain that tradition. That goes all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, over 100 years of presidents answering questions on a regular basis. You know, Franklin Roosevelt used to have two press conferences a week on average over 13 years and he was very, very accessible and it was a lot of decorum, a lot of respect shown to him. You know, Frankly, I think that the respect -- there's higher respect shown to a president today than when I first went to Washington. When I first went there, the president -- the press conferences, usually the press would stand up and there would be a lot of shouting and jumping to get the president's attention. Now people are sitting down and I think there is more decorum. What is at issue here is this decorum argument is really -- is a cover so that they can, you know, they can control the press and turn away questions that are inconvenient, which I think then reduces the public's capacity to know what's going on. I would add one coda. That is, this was a significant victory today in the courts for CNN and for freedom of the press, especially because it came from a Trump appointee to the court.</s>BURNETT: Right. That is obviously significant, as you and Jessica point out. Mark, you know, the clip that I played, Sam Donaldson asking former President Reagan something he didn't want to be asked, right? Other Presidents get this. This always happens. As David said, you know, they used to stand up when you're certainly with the press secretary, right? I mean, it's one more question, one more question, yelling, I mean, if you aren't tough, don't go in that room. But no one's ever been -- you haven't seen banned -- no one's been banned from these press conferences, no one losing credentials, so what happens here for Trump?</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, a couple things. One is I would take what he said today, his warning, very seriously. I do think that the White House is going to continue to clamp down on the amount of information that they send out. And quite honestly a lot of the information that they're sending out right now is misinformation, so I agree, we have to have these news conferences every day. We have to have the back and forth with the administration. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to keep them in line. And it's worth noting, even if you don't like CNN, if you're watching us right now or if you don't like Jim Acosta as a person, it's not about us. It's about you. And I think that people need to understand that because if they come and knock us out, they're coming for you next and that's very, very scary.</s>BURNETT: Right. That's the precedent, Margaret, that would be set here and what's amazing is that what the President's saying is, I can get there another way. Fine. Have your little press pass. I don't have to call on you. I don't have to hold the press conference. I can have your peers turn against you.</s>HOOVER: And what he's trying to do is he's also trying to send a message to journalists who cover him in a way that he views as favorable, and he's calling on them, giving them 45 minutes to show up at the White House and giving them as much time as they want with him. This just happened with the Daily Caller. Two reporters in the Daily Caller were called out of the blue for a sit-down with the President. Look, there is a criticism amongst Republicans that the President's writing here too, that the media's unfair, the media's been unfair to presidents for a long time. There's no president that believes the media is fair to them, OK?</s>BURNETT: That's right.</s>HOOVER: This is the system of checks and balances. There's not -- not the Clintons, not Bush, not Obama, not Hillary Clinton, and nobody believes it's fair but that's the entire, by design, by the founders. This is why we have a First Amendment. This is why we have a series of checks and balances.</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>HOOVER: And so we can be -- we, meaning the American people, not people in the press, the American people can hold our government to account. By the people, of the people, for the people.</s>BURNETT: You know, David, let me play, again, the interview with Fox News, right? When you talk about the friendly outlets that he chooses to give his time to. Let me just play again what he said to them about acting up. Here he is.</s>TRUMP: If I think somebody's acting out of sorts, I will leave. I'll say, thank you very much, everybody, I appreciate you coming, and I'll leave. And those reporters will not be too friendly to whoever it is that's acting up.</s>BURNETT: Just walking out and leaving, David. What would be the precedent for that if he just started doing that every time he didn't like a question?</s>GERGEN: I just think it would be very inhibiting for the whole set of exchanges if you're always going to be on edge if you ask a question that he finds inconvenient then he walks out. If they're going to have a set of rules, it's got to be when a reporter asks a question, that reporter can have a follow-up so you can dig a little deeper. It's got to be that you do call on the wire services, you do call on the leading organizations out of there. You don't go ideological on them. It's got to be a set of rules that serves both the president and the public and the press.</s>BURNETT: And yet, Mark, he also -- you know, he's already made it hard for some, right? The reporter he called stupid is a CNN reporter. He didn't like her questions. The reporter he called a loser, April Ryan, people know her as well, right? He has no problem humiliating someone and denigrating them in a way that lacks decorum and respect, that's for sure, when he doesn't like them already.</s>PRESTON: Yes, no question and we can just lay it at the footstep of his own house. We heard Melania Trump the other day say she's not surprised that people make fun of her or don't understand why she's pursuing this goal of ending cyberbullying. Well, we know why people make fun of her because of that, because her husband is really leading the charge in cyberbullying.</s>HOOVER: This is a devil, I'm sorry. You know, he needs to be careful because all you do is risk rallying a real backlash from the press and the American people if you make the entire press the enemy of the good -- the enemy of the people or the enemy of yourself, what are you doing but risking a backlash because if you're not tough enough to go out and take questions on behalf of the people you represent, who's the weak one?</s>BURNETT: All right. Well said and we'll leave it there. Thank you all. Next, President Trump reveals he has personally responded to Bob Mueller's questions.</s>TRUMP: I write the answers. My lawyers don't write answers. I write answers.</s>BURNETT: The President's long-time friend and attorney, Jay Goldberg, responds. Plus, breaking news, The Washington Post this hour reporting that the CIA has concluded the Saudi crown prince personally ordered the assassination of a Washington Post columnist. But the President reportedly resistant to accept his own intelligence chief. Why? And Kellyanne Conway's husband reveals what he really thinks about the Trump administration.</s>GEORGE CONWAY, HUSBAND OF KELLYANNE CONWAY: The administration is like a -- show in a dumpster fire.