Trump Upset Saudi Being Assumed "Guilty Until Proven Innocent; " President Trump Calling Ugly New Nickname for Alleged Former Mistress
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Anderson, thank you very much. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to PRIME TIME. Time to test, my friends, and at the highest and easiest level. President Trump says his lawyer Michael Cohen lied under oath. We will show you what is true and what is not. The other, Saudi Arabia is being Kavanaugh'd says the president. In each case, there is an avalanche of evidence that the president is dead wrong. We'll see if one of his ardent defenders in Congress can prove otherwise. Republican Matt Gaetz, welcome back to PRIME TIME. Then, horseface. The president of the United States calling that ugly new nickname today for his alleged former mistress, Stormy Daniels, and then she fired back and not in a big way. Bernie Sanders, not easy to fluster. Here's the question -- what did the president say that made him react like this --</s>SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: You know, it is -- it is really hard to keep up with -- is that really what he said? I hadn't followed that.</s>CUOMO: What made him say that? Fasten your seat belts. Let's get after it.</s>CUOMO: President Trump wants the same standard for an authoritarian strongman that he does for his Supreme Court justices. He tells the "A.P." the apparent murder of a "Washington Post" journalist is another case of someone being guilty until proven innocent. He continues to take the word of the Saudi king and crown prince over a growing body of evidence, including the latest CNN reporting that it was a high ranking officer in the Saudi intelligence agency who oversaw a botched Khashoggi mission. There is enough evidence for even some of Trump's fiercest supporters to demand action. So, let's turn to one of them. Trump's -- one of his biggest backers, we don't like to rank, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. Congressman, good to have you back on the show.</s>REP. MATT GAETZ (R), FLORIDA: Thank you, Chris.</s>CUOMO: All right. So, let's start with the president and some of the things he put out there today. Mueller matters is going to be involved in this with Michael Cohen. Saudi Arabia. I know that you wrote on both. So with Michael Cohen, why would he say that Michael Cohen was lying when he said that the president knew about and directed his actions with the payments of the women? Why would he say that?</s>GAETZ: I have no idea, Chris. I'll be honest. Most of our work in the Congress has been focused on oversight of the Mueller investigation and the activity surrounding Russia and the malign influence that they're expressing around the world. The issues going on in the Southern District of New York with Cohen, it seems to be a bit beyond the purview of Congress.</s>CUOMO: Certainly is. But you understand his thinking. You understand his strategy. He has to know that I'm in possession of the tape that proves he knew what Cohen was doing and endorsed it.</s>GAETZ: Yes. I honestly have no idea what is going on in the Southern District, if Michael Cohen is lying or telling the truth. It looks like Michael Cohen is a pretty odd individual if you look at the way he threatened reporters and kind of seemed like a tough guy when he wasn't. He's not somebody I'm a big fan of and not somebody that I think has a lot of credibility in the eyes of the American people.</s>CUOMO: Except he was doing what the president asked him to do. He would say it all the time when he was on. And you're right, it's not your purview. You're not handling that investigation, 100 percent true. But it's not about what's happening in the Southern District. It's about what the president is saying about his lawyer. I can play a tape. I don't want to waste the time. But you've heard it on the show before. The president's not telling the truth when he says Michael Cohen lied about being told to do those things. That's all I'm asking you about. Are you okay with that?</s>GAETZ: Yes. Again, the context of the president's communications with Michael Cohen is something that I am not privy to. I do believe that Rudy Giuliani has made the claims that there was some selective editing and there was not a full conversation to give us context of that discussion. But again, I'm not one that has any unique insight as to what we heard beyond the expressed words of the president and Mr. Cohen. And it looks like there will be a swearing match there that will continue.</s>CUOMO: All right. Let's go to something that is certainly more germane to your purview. What's going on with Saudi Arabia and what the line will be before Congress acts, either, you know, whether it's the Senate or do you all get-together, whatever it is. The president said today that he thinks that Saudi Arabia is getting Kavanaugh'd, that they're being seen as guilty and they're going to have to be proven innocent. With what you know to this point, do you believe that Saudi Arabia is getting railroaded here?</s>GAETZ: I don't, but I think that in every statement the president's made he said we got to get to the bottom of this. And the president's been clear that it's a really big problem if senior officials in Saudi Arabia had any role in the death of this Saudi citizen who was a journalist and who should not have feared this type of reprisal. No one should. I was in KBS' home just six days ago in Washington, D.C. and we were not discussing the one Saudi journalist. We were discussing the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11. And I do think that the Saudi government in some form and some capacity and some part had a role in that. If you just lay bear the 9/11 Commission report, you see that Saudi intelligence officials were signing leases for hijackers and special designations on passports and people associated with al Qaeda.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>GAETZ: The mosque that was the center of life for some of the hijackers backed by the Saudi government. And so, I think that that should be a lot more concerning to us as like are we engaging in this discourse and this diplomacy where they haven't -- if they haven't fully rooted out the elements the government involved. Now, I do think MBS could represent a bridge to the future. Remember, Chris, the people running Saudi Arabia, they're not your age. They're my age. You got a bunch of 30-somethings who have never known anything but extreme wealth. They did not know the poverty and challenge of their parents and grandparents. It's been kind of a Lamborghini lifestyle for a lot of these guys. And this transition, where -- they do seek the embrace of the West.</s>CUOMO: Right.</s>GAETZ: They want to have Saudi Arabia viewed as a modern player. But that transition is going to be dicey. And I think we've got a lot more to learn here on this fact pattern.</s>CUOMO: Make me wonder about my chin. Is that why you're making an age distinction between me and you, Gaetz? Let me ask the Twitter folk if they think that I look that much older. But let me ask you this because you're making good points.</s>GAETZ: Fair.</s>CUOMO: I read into what you're talking about 9/11. I lived that, obviously. It was a big part of my reporting early on. I haven't seen great proof or really any material proof that the Saudi government was behind 9/11 in any way. Yes, there's been a lot of stink on them for exporting Wahhabism. Yes, some have referred to them in the Middle East as the head of the snake when it comes to terror. But let's say contextually you're suspicious and with some cause. But the president doesn't agree with you. He says that they're good people there. That he's had great relationships with them and that rogue killers are as likely an explanation for what happened to Khashoggi as anything. And that Salman says he had nothing to do with it and he believes him. Do you swallow it as quickly as the president does?</s>GAETZ: Well, I think the president is right in that there could be multiple elements acting within the Saudi government. Remember, even though it is a monarchy, it is a kingdom, the government doesn't act monolithically. There are different elements of the government. Now the --</s>CUOMO: You think guy was fly to Turkey on private planes, be greeted by staff at the consulate as if expected, go in there and interrogate somebody and somehow wind up reportedly chopping them into pieces and Salman knew nothing about it?</s>GAETZ: I don't know. I'm not making that claim. What I'm saying is that the optimistic view that MBS represents --</s>CUOMO: The president kind of is.</s>GAETZ: Well, no, in every statement the president has made, Chris, you guys don't include this in your clips, but he says, we have to get to the bottom of this and there are going to be big problems.</s>CUOMO: But why offer up an excuse -- if you don't know the answer, not you, Matt, I'm saying, if the president doesn't know, why give such the benefit of the doubt to a strongman?</s>GAETZ: Because there are one of two options for Saudi Arabia. They either continue trying to move closer to the West and seek Western investment and technology, engage in investment in Western entertainment, or they move closer to Russia. Those are the two binary options, right? So, we're playing this kind of delicate game with Saudi Arabia where we want them to move closer to the West. We want them to continue to work with us on intelligence gathering and --</s>CUOMO: What are you willing to allow? You said earlier Salman could be a bridge. But he also may have chopped up a journalist who works for "The Washington Post." and if they --</s>GAETZ: Tomorrow night --</s>CUOMO: -- are murderous, do you want them connected to you? That's the question.</s>GAETZ: Well, tomorrow night, the kingdom was supposed to host a big party in Washington to commemorate the relationship with the United States.</s>CUOMO: Davos in the Desert.</s>GAETZ: Yes. Well, they canceled their event for tomorrow night at the embassy. I guess it's hard to get RSVPs when everybody that shows up at your sovereign turf doesn't always leave alive. That's a bit problematic. But -- look, I want to remain hopeful that the future for Saudi Arabia isn't destined to be one of this type of swift desert justice, that it's one where we can have more mutual cooperation on intelligence and that we can move beyond a relationship based on strategic interests to one of shared values. But this is a problem. And this transition is a difficult one. But I don't think we can give up on Saudi Arabia. But I think we've got to hold them accountable if, in fact, there was a senior moment in this activity.</s>CUOMO: You have, to right? Because if you don't --</s>GAETZ: You can't live in a world with no consequences.</s>CUOMO: A hundred percent, because if that's the message that MBS gets and he, indeed, in fact, had something to do with this, you know what happens next. More. And then now, he knows just like people would suggest with Putin and with Kim and with Duterte, that, you know what? If you say nice things about Trump, he's going to say nice things back. You're going to get some leeway. And that can be a dangerous precedent. Now your colleague in Congress and the Senate, Lindsey Graham, says, no way. No way to everything that's being discussed right now. Salman has to go. He's shown who he is. We knew who he was before. We know who he is from what he did to his own family. He's got to go. We can't work with him. You can't give him anything. Your take?</s>GAETZ: Senator Graham may have access to more up-to-date intelligence. As you know, I've been dealing with Hurricane Michael and the aftermath in my district and in neighboring districts. So, I don't want to presume to know more than Senator Graham. But, like, what are the alternatives, right? It's not like there is some Mr. Congeniality to turn to in Saudi Arabia that's going to embrace all of Western civilization and Western values. I think that this is a slower walk than any of us would like. But I least -- I hope that we can get to be directionally correct with Saudi Arabia where they're not looking to embrace these authoritarian tendencies but instead will normalize. And I think that possibility is true when you look at kind of the new generation of leadership. But this is admittedly a stumbling block. They should have to answer for it. And I know this -- these arms transfers and arms sales need to be on the table. We shouldn't act as if that's going to go through under every circumstance.</s>CUOMO: That's exactly what Trump is saying though. He's saying one of the balancing interests for him is I don't want to blow the money and the deals. Why would you want to sell weapons to somebody like this if Salman is behind it? It seems like you should put him in the balance on the other side of the scale.</s>GAETZ: Look, I know this about President Trump. He is the first president in the post-Cold War era who understands the fusion of economic interests and military interests. For far too long, we've been treating our adversaries and, frankly, a lot of our allies as if those are separate things. But if you look at China, North Korea, our activities in Latin America to get tough on Venezuela, you see the president really understands that. And so, I think that as a good negotiator, as someone who understands leverage very well, the president will have all of that on the table. And he should. But remember, he's still gathering facts. I think the president doesn't want to be too quick to judge. That's why Secretary Pompeo is in the region.</s>CUOMO: Gathering facts but he said it could have been rogue actors. He says he believes Salman, who shades the facts. And something I've seen as a pattern, I want your take on, Congressman, before I let you go. He is very soft on strongmen and very strong on the soft and vulnerable. With Honduras, he says, you don't stop this caravan coming, I'm not giving you another dollar. You better pull them back. They're people coming to seek asylum. They're not people looking to jump an imaginary wall. A But with Saudi Arabia, go slow. Take it easy. Could have been rogue people. Let's get to the bottom of it. Take time. Why the difference in attitude based on strong people and meek people?</s>GAETZ: Well, you offer far too much of an overgeneralization. If you look at the Maduro regime in Venezuela, that's a strongman regime and the Trump administration under the leadership of Ambassador Carlos Trujillo drove them out of the Organization of American States. And so, you know, again, if you look even at the treatment of Russia, we've been very tough in our actions expelling their diplomats and also reigniting appropriate sanctions when necessary.</s>CUOMO: Congress did that.</s>GAETZ: Yes. Look, it's a team effort.</s>CUOMO: No, no, Congress did it. He said go slow. He said he didn't like it. He said he believed Putin. Come open, matt. This is not strong footing for you on that point.</s>GAETZ: But he expelled the diplomats.</s>CUOMO: He had to.</s>GAETZ: He did more than any other American president. He didn't have to. He did that because he chose to.</s>CUOMO: He didn't do more. Obama did more. He dragged his feet. Congress brought it to the table. That's why he acted and said he didn't want to.</s>GAETZ: Obama was silent, weak, and soft as Russia was engaging in elections.</s>CUOMO: Those are adjectives. But the actions are he expelled more people. He was too soft on the initial interference. Obama should have rang the alarm. You know who didn't want him to, right?</s>GAETZ: Yes.</s>CUOMO: You know who didn't want him to, right? Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell said that he didn't want to go in on this with him.</s>GAETZ: Oh, Mitch McConnell, a great oracle of all things.</s>CUOMO: Oh, you're not anti-McConnell, are you? Are you side ways on McConnell?</s>GAETZ: -- take a little more action. You know, look, I think McConnell is in a lot of ways hadn't led the Senate with enough vigor.</s>CUOMO: He was like a Kasparov delivering you Kavanaugh.</s>GAETZ: We got 500 bills the House has sent over to the Senate that they won't take a vote on. I think he's protecting a lot of his moderate members and even some Democrats --</s>CUOMO: What do you think your base is going to remember? Five hundred bills that nobody can't name or him getting you through the justice that delivers a generation of jurisprudence? Be careful who you pick to get side ways with. McConnell delivered for you guys.</s>GAETZ: Well, on certainly on judges the leader has been very effective. But if you look at a lot of the elections going on, health care is at the center of the polling. If we did more to make health care solutions available to people at the state and local level, we could make a lot better claim about lowering prices and giving people better access. And so, I wish they would have done more to take up the health care bills that would have created a more free market bill.</s>CUOMO: Instead, you're going to have will people with popping rates because of what happened with the mandate and now you're going to have to make the case that shouldn't be on your account.</s>GAETZ: Yes. Look, I don't think that we've done enough on health care.</s>CUOMO: You've done enough to screw it up. People are going to get popping rates.</s>GAETZ: We screwed it up?</s>CUOMO: Sure.</s>GAETZ: Obamacare that skyrocketed rates. Rates --</s>CUOMO: Rates were going down.</s>GAETZ: No, they're not going down from before the Obama presidency. They're going down from their prior spikes. But if you look at where rates are now and when Obama took over, health care is way more expensive. Insurance are way more expensive.</s>CUOMO: You're right, because you got rid of the mandate.</s>GAETZ: Because the government is not the less cost avoider. Oh, that is ludicrous.</s>CUOMO: And you got rid of people that compete in different areas because of it.</s>GAETZ: No, it's because we ignored the cost of health care. No, it's because we covered too many people without looking at the cost of health care. If you look at why, you know, an Advil is $500 in a hospital or why ambulatory surgery is --</s>CUOMO: Well, that's drug pricing.</s>GAETZ: Well, it's all of those things.</s>CUOMO: You can do cost of care. You didn't do that. You got the healthy people out of the pool.</s>GAETZ: -- hospital industrial complex.</s>CUOMO: You didn't go at the hospital complex. You went at people.</s>GAETZ: No, we should have. I'm saying we should have.</s>CUOMO: But that cost you more money because now they go to emergency rooms. And now they don't have insurance.</s>GAETZ: You cannot cover anyone if you don't deal with the cost of care.</s>CUOMO: You can do both, though.</s>GAETZ: We're going to be bankrupt as a country.</s>GAETZ: Why don't we just allow people to buy insurance across state lines to get more choices? Why don't we do tort reform so it's not as expensive?</s>CUOMO: You could have done those things. You could have done those things. You didn't have to throw people off the roles to do that.</s>GAETZ: We got some bills -- we got some bills that do those things that the Senate won't take votes on. That's my criticism of the Republican leadership in the Senate. We got a whole heck of a lot of bills that would actually deal with some of the challenges that you and I are discussing, and they won't take a vote on them because a lot of their moderate members and some in the Democrats don't want to have to take an up and down vote, and we got this silly filibuster rule where people go in the Senate and they don't have to take votes on tough issues.</s>CUOMO: Well, that is true. We saw where the filibuster rule got us. Whether you like it or not, when they went to a simple majority on Supreme Court justices, there's no more any reason for compromise. And if you don't have a reason to compromise, you see what you get, what we're talking about right now, nothing. But, Congressman Matt Gaetz, you are always a good discussion, always welcome on the show.</s>GAETZ: Thank you, Chris.</s>CUOMO: Matt, thank you for doing it. Appreciate it. Congressman Gaetz, Florida. So, Republicans hold the purse right now, right? That's what Gaetz is talking about. He knows the Republicans are running the Senate. He is saying, come on, let's get some more things done. All right. So, how do those in power explain this? The economy is hotter than ever. It's better than ever. Then why is the federal deficit exploding in President Trump's first fiscal year? Why? If tax cuts were the key, why aren't they paying for themselves? Facts that you're not going to hear from the president, next.