Kelly's White House Mission; Baker's Advice to Kelly; Discipline in West Wing; Trump Tweets Foreign Policy.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thanks for sharing your day with us. It is day one for the new sheriff, make that new general, charged with calming the Trump White House chaos.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just swore in General Kelly. He will do a spectacular job, I have no doubt, as chief of staff. What he's done in terms of Homeland Security is record- shattering.</s>KING: This big White House reboot comes amid big global tensions. Russia expels U.S. diplomats to retaliate for new sanctions and the White House talks tough at both China and North Korea.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll handle North Korea. We're going to be able to handle them, OK? They'll be -- it will be handled. We handle everything.</s>KING: Tensions here at home, too, as the president again criticizes his own party for failing to repeal Obamacare, and threatens to cut off payments to the health care program that covers most members of Congress. With us to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Pace of "The Associated Press," CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Karoun Demirjian of "The Washington Post," and Mary Katharine Ham of "The Federalist." We begin today at the White House, where John Kelly was sworn in as chief of staff this morning and then was praised by the president at the top of a cabinet meeting called as part of the Trump team reboot.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Overall I think we're doing incredibly well. The economy is doing incredibly well, and many other things. So we're starting from a really good base. I predict that General Kelly will go down in terms of the position of chief of staff, one of the great ever, and we're going to have a good time. But, much more importantly, we're going to work hard and we're going to make America great again.</s>KING: Setting the bar high there on day one. We all know the president wants Kelly to bring his Marine strength and his discipline to a White House operation that the boss thought was weak and ineffective in the six month tenure of Reince Priebus. But there's a bigger question. As General Kelly changes the White House culture, can he change a president who more often than not can be his own worst enemy?</s>JULIE PACE, "THE ASSOCIATED PRESS": Well, look, Trump has gone through changes before. If you look at the campaign, he went through three campaign heads. And he could go through these cycles -- if you remember the last one where Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon came in at the very end, they did go through a period of time where Trump was more disciplined, there were fewer provocative tweets, there was a little more control over his speeches. That can happen in stages. It never happens long term. And that is because this is -- this is what is known -- Trump is Trump. I really think that that is going to be the most difficult piece for Kelly. He can probably get the staff to get onboard with a new plan. He can probably bring some discipline to the order of the West Wing. But can he really keep Trump at 6:30 in the morning from putting something out on Twitter that is completely off message, or on a Saturday morning? I'm pretty doubtful about that.</s>KING: And does he view that as his job? We haven't heard from General Kelly about this yet. Does he view that as his job? Is his job also reining in the president or does he view his job as, I'm not a political guy. I don't have Washington White House chief experience, but I am a general. I do have the Marines. I'm going to restrict access to the president. You're not going to have people wondering in and out as they please. What does he -- how does he view the job?</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's more the latter. At least people who have spoken to him believe that he's going to try and just bring some order to the building and the hallways that come out of the West Wing and in to the Oval Office. And, quite frankly, now there is a long list of people who have action to walk in and talk to the president whenever they would like. He, I'm told, is going to try and bring some structure to that. I would be surprised if he tries to control the president directly, because, as Julie said, it may happen for a bit. Not going to happen for a long time. But, look, the president is not going to change in office. But I think the things around him can become a more disciplined. And if the president respects him, I think it's entirely different, because at the end he did not respect Reince Priebus.</s>KING: Right.</s>ZELENY: He viewed him as weak and he at least respects this general.</s>KING: Right. You heard the president there say he thinks General Kelly be remembered soon as one of the greats to be a White House chief of staff. Someone who gets a lot of credit in that job is Jim Baker, back in the Reagan days, who was not a Reagan guy, but he was brought in by Reagan because of his Republican establishment, his D.C. experience. Here's what Jim Baker told "The New York Times" about General Kelly. You can focus on the chief or you can focus on the "of staff." Those who have focused on the "of staff" have done pretty well. What does he mean?</s>KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, that kind of is the director for which way Kelly should be looking, right, up or down.</s>KING: Right.</s>DEMIRJIAN: Whether he can control Trump or he can control everything else. And probably it will -- it may actually help calm some of the president's more erratic tendencies if he does control everything else because as we've seen, Trump has reacted poorly every time something has emerged from the White House that he wasn't controlling the message of. So if Kelly manages to, you know, have order over everything else and -- runs a very tight ship everywhere else, maybe there will be less for Trump to react to. It's a better bet that he might be able to do that with success, because he is their boss, then he'll be able to do that managing up the chain because, again, like we've said several times, you can't really control what Trump's going to do in those early dawn hours when he happens to be awake and nobody else is talking to him right then. So -- on Twitter I mean. So --</s>KING: Right.</s>MARY KATHARINE HAM, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, the good news is, as a Marine general, he will be up at 4:00 in the morning and ready for whatever is coming. Look, I think -- I think that Trump respects him. I think he sees that he's aligned with him or it felt like he did what he wanted him to do at Homeland Security for that brief time. So those are all points in his favor. But does Trump actually want discipline -- Marine discipline in the White House? I think that's a very open question. I don't think he wants it for himself. But I think the key for Kelly would be to make things feel better for Trump very quickly and send the message like, as, I think, Bannon and Kellyanne Conway did, look, this is working for you, the change that I am making here, and that is what is going to -- if at all possible do anything for the Trump part of this.</s>KING: I think it's the "if at all possible" part in the sense that we know the president thrives on this chaos. He wants a team of rivals, team of, you know, people who fight. He has -- you know, the Steve Bannon wing is still there. A lot of conservatives think of Steve Bannon more as a Democrat. You know, his populist proposals, his protectionist proposals. The Republican establishment is gone pretty much from the White House with Reince Priebus being the last member there kicked out. But you have the New York crowd which, again, if you talk to conservatives, they view them at moderate Republicans at best, if not Democrats. Listen to Mick Mulvaney, House member, brought into the Trump White House, a conservative, former Freedom Caucus member, now the budget director. Here's his take on the big change.</s>MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: I think Reince was terribly effective, but was probably a little bit more laid back and independent in the way he ran the office. And I think the president wants to go a different direction, wants a little bit more discipline, a little more structure in there. You know that he enjoys working with generals. We have several of them in the administration who are doing extraordinary jobs and the president likes that.</s>KING: He did like the job General Kelly did at the Department of homeland Security. General Kelly came in and said, OK, let me study the laws. These are the laws. This is what I'm going to do. Obviously, illegal border crossings are down. Immigration enforcement around the country is up. That's both the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security. But what can he do in the White House? Is he going to stop Steve Bannon from walking in and out? Is he going to stop Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump from being able to wander in any way they want? Anthony Scaramucci was just hired a week ago and he caused a huge dust-up when he came in. I cannot believe, if you look at "The New Yorker" and the vulgar language Anthony Scaramucci used, or the way Anthony Scaramucci goes on TV to talk about himself as much as the president of the United States. Is Chief of Staff General John Kelly going to stand for that and can he control it?</s>PACE: I mean, this -- look, this is the question. This White House has so many different factions. And one of the things that Kelly has to -- well, there are two main things I think he's got to get his hands around here. One, he's got to get these people rowing in the same direction. I mean this idea that you have people who truly, on a day- to-day basis, are there looking out for themselves and are staffed up to look out for their own interests, that is an amazing thing. And you always have internal rivalries at a White House, but the way that this white House is functioning is really unsustainable. And then the second thing is, they do have to start focusing on policy. Health care was just this crazy thing that was happening where you had the House and the Senate pushing forward on legislation and the White House sometimes being involved, sometimes choosing to talk about other things. If Trump gets to the end of the year and Republicans haven't move forward on something like tax reform and they head into a mid-term year with not a lot really to show for it, he's suddenly going to be in a really difficult situation.</s>KING: Yes, but we can't -- I don't think we can blame Reince Priebus --</s>PACE: Nope.</s>KING: Who was not a perfect choice as chief of staff. I think most of Washington agrees on that. But he was loyal to the president. I don't think you can't blame him or Steve Bannon or Jared and Ivanka or Stephen Miller or anyone else walking in or out of the Oval Office at a moment's notice, or Anthony Scaramucci for the fact that the president tweeted and caught the chiefs of staff -- joint chiefs of staff off guard with his transgender policy. The fact that if you read the president's Twitter feed over the past month or so, he's taken probably eight, 10 or 12 positions on what should happen next in the health care debate. That's not anybody on the staff's fault. I'm not saying they don't need staff structure there. "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board put it this way, the shuffling of the staff furniture won't matter unless Mr. Trump accepts that the White House problem isn't Mr. Priebus. It's him. Does the president accept that? Is hiring General Kelly an admission of sorts -- he'll never say it publicly -- that I need help or is it just, I'm sick of Reince and I'm going to put a general there?</s>DEMIRJIAN: I think that it's probably more of the latter but not purely the latter. Look, Trump -- the issue is that Trump does not fundamentally respect Reince Priebus as much as he respects General Kelly, right? It's easier to listen to somebody who you fundamentally respect and aren't just always kind of jockeying with in your head about, are they right or am I right? And I if we -- what we've seen in all these different positions that Trump has taken is that there isn't any one person he really listening to. Sometimes he's listening to his kids. Sometimes he's listening to Bannon. Sometimes he's listening to the people that represent the GOP establishment. But there isn't one clear end voice that's actually, you know, filtering that all out, putting it in front of him that he always listens to. And so this is almost a new role that Kelly could try to occupy, if he can craft that in a way that doesn't run afoul of anything that Trump holds very dear. I mean you can't go against Jared and Ivanka all the time. That doesn't work. They're family.</s>HAM: Well, and that's the thing is, he often respects people who are outside of his family. I was talking about the original circle, that he respects them until he doesn't. And that's what worries me about this position for Kelly. And, frankly, Kelly is an extraordinary person with this incredible resume, but the White House is a very, very different environment than a military environment and, frankly, I don't want to find out that this man of extraordinary skill and honor and duty cannot move things in the right direction. I would rather find out that he can and I hope that's why Trump brought him in because he does want to listen to him.</s>KING: When there was talk that this was coming late last week, part of the conversation was that Jared Kushner saw his moment to get rid of Reince and get rid of Bannon. Bannon stays. Does somebody win here? Is this a victory for Jared in that Reince is gone? Is it only a partial victory because if you believe the New York wing, they wanted either Gary Cohen, the chief economic adviser, or Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser, they wanted one of them in, and now you get a general who I don't think is beholden to any of them?</s>ZELENY: I'm not sure if it's a win for them or not. I think it is a win for the process here, though. And I think that it's going to be fascinating to see what happens to Dan Scavino. He is someone that most people probably don't know a lot about, but he is the man who sends out lot of the messages for the president.</s>KING: Yes. Right. He's the battery in that phone.</s>ZELENY: Exactly, he's the battery in the phone. So we'll see if any of that changes. I do get the sense that there is a, you know, a hope for a new moment for the White House. A reset, if you will. I'm skeptical of it because all the issues remaining the same. The Russia investigation remains the same. The president's still furious about that. But I do think it will restore some semblance of order and, you know, that's just been absolutely absent. But we'll see. And watch Anthony Scaramucci. He's been pretty silent since last week. And I think that he realizes that he overstepped his bounds perhaps. The president believes that, we believe. So keep an eye on him as well.</s>KING: All right, first day on the job for General Kelly. A lot of big questions and we will keep on track of them. More on that issue later. But next, the world stage. The Kremlin retaliates for U.S. sanctions and North Korea's latest missile test bring as tough tone from team Trump.