A newscast reviewing and analyzing top stories of the day as they happen. That and 300 billion after that. Basically the entire u. S. Trade relationship with china. Initially on the next tranche of 200 billion, the president was thinking about Levying Attacks of 10 . This afternoon were going to learn that the president is going to up that to 25 . The belief here among his trading Economic Team that china continues to be a bad actor when it comes to trade and they need very strong influence, if you will, to try to get china to change its ways. Listen to what Sarah Huckabee sanders. The president has made some head way the e. U. In terms of lowering trade barriers, taking steps towards levelling the Playing Field. Does the president and his team believe that is possible with china without taking some real punitive measures . Wed like to see the Playing Field levelled. The president as both he and i think about 15 members of his administration have said
repeatedly, wed like to see the un
security aides. they know the bureaucratic in-fighting that s going on in washington. they know what people like pompeo stand for, what bolton stand for. i believe for kim jong-un, this is all about playing too-to-donald trump s vanity, conveying to him that you re the man. you can do the deal that nobody has been able to do before. and analysts believe kim s regime could be trying to manipulate trump s team in other ways. in its latest statement, the north koreans again slammed the u.s. for trying to bring them to their knees with sanctions. experts say that s likely kim s way of trying to pressure donald trump to lift some of the economic sanctions against north korea, because the north koreans know that china, russia and even south korea are getting less and less enthusiastic about enforcing those sanctions. wolf? brian todd reporting for us. thank you. president trump slams robert mueller ahead of his congressional testimony as democrats say those public hearings could chan
will have change attitudes as far as launching a formal impeachment procedure in the house of representatives? i think it will to answer your question, yes. i think at the end of the day, because it will shift public opinion and that is what i think the democrats have failed to do so far and getting director mueller up there, because everybody will be watching, is a good way to do that. as you know, the president today made a statement accusing mueller of deleting texts from two former fbi officials who exchanged derogatory messages about the president and the candidate. that is not true. but give us your analysis of what the president of the united states is accusing robert mueller, who is the special counsel, the former fbi director, of doing illegally? yeah, it is quite frankly it is a breach of the president s duties under the constitution. the constitution says that the president has the obligation, the solemn obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
so-called working-level diplomats, have to agree on the details and those officials haven t been able to make much progress lately. this is not something that the two heads of state are going to go into and over the course of a weekend sort of hammer out. that s just not how it works. but getting lower level talks moving again may not be easy, despite the president s affection for the ruthless dictator. and then we fell in love, okay? kim s regime continues to show little love for the president s diplomatic team. in a new statement today, the north korean foreign ministry called secretary of state mike pompeo reckless, because the state department just issued two new reports, naming north korea as one of the world s worst violators of human rights. pyongyang has called pompeo gangster like, calling john bolton human scum and a bloodsucker. they may be seeking to divide trump from his top national
insistence that it would have been wrong for him to make a determination on whether president trump committed a crime. i want to bring in our justice reporter laura jarrett and chief legal analyst job. laura, barr seemed to blame mueller for not making a decision on whether the president obstructed justice. tell our viewers what he said. well, wolf, once again, the attorney general essentially accusing mueller of falling down on the job, not reaching a decision on the question of obstruction of justice. listen to his curious answer to cbs earlier today. he could have reached a conclusion. the opinion says you cannot indict a president while he s in office, but he could have reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, but he had his reasons for not doing it, which he explained, and i m not going to, you know, argue about those reasons, but when he didn t make a decision, the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein and i felt it was necessary for us as the heads of the