fans and i guess paying customers in some respect, people who are club members to mara lago. he wants that audience, he wants that sort of adieulation. i think this is partly related to why we are getting these questions from kind of friendly outlets of they don t want to make this president uncomfortable. i think his staff is constructing it that way? let s be clear. they are not off topic questions, they are just off the topic they want to talk about. flynn is very much in the conversation. relates to the primaryish national security. the russia, north korea, challenging questions about how they are handling these key issues. they clearly don t want it. it is a reason why president trump has only talked to certain outlets in his interviews as well. one thing we did learn about flynn s conversations with the russian ambassador here in washington through adam schiff, the ranking democratic on the house intelligence committee, in addition to the phone conversations which may hav
have paid me a for thune. wolf. this was after he got word of the north korea ballistic test? he still decided to sort of drop by this wedding that was going on at mara lago? yeah, this is something that trump is used to doing during his stays there. the grand ballroom at mara lago hosts charity fund-raisers and weddings and that kind of thing. trump is in fact proutd proud of it. he added it on when he bought the club in the 1980s. he says it had to go through an intense rezoning process. he is proud to he show it off to the people there. of course it is unusual now that s the president that he would drop into type of thing. kevin, good reporting. thanks very much. the aides have now brought the pieces of paper, the statements that the president is going to read, the prime minister is going the read. they are on the lecterns right now. momentarily both men will be walking in delivering those same. jim executo it s extraordinary,
cooperation as well and they wanted that to be the focus. they know if they take two questions on general flynn that nobody is going to come out of the press conference talking about that. they clearly tried to structure it by having friend will he reporters ask questions on topic. and they are able to avoid what they would think is sort of a distracted shiny object kind of moment. and instead focus on the topic at hand. the problem becomes, at what point, if you do that all the time, and you are not doing interviews as regularly, and you haven t you are not holding a full-fledged news conference where you are asking a sweep of reporters, you are just doing these two and two events so far, at what point are you walling yourself off from reality of sort of the issues around your presidency and not be forthcoming with the american people? i think that s right. we were talking about this before. i mean, i think there is a fish bowl quality to this. how do you keep trump comfortable? i
more about how you deal with this very real threat, wolf. the north korea threat. a lot of national security experts say that is the top, the most national security threat facing the u.s. right you no. stand by clarissa, i want to get to be. kevin lip dak is our white house producer. you are there. you were there in mara laga when president trump and the visiting japanese prime minister shinzo abe, they got word that north korea launched this ballistic missile. you ran a detailed piece for cnn.com in which you explained how they got the word. the pictures we saw. it looked like they were out in the open at mara lago, the president s estate there. and some were describing it as a sort of situation room where they were discussing national security information. walk us through what you eyewitnessed. it was a little different than your situation room, wolf. it was an extraordinary moment down there in palm beach. the president hosting japanese
north korea launch as ballistic missile test and we ve seen the photographs, they are hanging out at mara lago having dinner and they are getting word of a sensitivish you like that. whether it is the papers or the phone calls, you don t do that in public. it is such an obvious call. i had a security clearance. they used to have marines that went out of the secure part of the building to make sure you didn t leave a secured document in a secured part of the building. you don t do it in be approximate. the phone calls, the conversations with the foreign leader on the most sensitive national security topic of the day. it s remarkable. unprecedented has been so overused. including in a book. a really great book. you about it raises legitimate questions about whether that s an appropriate place and with appropriate public visibility for the president of the united states to be talking about you just saw the vice president walk in. went over to the canadian delegation, shook hands