the white house announcing that president trump is inviting vladimir putin to washington for a second summit this fall. that as team trump is trying to clean up the mess from the debacle in helsinki where the president sided with putin over his own intelligence community and complimented the russian president as a good competitor. here to discuss, cnn contributor frank bruni of the new york times and cnn political analyst mr. carl bernstein. gents, good evening. frank, you have some idea what all this obsequiousness is toward putin might be about when it comes to this president. so everybody wants to know. we re baffled. tell us. what is it? i have one theory among the many theories and we use the word normalize a lot, when it
honestly. what is going on here? let s bring there now cnn global affairs analyst susan glasser. a staff writer at the new yorker, for the new yorker. maybe she can help us understand what s going on here. good evening to you, sauzusan. thank you so much for joining us. let s talk about vladimir putin. invited to washington for a second summit. are we in bizarre-o world right now? well, i have to say, listening to your opening remarks there, don, it seemed to me that the white house had really helped you out there by almost writing your lines. it s been one of those weeks that not only feels like a year, but feels like every day is filled with revelations you re having a hard time digesting and, you know, when the news came out this afternoon that the president was, in fact, having a second summit, wanted to have a second summit with vladimir putin here in washington, i thought back to march when president putin was actually invited here to the white house in march by president t
that he had russians in the oval office and kicked out his own team and let russian photographers photograph him. the media is the reason the american people know about concerning contacts the president has had with russia. god bless the free media. they asked tougher questions of vladimir putin than the president did when they were both there in helsinki. i will stand with the media if i have to decide who is the bigger patriot. more breaking news, president trump moves to invite president putin to washington for a second summit as damage control efforts continue after the first summit. and as the white house reverses itself on russia s offer to interrogate americans the homeland security chief does a reversal of her own about russia s election attempts. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they took care of everything a to z. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that s a privilege.
to reject the proposal. let s go to our senior congressional correspondent monita rajpal. a lot of outrage on this. criticism has been building all week long after the president s summit with vladimir putin this week. republicans and democrats joining in the chorus of criticism about the president s comments keeping open that option yesterday of allowing americans to be questioned by russians. when i had a chance to ask members of congress about this they pushed back very strongly foreshadowing that 98-0 vote that occurred on the floor of the senate expressing the opposition to any idea like this coming just moments after the white house reversed course and said that they no longer were open to that idea. when i asked senator lindsey graham about the idea this is what he said. naive and absurd. there is no rule of law in
this second summit that the president has planned with putin in the fall over at the white house, he didn t know about it until a reporter asked him about it. what does that say to you that the director of national intelligence has to learn about a second summit in the works now with putin from the news media? it tells me we are more at risk at this upcoming mid term election than we were before because our leader, the president, is not on the same page with the person tasked with protecting us. russia attacked our democracy this past election. when your home is burglarized you don t invite the burglar to dinner. you put in a home security system. we should not be inviting president putin to dinner at the white house, to have a visit at the white house especially during the season of our mid term elections. it is incumbent that we are not helpless. we have a congress that can stand up to this president. today in the house intelligence committee we had an open hearing. ranking member