Would eventually end in disgrace for impeachment for obstruction of justice. Inside politics, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. Welcome to inside politics. Im jon king. To our viewers, thanks for sharing your sunday. President trump is back home from a debut International Trip that left key allies frustrated, but that mr. Trump labbels a hue success. I think we hit a home run no matter where we are. Were thrilled, getting back on the big plane and heading back to washington and the United States. It is a consciousal week ahead. He promises a decision this week on where to withdraw United States from the paris climate accord. That was the subject of a fierce debate on the trip and it is a subject of a fierce debate within the trump inner circle, first though, the president s mounting frustration with the cloud over the white house. The president vents to friends that the russia meddling investigation is in his view, out of control and there are white house meetings today, a sunday, as the president said to be mulling big staff changes and hiring muhr lawyers. The president s own conduct is investigation. Now, we know so rngs too, is the conduct of his soninlaw and top adviser, Jared Kushner. Hes among several loyalists whose russia contacts alarmed u. S. Intelligence officials frequently, individuals who go alo along a tremendoussonnous path dont realize until it gets to be a bit too late. My radar goes up early when i see certain things when i know what the russians are trying to do and i dont know whether or not the targets of their efforts are as mindful of the russian intentions as they need to be. Abby phillip of the Washington Post, jeff zellany, michael warren. Is this a little odd, but odka or is this the act of someone, someone on a tremendoussonnous path. They meet with russias ambassadors to the United States in december. Kushner proposes a secret back channel so the two can pom pair notes. Barack obama is still president. Tensions with the kremlin are high. Kushner says this needs to be b hush hush and the Washington Post says the Russian Ambassador told his bosses in moscow kushner proposed using russian diplomatic facilities for these calls so that u. S. Intelligence agencies would have a harder time eavesdropping. That is the question the president came home to. His soninlaw, one of his closest aides, a person whos supposed to be involved in policy, keeping the trains on track at the white house, how do they explain this . Jared kushner meetings with the Russian Ambassador he did thot disclose, now this idea of a back channel that some say frankly is unamerican. How theyre trying to explain it is theyre meeting at the white house this afternoon to try and figure this out. Its naive at best. Even though he was a private sipt senne, this is not a business deal. Not establishment people, but people who have been in this town, why did they do that. Theres also not been a full accounting of all the meetings that jared and all the others had with the russian officials. This could have been dealt with weeks and months ago, but it hasnt, so now, they are sort of stuck with this, but the whole specter of russia was hanging over the p president. His silence about it. Hes afraid to talk about this investigation. It had european leaders wonderfing why is is he being s silent about russia. Is he going to stand up to putin here, so, i think that the you know, Jared Kushner was always sort of the invincible one to the president. If he did anything or thot, we dont know, but its a huge problem. If he did anything or not, its a key point. Congressional investigations four months into a presidency thats had a cloud from day one, its getting thicker, not liger. When the president came back last night if you didnt notice, when he landed, he was reminded this isnt going away. Mr. President , did jared set up a for russia . Go ahead. How typical is this for the Trump Presidency . Every time they have a good political moment, neil gorsuch, most of this trip overseas, theres Something Else, you have Something Else they werent clear on or werent entirely truthful on that seems to interrupt it. This is a real problem. An ongoing problem. You wonder at what point do the staff and does the president break from this sort of constant barrage of scandal after what ought to be a good news cycle friday. Its also a problem because some of the explanations dont pass the smell test. Back channel communications. Why do you do track two diplomacy in the first place . To keep it from the b public. Not the executive branch. Talking about is syria. Thats because you dont want politics to get involved. So, if youre going to set that up, why do it in a way where the fbi, the cia, all the Intelligence Community cant hear what youre doing. That doesnt really, thats not how it works. Also, the fl low up meeting a raising a big question. It was with the head of which in russia means outside economy banks and they do Foreign Investments to benefit the russia state and they manage the state pension funds. And theyre under sanctions and the guy has a history as fsb. Hes not a military guy to talk about syria. None of these things seem to match up if its an innocent meeting just because they want to do a better job in the middle east. Whos at that early december meeting . Mike flynn, who has a very interesting relationship, with the u. S. Intelligence community and sort of intelligence infrastructure and you know, does raise those questions. Michael hayden was on with Michael Smerconish yesterday. To that point, he is of the opinion now this is just stupid in the sense that because of mike flynn perhaps talking to kushner, kushner decides we cant trust the obama people, so lets have this back channel communication. Heres general haydens take. Is this nefarious or nigh ef ta . Im going with nigh ef ta and thats not particularly very comforting for me. I mean, what manner of ignorance, chaos, human being rouse, suspicious, contempt, would you have to have to think that doing this with the russian am babassador was a good or an appropriate idea. Yeah, i mean, it seems like a couple of things going here. Both kushner and a lot of people close to this president have never seeped to really grasp what they lack in terms of their understanding of how things work in washington. How diplomacy works, how Foreign Policy works. And so, they charge forward in the transition and elsewhere, doing things without really con stult sulting with people who did know. And the question of why does the white house not create some kind of narrative around these meetings to help explain their side of the story, you know, one of the things i constantly worry about is how much does the president know about what happened around him during the transition and during the campaign. And its hard for him to understand this russia investigation, why it exists in part because some of these things he may just be learning about himself b and he thinks its all overblown, but if he doesnt have a full understanding of the picture here, its hard for him and his staff to figure out what can they say to make this make sense. For the rest of the country. And its you know, it seems like theyre going down a tunnel. Not really even knowing what is ahead of them. And they do know though. Kushner knows and to karens point, if you wanted to just say look, we wanted to get off the ground on day one run ining so wanted to open this channel of dmun communications with the russian bs so it doesnt take weeks and months to get to know each other, then dont disclose all the meetings. Explain why you met with former spy who now runs a bank whos close to putin whose job is to move money around and hes under sanctions. Hillary clinton recalled this week, she was the student speaker at wellsly college 49 years later in 1969, the it was richard nixon. She did thot say this by accident. We were furious about the past president ial election. Of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice. After firing the person running the investigation into him at the department of justice. The Democratic Base loves that. They loved that. We dont know where this is going, but the cloud does have the president meeting today with his legal team. The senior staff m coing in on a sunday after an International Trip where everybodys tireded to talk about a staff shake up. The president s mad, hes venting, he thinks his staff isnt doik a good job. How serious does this talk of a major white house staff shake up . Its pretty serious. More serious than its been at any other point up until now, but there are limited options. A, there are not a lot of people in washington who are eager to go inside and work there. B, theres still a sense of you know, division inside the west wing here. Everyones not on the same page, but one of the things i was seeing when trefling over the last week with the president , the administration is not clear on its policy toward russia. On thursday b i believe it was, the chief economic adviser said the president didnt know his view on russian sanctions. That sort of created a bit of an uproar. The next day, he said of course he knows hes going to leave them as they are or strengthen them. The policy toward russia has been muted or confused by all of this and i think until the president sort of realizes that this investigation is serious, not fake new, not sore loser democrat, i think thats a huge challenge. If wrou talk to a lot of democrats who are eager to do the right thing, not sure how helpful it is to this process to have secretary clinton out there doing this. That injects politics into it and this is much more serious. Joined her from republicans is going to be well the only president who was impeached, to that point, you read all these accounts of the potential white house staff shakeup. You take a crisis team, you have a government team. If youre asking about Health Care Policy or tax reform, you talk over here. If youre talking about monica luns ski, Something Like that in the Trump White House now. If you see these stories, they want to follow the clinton model. Clinton got humiliated and impeached. This white house is fixated op this idea that this is a pr problem, which it is not. It is a real thing. The source of a lot of their grief has been the president himself, so theyre working hard to try to figure out how do we restructure the press office and Communications Job to deal with these inquiries to communicate better. At the end of day, thats only a part of the b problem. T not the full picture and the clinton model was in part successful in a limited sense because they actually had policy to kind of go back on. But they had some sort of track record of governing, where as this white house is really struggle iing to get their feet under them in terms of real policy and real agenda items they want to put out there. They had an economy, wooem see what happens to your point about a nineday International Trip, no press conference from president of the United States, no tweets either. So he seems to be listening to the attorneys. Up next, a public break with other Global Economic powers. The president s trip was trademark trump and left key allies worrieded. A reminder, this is memorial day weekend here in the United States. Its about much more than the beach or backyard barbecue. Sfx engine revving silence . Where each drop was formulated to be smarter. Even smarter than that. So if a color didnt go on evenly, it would balance itself out to reveal its truest, richest state. If a paint could realize the fullest potential of any color. You have to wonder. Is it still paint . Aura interior from benjamin moo®e. Only available at independently owned paint and hardware stores. If you have a garden, you know weeds are lowdown little scoundrels. With roundup precision gel®, you can finally banish garden weeds without harming precious plants nearby. So draw the line. Just give the stick one click, touch the leaves and the gel stays put killing garden weeds to the root with pinpoint precision. Draw the line with roundup precision gel®. And be sure to check out roundup® with sure shot wand. Another goodforthegarden product from roundup. Oh no, looks like somebody needs a new network. When i got this unlimited plan they told me they were all the same. Theyre not. Verizon has the largest, mostreliable 4g lte network in america. Its basically made for places like this. Honey, what if it was just us out here . Right. So, i ordered you a car. Thank you. You dont want to be out here at night cause of the, uh, coyotes. Ok, thanks, bud. Bye. Be nice to have your car for some shelter. Bye. When it really, really matters, you need the best network and the best unlimited. Just 45 per line for four lines. It should no longer surprise anyone that President Trump is different and disruptive. Still, it was fascinate tog watch the trump effect these past nine days. He sees it as a big win. Saudi arabia to israel to nato to the g7. We made extraordinary gains on this historic trip. To advance the security and prosperity of the United States, our friends and our allies. Monitoring the president on twitter, hes repeating this that this morpg, saying it was hard work, but great progress from the yit, but a rot of grumbling on the style and substance. Yesterday in italy, the president refused to sip on to a communique, so the g7, the leaders of the worlds biggest economiesished a statement while noting the United States is still debating whether to walk away. The president tweeted he will make that decision this week, he was heavily lobbied on the trip by the pope and other World Leaders to stay in the paris accord. His chief economic adviser, listen here. If he were standing here, he would tell you he feels much more knowledgeable an the views today. He came here to learn and get smarter, to hear peoples World Leaders views. Its interesting. Number one, they wouldnt do these briefings on camera. Part of the new white house media strategy. Number two, does the president take that as a plus, he came here to listen, to learn, to get smarter. Hes evolving. It sounds like the president came here not knowing what he believed and is is still searching. Which is it . Yeah, its hard to see, hard to know how hes going take that, but its a common thing with his aides describing him as someone whos constantly evolving on terrorism, islam. The paris climate agreement. If hes tired of it, he hasnt said so. The message has not been delivered to staff to stop characterizing him in that way. And but i think its also true in the sense that trump is actually learning about these things and remarkably is going to have to make up his mind in a very short amount of time based on information, some of which he is just internalizing, so thats a lot to ask of him. In some ways, theres a lot of people hoping theres a certain inertia where the existing policy is so hard to get out of and causes so many other problems, it makes it harder for him to make a decision. Almost certain to announce we believe that he will withdraw from this climate accord. People would be very surprised if he had been doing anything by that. But that is sort of interesting. Just b wonder why he didnt say so. This evolving and learning is interesting. One thing i was struck by on this trip, he said in saudi arabia, i do not come here to lecture you, but in fact, in brussels at headquarter, he was indeed lecturing the u. S. , the alliances. A monarchy with a horrible human rights record that has not kept his promises, but he did come to lecture nato. We dont know if any of this will work. Maybe it will. I think we have to keep an open mind in terms of his ability to unite the arab world around the fight against extremism. Its a huge challenge. No one has been able to do it, but lets be an open mind. But the whole lecturing idea, the trip started off in a positive way. The skept advertise m toward him and his administration, he did nothing to reset that. America first agenda was out front there, but second part of the trip so interesting. In terms you mentioned they dont have a clear russia policy, theyre back and forth. The paris climate accord, he said he was against them. Theyve had meetings and hes had cabinet secretaries go on television because they think thats the best way to lobby the president. Now, the pope says stay. Listen to the italian Prime Minister saying we need American Leadership if we want india, china, the countries with the developing economies who are using more and more carbon, if we want them to pay attention, we need the americans on board. We have simply taken note of the fact that six out of the seven countries fully confirm the commitments taken under the paris agreement. Its very difficult to have an uncertain position on the part of the most important economic power in the world. This was among the many complaints. You were on the trip. I was emailing and texting with diplomats and representatives that where is the American Leadership, take a position. They disagreed with president bush quite a bit. This is going to happen. There are going to be disagreements. He told them where he stood. They thought he had too much swagger, but he explained his positions. The uncertainty is driving some theuts. Sxwl. Sure, but you have to remember were talking about donald trump here. Hes not a guy to join a group. American leadership is is not going to be linking arms with my allies even though theyre not paying enough defense money into nato. Hes going to take the time he needs to separate himself so people, we are paying attention now to the decision he makes. Its like iran choosing with team hes going to go to. I know thats a joke, but it