Wolf Blitzer looks at politics, breaking news and international stories. Historically, because a lot of our viewers will remember. When you and bob woodward were working on the watergate related stories, was president nixon as anxious publicly during your reporting as we now see this president being very anxious, deeply concerned about the Mueller Probe . First, i think what were seeing is more than anxiety on the part of donald trump. We are seeing a president who is behaving and acting unhinged. Nixon did not really publicly act unhinged, but i think we need to look at something larger. That is that in watergate, the system worked. The president of the United States did not publicly declare the press an enemy of the people and seek to undermine the First Amendment and the very legitimacy of what the press did, though he did try to make our conduct an issue, or the issue in watergate, rather than his own conduct. Can share my own personal perspective. Ive certainly received my fair sh
when the press secretary yesterday said that there was a lot of corruption within the fbi? do you have any response to those statements coming from the white house? i can assure the american people that the men and women of the fbi, starting from the director all the way on down, are going to follow our oath and do our jobs. i have a question for director coats. director coats, how would you characterize the current russian efforts to meddle in the 2018 election relative to 2016? is it more intense? do you see those efforts focused on a particular party? and in general, is the pace of those operations in any way relative to 2014, 2012, or is it more intense? relative to what we have seen for the midterm elections, it is not the kind of robust campaign that we assessed in the 2016 election. we know that through decades,
i think it s important that we address the question of the president s involvement in this, his leadership, his determination to prevent russian and other foreign influence in elections. we meet on this constantly. the senior staff here at the white house, we meet with the heads of the different agencies involved. we discuss it quite regularly. in my tenure as national security adviser, we ve had two full national security council meeting chaired by the president. as i say, countless other discussions as well. since january 2017, the president has taken decisive action to defend our election systems from meddling and interference. this includes measures to heighten the security and resilience of election systems and processes, to confront russian and other foreign malign influence in the united states, to confront such aggression through international action, and to reinforce a strong
advisers, president putin said the first issue that president trump raised was election meddling. i guess the question is, at the press conference, the president didn t highlight any of the malign activities that you have and that his advisers have. so should americans believe that he is listening to your advice or that he s going his own way when he s having meetings like he did with the president of russia? i think the president has made it abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it and that he expects them to do their jobs to their fullest ability and that he supports them fully. i believe this it either for director coats or director wray. i ll let you choose. since social media was brought up, there s a recent case with facebook, how they just shut down some 32 accounts believed potentially to be from russia. can you give us an idea, is that a large amount? is that kind of the tip of the
people around the world are watching what you are saying and the white house for the united states of america, the president of the united states should not refer to us as enemy of the people. his own daughter acknowledges that and all i m asking is you acknowledge that right here and right now. i appreciate your passion. i share it. i ve address this question. i ve addressed my personal feelings. i m here to speak on behalf of the president. he s made statements clear. the national archives told the senate judiciary committee today that they can t finish up the document collection regarding brett kavanaugh until october. that s later than the timetable that you guys, senate republicans are hoping for. any comment on that or any potential assistance that the white house can give the archives in facilitating that. we want to be as helpful as possible to turn over documents. several senators said there s over a million pages of documents to review including