Trump rails against CNN when asked about $1.776B fund

[0:00] As you're about to hear in his answer here, the president seemed clearly irritated when [0:04] he was asked earlier today why his administration says it is not moving forward with that $1.8 [0:10] billion anti-weaponization fund, as they have called it. And just to note, as you're about [0:15] to listen to this, this first exchange actually occurred before I had yet to ask the president [0:20] a question. Can you explain why you decided to drop the anti-weaponization fund? [0:26] So, I love it. I think it's so important. People were, this is a victim right here, [0:33] but not only a victim, he was also a student of it. What happened to great people, great [0:39] American people, the way they were victimized, the way they were savaged. You have suicides. [0:45] They killed themselves. They went bankrupt. They were weaponized by the Biden administration, [0:52] by a bunch of thugs, including Obama people. And like nobody's probably ever been. I mean, [0:58] I can think of maybe two instances in this country where they've had it to somewhere that extent. [1:04] I'm not even sure if it was so much. They were put in jail for long periods of time. They were [1:11] accused of things that never happened. They had prosecutors that were radical lunatics, [1:18] and their lives were destroyed. And frankly, we had a lawsuit that against us on the, you know, [1:26] on the weaponization, where the judge, a radical left judge ruled against it. [1:33] And we'll see how that all works out. But a radical left judge ruled against it. [1:38] But these people, their lives have been destroyed. Their families have been destroyed. [1:42] Many of them. I'm not just talking about a few people. Many of them. [1:46] I'm one of them. I look. They raided my house, Mar-a-Lago. That never happened. [1:53] Nobody ever thought of anything like that. It turned out that it was a total fake. [1:56] Everything about it was fake and corrupt. We have all the information here. [2:00] You know, the good advantage to sitting here is we can get information that you wouldn't get [2:04] by what we have and what we are going to be showing over the coming weeks or months. [2:09] You're not even going to believe. Some of you will believe it. [2:11] Like CNN will believe it because they knew what was going on. They're crooked as hell. [2:17] CNN is a very corrupt organization, but with a corrupt reporter standing right there. [2:23] Never smiles. She never smiles. She's a young, beautiful woman. Never smiles. [2:27] I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes. Like, [2:32] she has hatred because we have borders, because we have a strong military, [2:36] because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted. [2:41] And then we win our election in a massive landslide. We win 87% of the counties in this country. [2:48] Nobody's ever heard of a thing like that. And that's because we're doing the right job. [2:53] And we took a detour down to Iran because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon under [2:58] any circumstances. We can't let that happen. So the reporters should be happy. They shouldn't be [3:04] unhappy. They should be very happy. Because you know what we're doing? We're saving our country. [3:08] Excuse me, Mr. President. Just to clarify on what you were asked earlier, [3:11] is the $1.8 billion DOJ fund dead, or is it on hold? [3:15] It's, uh, I'd have to ask the lawyers. I don't know. I know one thing, [3:20] the weaponization. Are you talking about the weaponization fund? [3:22] Yeah, what's your decision? [3:23] The weaponization fund, uh, as far as I'm concerned, [3:27] was a beautiful thing. It was something I was, I didn't make it, [3:32] but I was, I heard that. I thought that was the greatest thing because [3:35] people like you have abused our people so badly. The fake news like CNN, [3:40] like the New York Times and like others have abused our people. [3:43] Well, Republicans are a critical of it, Mr. President. [3:44] On Capitol Hill. [3:45] Have abused our people so badly, and you should be ashamed of yourself. [3:48] You used to be a conservative. She was a conservative from Alabama, [3:52] can you believe it? But CNN, in particular, CNN does such false reporting. [3:58] But now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. I doubt it. [4:02] But it's hard to straighten garbage out. But CNN has abused, and others have abused so badly. [4:08] People, uh, these are people that are great people that would destroy. [4:13] Their families have been destroyed. Many suicides. They committed suicide. [4:17] People that went there to, with love. They went there with love. [4:21] You know, when I made that speech early in the day, uh, tremendous crowd. [4:26] I hate to say because they'll say, oh, I was wrong on the number. But [4:30] I believe it's the largest crowd I've ever spoken to by, by twice. The biggest crowd, [4:36] I think, bigger than the inauguration is bigger than anything. And [4:39] there was so much love and, and friendship. It was the most amazing thing. People were crying. [4:44] Attacks aside, the news there is the president defending this $1.8 billion fund while pushing [4:52] questions about whether or not the door is permanently shut on it to the, off to the attorneys in his [4:57] administration. He himself never said whether or not it could potentially move forward. [5:02] The fact that the administration has not done so and hasn't done so in writing, despite the fund [5:08] being actually announced in writing, has not gone far enough for some Republican members of Congress [5:14] who are now issuing fresh calls to officially kill the fund themselves. In fact, the unprecedented [5:20] use of taxpayer money has become so politically toxic that sources say many in the GOP were glad to [5:26] see the issue taken off the table by Todd Blanche, or so they thought. A brief reminder of what we [5:32] heard from the acting attorney general on Capitol Hill. Look, we're not moving forward with the fund. [5:39] We are not moving forward with the fund, period. We are not moving forward with the fund. [5:43] Not moving forward ever. Correct. We're not moving forward with the fund. [5:47] We're not moving forward with the fund. We're not moving forward with the fund. We're not moving forward with the fund. [5:52] Now, before the president's answers today inside the Oval Office, we heard from the [5:57] Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, who sounded upbeat and optimistic. [6:01] About an hour actually before the president spoke to reporters today, the Senate had voted [6:05] to move forward on a critical first step on immigration funding for his enforcement and [6:09] crackdown. [6:10] It had been held up over this exact controversy. [6:14] And it's perhaps the last major legislative win that the president will get before the [6:18] midterm elections, which are exactly five months from today. [6:22] But what the president told me today will now seem to hang over a marathon voting session [6:26] that is set to start tomorrow. [6:29] Republican leaders have been spending the night trying to calm members who refuse to back that [6:32] plan or vote for it until they know for sure that this $1.8 billion fund from the DOJ is [6:39] dead. [6:40] Just listen to two Republican senators today before you heard the president crack that door [6:44] back open. [6:46] I think even DOJ knows that this was a bad idea and what we need to do is provide finality. [6:53] We got to either eliminate it, streamline it, guardrail it. [6:56] It can't go in its current form. [6:58] And if that's the only choice we should have, we should eradicate it. [7:01] In general, I support what Senator Tillis is trying to do to make sure that the weaponization [7:06] fund is not just mostly dead, that it's truly dead. [7:09] I want to make sure it's not mostly dead. [7:11] I want to make sure it's completely dead. [7:14] Our CNN anchor and our chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju joins me now. [7:19] And obviously, not having this in writing or not, they don't seem to think, these Republicans, [7:25] which was the point of our questioning to the president today, they don't seem to think [7:28] the administration has been definitive enough. [7:30] Yeah, and this is just another example where Republicans want to pull their hair out on [7:35] Capitol Hill. [7:36] A perfectly laid plan, so they thought, until Trump comes out and says something else and [7:41] completely cuts their legs from underneath them. [7:44] I mean, remember, right before Memorial Day, before the Memorial Day recess where Congress [7:48] left town for a week, they were going to pass $70 billion in new funding for related immigration [7:53] enforcement priorities for this president. [7:55] And then they dropped this $1.8 billion weaponization fund. [7:59] That blew everything up, because Republicans wanted to rein it in. [8:02] They didn't know how to rein it in. [8:03] And they knew if they added language to this bill, it would completely derail its chances [8:09] of becoming law, because Trump would ultimately veto it. [8:11] So then Blanche says what he says, John Thune is happy, they can move forward with this bill. [8:17] And now he says to you, and he's making very clear that he's not on the same page as [8:22] Todd Blanche. [8:23] And now this critical vote is happening tomorrow over this bill. [8:26] I just want you to listen to what some of these members told me today when I asked them about [8:30] the president making it very clear that, in his mind, this is not a dead issue. [8:37] The president said that today he would not rule out this fund moving forward again. [8:42] Well, I am. [8:43] I'm ruling it out. [8:44] Does that mean that you're going to still push ahead and try to kill it? [8:46] Of course. [8:47] But to answer your question about the weaponization fund, this issue is not dead. [8:50] It's not over. [8:52] We have to fix the law. [8:54] I feel very strongly about that. [8:55] Should he say the weaponization fund is dead? [8:58] Should I say that? [8:59] Should he say that? [9:01] I think you heard from the acting attorney general yesterday. [9:04] Does that concern you, despite what Todd Blanche said yesterday? [9:07] It's kind of surprising based on what Todd Blanche said yesterday. [9:11] And that's really the question here and the concern that a lot of Republicans have. [9:16] Listen to what the president said. [9:18] If he had said what Todd Blanche said, then it would have been very easy to vote against [9:22] some of these amendments tomorrow when they come to the Senate floor. [9:25] But now that the president's keeping it open, it's going to put a lot of pressure on some [9:29] of these key swing votes. [9:30] You already heard Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy. [9:32] That's two Republicans. [9:34] Can they get two more? [9:35] Probably Susan Collins, in a very difficult race, will have a very hard time voting against [9:39] an amendment backed by Tom Tillis and Bill Cassidy to reign this in, as will others like Lisa [9:45] Murkowski, who's been critical. [9:47] Mitch McConnell, also been critical. [9:48] But the one big thing to watch for tomorrow is that because of the peculiarities of the [9:53] Senate's rules, it's possible that some of these may have to require 60 votes to be adopted [9:58] in the 5347 Senate. [9:59] It's unlikely to get 60 votes, but it's possible that some of these could be adopted by a simple [10:04] majority. [10:05] And if it's 51 votes, that's where it could be very difficult for the president. [10:09] Some of these measures could get adopted and ultimately end up and put the president [10:13] in a difficult spot where he has to decide whether to sign a bill that includes some of these [10:18] provisions. [10:19] Because even in the House, you heard Brian Fitzpatrick there telling me tonight, he's going to push [10:22] for this in the House with that narrow Republican majority in the House, perhaps they can get [10:26] that language out of there, putting the president in a difficult position all by his own making.