GWEN IFILL: A huge government data breach, the Confederate flag debate goes national,
the presidential campaign goes ballistic, and the Iran talks go nowhere.
We'll catch you up tonight on Washington Week.
As the Confederate battle flag comes down in South Carolina -
SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY (R): (From video.)
It is a great day in South
Carolina.
(Cheers, applause.)
GWEN IFILL: - a fresh debate flares on Capitol Hill as Democrats work to remove the
symbol from most federal property.
REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): (From video.)
Had this Confederate battle flag
prevailed in war, I would not be standing here today as a member of the United States
Congress.
I would be here as a slave.
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): (From video.)
I do not want this to become some
political football.
It should not.
GWEN IFILL: Too late.
As the Iran nuclear negotiations move into the final stages in Vienna -
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: (From video.)
The stakes are very, very high.
We will not rush, and we will not be rushed.
SENATOR BOB CORKER (R-TN): (From video.)
I'm glad that they're not trying to meet some
artificial deadline.
GWEN IFILL: - will any deadline ever hold?
And on the campaign trail, war chests grow, and Donald Trump and his tough stand on
immigration become the issue du jour.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
More people are in this country right now illegally than
ever before.
I will build a better wall, and I'll build it for cheaper.
And Mexico will pay.
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): (From video.)
The first rule of politics when you're in
a hole is stop digging.
Somebody needs to take a shovel out of Donald Trump's hands.
GWEN IFILL: As the leading Democrat seizes on the disarray to tar the entire field with
the same brush.
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: (From video.)
I don't care how many - how
many people running for president on the Republican side try to demean immigrants, insult
immigrants, cast aspersions on immigrants.
GWEN IFILL: Is the Trump factor hurting the GOP?
Covering the week, Susan Davis, congressional correspondent for USA Today; Yochi
Dreazen, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine; and Karen Tumulty, political
reporter for The Washington Post.
ANNOUNCER: Award-winning reporting and analysis.
Covering history as it happens.
From our nation's capital, this is Washington Week with Gwen Ifill.
Once again from Washington, moderator Gwen Ifill.
GWEN IFILL: Good evening.
Less than 24 hours passed between the revelation that more than 21 million federal
personnel records had been hacked - six times as many as previously disclosed - and the
obviously forced resignation of the woman who led the Office of Personnel Management.
It's a breach even the FBI director described as potentially dangerous.
John Harwood joins us on this developing story.
John, why are we learning of the scope of this breach now?
JOHN HARWOOD: Well, I think OPM gradually, as they took stock of what had happened by
these hackers, who have been - it's been suggested they're the Chinese, but the
administration has not publicly accused them - I think they recognized that it was much
bigger than they said.
And that's one of the reasons why Katherine Archuleta had to leave, because you had
Democrats and Republicans on the Hill questioning both competence and their
straightforwardness, whether they told the full story early.
And once the news came out that it was 22 million people, it was - the writing was on
the wall.
It was clear she had to leave.
GWEN IFILL: Just yesterday she was on a conference call with reporters where she said,
I'm not going anywhere.
And that was always a sure sign, I suppose, that you're about to be pushed out the door.
What happened in between?
JOHN HARWOOD: Well, I think the pressure from people like Mark Warner, a Democratic
senator from Virginia; Barbara Mikulski, a Democratic senator from Maryland -
GWEN IFILL: It should be said he has a huge federal workforce in his - in his state.
JOHN HARWOOD: Exactly.
Both Virginia and Maryland are chock-full with federal workers.
When you had prominent Democrats, members of the president's party, saying that she
needed to go, saying that this had been an outrageous violation, I think she finally got
that signal that wasn't expressed on the conference call.
In the White House today at the briefing, Josh Earnest said it was quite clear that new
skills were needed.
That is a sign that the White House was not a bystander in this.
They wanted this change made.
GWEN IFILL: We have heard 21 million this time, maybe 4 million earlier this year.
Do we know anything yet about the sensitivity of the data that was breached and who was
affected and who caused it?
JOHN HARWOOD: Well, we know that it was not only federal workers, but also family and
friends of federal workers.
The exact identities of which people were affected aren't known.
At the press briefing, a reporter asked Josh Earnest, I've applied for a security
clearance to get my White House pass; was my data compromised?
And the answer was, well, you'll find out fairly soon because notices -
GWEN IFILL: I love reporters.
What about me?
(Laughs.)
JOHN HARWOOD: Exactly.
Notices are going out.
It is believed that this was not an attempt to reap economic advantage, but more in the
realm of traditional intelligence.
And that may contribute to how the White House responds to it.
But I talked yesterday to a Republican member of Congress who said the administration
needs to be more out front, publicly calling out China for this.
GWEN IFILL: And who is responsible?
You talked - you mentioned China, but they're not really saying it's China.
Is there a reason for that?
JOHN HARWOOD: I think the - for diplomatic reasons, unless you have an ironclad case
you don't want to say.
Then also once you do say, that propels forward some responses that you may not have
decided you're sure that you want to take.
GWEN IFILL: OK. John, thanks a lot.
JOHN HARWOOD: You bet.
GWEN IFILL: And thanks for letting us borrow your digs for a little while.
Congress has been wrestling with a lot of issues lately - highway funding, education,
encryption technology, judicial nominations - but what broke through yesterday was
spurred by an incident hundreds of miles away: the murder of nine black churchgoers in
Charleston South Carolina, which inspired the state to finally today lower the
Confederate battle flag that flew on state grounds outside the capitol in Columbia.
SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY (R): (From video.)
This is a story about action.
This is a story about the history of South Carolina, and how the action of nine
individuals laid out this long chain of events that forever showed the State of South
Carolina what love and forgiveness looks like.
GWEN IFILL: The debate reached Washington after Republicans sought to change a
Democratic amendment that would have banned the display of Confederate flag symbols from
most federal property.
Democrats, keeping one eye on the South Carolina state legislature debate that was
occurring at the same time, pushed back.
REPRESENTATIVE BARBARA LEE (D-CA): (From video.)
This is simply outrageous.
It's past time for our nation to get serious about putting away not only these hateful
symbols, but ensuring liberty and justice for all.
It's past time to take it down.
GWEN IFILL: House Speaker John Boehner said he was ready for a conversation, but not
yet for a vote.
Sue, was this a distraction or was it an example of how Congress really works these days?
SUSAN DAVIS: It was a little bit of a distraction.
I think that there's far more consensus in Congress on the restrictions on the
Confederate flag than the rhetoric and the debate on the floor would have had you suggest.
What Republicans were trying to do is they passed by voice vote, with no opposition, new
restrictions that would codify standards to ban flags - Confederate flag uses on
gravesites that are on federal lands, concessions, and banning any kind of federal
funding to purchase flags.
No opposition.
What happened was a bloc of Southern Republicans brought to the attention of leadership
that in 10 states in the South there's something called Confederate Memorial Day.
It is an official holiday recognized in these states in which it's a tradition often for
descendants of soldiers that served in the Confederacy to put small Confederate flags on
the graves.
Under existing Obama administration policy, it is allowed to be done only on that day
and are supposed to be taken down as soon as possible.
A group of Republicans wanted to at least have a vote to say that that could still
occur, that that would not be banned.
I think Republicans clumsily handled the matter.
I don't think that they consulted with Democrats on the intention of the amendment.
And it opened up a party who is - quite frankly has some weaknesses when it comes to
racial policy matters and race relations, and I think Democrats saw this as an
opportunity to hit Republicans where they're weak.
But I do not think that the intention of what they were trying to do was in any way
different than what the position of the Obama administration on what the usage and the
federal usage of the Confederate flag should be.
GWEN IFILL: So the Democrats, when they came to the floor and in their victory lap
afterward, said, listen, this was a secret midnight attempt to undermine our attempt to
kill the Confederate flag symbol.
And Representative Ken Calvert, who is a Republican from Virginia -
SUSAN DAVIS: California.
GWEN IFILL: - California - who is considered to be behind it.
But that's not as shocking, not the way it actually played out.
SUSAN DAVIS: It was shaped as sort of this in the dark of night, decision was made.
And when you talk to supporters of this amendment, they thought it was going to fail.
They thought that it would not happen anyway.
The Republicans who come from these states wanted to represent the interests of their
states, where this is still an official holiday.
And they felt that it was done without a voice vote, and they wanted to be - to go on
the record about this issue.
It was not, I think, as pernicious as maybe some of the allegations on the floor were
lobbed at Republicans.
The White House in particular, Josh Earnest had really harsh statements about House
Republicans, suggesting that it was a party that had long trouble with race relations.
And I think is what forced John Boehner, the speaker of the House, to just pull the bill
from the floor, say we have to defuse this situation, we have to have a broader
conversation, and we need to find a way that we can vote on this, because our intention
is not racist, it is not meant to demean anything that happened in Charleston.
And he is on the record opposing the use of the Confederate flag, as are most leaders of
the Republican Party.
GWEN IFILL: Well, let's - I want to get back to what John Boehner will do about this,
but I want to ask Karen about this for a moment because it wasn't just Josh Earnest who
decided, ah, an opportunity to link all of these things together.
It was also Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton and also - well, actually, where
are Republicans on the Confederate flag debate?
Where have they been, Republican candidates?
KAREN TUMULTY: Well, actually they're - you know, they have
sort of gone into it warily.
But you have, for instance, Jeb Bush first saying, you know, they should do the right
thing - I did the right thing in Florida when I brought it down - but then saying more
explicitly it should come down.
GWEN IFILL: But then you also have people - actually a Democrat like Jim Webb saying,
hey, it's a symbol, right, and deciding that it was OK.
KAREN TUMULTY: And you do have a number of them arguing that this is something that
should be just left up to the states.
But I think that the tide of sentiment on this has been so stunning that, you know,
again, I think pretty much everybody is now pointed in the same direction.
GWEN IFILL: Now, Sue, this isn't just about flags.
It's also about other Confederate symbols, including right in the Capitol, behind us,
there are statues.
There are other ways of commemorating the Confederacy.
Is there any discussion underway about those?
SUSAN DAVIS: There is.
But what's interesting about that is the symbols of the Confederacy that exist in the
Capitol, it really is a statehouse issue in some ways.
The Mississippi flag is the only flag left in the union that still uses the emblem of
the Confederate flag.
There's an effort - Bennie Thompson, who's a Democrat from Mississippi, has introduced a
resolution requiring the flags to come down in the Capitol.
But changing the Mississippi state flag is something that the state legislature's going
to have to talk about when they come into session next year.
I don't believe they come back in until January.
And then there's also statues.
And for one example, in the state of Ohio they have already voted to remove one of their
statues, who's a former lawmaker who was anti-Abraham Lincoln, who was pro-slavery.
They are taking his statue out and they're going to remove it, and they're putting in a
statue of Thomas Edison.
And that is supposed to happen as early as later this year.
So there are certainly efforts afoot to take what states have seen as maybe hurtful
symbols of the Confederacy or their state's past and replace them.
But there are members who are nervous about maybe just trying to blanket remove maybe
somewhat ugly history of the - of the country's history.
GWEN IFILL: And lucky John Boehner has to figure a way to get an interior
appropriations bill - which is by the way what this was all about - through without that
attached to it.
Thanks, Sue.
Democrats didn't hesitate to link the fight - flag - as we were saying, over the flag
over the other debate, another debate about intolerance.
In the end, two themes dominated this week's 2016 campaign maneuverings.
One was money.
Jeb Bush raised a lot.
The other was Donald Trump.
DONALD TRUMP: (From video.)
If somebody's an illegal immigrant, they shouldn't be here
at all.
There shouldn't be any crime.
They're not supposed to be in our country.
GWEN IFILL: That is, of course, technically true, but Trump has refused repeatedly to
back away from his contention that these undocumented residents are mostly criminals.
And by doing that, he has put Republicans in a bind.
Jeb Bush called it a weird little controversy.
FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR JEB BUSH (R): (From video.)
This is a bizarre kind of idea,
that somehow you can have an affection for people in a different country and not think
the rule of law should apply.
This is ludicrous.
GWEN IFILL: Other candidates tried to distance themselves.
OHIO GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH (R): (From video.)
I'd like to honor Reagan's 11th
Commandment of not attacking fellow Republicans.
FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR GEORGE PATAKI (R): (From video.)
I was outraged and
repudiated Donald Trump's comments about Mexicans.
SENATOR TED CRUZ (R-TX): (From video.)
And I commend him for shining a light on an
issue that the Washington cartel doesn't want to discuss.
FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: (From video.)
I'm very disappointed in
those comments, and I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and with the
Republican Party for not responding immediately and saying: enough, stop it.
GWEN IFILL: By the end of the week, Republicans were not debating whether Trump was
hurting the party but how much he was, and more important what, if anything, can be done
about it.
Karen's been keeping track.
What, if anything, can be done about it?
KAREN TUMULTY: Not a lot.
The problem here is that, you know, Donald Trump
thrives on two things, controversy and attention.
So to sort of push back on him is to do exactly what he is looking for.
The second thing is he is tapping into a real, genuine anger, and you know, unease about
illegal immigration in his party.
And this is - we're in primary season.
The real thing that they're worried about is not that he stays in the race and does this
- although they are worried about that - but that he leaves the Republican Party, takes
all his money, and wages an independent campaign, runs as a third-party candidate.
As one prominent Republican told me, the thing everyone's afraid of is that he's going
to go Ross Perot on us, which of course refers to the third-party candidate who a lot of
Republicans think, you know, cost them the White House twice.
GWEN IFILL: Well, OK, let's think about that for a moment.
Donald Trump is not without his fans.
And in fact, this weekend in Arizona he's got - a lot of people are lining up to see him.
They cannot wait, in spite of the fact that the senator from that state has been like,
whoa, could you just stay away.
KAREN TUMULTY: Right.
(Laughs.)
GWEN IFILL: Republican senator, I should point out.
So what is it that Donald Trump is tapping into?
KAREN TUMULTY: Donald Trump is tapping into, I think, a sense - and again, if you look
at the polling, and even polling among Republicans, most Americans and most Republicans
and even most Republicans who call themselves conservative Republicans think that for the
illegal immigrants who are currently in this country, there should be some pathway to
giving them a legal status, even citizenship.
But there is a part of the Republican base that, you know, feels uneasy, both about what
they see as, you know, too many people coming across the border, but also the fact that
sort of the whole system is out of control, that there is - there's an economic unease
that goes along with this as well.
So this is a small, but very vocal and powerful part of the Republican base.
GWEN IFILL: You wrote a story in The Washington Post about the head of the Republican
National Committee calling Donald Trump and telling him to kind of tone it down, which
Donald Trump immediately said that's not what he said, he said - or whatever.
So what really happened this week between the leaders of the Republican Party
and Donald Trump?
KAREN TUMULTY: Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee,
called Donald Trump and they had a phone conversation.
And depending on who you're listening to - Donald Trump said it was very brief; we were
told that it was 45 minutes in duration - Donald Trump first said, you know, he was
calling to congratulate me.
But he then called one of our reporters, Bob Costa, and acknowledged that, yes, at the
end of the conversation he was asked to tone it down.
But he says, you know, I've got to be me.
GWEN IFILL: I wonder if he keeps his timer only when someone else is speaking and that
when he's speaking he doesn't count.
That could be what the issue is with the timing here.
OK, I want to talk to you about another big piece of the political story this week, and
that's money.
Jeb Bush raised money in the first two weeks of his campaign at the rate of $8 a second,
and he ended up with $114 million in the first quarter.
That's a - and including his super PAC money, right?
KAREN TUMULTY: This is on a scale that we have never seen fundraising before, and it
speaks in part to his abilities and his network as a fundraiser.
But what it really talks to, what it really speaks about, is the new rules for raising
money because most of this money was not given directly to his campaign in regulated
amounts.
Of this ($)114 million, ($)103 million was given to his super PAC.
And these are these outside organizations, unregulated amounts of money.
And so what we are basically - this is the, you know - this is the biggest number we've
seen, but everyone who's a serious contender in this race is coming in with
some very big numbers.
GWEN IFILL: So how does that compare to what we know about what Hillary Clinton and her
associated friends have raised?
KAREN TUMULTY: At this point it looks like Jeb Bush was raising money about 1 1/2 times
as fast as she was.
It looks like he's going to have more than twice as much cash on hand in the early going
as the second-biggest fundraiser in the Republican race that we know of so far, which is
Ted Cruz.
People are expecting Marco Rubio to come in at maybe ($)30 million.
Again, these are sums that -
GWEN IFILL: Why is it that that amount of money raised at that fast a clip isn't
scaring other people out of the race?
It seems like we still are getting new candidates every week.
KAREN TUMULTY: Because all you really need to do is find a few people who are willing
to give up half the price of a yacht this year and you're in.
GWEN IFILL: Half the price of a yacht would be ten times the amount I would ever give
to a president, any kind of campaign, but that's just because I haven't got it.
Thank you, Karen.
(Laughter.)
Finally tonight, the waiting game in Vienna continues as deadline after deadline passes,
the latest just today.
Secretary of State John Kerry, broken leg and all, wavers between optimism and pessimism
as he attempts to broker a nuclear agreement with Iran.
So far, no dice.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: (From video.)
We are not going to sit at the
negotiating table forever.
We also recognize that we shouldn't get up and
leave simply because the clock strikes midnight.
GWEN IFILL: Earlier this week the president put the chances of reaching a deal with
Iran to avoid additional sanctions by curbing its nuclear program at, quote, "less than
50/50."
In Congress, pessimists are growing more vocal.
SPEAKER BOEHNER: (From video.)
Iran, by all accounts, still isn't serious about
abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
When will the president and his negotiators stand strong?
Well, I think it's time for the administration to come back to Earth.
GWEN IFILL: Will it take yet another deadline for the final shoe to drop?
And what do deadlines matter anymore, Yochi?
YOCHI DREAZEN: At this point I think we need a different word.
I think when you set something that doesn't actually matter and is kind of aspirational,
and then you set another thing that's also aspirational and you keep doing it, "deadline"
no longer applies.
We could say "goal."
We could say "hope."
We could say something different.
What I was struck by was John Kerry kept using the phrase "artificial deadline," as if
this idea came from nowhere, it came from outer space.
It came from negotiations - dozens of hours of negotiations that first said June 30th,
then said June 9th, then June 10th, now is extended today till June 13th.
GWEN IFILL: So a deadline only matters when you have achieved what you wanted.
But if you haven't achieved it, then it doesn't matter, it's ephemeral?
YOCHI DREAZEN: Right.
And it - and it was imposed by someone other than yourself.
GWEN IFILL: What are the sticking points at this - at this stage, as opposed to this
time last week?
YOCHI DREAZEN: So they keep saying that it's just a small, couple of areas, but the
couple of areas are gigantic.
One of them is inspections.
Will Iran have to open up its military facilities to U.N. inspectors, U.S. inspectors?
The U.S. believes that military bases Iran possesses are where ballistic missile
research was done, where nuclear research was done, and they need access.
Iran is saying that they won't provide it.
The other is U.N.
sanctions on Iran also impact its conventional weaponry - so tanks, machineguns, things
that have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Iran wants those sanctions off.
The U.S. says no.
GWEN IFILL: And Iran, in fact, calls them like a web of sanctions.
They make it sound like it's a constraint that they can no longer accept.
But if they won't accept it, then why are they - what are they talking about?
YOCHI DREAZEN: We're in a weird moment right now because Boehner, others who oppose
this deal, they say just leave the table, leave the sanctions on.
The problem then is Iran continues to enrich uranium.
So if we're worried that Iran is getting closer to a nuclear weapon, when they go back
to enriching, if there is no deal, they get closer by the day to that weapon.
So this deal may be flawed, but the question of what's the alternative, nobody really
has a good answer to it.
GWEN IFILL: So when the president says, or I should say when John Kerry says that there
has been important progress made, what does he mean?
YOCHI DREAZEN: What he means is that two issues that have been in contention - one,
when do the sanctions lift.
For a while, the supreme leader kept saying - the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei -
that they have to lift the minute the deal is signed.
Now there's an agreement that they would be lifted gradually over time.
That's one area.
The other area is the enrichment level - how low it would be, the amount of enriched
uranium Iran could have.
They're closer than where they were.
The number of centrifuges Iran could operate, they're closer than where they were.
So there is measurable progress.
But these gaps that remain are not small.
These are significant.
They're big.
They're substantial.
GWEN IFILL: Sue, who in Congress is for this deal at this point?
SUSAN DAVIS: That is a very good question.
I would say on the whole you have more skeptical optimists in the Democratic Party who
want to see the president secure a deal and think, as Yochi said, that some deal will be
better than no deal, that some guarantees will be OK.
I would say from the Republicans in control of Congress - Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham who
has also been very vocal on this - they're very skeptical that a deal is going to be reached.
And if and when it does, obviously Congress recently passed a law that will give itself
a role in the approval process of this.
So if they do achieve something in the short term, we're going to see this debate flip
over to Capitol Hill where, you know, Congress said they wanted a say in this, but are
they really going to want the role to maybe try and vote this down.
GWEN IFILL: And in fact, by blowing through this last deadline, Congress gets a lot
longer, Yochi, to look at this, right?
YOCHI DREAZEN: Right.
Missing June - the July 9th actually mattered because the legislation in question was if
they had had it by July 9th, Congress got 30 days.
Congress is in recess, so functionally that meant Congress had no time.
By missing it, Congress has 60 days.
They'll be back from recess.
That means they have at least a month.
So this deadline - and again, using the word very loosely - missing it, this one
actually does have significance.
At this point, though, now that they're to July 13th or God knows when they'll keep
going, now it's just let it play.
GWEN IFILL: Now, it's just - not just the U.S. and Iran at this table.
There are also the P5 partners, other nations, European nations.
In whose interest is it to walk away?
Who's closest to just getting up and throwing their hands up?
Or are we just at this point just dealing with people who are spinning us on what is
happening in these negotiations?
YOCHI DREAZEN: The other countries that are part of this P5 and one, as you flag, a lot
of them want to go back to business with Iran.
They don't want to have to keep enforcing sanctions.
They have existing deals that were in place before sanctions.
They have deals they want to put in place now.
Russia, China, they want no part of this.
They want to go back to doing business.
Same to a degree with France.
So the U.S. to a degree, the longer this goes, the more isolated the U.S. is.
GWEN IFILL: And there is a whole lot of disincentive for actually getting something
done, and a whole lot of people poised to criticize if they do.
So yay, John Kerry, have a good time in Vienna.
Thank you, everybody.
Week two in our temporary digs.
Thank you all for hanging with us.
We're done here, but there will be more online, as always on our Washington Week Webcast
Extra, where we let down our hair a little bit and talk about all the other things that
happened in Washington that no one else is talking about.
You can catch the webcast later, tonight, and all week long at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.
Keep up with daily developments with me and Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour, and we'll
see you here next week on Washington Week.
Good night.
