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Inside Politics

Trump Attacks Female Anchor; Response to Trump's Tweet; House Vote on Immigration; Partial Travel Ban Begins Tonight; Trump Promises Surprise. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 29, 2017 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Over right now. That's it for us AT THIS HOUR. "INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate.

And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thanks for sharing your day with us.

This should be a good agenda day for President Trump. The Senate health care bill is the subject of urgent negotiations this hour. Key pieces of the White House immigration agenda are just about to be voted on in the House of Representatives. The revised Trump travel ban takes effect today and South Korea's president will be at the White House for a dinner conversation about the North Korean threat. Should be a big agenda day.

Instead, the president is using his time and his bully pulpit to add mean, sexist tweets to his rants against the news media. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski is the target of the latest offensive tweet storm. After criticizing her morning program, the president tweeted, "then how come low IQ crazy Mika, along with psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago three nights in a row around New Year's Eve and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no."

Now, Mr. Trump has a long history of attacking women by criticizing their appearance. And he did it while sitting in the White House has added to the swift repudiation, including from fellow Republicans. Kansas Republican Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins tweeted back at the president, "this is not OK. As a female in politics, I am often criticized for my looks. We should be working to empower women." "Please, just stop," was the Twitter plea of Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse. "This isn't normal and it's beneath the dignity of your office." And this from South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. "Your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America."

With us to share their reporting and their insights, Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast," Jackie Calmes of "The Los Angeles Times," Abby Phillip of "The Washington Post," and CNN's Phil Mattingly.

I think I know the answer, that this is who he is, but, why?

JACKIE CALMES, "THE LOS ANGELES TIMES": Why? I mean what is this president's obsession with women and blood? At least it wasn't about her, whatever, but it's just -- and it isn't even just about women. It's about decency and fitness for office.

ABBY PHILLIP, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I mean even if something like this were said in a private setting, I think it would still be equally shocking. That it's being tweeted out by the president of the United States in a public forum is really, I think, outrageous. I think there's no question about that. And what it seems to indicate this, and a lot of his tweets this week, is that there is a kind of personal grievance that he is fixated on that has overwhelmed everything else going on in the world. You are the president of the United States. You've got health care cooking. You've got North Korea. You've got Syria, and yet this is what is on his --

KING: In a signature campaign item. The immigration issue is before the House of Representatives today. For all the talk about, you know, no signature achievements, hasn't signed health day, this is a day where he could be talking up about getting things done, or at least moving things along. We know he doesn't like the media. We know he uses this to play to his base. Look, if he had said psycho and low IQ, that's childish. It's third grade.

CALMES: Right.

KING: You know, but this network, you know, made a mistake this week and he bounced on us, fair game. But it's the issue why does he attack a woman's appearance? If he wants to say liberal news media, or whatever, that's part of his political strategy, but what is it about this president that makes him go to attacking a woman's appearance?

JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": Because he has -- he has never changed. He is the same person that hosted "The Apprentice." He is the same person that was in Hollywood essentially for quite a wail before he was president and he never adapted to the gravitas that is necessary for this office. And, right now, we're seeing it sort of being torn down by him publically tweeting these things and, you know, continuing to be very disrespectful to women. And it's not acceptable.

And I was most shocked, frankly, by the first lady's office's response to this, which basically -- was basically, and I'm paraphrasing, he punches back harder. Well, you know what, he should be better than this.

KING: Yes, here's exactly -- here's exactly what it is. I want to get to the history of Mr. Trump in a minute, but here's the statement from the first lady's communications director. "As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back ten times harder."

There's no problem -- if he wants to counterpunch, that's his right. As, like I said, if he wants to say low ratings, failed "New York Times," you're liberals, you're biased, or challenge the facts. Actually challenge the facts of what they said about him. That's all fair game. We can debate whether it's a smart, political strategy, but that's all fair game. But the idea that Melania Trump, who went to suburban Philadelphia in the campaign, said her platform was going to be against cyberbullying, this is sexist cyberbullying from the president -- you have to stop yourself -- from the president of the United States.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean the silence from Ivanka Trump, who, a week ago said she was so shocked by how personal and mean politics have become.

KUCINICH: She has Twitter, right? We're all confident she has Twitter?

[12:05:00] PHILLIP: She has Twitter.

KING: And she -- she was talking just last week about how surprisingly vicious this town is.

KUCINICH: Right.

PHILLIP: It's amazing. And there's no real justification for it. And, you know, Sarah Huckabee Sanders also issued, you know, a comment that basically suggested that whatever was going on, or being talked about on "Morning Joe," which, by the way, is a news program, was -- had justified an attack on Mika Brzezinski's looks.

KING: She said, let me just interrupt you to say what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. "I think it is necessary to push back against unnecessary attacks on the president. I've seen worse -- far worse things come out of that show."

Look, whatever they did, whatever they did, or whoever he doesn't like, whether it's -- again -- again, there's a very important distinction here. If the president's political strategy is to beat up the media, fine, fine, that's a perfect -- and sometimes it works and it certainly plays to his base. But you can beat up the media and say what you want -- again, challenge the facts of what's being said on television, challenge the priorities of what's being said on television. If you want to go to the liberal bias card, got to liberal bias card, but why do you attack a woman based on her appearance?

CALMES: Well, and past presidents have used their aides to get out a message in their defense most of the time. You didn't see other presidents in the past doing this. I mean --

PHILLIP: Yes.

CALMES: And he's not only doing it himself, but he's doing it in such a vile way that it's -- it's, frankly, just un-presidential. That's all you can (INAUDIBLE).

KING: And we say -- and, again, I want to get to the history in a minute, but I want to hear -- I want to ask you this question, Phil, because you're spending your time on Capitol Hill these days. Can they pull a rabbit out of a hat and get the health care plan. Now they're going to try to pass immigration bills, which they'll pass in the House today. Can they get those through the Senate? When they come back in the fall, will they do tax reform? All big, hard things to do. We have an all-Republican government now.

Listen to the speaker of the House just moment ago. He's trying to talk about the House Republicans keeping their promises and passing their agenda. And, of course, he gets asked about the president's tweets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Obviously, I don't see that as an appropriate comment. I think -- look, what we're trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate and this obviously doesn't help do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: One would think if you're trying to improve the tone and civility of debates, having the president of the United States, who has the biggest platform in the world, to use -- to set a tone would help. But does it affect -- we're having this conversation. Trump voters out there are saying, you know, there they go again talking about the president. Forgive me, I'm sorry if you're a Trump voter, if you have a daughter, sit down with your daughter and see if you can have this conversation. See if you can say those things to your daughter. But does it affect getting things done?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it does. And, look, people are -- on Capitol Hill, I've heard a lot of unsolicited text messages after this tweet came out with a lot of profanity in them. It's frustration. It's exhaustion. And it's just kind of a throwing your hands up type of a moment here.

Look, they don't expect the president to be in the weeds on health care, OK? He's not going to be holding a town hall speaking for 120 minutes on high-risk pools and why they're necessary or why they matter or how they should be structured. But if he could focus just on health care and on selling the bill, that's where they want him. They know his social media presence. They know his ability to get a message out. If he could just focus on one issue, that would be helpful to the process, a very complicated, very complex process which I'd note has approval ratings in the low double digits right now.

Perhaps, more importantly, immigration. What they're doing on the House floor today are two of his biggest campaign promises.

KING: Right.

MATTINGLY: They are things that are extraordinarily important to the Republican base, extraordinarily important to the constituents in a lot of the Republican members' districts. This is something that they think they won on. They're going to have a victory lap press conference with the DHS secretary today and that's what they get asked about.

You could hear the exasperation in the speaker's voice there. And I'll say this, I hear this all the time on Capitol Hill, you guys aren't covering real policy.

KING: Right. MATTINGLY: You don't care about the real issues. You guys are a mess. And that's, I think, every reporter up here probably hears the same thing from several aides. My response to that is just to point to the tweet today. You know, talk to the guy in the Oval Office and as all of us are running around desperately trying to get details on the health care bill, tell the guy in the Oval Office to also focus on the health care bill. That's kind of the reflection (INAUDIBLE).

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: Right. This -- I -- look, I had to do this when I came in today, rip up the show we were planning to do --

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: Which was about immigration, which is about health care. We'll get to some of those issues because it's important. It's important to the American people. But this isn't some guy in a bar. This isn't some boorish (ph), sexist guy in a bar making an ass of himself. This is the president of the United States. And to the point of why members of Capitol Hill say we can't get our stuff done, why? Let's go back. Remember, he talked about -- he said Mika had a face-lift. He said she had blood. He likes to use blood when he attacks women's appearance. Let's go back into the campaign. Mika Brzezinski today, Megyn Kelly then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her -- wherever. But she was, in my opinion, she was off base.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, that was during the campaign. You might say the president was mad about one debate. But remember the "Access Hollywood" tapes. This is who he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Kiss. Kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

BILLY BUSH: Whatever you want.

TRUMP: Grab them by the (EXPLETIVE DELETED). You can do anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:04] KING: Now, we were talking a bit before we came on the air, that when you see these things you get shocked and then you say, why should I be shocked given the history. We should always -- I don't know if shocked is the right word, but we -- he's the president of the United States. You can't just say, oh, forget about it, it's Trump being Trump.

CALMES: Right. Well, and, you know, and this also comes in the same week in which a video went viral of him calling over an attractive Irish female reporter to the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and -- while he was talking to the leader in Ireland and saying how -- what a pretty smile she had, so she must be -- treat him nicely. And it's -- you know, and that went viral and I didn't get too upset about it. But it's just part of a pattern.

And I think, like this tweet is not going to be the be all and end all. It's not going to mean that he's not going to be able to get the extra Republican votes he needs on the health care bill, but it does have an impact. It is what -- it tells you that he is not changing and does Susan Collins or Shelley Moore Capito, those senators want to hitch their wagon to this president when they know they're constantly going to have to be thrown on the defense.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: And Susan Collins actually responded in a tweet to this and said something to the effect of, we all don't have to like each other, the media and -- between the media and politicians, but we need to be civil.

CALMES: Right.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: And so -- that -- for that reason, it does make it harder. Now, if she loves the health care bill, is she going to vote for it again? They -- of course she is. Does this make it harder for the president to reach out to her? Yes.

KING: It also makes it harder when she goes home. If she's going to come around from being against the health care bill to being for it --

KUCINICH: Yes.

KING: She needs to explain it to the voters back home, when she has events back home.

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: Guess what she's going to get asked about? You mentioned the Susan Collins tweet, "this has to stop. We all have a job. Three branches of government and the media. We don't have to get along, but we must show respect and civility." Hard to argue with that point.

All right, we're going to take a quick break.

Next, yes, we actually will talk about agenda items. The president may not want to focus on his agenda, but parts of the Trump travel ban take effect tonight and the House about to debate a big Trump immigration promise.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:16:30] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KELLY, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: The two bills up for a vote this week, Kate's Law: The No Sanctuary for Criminals Act will helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement uphold our nation's immigration laws and help make our communities more safe. President Trump has been clear that our borders are not open to illegal immigration, that we are a nation of laws and we will no longer look the other way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's the secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly, on Capitol Hill. A rare visit up there for him, just an hour ago, to make a key point. The House of Representatives voting today on two key immigration items that President Trump talked about in the campaign. Kate's Law, named after Kate Steinle of San Francisco, would allow courts to put tougher prison sentences on immigrants who repeatedly cross into the United States illegally and get caught, either just get caught or get caught committing offenses. It would allow judges to keep them in jail longer. The sanctuary city law would allow the federal government to deny funding and other crackdowns on cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

Phil, again, this is a day where the president should be doing handstands that a key campaign pieces of agenda are -- at least are going to make their way through the House. What's the prognosis in the Senate?

MATTINGLY: Not great. Look, they voted on Kate's Law or integration of Kate's Law in the Senate last year. There were a couple of Democrats that came -- that came over and supported that. Moderate Democrats. You're going to see Democrats I think in the House today also support this bill. So that will be a bipartisan victory for House Republican leaders. Another thing you think they would want to tout.

But there -- there are a lot of problems from some of the outside groups, particularly on the liberal side of things. On some cases the ACLU as well about the direction of these bills. Kind of the track that they take. So will this actually move forward in the Senate? Will they be able to get 60? They need eight Democrats to come over. I think that's unlikely. They can probably get three or four. So this is more, I think, and this goes back to what we were talking about, you view this more in the prism of, you're getting stuff done, at least in one chamber of Congress, that you touted, things that are likely on Steve Bannon's legendary whiteboard, things that you want to cross off.

KING: Right.

MATTINGLY: You're actually doing that right now. This should be something you should be focused on.

KING: And you get a boost out of the House and this would put a lot of pressure on those 10 so-called Trump state Democrats. Democrats who are up next year from states the president carried in the campaign. I would suspect you get a big enough bounce out of the House, it's possible.

MATTINGLY: And if you get enough bipartisan --

KING: Right.

MATTINGLY: If you get enough Democrats in the House -- and I'm not saying there's going to be a large number. There will be a few -- and then you can talk about this bipartisan vote and there's going to be a big push on it over in the Senate. If the president would talk about it and add pressure to those 10 red state Democrats, who knows what could happen.

KUCINICH: And -- but they'd have to keep all the Republicans, too, which isn't a lock in the Senate because of the criminal justice reform.

MATTINGLY: Right. True.

PHILLIP: Right.

MATTINGLY: Right.

KUCINICH: People who are for more criminal justice reform and think that this bill will just lead to more mass incarceration.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: So that's -- that's also. But, again, we're talking about policy. We're talking about, you know, a legislative strategy, which is what you think the White House would want to be talking about.

MATTINGLY: This is a fight they want to have.

KUCINICH: Yes.

CALMES: Exactly. Right.

MATTINGLY: This is something they are more than willing to go to the mat to fight and try and persuade (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIP: Right.

KING: And a fight in which, in most of the country, especially red America, he's had very solid ground.

MATTINGLY: No question.

KUCINICH: Right.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean I think this is actually a potentially good opportunity for Trump to actually wield some political influence to sell his agenda to people in the middle, maybe to moderates who I think actually -- you know, Kate's Law is something that I think Democrats are going to actually have a hard time voting against, many of them, but you don't actually see the president doing that. He's never really going out there and pushing specifics of legislation and actually making it difficult for people to vote against something that is easily explained and that -- from their perspective is easily explained.

So, you know, it's a missed opportunity here. Yesterday they also had a briefing on this at the White House that was off-camera because they insisted on having an off-camera briefing yet again this week. So they're really fumbling the ball here on some pretty, you know, straightforward efforts, political efforts, that they could get wins on.

[12:20:11] KING: To help their own boss.

CALMES: I'd like to mention that the -- the president has had these roundtables with what he calls the victims of illegal immigrants. But we -- talking about Kate's Law. Kate Steinle's parents and her brother have asked that her death not be politicized, and it seems like they could have, you know, honored that.

KING: Right, in a different way to do it, maybe.

And on the Democratic side, the House Hispanic Caucus came out early this morning. They -- a, they don't like the merits of this legislation and, b, they suggest that the Republicans are moving it now to try to show some progress because they have failed elsewhere.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D), TEXAS: They've failed to do health care. They've failed to do tax reform. They failed to work on any substantive or significant measure of legislation. Instead of doing that, because they can't do it, they instead look to pit people against each other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This is one of those classic issues, if I had the map I would show it, where if you look at especially the house, you look at all the red house districts and then you look at the blue house districts, which tend to be on the coast, in Congressman Castro's case, urban areas of Texas, this is one of those issues where in the blue parts of the country they -- you know, they say, how dare you cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities. And in the red parts of the country, they say, why didn't this happen ten years ago?

PHILLIP: Yes, but I do think that there is -- the sanctuary cities issue is, I think, more nuance than people make it out to be. I think when you explain this -- if you -- if -- when pollsters ask people about sanctuary cities and they sort of explain the broad strokes of it, there are a lot of people who identify as Democrats and a lot of independents who say, well, maybe that's not the way it should be. So it's a hard issue and it's one that I think, you know, Democrats are framing it, you heard in that clip, as pitting people against each other, which is a different way of opposing that law than saying this is not something that should happen. So I think -- Democrats have a sort of P.R. message that they want to put out about this bill and, frankly, Republicans are making it very easy for them to do that. And I think that if they really had a full discussion about this, they may have a better shot of convicting some of these moderates, especially in those Trump districts, that they might have to take a second look at a bill like that.

KING: You mean a smart, coherent political conversation about policy.

Tonight will be a big test. Starting tonight, a big test for Secretary Kelly. You saw him on Capitol Hill talking about immigration reform. The travel ban, the revised travel ban goes into effect tonight. The parts of it the Supreme Court allowed. If you're a United States citizen or a legal permanent resident, meaning a green card holder or a current visa holder, you're allowed in. The ban guidelines do -- you have to prove if you're trying to get into the country that you have a relationship, a bona fide relationship the Supreme Court said, with a parent, spouse, child, but you can ban -- you can ban people who do have family relationship. Grandparents are not covered by this. Aunts and uncles aren't covered by this. There was a big question about, you know, the way they rolled it out the first time, then it got blocked by the courts. Now we're going to see -- they're going to get a chance to implement this and we're going to see, do we expect protests? Do we expect debate?

KUCINICH: I think you can expect protests because there are ACLU and some other groups that are going to make political hay of this. Whether there's going to be the mass confusion at the airports that we saw when this first went through, that doesn't -- that -- we're not hearing that that's going to be an issue like it -- like it was.

KING: The challenges for the department to decide. And I think deciding that bona fide relationship thing is going to be the interesting question (INAUDIBLE) --

KUCINICH: Particularly with refugee groups.

KING: Yes, for the Department of Homeland Security.

All right, everybody, sit tight. Up next, is the Senate health care bill back on track? Well, depends who you ask.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:36] KING: Welcome back.

If you asked the president, the health care plan, Republican leader Mitch McConnell wouldn't bring to the floor in the Senate, it's back on track.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Health care is working along very well. We could have a big surprise with a great health care package. So, now they're happy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you mean by big surprise, sir?

TRUMP: I think you're going to have a great, great surprise. It's going to be great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The Chicago Cubs there if you didn't get that one.

But asked around the Senate this morning and you get a lot of eye rolling and a few signs of key division holding up the bill, well, are they still being settled? CNN's MJ Lee is up on Capitol Hill.

MJ, I did this to Phil Mattingly yesterday. It's your turn today. You're talking to all these Republican senators this morning. Do they seem any more confident you can take 52 minus 9 and get to 50?

MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, well, you know, it's really crunch time right now. There's a lot of furious negotiations happening. We have seen a stream of Senate Republicans walking into Mitch McConnell's office today, just as we saw yesterday. Vice President Mike Pence is expected to be back on Capitol Hill as well.

I have to stress, though, there is no deal yet. We do not yet know what this revised bill will look like. But we do know -- we are learning about some of the details that may end up getting include in this final bill. One of those things is, $45 billion in extra funding for opioid treatment. This is a really important issue for senators like Rob Portman, Shelley Moore Capito. The other one that is more to appease conservatives, is more flexibility for health savings accounts.

Now, having said all this, maybe in the clearer sign that these negotiations right now that are happening are very real, a lot of these key senators are really holding their cards close to their chests and not really wanting to talk about what these negotiations have been about. I did, earlier, catch up with, or should say tried to catch up with Senator Dean Heller of Nevada. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: What needs to happen by Friday in order for you to get to a "yes"?

SEN. DEAN HELLER (R), NEVADA: It's not about me getting to a "yes." And I'm not going to negotiate with -- with the press here on what it's going to take to get to something favorable for the state of Nevada. But the bottom line is, is if this bill's not good for the state of Nevada, I'm simply not going to support it

LEE: Tell us about the meeting that you had at the White House. What exactly did you say to President Trump about the attack ad that was made against you?

HELLER: I don't want to talk about it. Yes, it's a private conversation.

LEE: Did he say that he knew about the ad? HELLER: I don't want to talk about it. So, thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: So you see there, John, Heller not really shedding any insight into this big surprise that President Trump was talking about. Maybe we'll know more tomorrow.

[12:30:12] KING: And, MJ, you can skip the gym tonight. You got your cardio in there. That's good