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Inside Politics

Public Pressure to Fire Aide; Trump Eyeing Replacements; Trump Pushing for Key Committee Posts. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 14, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:11] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

The deputy national security adviser is on the job today. Why is that news? Because the first lady went public with a call for her to be fired. And the president, so far, isn't listening. That's just one piece of the post-election West Wing chaos.

Plus, turmoil on Capitol Hill too. As House Republicans prepare to be the minority party, the president intervenes in the leadership fight, pushing to elevate two of his loyal pitbulls in anticipation of aggressive Democratic investigations.

And Democrats have their own family feud. Nancy Pelosi's critics say they have the votes to block her bid to be speaker. But Pelosi's supporters question that math and the courage of those who oppose Pelosi but lack an alternative candidate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAN KINDEE (D), MICHIGAN: If no member of our caucus is willing to stand up and take on Nancy Pelosi and offer an alternative, can we expect that leader to deal with Donald Trump and deal with an administration that we're going to have at times and adversarial relationship with?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: With me in studio this day to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Michael Shear of "The New York Times," Olivier Knox of Sirius XM, and Karoun Demirjian of "The Washington Post."

The day is young, but the top -- a White House official most of you have never heard of is still on the job at the moment, winning a West Wing stare down with the first lady. Mira Ricardel is the deputy national security adviser. You see her there. She's sharp-elbowed in her job. She's at work today despite a stunning, stunning statement from Melania Trump that Ricardel needs to go. That statement all the more remarkable because CNN reporting is the first lady went public after several private appeals to her husband, the president. So this is not just a test of wills between Melania Trump and Mira Ricardel. It is a very public challenge to the president by his wife.

And she knowingly made it at an already delicate moment. An angry president, stewing over the midterm elections, already mulling other changes inside his White House. Yes, first ladies often exert power behind the scenes, but this is unheard of.

Here's the statement right here. It is the position of the office of the first lady that Mira Ricardel no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.

Wow. I covered the Bill Clinton White House. I covered the George W. Bush White House. First ladies in different ways. Laura Bush very different from Hillary Clinton. They exert power and influence behind the scenes. To publicly say you must in go, and then for 18 hours later, 20 hours later, for that person to still be there tells you what?

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": That you don't have that much power and influence behind the scenes. I mean, if you did, then this would never have to come out into public that way.

It's strange to have a first lady have to go through the press to speak with her husband about -- of this nature. It's not usually the first lady's say, necessarily, who serves in national security positions, but if she has that much influence in the White House and she's choosing to wield it this way, it speaks of discord between Trump and Melania, in addition to the regular discord that you're seeing between Trump and his staff.

KING: You go to your husband several times and privately say, I think this person should go. He does not act on that. He disagrees with you, clearly, or he doesn't like to fire people. He won't -- he won't get to where you want him to go. And then you go public days after a midterm election in which your husband was thumped.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

KING: What?

PHILLIP: This is bizarre on a whole host of levels, but also just part of the ongoing dysfunction in this White House. It has been two years. That has not changed. In fact, this seems to be a major escalation for the first lady's office to now be part of the dysfunction is really extraordinary.

And perhaps it is to Trump's credit that he didn't immediately fire a national security official because his wife didn't like that person. I think there is still probably more that we need to learn about what really is going on behind the scenes between the first lady's office and Mira Ricardel, but it seems obvious that she's so upset about this that it was something that she felt like she had to force the president's hand.

But we also know that the president doesn't love the -- love his hand being forced. This is something that is clearly playing out slowly in the White House, in the West Wing right now. She's still on the job as of this morning. And maybe she might eventually be fired. But the fact that the president is slow walking this is probably a good sign that he's not thrilled with how this is playing out publicly.

It's an embarrassment to him in a lot of ways. And he faces the choice of either firing this woman or publicly humiliating his wife.

KING: And, remember, the first lady gave an interview with ABC during her Africa trip, I believe, which is the source of some of this frustration. Seats on the plane. Bureaucratic stuff. Normal, bureaucratic stuff that happens in every administration. I want this seat. How many do you have for your staff, this and that.

[12:05:04] But listen to this part of the -- this is -- this in and of itself was interesting that she would go this far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has he had people that you don't trust working for him?

MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you let him know?

TRUMP: I let him know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what did he do?

TRUMP: Well, some people, they don't work there anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Making the case there that she has had some influence, or at least been part of other decisions, prior decisions. She wants the deputy national security adviser to go. I'm told she also does not think highly of the vice president's chief of staff, who is among those rumored to be a possible candidate to be the new chief of staff.

So now we have a public display of Melania Trump's influence or are we about to see a public display of the limits of Melania Trump's influence? Which is it?

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I think this underscores two things that have been true about this White House, and we've all written and talked about it for the last couple of years. One is that the president doesn't like to be pushed, especially, you know, when it looks like weakness, when he -- when it -- when it feels to him and it looks to the public like he is being pushed to do something and that -- and that -- that suggests that he's too weak to do it by himself.

And the second thing is factions. I mean from the moment this administration started, one of the things that's characterized the White House has been different factions that have been warring with each other. Now that's, to some extent, true of every White House. It has been on steroids in this one. And, you know, Mira Ricardel is not just -- does -- is not just in a war with the first lady. She has annoyed, angered, made furious lots of other people in this White House. And, you know, when you say, well, you know, Nick Ayers has the support of perhaps Jared and Ivanka, but maybe not the first lady, it just underscores how everything in this White House is divided.

KING: And to the -- she -- Mira Ricardel has angered a lot of people. Her defenders would say, she works in a place that doesn't have a lot of order and systems to it and she's trying to get her job done.

SHEAR: Right.

KING: And you might not think, who is the deputy national security adviser. It's a very important job.

SHEAR: But --

KING: It's an incredible -- you run the day-to-day business of coordinating the national security apparatus.

OLIVIER KNOX, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, SIRIUS XM: Her defenders would also say that she -- she has actual policy jobs.

KING: Right.

KNOX: She's actually served in important senior positions under national sanctions, on NATO, on missile defense. She was in the Defense Department in a senior job under George W. Bush. I think your point about the influence of Melania Trump is interesting. First ladies have basically two levers that they can pull on. They can't introduce legislation. They don't control agencies. They can't call a cabinet official and demand anything. They have access to their spouse and they have this public image, right?

And so we're seeing a tension here between the private access of the spouse didn't get the job done. So now the public messaging is on display. And, you're right, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm tempted to think back to Nancy Reagan, ultimately pushing out Donald Regan (ph) at the White House. But that was much less -- initially much less public than this is.

KING: Yes. Cable TV and Twitter, it was a different world back then. It might have been -- it might have been the same. Who knows? If this technology world, media world, existed then, as we have this conversation, the delicate moment is why it's interesting for me. Why did the first lady decide to play this card, force her president -- force her husband, the president, into a corner at a moment where he's already -- we all hear he's sulking over the elections. He understands what's coming with the Democrats. And his Homeland Security secretary, I believe we have pictures, she's at the border right now with the Defense Secretary James Mattis. Kirstjen Nielsen among those the president vents about constantly, saying she must go.

What are we to expect? How much of this -- we've lived through this before. How much of this is the president venting and lashing out at people and how much of it is, he has a list and by the end of the year, you know, two, three, four, five people are going to go in?

PHILLIP: There are a lot of people that the presidents wants to get rid of in this period, basically the lame duck period when he thinks --

KING: Wants to get rid of, and does it -- not just wants to vent at?

PHILLIP: Yes, actually wants to get rid of. I think for some time now he's felt that he is entitled to have actually the people around him who he wants to work with, who he feels like has his agenda in mind. And he sees this time period as the time to do that.

The problem is, that you can't necessarily do all of them at the same time. And so the balancing act that he's trying to work out right now is, who can he afford to get rid of right at this moment? He's already done Sessions. Does he want to do John Kelly now? Will that create even more instability? Will that create more instability than he can hand? Can he get rid of Kirstjen Nielsen, or if he does that, will he also be losing John Kelly?

So there is a lot that is being weighed. A lot of people are trying to influence him about those decision. And so that's why it hasn't all happened. But everybody at the White House is just waiting for the tweet because they know that when the president makes the decision, it's just going to happen and they may not be able to do anything about it.

KING: And part of the other calculation, which is again why I asked the question about, you know, do they have an order and a process, have they learned the lesson of the past? If you call around town to perspective chiefs of staffs or perspective cabinet secretaries and even number twos, a lot of people are saying, no way, I won't take that call. No way, I won't go in.

[12:10:00] You know, we saw they fired Jeff Sessions. They had to put an acting attorney general in. We're still waiting to get Nikki Haley's replacement. They announced she was leaving months ago. Why is it that they can't -- or at least they -- let me put it this way, let's be nicer, I guess. They think this is the OK way to do it. It's not the way previous administrations have done it.

KNOX: Right. I mean they could argue that, you know, they're not losing a ton by not having a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, which is a forum that they don't think very highly of in any case. You could certainly argue that.

Historically, though, it's been true that you don't fire someone until you have a replacement in the important jobs. I mean it's a little hard for me to imagine that the laws of gravity don't apply to the chiefs of staff, for example. You know, if you lose your chief of staff, you lose someone who is running the day-to-day operations of the White House. But with this administration, who knows, honestly?

DEMIRJIAN: And, honestly, it -- in a way Trump kind of doesn't always listen to his chief of staff anyway. Yes, he can't actually run the operation. The White House is too big. He probably thinks that he can in a way because he's always been the boss.

I think the Whitaker example, though, is really going to be a teaching moment. A moment which they should learn from because there is no heir apparent that's actually going to be the nominee for Jeff Sessions yet. It's created this vacuum into which you've seen everything from now a court challenge on the constitutionality of the appointment, to just a non-stop assault of -- from the Democrats of just all the complaints that they've made.

It behooves Trump to wait on some of the positions that need to be Senate confirmed until next year because if you do it now, you give people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski kind of the power to weigh in on this as potentially decisive voices, which they really won't be next year. But this gap that we've had with the AG, who clearly was going to be the first to go given all the vitriol from Trump to Sessions, has kind of shown you exactly what will move into that space, though, which is a lot of cacophony, terrible, terrible optics for anything that's to come, and just another problem that now the Trump administration has to answer for.

ABBY: Yes.

SHEAR: Yes. And I think that the tension, or the problem that they'll face with somebody liking a Kirstjen Nielsen is not only the fact that they'll have a lot of real trouble getting -- whether it's this year or next year, getting somebody confirmed into that spot, but also that it's hard to imagine who could be in that spot, who could satisfy Trump's demands on immigration, right?

DEMIRJIAN: Right.

SHEAR: I mean Kirstjen Nielsen was a hardline person who was trying to push forward the president's agenda on immigration, but was trying, at times, to describe for him the realities that his agenda runs up against, the legal realities, the political realities, the diplomatic realities, and he doesn't want to hear those. And so anybody in that position is going to -- is going to face that same tension. And it's going to be really difficult for them to find somebody once they do pull the trigger.

PHILLIP: And, let's face it, I mean the lesson of all of this perhaps is that your time in President Trump's good graces is always limited in this White House.

SHEAR: Yes.

PHILLIP: He will really kind of turn on people on a dime. In one moment you're OK, the next moment he's tired of you. He thinks you're not working for him. And so for a lot of people, I think this is just -- the turnover is not just that some people are ready to leave, because it's been two years or however long it's been, but also because President Trump sours on people very quickly.

Look at James Mattis. He used to be "Mad Dog" Mattis, the guy that President Trump thought was perfect for the job. And now his stock has really -- KING: Moderate. Moderate matters.

PHILLIP: Yes, now his stock has really, really fallen precipitously and he's not the only one. There are a lot of people in that same (INAUDIBLE).

KING: And for the not -- for the non-cabinet jobs, if you're working the West Wing or you're thinking about leaving or if you're thinking about coming in, you're going to watch how this deputy national security adviser thing plays out to see, is that the kind of place I want to work? We'll see.

Up next, under new management. House Republicans decide who will lead them as the minority party. In the outgoing speaker's office, meanwhile, a friendly flashback to 2012.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good to see you. How are you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good to see you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A happy man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:18:04] KING: More proof today the president's post-election instinct is combat, not compromise. House Republicans are picking new leaders and preparing to lose their clout and fall to the minority party. Picking leaders and then dolling out committee assignments is normal internal House business, but not in this age of Trump. Kevin McCarthy appears well on track to win the top House GOP leadership post. His challenger is Trump defender and longtime rabble-rouser Jim Jordan of Ohio.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R), OHIO: We've got to understand, Steve, the environment we're going into is something we've never seen. I mean this is -- this is the world of Cummings, Nadler, Schiff, Waters, Pelosi. They've got 80 investigations tee'd up and we're going to have to be prepared with the right attitude to come to this town and fight every single minute of every single day defending the truth as they're attacking everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, Jordan appears well short of the votes to topple McCarthy in the leadership challenge. But sources tell CNN, the president has spoken to McCarthy about elevating Jordan to the top Republican spot on the Judiciary Committee and also about giving Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows the top committee spot. That's a bitter pill for McCarthy, who views both more as troublemakers, more than team players.

CNN's Phil Mattingly tracking this drama up on Capitol Hill.

Phil, unusual for a president to try to weigh in here. Will he get his way?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's still an open question, but it's certainly unusual. And I think you make a key point, it's not just Kevin McCarthy, who will almost certainly be the minority leader next Congress, hasn't always agreed with where Congressman Jordan or Congressman Meadows always end up. There's actually a large portion of the Republican conference that feels that way and have been frustrated by some of the tactics.

I think the interesting element here is, John, you know the leadership fights quite well. A lot of times people run, not because they expect to win, but because they want lever for other positions or for other positions in their caucus. That appears to be something that could be happening here and the president is giving a boost to that.

I think the bigger issue here right now is, it's not just a snap of your fingers thing where the president says, I want this to happen, and Kevin McCarthy says, cool, that sounds great, let's do it. There's a steering committee here where multiple members actually have a say in who becomes the top Republican on both of these committees. What I will say is, when you talk to people around here, they recognize that the president wants, and the Republican conference probably needs, fighters at the top of Judiciary, at the top of oversight. Are those fighters going to be the people the president actually wants and has requested? That's still an opening question.

[12:20:20] But to your point, it's very interesting, the president is getting involved, particularly from members that perhaps don't have the greatest names when it comes to everybody in the Republican conference right now.

KING: I'm not sure if this is help to Kevin McCarthy as he tries to herd the sheep or complications to Kevin McCarthy as he tries to herd the sheep? Phil Mattingly live on Capitol Hill. Good luck today and in the next few days as we sort all this out.

It is striking. And, again, it tells me the president's instinct. The president, at his press conference right after the election, did have a few moments where he talked about, maybe we can get a deal on immigration, maybe we can get a deal on infrastructure. But he talked -- and let's actually listen to the president. Let's go back and listen to the president now. This -- picking up the phone saying, put Jim Jordan in a place where he can help me, put Mark Meadows in a place where he can help me is a reflection of this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Are you offering a my way or highway scenario to the Democrats? You're saying that if --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. Negotiation. Not at all.

QUESTION: If -- if they start investigating you, that you can play that game and investigate them?

TRUMP: Oh, yes, better than them.

QUESTION: Can you -- can you compartmentalize that?

TRUMP: And I think I know more -- and I think I know more than they know.

QUESTION: Can you compartmentalize that and still continue to work with them for the benefit for the rest of the country --

TRUMP: No.

QUESTION: Or are you -- or are all bets off?

TRUMP: No. If they do that, then it's just -- all it is, is a war-like posture.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: This is a reflection of that, is it not, in that Jim Jordan, some Democrats out there, Jim Jordan. A lot of Republicans out there don't like the way Jim Jordan does it. But if you're the president, you watch Jim Jordan on TV, you watch him in these committee hearings, and you think, I want that guy.

DEMIRJIAN: Yes. Look, the president is actually just jumping into something that kind of was almost a certainty even before the election. I took a look at kind of the mechanics in play and they were anticipating having to make some sort of a deal with the Jordans and Meadows of this world because they really have just kind of punched above their weight in terms of how they've influenced this joint probe of the FBI and the DOJ and all of the -- anybody who's bothering Trump, they have managed to force the heads of the Republican leadership, if not to go so far as like impeaching Rod Rosenstein, then to at least really bring pressure that they're not that comfortable and probably would not bring to bear themselves on the agencies that are looking at the president.

So, yes, the president is throwing in his lot behind Jordan. If Jordan takes over Judiciary, that -- that -- he wouldn't have a bully pulpit to do what he's been doing. He would not necessarily actually have that much power because the House is majority fiat, basically.

KING: Right.

DEMIRJIAN: Nadler can do what he wants by himself. But you would have a real breakdown on that committee, not just around the Russia probe issues, but Judiciary's reach is very far and wide. They hit on some very important basic constitutional functioning of the country type of issues. And that would be completely snowed over with.

KING: And it's fascinating to watch this play out as the Republicans become the minority because it is -- it is the Freedom Caucus types, the Jim Jordan types that convinced John Boehner, I'm out of here. One of the reasons Paul Ryan said, forget about it, I'm not running for re-election, I'm leaving.

Now Kevin McCarthy has that job, but in the minority. He has less fruit, if you will, to hand out. Less ways -- less prizes to hand out as this goes through.

I just want to read this from Jim Geraghty in "National Review." If being in the majority required more metaphorical bomb throwing at the majority and rallying the base and less coalition building than being speaker of the House, Jordan might be ideal for the job. If the House Freedom Caucus thinks it can do a better job, maybe it's time they were given a chance to put up or shut up.

But Kevin McCarthy wants this job and now he's going to have to deal with this.

PHILLIP: Yes, he is. And I think the president's probably going to get what he wants, partly because I think he recognizes that this is going to be a little bit of a PR battle. They're not going to have much power when Democrats take over, so he wants his people on television. He wants them vocally defending him, vocally fighting back against the Nancy Pelosis of the world and Kevin McCarthy is going to have to understand, I think, and I think he does get this, that this is -- for the president, if you're trying to please President Trump, it is as much about the public relation fight as it is about the mechanics of the chamber itself. And giving Trump a little bit of what he wants on both sides of this is going to be really important.

KING: And we talk a lot about the rise in the year of the women in the Democratic Party. Liz Cheney about to get a spot in the House Republican leadership. The daughter of the vice president, Wyoming congresswoman. And Joni Ernst just won a contested election against another female Republican colleague on the Senate side to be in the Republican Senate leadership. So you'll have two new Republican faces in leadership as well as we get into this next Congress, which is going to be quite interesting. We'll keep an eye on that.

Up next, the recent lawsuit deluge in Florida. But before we go to break, some levity moments ago from the Senate majority leader and the senior senator from Iowa.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: Grassley is shy, but he's our new president pro temp (ph).

[12:25:01] He said he didn't -- he said he didn't want to say anything. I don't understand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Today, more promised courtroom drama and more evidence that Florida is not the very model of a modern major state. Governor Rick Scott, standing shoulder to shoulder here in Washington this morning with the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, not answering questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:30:00] QUESTION: Governor Scott, do you still contend that there's fraud going on in Florida with this recount.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, everyone, thank you very much.