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Trump Visits Troops; Trump Brings Politics into Warzone; Workers Share Shutdown Stories; Pelosi Calling the Shots. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired December 27, 2018 - 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: Will reach way beyond 2019 and the years after. Come on, 2019, we need something better when it comes to this weather.

Thanks so much for joining me, guys. I really appreciate it.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with Nia-Malika Henderson starts right now.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Nia- Malika Henderson. John King is off.

President Trump back at the White House after visiting U.S. troops in Iraq and Germany, but Iraq's current ruling political party openly criticized his visit.

The U.S. markets and consumer confidence are both down right now, all while China prepares to meet with the Trump administration in efforts to calm down the trade war.

And it's day six of the government shutdown. Here's a status update from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R), LOUISIANA: Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Not much has happened in Washington as best I can tell. Ultimately the president needs to sign a deal, Schumer needs to give 10 votes for it to pass in the Senate. You're asking me, will Schumer move? I don't know that. I don't know his mind. Should he move? Absolutely. It won't be nearly as far as where he's been before and I think it would be good for our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: More on the shutdown standoff in minutes.

But, first, the president parachutes into a war zone and leaves with fresh controversy tailing him back to Washington. The president in Iraq yesterday at Al Asad Air Base for his first visit to troops deployed overseas. The commander in chief shook hands and signed MAGA hats. Later in Germany at another base, he took selfies with troops. The sight of an American president boosting the morale of America's fighters on the frontlines certainly a good look for any White House. But this morning the talk in Washington is about the president using those troops as proxies in his political battle here at home with Democrats over a southern border wall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want to have strong borders in the United States. The Democrats don't want to let us have strong borders, only for one reason. You know why? Because I want it.

And that's what you're fighting for. You know, when you think about it, you're fighting for borders in other countries. And they don't want to fight, the Democrats, for the border of our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: The president arrived in Iraq amid a Pentagon shake-up spurred by deep disagreements over whether to stay or leave Syria and drawdown the fighting force in Afghanistan. With allies looking for reassurances they won't be abandoned, the president pointedly defined his foreign policy doctrine, pay us and we'll protect you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If they want us do the fighting, they also have to pay a price, and sometimes that's also a monetary price, so we're not the suckers of the world. We're no longer the suckers, folks. And people aren't looking at us as suckers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: CNN's Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon.

Barbara, thanks for joining us.

We know that this president has obviously been criticized for not visiting troops overseas. He's finally done that. So how is this trip and the president's comments playing with the Pentagon?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I think Pentagon officials are very happy that the president made the trip. He, you know, at the holiday time, took the time finally to go visit troops. It's good news for the troops. It's good news for military families.

The deeper question, of course, is Mr. Trump's political statements in front of a military audience because the U.S. military is not a political organization. It serves the country. It serves the American people.

They have seen the president do this before. You get, you know, the big sigh, the slump at the shoulders, he's doing it again. I think the -- his statement there about the U.S. being suckers is pretty interesting that he would make that in front of U.S. troops, many who are veterans of multiple combat deployments, many of whose families have sacrificed greatly. I'm not sure they see themselves as suckers. They are volunteers in the U.S. military, volunteering to defend the country. So his choice of words may be a bit awkward in front of a military audience, Nia.

HENDERSON: Barbara Starr, thanks for that report.

Here with me to share their reporting and their insights, we've got Shannon Pettypiece with "Bloomberg," Michael Shear with "The New York Times," CNN's Elise Labott and CNN's Phil Mattingly.

We'll just start with this trip, Shannon, and I want to go to you on this. It couldn't have come as a surprise to this White House that the president turned what would normally, for most presidents, just be a speech into almost a political rally.

SHANNON PETTYPIECE, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "BLOOMBERG": Well, I mean, it's sort of been his hallmark since the very beginning of his presidency. As Barbara mentioned, you remember when he visited the CIA and in front of the wall of stars took the opportunity to brag about his electoral victory. I mean this is sort of his operating procedure. Everything comes back to him. It's about him. He took the opportunity to talk about all the great equipment that he acts like he personally has supplied to the military, once again bringing politics into this, never missing an opportunity to attack Nancy Pelosi. He knows the cameras are on and I think he sees it not just as talking to an audience of troops or talking to an audience of intelligence officials, but talking to the camera and talking to a domestic audience on this.

[12:05:22] HENDERSON: Right, and talking to his base particularly --

PETTYPIECE: Right.

HENDERSON: Because that's what he likes to do, obviously.

The president also talked about Syria. Here is how he described the decision to pull out of Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I said, let's get out. And they said, sir, could we have six more months? I said, yes, you've got six more months. And then they said again recently, could we have more time. I said, nope, you can't have any more time. You got enough time. We've knocked them out. We've knocked them silly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: Michael, obviously some disagreement there. The president's assessment of where ISIS is versus where military leaders are in terms of where ISIS is.

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, and I thought what was interesting about that explanation was, I think the president was trying to go to pains to portray the decision to pull out of Syria as a kind of deliberative one in which there was a long and lengthy kind of back and forth between the military officials and the president. And ultimately he's the president. He's the commander in chief. He has the ability to do this. I think what our reporting has shown both here at CNN and at other --

and "The Times" and other organizations is that it was anything but deliberate and that he was -- he was going not -- not -- he pulled out not after a kind of process that would have led to a rational conclusion, but rather just as a -- a kind of gut instinct that really did set off the military allies, lawmakers, everybody, and obviously led to Mattis' resignations as well. So I think that's -- what struck me was the way in which he was trying to cast it in a way that perhaps isn't accurate.

HENDERSON: And, Elise, he also seemed to suggest that they could stay -- Americans would stay in Iraq. And if there needed to be any sort of fighting in Syria or attacks in Syria on ISIS, that Iraq would be a fine place for the troops to be.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I just think he doesn't really understand the situation with ISIS or the situation in Iraq because he's sitting in a place where ISIS really originated and that border between Syria and Iraq. The Iraqi government is still in kind of shambles. They haven't been seated yet after being elected in May. They haven't formed a government yet.

And it's not just as easy as, you know, launching an attack from Iraq into Syria into ISIS. If ISIS is allowed to reconstitute in Syria, you have a vacuum in Iraq that could certainly see in our -- an ISIS reconstitute or even something more dangerous.

I think the thing that we've been talking about here is that when the commander in chief goes to talk to the troops for this holiday, it really is important, as Barbara said, and a boost to the military, but it's also about the awesome weight of being the commander in chief, being the commander of all of these troops out there and the sacrifices that they're making for American democracy, to defend American liberty, but also to help allies around the world. And I think, in his political message, it didn't reflect the weight of the office of commander in chief.

HENDERSON: And at least one Democrat criticized the president for what he said to troops there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIMMY PANETTA (D), CALIFORNIA: This president is kind of a one- speed president. He only one thing, and that's basically holding these types of political rallies. And, unfortunately, that's what we saw yesterday there in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: And what's your sense, Phil, obviously he's a Democrat, he has criticism for the president, how do Republicans feel about this trip?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I think broadly they agree on the assessment that they would like these not to become political rallies. I think that's -- but I would also note that -- and this should be bipartisan and everything should be prefaced with the fact that he was there and that matters.

HENDERSON: Right.

MATTINGLY: It matters to troops that are deployed. It matters to their families. Just like USO tours matter. Just as anybody paying attention to people who were deployed, particularly when the country, on its face, seems to forget that there are multiple wars going on, that we have troops deployed in various places throughout the country, all of whom are inside danger zones. And so the fact he was there matters. The fact he went matters.

I want to just jump off Elise's point, because I think this is actually a really interesting one, and it's both his decision to pull out of Syria and -- well, we can just pop back in and do air strikes if we want to. What that seems to misses is kind of the geopolitical overtones of what leaving Syria means, what creating the vacuum, not that just ISIS could fill, but what it means for Iran, what it means for Bashar al Assad, what it means for Russia, but also inside Iraq.

And you hit on the stability issue here. This is not -- Haider al- Abadi is not the prime minister anymore.

LABOTT: That's right.

MATTINGLY: The willingness to have U.S. troops in Iraq is not the same that it used to be given the structure of the government, given the current makeup of parliament, whenever it decides to come to play, and given the current prime minister. And I think as long as those things are still very much in flux and very much kind of open to questions, that that's where there's potential problems.

HENDERSON: And the president had a phone call with the prime minister there.

LABOTT: Right.

HENDERSON: There was no meeting.

LABOTT: Right.

[12:10:01] HENDERSON: There was some sort of back and forth about why that meeting didn't happen, Elise.

LABOTT: Well, the Iraqis are saying it's a difference of point of view over the trip itself. The Iraqis are saying that the president gave them very little notice. Supposedly that's probably because they didn't want any leaks about the trip, which often happens. The security of the president is very important. The White House, you know, said that there wasn't enough time. There's all different reasons.

But, you know, they did talk. This is a government that, being close to the U.S. president isn't necessarily an asset. And as Phil said, you have Muqtada al-Sadr, that fiery cleric, who had the number one votes in parliament. He is someone who wanted U.S. troops out long ago. And so the appearance of an Iraqi prime minister coming to a base to meet with a U.S. president, not a very popular idea.

I must say, though, that President Obama didn't really go to great length to go to Iraq and meet with the leaders there either. He kind of kept a little bit of a distance.

But it is important to kind of reach out to this new government, especially when we're asking them to stand up more and, you know, take on more of the burden of defending themselves.

HENDERSON: And at some point apparently there was an invitation to come to the White House and maybe that's something that will happen down the line.

SHEAR: Yes. I mean for all of the reasons that Elise just mentioned, it's a little bit fraught in terms of -- on both sides, the politics -- both domestic in the United States and then domestic politics in Iraq, whether or not that happens and how it happens and under what circumstances. You can obviously -- American presidents can have a wide range of options. You can bring somebody in for a quickie meeting that happens in a couple hours and then leaves or you can have the -- all the frills --

LABOTT: It's not mandatory.

SHEAR: Right.

LABOTT: Right.

SHEAR: And it's -- and as we said, it's not something, you know, Obama had fraught relationships over the years with the allies, both the governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of the tensions as -- you know, inside those countries about U.S. troop presence there and about what the direction of the effort was going to be between the United States and their partners. And that always is difficult no matter who the president is.

HENDERSON: Yes. Well, we'll have to leave it there.

And before we go to break, we'll have a flashback of another president who visited U.S. serving in Iraq over the holidays.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT (November 27, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq): I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere. Thanks for inviting me to dinner.

I bring a message on behalf of America. We thank you for your service. We're proud of you. And America stands solidly behind you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:49] HENDERSON: It's day six of the government shutdown and negotiations are at a standstill. Yes, Congress is expected to gavel back in today, but there aren't any votes that are actually scheduled. Leadership comes back to Washington while members stay on break.

And President Trump, he's back at the White House after his surprise trip to Iraq and he has this message to Democrats about the shutdown, tweeting this morning, have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need border security and a wall on the southern border. Need to stop drugs, human trafficking, gang members and criminals from coming into our country. Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats.

The White House hasn't respond to CNN about what that statement is based on, but the head of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents about 700,000 federal workers, says this, the federal government is an apolitical workforce comprised of hardworking veterans, law enforcement officers, scientists, analysts, janitors, nurses and many other civil servants, all with diverse backgrounds and demographics. A government shutdown doesn't hurt any one political party or any one federal employee more than another, it hurts all of them.

Matt Viser, he's with us from "The Washington Post" joining our conversation.

Matt, thanks for being here.

We in Washington often do sort of talk about the numbers, 700,000 or so affected by this shutdown. But the kind of personal stories here are often overlooked. And I don't know if you've been looking on Twitter, it's been very interesting, this hash tag on Twitter, these stories about people's lives being adversely affected by this shutdown. I can read one here. This is from Michael Mack. This is his statement here. I am disabled, wife is TSA supervisor for 15 years, two daughters living with us. Forced to move in October, rent doubled, used savings to move. Praying last check and Social Security come Friday or we will be homeless next week. Next will be heat and lights, food, transportation to get wife to work.

And you have the president there essentially saying, ah, well, they're all Democrats.

MATT VISER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, and I think that gets lost a little bit sometimes when we talk about the numbers is the people who are living paycheck to paycheck.

HENDERSON: Yes.

VISER: Who don't know when their next paycheck may come at this moment. And they're sort of in vivid terms IRS workers, for example, who are needing to put together new regulations, get trained in these new regulations from the Republican-passed tax bill, not able to do that right now. My colleagues at "The Post" talked to a NASA scientist who in pretty blunt terms said he was -- they were tired of being called parasites.

HENDERSON: Yes.

VISER: You know, and said that he'd been at the -- at NASA for 30 years and was considering retiring. You know, retirement looks better to folks at this moment. So --

HENDERSON: Yes. And --

VISER: I think all of that kind of --

HENDERSON: Sort of gets lost.

PETTYPIECE: And that's sort of where I -- we have seen government shutdowns over and over again, but not really past this two week, one month mark or something. And I think that two week mark is where it starts getting real for people. I mean how many of you, if you lost a paycheck for two weeks would just -- would it be a rounding error? No, I mean, that's your rent for the month.

But I don't get any of that sense of urgency at the White House about this at all. That their -- that does not seem to have gotten through. And maybe it's just been this denial thinking it will just be a few days. But, you know, reality is going to have to set in for what this really means.

[12:20:16] HENDERSON: And the president addressing this here when he was in Iraq yesterday. Here is what he had to say about Nancy Pelosi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have a problem with the Democrats because Nancy Pelosi is calling the shots, not Chuck. And Chuck wants to have this done. I really believe this, he wants to have this done. But she's calling the shots and she's calling them because she wants the votes. And probably if they do something, she's not going to get the votes and she's not going to be speaker of the House and that would be not so good for her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: The strategy here, Phil, is what has in many ways been remarkable is that the Democrats, not usually a party known for their unity, seem to be very unified on this. The president trying to make, you know, hay and some division.

MATTINGLY: Drive a wedge of some sort, right. Democrats not in disarray apparently is this storyline here.

HENDERSON: Yes.

MATTINGLY: Look, it is the theory of some that Nancy Pelosi is driving everything and she's the reason why Democrats won't move off of their initial offer, which has been the same for the entirety of these negotiations, which is $1.3 billion for border security. The reality is that she and Schumer have no daylight in between them and they have stayed together. The reality is the Democratic base is firmly behind them on this. And the reality is their caucuses are firmly behind them on this. You don't have rank and file members coming out and saying, we should break on this.

And there's the reason why. And it's actually not that complicated. The political incentives are for them to stay where they are. They are feeling no blowback. They are feeling no pushback. And they believe they win.

And I think one of the things that gets lost is people are like, whoa, what are the potential deals here, how do both sides win. There is no both sides win in a shutdown. One side gets bludgeoned to the point where they cry mercy. That's how these end. If you look over history, government shutdowns end when one side has been beaten to a pulp. And Democrats feel like that's not going to be them and, therefore, they're not going to budge. The wildcard here throughout all of this is the president is -- does not act in a way that I think many people would think would be a rational way of acting as a White House, or a rational way based on the politics. He believes this is a fight that he wants to have. He said he was going to have it for months. He's now in it. How do you get out of it without blinking? And if he's not going to blink, then it's not going to go anywhere.

HENDERSON: Yes, and his new sparring partner is going to be Nancy Pelosi. Here is what she had to say. She was ridiculing -- this was in "USA Today," his definition of a border wall. This is her saying, he says, we're going to build a wall with cement and Mexico is going to pay for it, while he's already backed off of the cement, now he's down to I think a beaded curtain or something. I'm not sure where he is.

She is particularly good at needling him in pretty shady sound bites.

SHEAR: Yes, she's really good at that. I think one of the things that you see in this shutdown that's more -- that's more dramatic than maybe in other shutdowns is the partisan nature of it. I think the president's comments go to that, right? He thinks that by casting this as a -- as a real Democrat issue, that that's good for him. It's good for his base. And that's where he's -- that's where he's looking.

I -- you know, part of what struck me about that last tweet this morning was the extended to which is underscored his view of the government that works for him, right? He -- he sees the bureaucracy as full of insidious, resistance fighters for the Democrat Party --

HENDERSON: Deep state. Yes. Yes.

SHEAR: The deep state. And what isn't stated outright in that tweet, but is sort of the underlying kind of notion behind it, was that since they all are Democrats, that's fine, they can go without their paychecks.

PETTYPIECE: They don't deserve money, yes.

SHEAR: And they don't deserve money. And that's something, to Phil's point, that, you know, previous shutdowns at the very least there was an attempt by both sides to sort of pretend anyway that the government bureaucracy is sacrosanct and that everybody is concerned and of course we're all concerned with whether these people are going to get paid or not. This is really a break from that and may portend a very long shutdown, if that's really what he thinks.

HENDERSON: Yes, and it's unclear what he would take in any sort of a deal. He was asked this question yesterday. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Will you accept $2 billion instead of $5 billion?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not going to talk about it now, but I will say this, we have been building a lot of wall. A lot of people don't know it. And I haven't really been stressing it, frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PETTYPIECE: Well, I mean, he needs a face-saving move here because obviously it's the who gets bludgeoned to death in the shutdown. To Phil's point, that's who caves first. Right now his base isn't bludgeoning him to death over this, but if there is, you know, any sort of concessions made on the wall, if there is no wall, the base will bludgeon him on that. They've made that very clear over and over again, they want that wall. That is very important to them.

So, I mean, he needs to get out of this in some way to sort of save face to look like he was strong, he stood up for principals, that's what Republicans want to see is someone who is strong. They feel like that is going to put them in the best position as a party. So, you know, he needs to come up with -- they need to come up with some way. And maybe that's something the Democrats can help with if they really wanted to get this done, what -- how can they help each side save face a bit so we can get through this and actually move on?

[12:25:10] HENDERSON: Yes. And here is Bill Cassidy talking about maybe some sort of compromise that could happening in terms of whether there be a huge wall all at once or bit by bit. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is anything less than $5 billion a loss for those who believe the wall is important?

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R), LOUISIANA: No, I think that we have to get this bit by bit by bit. And there's going to be some places, hot spots, that we can secure and next we secure the new hot spot. So I think it will be nice to have the $25 billion long-term commitment. But on the other hand, this problem is not going away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: Bit by bit by bit. That doesn't sound like, you know, sort of a massive wall --

SHEAR: One steel slat at a time is going to happen.

PETTYPIECE: Slat by slat.

HENDERSON: But what do you make of his framing?

MATTINGLY: He's a rational actor in this moment.

HENDERSON: Yes. Yes.

MATTINGLY: And I think that the way -- the natural way out everybody sees, if there is a deal, is for you to get what has been put on the table, which was by the president's own administration, which was $2.5 billion in border security. And he used the same language that was used in the omnibus earlier this year, which is that's for fencing, that's for repairs, that's for some cement and ballis (ph) wall and just call that a wall, right?

HENDERSON: Yes, this is a wall, yes.

MATTINGLY: Have the semantic battle and say this is a wall, this is what I'm building, this is what it is and just take it. And Democrats on the other side can say, we didn't give you a wall.

HENDERSON: Right.

MATTINGLY: Explicitly in the language it says it can't be used for a wall. That's the kind of rational way out of this. I think the reality of it is Democrats are unwilling to move off of their $1.3 billion or even 2.5 or 2 or whatever is not flying right now and is the president willing to take that language that could be hedged and I think right now we don't know.

HENDERSON: Quickly, you want to jump in, Matt?

VISER: And if you go back a week ago, to the degree that this is the whims of President Trump, Republicans thought that they were heading home.

HENDERSON: Yes. They had a deal. He -- yes.

VISER: You know, that they had solved this. President Trump was feeling the heat from his base and he sort of boxed himself in at this point. And Nancy Pelosi hit upon a point too about Mexico was supposed to be paying for this wall.

HENDERSON: Which people don't talk about, right? I mean that was the promise. It wasn't, you know, a wall that taxpayers would pay for. It was, Mexico would pay for it. But we're a long way from there.

Next, Wall Street's split personality. Markets fall deep into the red after yesterday's record breaking gains.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)