Return to Transcripts main page
Inside Politics
Kamala Harris Announces Presidential Bid; Potential Presidential Candidates Speak on MLK Day; Gillibrand on Bernie Sanders' Party; Beto O'Rourke Dithering; Vote on Trump's Plan. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired January 21, 2019 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:00:01] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.
The partial government shutdown now entering its second month, no end in sight, as a second missed payday for federal workers looms.
On this Martin Luther King national holiday, it takes a grant from the Delta Airlines Foundation to open the King Historical Park in Atlanta.
Plus, Kamala Harris makes it official. California's junior senator joins the 2020 race, adding an African-American woman to the growing Democratic field.
And there are more to come. The former vice president, Joe Biden, the former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, also testing the waters. And they share a stage at an MLK event here in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: I haven't had a chance yet to talk to the vice president at length today, but I did want to get some pointers from him of how it's like to live in Washington, D.C. I actually thought that was funnier than you did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Back to politics in a minute. A fairly quiet holiday for President Trump so far, but a very busy day as you see there for the Democrats hoping to evict him from the White House. Some images here of the president and the vice president, just a short time ago, paying a brief visit to the MLK Memorial here in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good morning, everybody. It's a great day. It's a beautiful day. And thank you for being here. Appreciate it.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: The activity among Democrats included a new and important entry into the 2020 White House race. Democratic Senator Kamala Harris making her announcement first in a campaign video and on "Good Morning America."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), CALIFORNIA: I am running for president of the United States. And I'm very excited about it. I'm very excited about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Harris joins a crowd, a quickly growing Democratic field. The third woman from the U.S. Senate to take steps toward an official bid, joining Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand. They've both launched exploratory committees. There are now a total of nine official or semi-official contenders and many, many, many, many more flirting with a run.
With me this day to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, CNN's Maeve Reston, Molly Ball with "Time" and Jackie Kucinich with "The Daily Beast."
Let's start with our California correspondent here. It's a big entry. She's obviously wanted this. She's ready to step in and do it, an African-American woman. What makes her different from the rest?
MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, I think that her team really feels that her experience as a prosecutor, as someone who really drilled these Trump nominees, from Brett Kavanaugh to John Kelly, is someone that would come at the race with a -- with a different background, also being of mixed race heritage. She really feels that she can better represent the Democratic Party and the country in the White House. And she's obviously hoping here not just to draw African-Americans to her campaign, but also Latinos because she has worked very hard on the immigration issue, particularly on DACA. And we've got all these states early in the calendar, like Nevada, for example, her neighboring state, and California, which is actually going to be mailing out ballots on the same day that Iowans caucus. So there's a lot of opportunity here.
KING: Proof if you're from a big state, especially the bigger state, it's good to have friends back home. Those were changes -- changes made with a Harris candidacy in mind, California moving up.
You mentioned the prosecutor role. Is it a plus. Will it be a minus in the primaries? That's one of the interesting questions.
She writes this in her book that she used to introduce her candidacy. You can want the police to stop crime in your neighborhood, also want them to stop using excessive force. You can want them to hunt down a killer on your streets and also want them to stop using racial profiling. You can believe in the need for consequence and accountability, especially for serious criminals, but also oppose unjust incarceration. I believed it was essential to weave all these varied strands together.
At a time when President Trump just signed criminal reform, the Black Lives Matter movement is right behind us in the 2018 campaign and will be with us through 2020. How does she -- can she strike that balance, I guess, is the question?
RESTON: She's been answering these questions, though, you know, ever since she decided to become a prosecutor and really faced some heat within her family where family members and family friends were saying, how can you possibly be part of a system that disproportionately incarcerates black and brown men? And she tried earlier in her career to really start working on reforms from the inside. And that's the way that she answers the question.
But as we've seen over the past week with one interruption at her San Francisco event where a woman shouted, what about black people, Kamala? And then also a very pointed op-ed piece in "The New York Times." This criminal justice record for her is going to be a real double-edged sword.
KING: Can a -- can a Democrat run against her -- a Democrat running against her say she's too tough on crime or too insensitive on crime? What's the way --
MOLLY BALL, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "TIME": I think you would -- I think the kind of criticisms you would hear are sort of some of the criticisms that came out around Hillary and Bill Clinton and the crime bill in her 2016 run, where you see -- and -- you know, Kamala Harris' record is much more -- more recent. But many in the criminal justice and social justice communities do see some black marks on her record, punitive actions or policies that she pursued while in that office.
[12:05:11] But it is an interesting balance because you obviously do have Democrats wanting a certain type of law and order. They want accountability for Trump and his administration. And that's what's so satisfying to them about those committee hearings where she grills people, where she's relentless, where she takes people down. That's the type of prosecutor that Democrats may be looking for. The question is, on these policy questions, does she have a better answer for those because it is somewhat glossed over in the book where she just makes it sound like those things can just sort of effortless get along.
RESTON: Very glossed over.
JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY BEAST": And we don't know where she's going to end up on the wide spectrum of Democrats that are -- either have thrown their hats into this ring or are contemplating. Is she's going to be -- she's -- she is a little left of center from someone like a Kirsten Gillibrand, who, at the beginning of her career, really was sort of a moderate voice. Now a little bit less so, but she's not all the way left like someone like an Elizabeth Warren, who has spent her career going after Wall Street. We'll have to see where that settles out as she ramps up this rollout.
KING: It's a great point. And we have no idea. We have no idea how many. We have no idea what Democratic voters want. What do they want and that's how you pick who you want by deciding what you want.
One thing clear, though, out of the box, listen to Senator Harris here. She believes it is critical to portray strength.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, I love my country. I love my country. And this is a moment in time that I feel a sense of responsibility to stand up and fight for the best of who we are. And that fight will always include, as one of the highest priorities, our national security. We must understand the power that we have, the strength that we have. That it's about military power. It is about diplomatic power.
My entire career has been focused on keeping people safe. It is probably one of the things that motivates me more than anything else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: One of the things I always watch early on, having been through a few of these, is, you know, how do they grow? What do they like to talk about? What's the reflex? Strength, power, it's presidential, is it the right primary message?
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It may not be the right primary message, but I think it's responsive to something that you're already starting to hear from Republicans on the right is trying to -- whoever the Democratic nominee is, the Republican argument, the Trump argument is going to be law and order, that they want to abolish ICE, they want to create chaos, they want to create a sense of lawlessness in the country and that Trump wants the opposite of that. So she's already being responsive to that message. Whether or not the Democratic primary will care as much about that compared to other things or whether they will see that for what it is, which is perhaps some smart positioning on her part, anticipating a general election in which that -- I can almost bet you money right now, it is going to be the central message. This is what Trump wants to run on. He started in the 2016 midterm elections talking about the party of chaos, framing Democrats in that way, and Kamala Harris is basically making the argument that unlike a lot of these other people, I actually have a law and order record, and I can run against Trump in that way.
RESTON: And it's all about -- exactly. It's all about how they take on Trump, which I think is the most fascinating thing that we're watching right here in these first two opening weeks. Do they engage him? Do they take the bait? Do they fall into the trap that Elizabeth Warren did with the DNA test? And so far what Kamala Harris has tried to do is speak about him as the president, talk about the nobility of the office, but still go really hard on policy differences with him and in that way try to show her toughness and that she'd be able to stand up against him.
KUCINICH: Another x factor is how the president is going to deal with her. He's one of the few candidates -- I was going through his Twitter feed earlier today, I didn't see any references to her.
BALL: He didn't -- yes (INAUDIBLE) last week from him (ph).
KUCINICH: Yes, I don't -- I don't think he's taken her on, on Twitter yet, which is just -- it's obviously a subset of how the president goes after people.
KING: It's the biggest subset.
KUCINICH: But it's the biggest subset.
KING: It's the biggest subset.
KUCINICH: And we haven't -- we haven't seen how he's going to take her on.
KING: Right.
KUCINICH: And if she emerges as a strong force in this race, he's absolutely going to.
KING: And so, your first day in, you want people to get to know you. You want people to like you. You want people to get interested so they keep paying attention to you. So we'll watch as Senator Harris -- she's been on the book tour, now she's in.
You mentioned Elizabeth Warren had some -- at least people think perceived misstep with the DNA test, engaging too much, perhaps, with President Trump. Listen to her today. She understands more candidates are getting in, so you need your niche. You need your niche. She's trying to say, especially on this MLK Day, I'm with the little guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: His last political act was to support sanitation workers as they fought for economic security and dignity on the job. In this battle, Dr. King stressed that the struggle for equality and justice is not limited to civil rights, it also includes economic rights.
There is so much to be done in the fight for full equality.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Populism works. Here's a question, once Barack Obama became credible, the African-American vote went his way. If you're Kamala Harris or if you're someone trying to stop Kamala Harris and you're trying to make this appeal, what's the path?
[12:10:08] BALL: Well, you know, she needs name ID first of all, right? I mean when Barack Obama started, he was not known nationally by the African-American community. That's going to be crucial in various primaries, starting with South Carolina and California as well. They know her in California. She's not actually that well known within the broader Democratic primary electorate. So, like you say, the first thing is just going to be getting people to get to know her, getting them to like her because you hear -- when you go out to Iowa, when you're talking to voters, they want to like her. They've heard of her. They liked her in the committee hearing, but they need to see her up close. They need to know what it's going to feels like because what Democrats are looking for I think more than anything, they want someone they think can beat Trump and they want someone who makes them feel something, much more than any kind of checklist of policy priorities.
KING: As we get more candidates, we get to approach the time of our favorite -- it's cliche but it's also true in politics. I mean in Iowa they say, I like that candidate but I've only met her three or four times. We've got to keep going back -- got to keep going back on this one.
We'll continue the conversation.
This programing note too. 2020's underway. Jake Tapper will moderate a town hall with Senator Kamala Harris in Des Moines. That's next Monday, 10:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. Stay with us for that event and more as we kick into the 2020 campaign.
Up next, what about all those other 2020 Democrats?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY CARTER, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I hope you run for president.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: Thank you for saying that. You encouraging me means more to me than you could imagine.
CARTER: All right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:15:41] KING: Welcome back.
More on the growing 2020 Democratic field now. And on this Martin Luther King holiday, a chance for those in or leaning in to say hello, and make a point or two.
The former vice president, Joe Biden, former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, Senators Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker to name a few.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: I've been fighting gun violence and the NRA for many years, spending hundreds of millions of dollars of my own money and traveling around this country rallying voters of gun safety candidates and causes.
JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Folks, what the hell are we arguing about a $15 minimum wage for? Why is it even a question?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: We'll make sure that all people have decent wages. Remember where he died. He died in Memphis signing with exploited sanitation workers. So Dr. King is a hero of mine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Paul Kane of "The Washington Post" join the conversation.
You're in or leaning in. You're trying to in a crowded field. Carve out your niche. You heard Mayor Bloomberg, gun violence, climate change. He thinks Democratic base voters, they might say, wait a minute, weren't you a Republican, weren't you an independent, but he thinks he can listen here. For Vice President Biden, it's leadership. For Bernie Sanders its, you know me, you trust me. Is that fair?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Sort of. Sort of. And I think that they're also trying to carve out their individual lanes with each very high burdens. And I think Mayor Bloomberg there is starting out. He does have to remind people that, look, I was a progressive. I did spend millions of dollars to help elect Democrats. We'll see if that works or not.
But, important to keep in mind, we have a Republican president in the White House now who used to be a Democrat. So I think we should, you know, stay open to that possibility. But, still, a little hard to see how he navigates the primary.
But I think Vice President Biden there, I was at that event this morning, all eyes certainly on him. No indication of what he's actually going to do. And his record, of course, would come under scrutiny.
But, Bernie Sanders, keep an eye on him. He's in South Carolina. Boy, if he's going to try and make a second act, he needs to do better in the south than he did four years ago.
KING: He sure does.
But to your point about Mayor Bloomberg, Donald Trump is president of the United States. Nobody thought he was an ideological fit for the Republicans when he ran. So don't count it out. I've just -- I count nothing out in the age of Trump.
ZELENY: Exactly.
KING: Back to the former vice president.
Everybody knows him. He ran twice for president and failed. But he was vice president for eight years. Part of his message today was remember the most popular Democrat on the planet is my friend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: And I saw firsthand the courage of Barack every -- excuse me, the president -- he's my buddy. No, he really is my buddy. All those memes are true except he did the first friendship bracelet, not me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: And.
PAUL KANE, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": He's been using that line for a years now and maybe two years, but --
KUCINICH: There are worse lines.
KANE: Yes.
I -- he genuinely -- I don't think he has decided. I think everybody else has basically made up their mind. I think he and maybe Beto are the only two left that are truly trying to decide right now.
His numbers are amazing. They're better than everybody else's numbers with just about every subset.
KING: Oh, the blessing and a curse early on.
KANE: Yes. Never be a frontrunner.
BALL: Well, that's the interesting thing to me about the Biden candidacy is, although he is leading by a mile, a lot of these earlier polls, which, of course, don't tell you what's going to happen, but they tell you where people's hearts are at the moment, nobody seems to be scared out of the water by him. There is this assumption that that support is soft and that when he were to get in, once voters learn about some of the other candidates, they're not necessarily committed to Joe Biden, even if they know him and they like him and they associate him with Obama, who they love, that there -- unlike in 2016 and 2008, there isn't a candidate who is scaring people out of the field right now.
And you see also the upside of this strategy that the woman candidates have of getting in early is trying to brand themselves in the lanes that might -- that the men might want to take, right? Elizabeth Warren you talked about wanting to be the economic justice candidate. Well, that's Bernie's line. If she can get in there first and convince people she's the younger, fresher alternative, there's still going to be a lot of people that only belong to Bernie, but the idea is to edge him out of his lane.
KING: It's a great point. And to the prospect of Bernie and edging out of his lane, this is Kirsten Gillibrand, senator from New York, who has some of her own explaining to do from a more conservative House record. Now she says she's more progressive. But is this shade or is this just the truth?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: We have amazing stars in our party. We've got Bernie, Liz -- well, he's not actually in our party. So let's just start with Liz and Cory and Kamala are all amazing.
[12:20:07] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't consider Bernie a Democrat? GILLIBRAND: Well, he's not, he's an independent but he caucuses with us, which I'm very grateful for and I think a lot of his ideas are great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: If it's a little hard to hear there in the wind, that's our Dan Merica asking her -- she mentions Bernie and then she goes, well, he's not actually in our party. And then he says, you don't consider Bernie a Democrat? Well, he's not. He's an independent. That's the truth. That's the truth. He ran in the Democratic primary. He caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. Is that a poke or is that just a fact?
KUCINICH: It's a fact, but I think it's probably both. You know, and I also think, you know, Bernie Sanders really has had a lot of trouble explaining this scandal that went on in his last campaign, having to do with women who were being sexually harassed and perhaps not being taken seriously. So he really hasn't -- so the fact that there is this -- all these women candidates in addition to that, in addition to also having run before and failed, I think all of that is tough. Those are definitely in a -- maybe don't run for Bernie Sanders, but also he has a lot of do run. He still has a lot of support out there.
KING: Without a doubt.
Let me add this quickly as we go.
Beto O'Rourke's on the road. We can show you his latest medium post. He's in Pueblo, Colorado, now. We -- you can read it yourself if you want.
Back home, this "Corpus Christi Caller Times" says, is Beto O'Rourke dithering when he should be preparing for the 2020 presidential race. Is he dithering or is he just doing it differently and along the way getting a lot of attention?
ZELENY: Well, he's definitely doing it differently. And I think the first name of the game -- it always used to be the -- how much money you could raise. I think it's how much attention you can command at this point.
But I do talk to Democrats who wonder, OK, how long can this go on before you, you know, show that you're serious and do something more serious than a selfie or an Instagram photo.
But I think Paul is right, he has not decided if he's running or not. He's back in El Paso over the weekend after this -- this road trip. He didn't really come to a conclusion, at least in his writing, if he's running or not. Friends I've talked to of his over the weekend said they're still not sure. He's enjoying this for a little bit, but it's how -- it's unknown how long this tease can go.
KING: That's not --
BALL: And that's what I hear about Bloomberg as well.
KING: Right.
BALL: There's a lot of candidates who are quite literally dithering at this point.
ZELENY: Right.
KING: Testing. Testing.
BALL: Sure.
KING: Testing.
KANE: Testing the waters.
KING: (INAUDIBLE) wondering.
All right, up next for us, your government's still shut down after the president puts a new offer on the table.
But as we go to break, Senator Cory Booker, a few moments ago, in South Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: We are dissatisfied. This is not a time for us to rest in our country. The work is not done. The dream still demands. The call of our country is still loud. And the question is, are we dissatisfied?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:27:29] KING: It is day 31 of the partial government shutdown and this week's agenda on Capitol Hill suggests the end is not near. Senate Republicans plan to debate a new proposal from the president. House Democrats, meanwhile, already rejecting the president's idea. They promise votes on their own border security ideas, which do not include the president's border wall.
That new offer the president made over the weekend includes three years of protections for some immigrants, including about 700,000 who were brought to the country illegally as young children. In return, the president wants $5.7 billion for border barriers. Democrats, not budging.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), MINORITY LEADER: If he opens up the government, we'll discuss whatever he offers, but hostage taking should not work.
It's very hard to negotiate when a gun is held to your head.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: CNN's Phil Mattingly live for us up on Capitol Hill.
Phil, will the president's plan pass the Senate? Can it?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Barring some substantial revision or substantial move in a different direction by Senate Democrats, the short answer here is no. And when you look at the entirety of the plan, it's not just what the president laid out on Saturday, there's more elements, too. There's obviously the border wall. There's border security elements. But it's also seven appropriations bills. Essentially the entirety of the appropriations process that's currently unfunded would move through. It's about $12.7 billion in disaster aid. It's an extension through September of the Violence Against Women Act. It's a very large package and Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, hopes at putting all of those things together, could at least put more pressure on Democrats, if not pull a few over.
But I think the reality here with a policy proposal is that's not what Democrats are looking for. Democrats have made very clear, as you heard from Senator Schumer there, they want the government reopened and then they will start to negotiate. The idea being, they want to play the long game here and not incentivize the president to ever do this again by giving him anything.
Here's the problem with that on the Republican side, at least according to Republicans I'm talking to. The idea of reopening the government for a short term and continuing negotiations is something that has been tried many times in the past, particularly on the issue of immigration, and has fallen flat on its face many times in the past, particularly on the issue of immigration. So the idea from McConnell's perspective right now is essentially, we have to do something. We're in this now. We have to get out of it in the long term we're going to be dealing with this month after month after month.
Therein lies kind of the crux of the issue. Democrats won't do anything until the government's reopened. McConnell, the president made clear, they want to do something that kind of ties everything together and puts an end to this so they can move on. And there's no kind of synergy there, there's no crossing, there's no bridge that's being made. And, in other words, we're still going to be in a shutdown for a long period of time barring some sudden shift that nobody I'm talking to right now currently sees, John.
[12:30:03] KING: And we're speaking on Monday. Friday, of course, payday number two that will be a payless payday for 800,000 plus federal workers.
