Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump Threatens to Release Migrants into Sanctuary Cities; Trump Tweets Video of Omar Comments & 9/11 Footage. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired April 14, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[08:00:26] JOHN KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): Time for the Mueller report.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was an illegal investigation. Everything about it was crooked.

KING: Democrats don't trust the man deciding how much goes public.

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.

KING: Plus, the president rages about immigration.

TRUMP: The asylum laws are absolutely insane. We'll give them to the sanctuary cities. We can give them an unlimited supply.

KING: And Bernie Sanders makes another run at Medicare-for-All.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a struggle for the heart and soul of who we are as American people.

KING: INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters, now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King.

To our viewers in the United States and around the world, thank you for sharing your Sunday.

A week-long presidential rage about immigration includes a sweeping purge at the Department of Homeland Security and now, a threat to dump those apprehended illegally crossing the border in so-called sanctuary cities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): It's illegal. It's immoral. It's unethical. It's sophomoric. It's petulant and it's par for the course.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Plus, the attorney general plans to release the Mueller report this week. Democrats don't trust his promises of transparency. And the president clearly worried is hoping to convince you not to believe it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It was an illegal investigation. It was started illegally. Everything about it was crooked. Every single thing about it. There were dirty cops.

This was bad people. This was an attempted coup. This was an attempted takedown of a president and we beat them. We beat.

I won. No collusion, no obstruction. I won.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And a busy weekend for the 2020 Democrats. Bernie Sanders follows the Trump 2016 map. Cory Booker launches a new tour.

And one of the field's early surprises later today will make his run for the White House official.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not running to be president for anyone. If I thought of myself just in terms of identity lanes, it would be a lonely place because I'm the only Maltese-American, Episcopalian, gay veteran that I know. If we get identity right, then it can actually be a source of solidarity with people whose identity is completely different. I think divisive identity politics is exactly what's being practiced by the White House today, and it's using race to divide us within, for example, the middle and working class. And we've got to turn the page from that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Back to 2020 in a bit. But we begin the hour with the president's immigration obsession and the numbers behind his anger. Just about every day this past week, another stunning headline, beginning with the White House purge of the Department of Homeland Security that began last Sunday. Four top officials now gone, two more known to be out of favor at the White House. Plenty of policy turmoil, along with the personnel turnover, accounts of the president, for example, pushing again to close parts of the border or asking to reinstate his now abandoned edict to separate families caught crossing illegally.

And on Friday, after his aides spent the day telling reporters your sources are wrong, the president tweeted, yes, he is discussing dumping migrants apprehended at the border in sanctuary cities, places like San Francisco, home of the House speaker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I don't know anything about it. But again, it's just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful to the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, who address who we are, a nation of immigrants.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There were several tweets from the president last night on the sanctuary issue as well, including more presidential lies, this time about how mayors of some of those cities have reacted to his threat.

So, why is the president so mad? Well, today is day 814 of the Trump presidency. That's two years and nearly three months in office. And the president has failed to keep a signature promise to stop what he calls an invasion of illegal immigrants.

Let's look at some of the numbers. Number one, these are apprehensions at the southwest border over the past five years including, of course, several years of the Obama administration. You see the numbers here. This is the current fiscal year. That is what makes the president so mad, his team, his policies causing a spike, not a reduction in apprehensions.

Plus, the face of this challenge is changing dramatically. Go back a few years.

[08:05:00] This is individuals. The gray color, individuals crossing the border. Families and unaccompanied children, you see the color coding there.

Look what's happened in recent years. Now, more than 60 percent of the challenge, families and unaccompanied children, individuals crossing the border, much less of a problem. This is what makes it more personal, much more difficult for the president.

Plus, remember he was going to build a big, beautiful wall? Here we are, at this point of the Trump presidency, zero miles of new wall. Yes, some new construction are just now starting. So, some Trump wall is being built starting now. But so far, only 36 miles of replacement barriers have been put up during the Trump presidency. Much of this, this orders for this wall go back even to the Obama administration. So, that is the state of play, why the president is so mad, why he wants to make this issue front and center constantly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We'll bring the illegal -- really, you call them the illegals, I call them the illegals, they came across the border illegally, we'll bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it.

We can give them an unlimited supply. Let's see if they're happy. They say they have open arms. Let's see if they have open arms.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: With us this Sunday to share their reporting and their insights, Eliana Johnson of "Politico", CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Toluse Olorunnipa of "The Washington Post", and Karoun Demirjian, also of "The Washington Post".

Which is more important, the anger behind this -- what to call it, flailing, constant changing, constant demanding, new policies or new changes or just the numbers that show, if you accept the president's view on this, you can understand why he's frustrated because his policies are doing the opposite of what he intends.

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, it's hard to determine cause and effect on the border. I think what we do snow the president has one metric for measuring whether his policies are effective, and that is the detention numbers at the border which he views as a proxy for illegal immigration. And he's been endlessly frustrated these numbers have continued to tick up, and he and Steven miller, the senior White House adviser who is put in charge of immigration have told people they simply don't know what to do at this point to get those numbers down.

And I think that is the reason for the confusion, flailing, sort of action that we've seen in the White House over the past 10 days that began with the pulling of a nominee to lead ICE, the previous week and then last Sunday with the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen who is running the Department of Homeland Security.

KING: So, blame the people -- he's blaming his people clearly.

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He's definitely blaming his people. In the short term, that's creating the bigger problem, because nobody knows what the president is going to determine he wants to do next. We thought the family separation policy was over. Maybe now it's not.

We're not quite sure if he's going to try to demand a tough-guy-only approach. And if that case, if that's what he's doing, McAleenan looks like the guy, he may not be the guy. So, is he going to fold too if the president just continually justified? And if you have this total instability all the time, how you actually plan for mitigating the flow of immigrants crossing the border.

So, that's -- the short-term issue, the president is not making things better with his erratic choices about who he is going to let stay and go, but long term -- yes, there is something that's there that has to be addressed generally. Immigration has had to be addressed generally speaking for a very long time. Not just since Trump has been president.

And in the short term, Trump's erratic actions do give people campaigning against him a great thing to point to. But the issue is still going to be there. If anybody is able to beat him, to change the balance of power in Congress, they still have to actually address what has been a very difficult threat in terms of how do you address the immigrants in the country, the reasons people are coming to the border consistently, and yet still have a border policy that isn't totally open because that's not going to be sustainable with the electorate.

KING: Right, there's 25-plus years of dysfunction on this issue and the Democrats don't want to give the president what he wants. The president doesn't want to reach out and try to reach any compromise right now. So we're dug in, the numbers are getting worse.

Now, you see, here are some of the headlines as the president lashes out this past week. Trump told CBP, Customs and Border Patrol, he pardoned them if he were sent to jail for violating immigration laws. The president denies that, but well-sourcing behind that story. "The New York Times," Trump urged homeland security official to close border despite an earlier promise of a delay.

You heard these things where the president is telling either policies rejected by the courts or policies that his own advisers like in the case of closing the border, sir, that would be an economic catastrophe, it would just makes things worse.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes, look at what the president has done over the last few years. It shows how desperate and frustrated he is with this immigration issue. He tried separating families at the border, that didn't work. He tried sending in the military. That didn't deter people from coming over. He tried the national emergency that he declared earlier this year, shutting down the government.

None of it has worked to either get Democrats and Republicans to come together, to put together new laws to address the situation at the border, or to deter people from coming in the first place.

[08:10:01] This is a president who campaigned saying I alone can fix it. He's faced with a problem that he has not been able to fix. That's why you see him flailing from policy to policy and potentially, based on this reporting, you know, encouraging his own officials to break the law or run afoul of the law by doing things that are far beyond what is allowable under current legal standards. The president is basically saying I would pardon you. That shows he's frustrated with the situation he finds himself in and he hasn't been able to get Republicans and Democrats to come together and hasn't been able to solve the problem on his own.

KING: And you just see how front and center, it is in his mind, in the sense that he went golfing yesterday at his club, and he came back and this long tweet storm about immigration, including something that's not true, saying that mayors -- you can put a map. There are sanctuary cities, so-called sanctuary cities all across America, saying if the federal law wants to enforce immigration laws, fine, but we're not using local resources to help the federal government. So, you see them there.

The president dropped this one -- again, his aides spend hours on Friday and Thursday night saying, no, your sources are wrong. This is not a serious proposal. Then the president tweeted, yes, I'm thinking about taking the buses to these detention facilities and then taking these immigrants caught coming illegally and dumping them in sanctuary cities. Last night, he was tweeting ,all these mayors say, don't do it, they won't accept.

Actually, the contrary has been true. Many of these mayors have been on television, like Chicago's new mayor-elect saying, Mr. President, we think your policies are wrong, we think you have bad ideas, but sure, we'll take them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LORI LIGHTFOOT (D), CHICAGO MAYOR-ELECT: Of course, because we're doing that now. We have people routinely coming to the city. We have a whole infrastructure making sure their rights are protected. We are a city that is a sanctuary city. We have immigrants from all over the world who call Chicago their home. They'll continue to do that and we're going to continue to make sure this is a welcoming community for those immigrants and we want them to come to the city of Chicago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is this where we're headed in the week ahead? Are they going to send buses to detention centers and take them to sanctuary cities?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORREPSONDENT: We'll see. I'll be a little bit surprised of that. But the reality is that this underscores that there's no long-term strategy. This is the president, probably with Steven Miller at his side, essentially doing this as it's going along which is way aides at the White House are saying no, no, that's not true. This isn't something he's thinking about. In fact, he was thinking about it.

So, the problem here is a week after essentially the firing of his secretary of homeland security, the president -- you know, once again, there are consequences for not having a full government in place, not having a full structure in place. So, the problem hasn't changed at all. But there are fewer people to staff and enact all of this.

So, it is a huge frustration of his, but there's no sense that he either wants to find a way out or can find a way out here. But I would be surprised if people are bused to cities like Chicago. Of course, Chicago has a proud history as the new mayor was saying of having new families and new immigrants there. Think of the sort of a chaos that would happen if that was happening in the cities across the country. So, we'll see where the president goes this week and he clearly does not have a clear strategy.

KING: And just to remember, for those of you who might forget, when his party controlled both chambers, the president had a deal on the table that would have protected the Dreamers, would have given him money for his wall and he walked away from it. Now, with the Democrats in charge of the House heading into an election cycle, both parties are blamed for the dysfunction, but the likelihood of a deal is very small, shall we say.

Up next, Democrats say the president is inciting violence with a tweet attacking Ilhan Omar and using video of the Twin Towers falling.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:17:36] KING: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar calls her love for America unwavering and says she won't be silenced by President Trump or anyone else. Those just two of the sentiments in a series of tweets by Omar Saturday, which also brought an outpouring of support for the freshman Democrat from her party's presidential candidates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump is trying to insight violence and to divide us, and every political leader should speak out against that.

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To see a president of the United States, to use images of 9/11 in a vicious, crass, disgusting way, that is so offensive.

BETO O'ROURE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is an incitement to violence against Congresswoman Omar, against our fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: At issue is a Trump tweet now pinned atop the president's Twitter page. It is a video that includes a snippet of an Omar speech and then video of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11. Four words from the congresswoman, quote, some people did some thing, are used in the video, and it became a rallying cry for Omar critics who say she's deliberately minimizing the deadly terror of 9/11 attacks.

For context, here is a clip from her March speech about how Muslims need to do more to fight for their civil liberties.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D), MINNESOTA: Far too long, we have lived with the discomfort of being a second class citizen. And, frankly, I'm tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it. CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CAIR was actually founded back in the 1990s. A factual error from the congresswoman there. The congresswoman's staff says she got a little confused there.

But to the bigger point, this has become a huge rallying cry for her critics. The president's video which includes video of the Twin Towers falling and splicing her words "some people did something." You see from Speaker Pelosi, you see the Democrats running for president, all saying that goes beyond the pale. If you want to have a conversation with her, that's one thing. But using images of 9/11 they say, A, is wrong and B, could insight violence.

DEMIRJIAN: Especially when your criticism of Congresswoman Omar is she's being too lighthearted about 9/11 by not speaking about it in more serious tone.

[08:20:04] To then cut and splice that video together, seems like it's using that to make a very, very questionable political point.

And it's really interesting because, you know, there -- before Trump started piling on to Congresswoman Omar who does have things to be concerned about, she's had death threats on her, her commentary, her comments she was accused of being anti-Semitic and the other slips of the tongue she's made because she keeps failing into these traps, this is an issue that Democrats are dealing with by the Democrats. There was proposals to maybe censure her on the floor.

And now, you got all those people who are saying, what are we going to do about Congresswoman Omar's comments defending her because the president has gone so far doubling down and trying to make an example he thinks will play well to his base and is crossing the line, Democrats are now accusing him of incitement, of stereotyping and they've rallied around him. So, it's not longer a tool for him. It's no longer a weapon --

KING: It's not just the president. This is the cover of the "New York Post" last week, "Here's your something." Again, pictures of the twin towers falling.

Listen with the congresswoman. She was on with Stephen Colbert last week and in her view, this comes with the territory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OMAR: There are many members of the community that their identities are a lightning rod, being used as political football. We're talking about immigrants, we're talking about refugees, women of color, people of color, minorities.

I just happened to have --

STEPHEN COLBERT, TV HOST: Muslims specifically.

OMAR: Muslims specifically. I just happen to embody all of those identities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: She was rightly criticized in my view by people in both parties for anti-Semitic tropes that she peddled. If you watch the whole speech to the Committee of American Islamic Relations, it's -- yes, you can make the case that when you refer to 9/11, you should be very careful about the words you choose. And you should very honest about the deadly, horrible terrorism of that day. It's a fair point if you were watching the public (INAUDIBLE).

But the speech is about civil liberties. The speech is about Muslims, you know, 18, 19 years later still being looked at suspiciously. Some of the criticism is taking the broader goals of the speech out of context.

JOHNSON: I'm going to talk about this purely politically and put the moral question aside.

This is a fight the president wants to have.

KING: Right, for sure.

JOHNSON: He's not somebody who casually chooses his opponents, OK? So, he has chosen her as a political opponent. And now, what's happened? He's dragged the entire Democratic presidential field into this.

I think that's foolish on the part of Democratic presidential candidates to get in a mudslinging fight with the president defending Ilhan Omar, because I think if it's a question of Donald Trump versus Ilhan Omar, a lot of Americans will choose President Trump, particularly on the question of 9/11 and whose language they prefer.

ZELENY: I think Speaker Pelosi was probably -- once against probably setting the tone for the Democratic Party. She said, we must be careful in how we speak about 9/11.

JOHNSON: Absolutely.

ZELENY: So, there is some words for the congresswoman as well.

But just add another sentence to that, you know, into the speech in the first place.

But Democrats in their rush to make good with the left of their party, they're afraid to not support her. By and large, just when you step back, it is stunning that this conversation is being led from the White House, these videos, 18 years after September 11th, after George W. Bush was standing on that burning pile of rubble.

So, we've never seen 9/11 politicized quite like this. The president was also at that moment saying he's having the tallest building in Manhattan. He has his history of that, seeing people cheering about that, I mean enough of the 9/11 discussion in this respect. I just think it's completely distasteful and does not honor the memory of all the people who died and in the wars that followed from all of that.

KING: To your point, it's pinned atop the president's twitter page, more than 8 million views as of this morning. The president --

JOHNSON: It's a crassly political move on the president's part that he thinks is advantageous going into the 2020 campaign.

ZELENY: He probably wins the first round on this.

JOHNSON: Yes.

DEMIRJIAN: Yes.

KING: Up next, the new state polls give us the 2020 Democratic leader board, Bernie Sanders among those in the top tier. But listen, he gets a little testy when reminded he also is now in the top 1 percent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I didn't know it was a crime to write a good book. I won't apologize for writing a book that was number three on "The New York Times" bestseller, translated to five to six languages, and that's that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:28:41] BOOKER: I'm the only senator who comes home to a low income inner city beautiful community, and I know and you know that we don't have the privilege to wait for what fits into someone else's narrow view of what it means to be a progressive. Our first priority must be to make people's lives better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's Senator Cory Booker at home yesterday in Newark, a rally to kick off the two-week national tour for a candidate who is, so far anyway, finding it hard to move up in the early 2020 Democratic race.

Let's take a look. Some interesting numbers from the early states especially. This, a new state poll in Iowa.

Monmouth University poll, it shows the former vice president is waiting to get in. But Joe Biden at the top of pack, at 27 percent, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Warren. Remember that, this is Iowa.

Let's add in New Hampshire. Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, Warren. This is a national race so far. The first kickoff state with caucuses -- essentially the same result as you look through the race as of now.

Interesting point I want to make here. This is the Iowa poll, this is the support for the candidates again. Over here is the percent of likely goers with an opinion. So, 92 percent of Iowans, Democrats, have an opinion about the president, 93 percent have an opinion about Bernie Sanders. Pete Buttigieg who makes his official announcement today --

0830

[08:29:52] JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Interesting point I want to make here. This is the Iowa poll. This is the support for the candidates again.

Over here is the percent of likely caucus goers with an opinion. 92 percent of Iowans, Democrats, have an opinion about the vice president. 93 percent have an opinion about Bernie Sanders.

Pete Buttigieg who makes his official announcement today, he has room to grow. He's at 9 percent in third place but only 54 percent of Iowans have an opinion so far. Senator Sanders also has room. Senator Warren a little less so.

But for these candidates, the getting to know you part phase is still going on, they have room to grow.

Let's look. California also with a poll. And again, this is Kamala Harris' home state -- Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren Buttigieg, a little difference in Iowa and New Hampshire but still you're seeing a nationalized race so far.

Much like we have in the Republican side, last time around. This is interesting from the California poll. Who has the best policy ideas? Senator Sanders leads the pack there. You see the other candidates.

Who has the best chance to beat Trump? At this moment -- at this moment that place goes to Joe Biden as you stack it up and go through the race. The question is for the candidates now and you see them all making their case, is how do you get into this?

Bernie Sanders this weekend tracking the Trump map, going to the places, the blue states that Donald Trump turned red in 2016. Bernie Sanders saying I can beat him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Of all the lies, little and small that he has told, the biggest lie of all was when he said during the campaign that he was going to defend the interests of the working class of our country and that he was going to take on the powerful special interests to do that. What a monstrous lie that was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Those are the two most interesting things to me. Number one, Sanders trying to make the electability argument. A lot of people say, wait a minute, you're the guy who's too far to the left. You have Medicare for all. The Republicans call that socialism. Sanders going to the places that Trump flipped.

And the other thing when you look at those numbers, sometimes Iowa and New Hampshire are very different. Sometimes you go to a state like California and it's got its own view of the race.

This is very much like the last Republican race because of the age we live in where everybody is connected. It's a nationalized climate.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: . It is a nationalized climate so far. And this large field likely benefits Bernie Sanders tremendously. Because, you know, we are still waiting for Vice President Biden but once he gets in, we'll see if he stays at the top of the heap like that or if his support begins to divide up.

But Bernie Sanders can lose support in 2016. He does not have to even maintain his levels of support and that could be enough to win and carry him over in a state.

So interesting that he is in Wisconsin which he won in 2016 in a primary, and Michigan, which he won in the 2016, the primary. But he is making the electability argument. But one thing he's not talking about as much is sort of how much some of these things will cost.

So once other Democrats get alongside the debate stage, his plans for Medicare for all which several senators have signed on to, these things are going to be sort of the lightning rod for the Democratic debate. And we're going to see other Democrats like Amy Klobuchar and others saying wait, how much is this going to cost?

Once Biden gets in this race, if he gets in this race, we're still expecting him perhaps next week, that will then begin to change sort of, you know, the shape of this potentially.

KING: And official, getting in today is the South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg who, in a crowded field, you want to get attention. You want to be in the national media conversation as well as making waves here when you travel to these individual states.

One of the ways Pete Buttigieg has gotten some attention is picking a fight with his former governor Mike Pence, now the Vice President of the United States. Pete Buttigieg, an army veteran, a gay American who has criticized the Vice President's stance on LGBTQ issues -- listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Me being gay was a choice. It was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. You're quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

It's time for us to move on toward a more inclusive and more humane vision than what this vice president represents.

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hope that Pete will offer more to the American people than attacks on my Christian faith. I think Pete's quarrel is with the First Amendment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How so?

PENCE: All of us in this country have the right to our religious beliefs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Even Pete Buttigieg conceded (INAUDIBLE) the other day, he thinks this has helped elevate him in the conversation.

You made this point about the Omar video. I think from the Vice President's perspective, this could be a debate that both of them think works just fine for them considering what they're for and which electorate they're focusing on. TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": Yes. And

I think when you look at the poll and you see how much room that Mayor Pete Buttigieg has to grow in terms of people getting to know him and getting to understand where he's coming from as the mayor of a small- sized city, making these attacks and bringing in the Vice President into this is a way to raise his profile. It's a way to get into a back-and-forth with someone who has a much larger platform.

[08:35:00] And Vice President Mike Pence does not necessarily want to be in this fight, according to several of his aides because they know that it elevates the mayor and it gives him a bigger platform and they see him rising.

And they see that all that room that he has to grow in the polls just because of a number of people who have not yet heard about him or are still waiting to see what kind of policies he's going to bring to the debate.

And he is building for himself a much bigger platform by getting into this back-and-forth with the Vice President. And it's all upside for him because as long as he's in this back and forth with the Vice President, more people are paying attention to what he's saying. More people are listening to his speeches. And he's using that as a way to build his platform.

KING: And if you look at the California poll, one interesting thing you mentioned, we're still waiting on Joe Biden. We assume that will happen, he said after Easter I think, in four weeks -- expected it to happen. Do you consider the Biden allegations meaning he's using his conduct over the years and it made women uncomfortable, nothing sexual, but touching them. Is that a serious issue?

27 percent of all Californians, 24 percent of Democrats, 26 percent of women. So if you're the former vice president, those are not no numbers -- that's not nothing, but do you look at that and say, ok, this did not become a wildcard.

KAROUND DEMIRJIAN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": I think if you're Biden you say glass half full, (INAUDIBLE) of the people that I actually kind of speak to most directly and that I may have insulted with this for not actually taking it that badly.

But -- and that suggests that everything that Biden has done suggests he's looking for a way to just kind skirt these issues and get into the race anyway. And so if that happens and he's going to continue to be a formidable force, helping him be at or near the top of these polls as we go on, especially as all of the people that are down- ballot, Buttigieg and all the senator sand everybody else, struggle to make themselves break through these double digits and get to be known to the broader audience.

If he doesn't get in, it's going to be very interesting to see where all of that the Biden support falls out. Do they go to Sanders? Does it start to go to the, Buttigieges of the world. And that's a question that may not be a question to ask depending on when Biden gets in. KING: We're going to have to ask that question.

(CROSSTALKING)

KING: But until he -- until he says I'm in, we will keep right over here in case we need it.

One other piece of 2020 news before we go to break. At the top of the hour, Senator Kamala Harris releasing 15 years worth of her tax returns. They cover the years 2004 through 2018. That is the most of any candidate so far.

Up next, the Mueller report could come this week. So the President is again attacking the special counsel's credibility.

[08:37:13] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: It will be a big week ahead. The Attorney General William Barr says he should be able to get the Mueller report to Congress this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was an illegal witch hunt and everybody knew it. And they knew it, too. And they got caught. And what they did was treason.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't care about the Mueller report. I've been totally exonerated. No collusion, no obstruction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That tells you he does care and he's trying to discredit the findings. The totally exonerated part, by the way, just not true.

The release of the report though will turn the conversation back to what the Special Counsel investigated and what he did and did not find. Much of the talk this past week was about how the investigation began.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur.

SENATOR JEANNE SHAHEEN (D), NEW HAMPSHIRE: Well, let me --

BARR: The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated. And

I'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that. I feel I have an obligation to make sure that government power is not abused. I mean I think that's one of the principal roles of the Attorney General.

I'm not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I'm that saying I'm concerned abo it and looking into it. That's all. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The use of the term spying, which he knows because he's a former Attorney General, not just the current Attorney General is a term of art with meaning here in Washington, made the President happy as can be.

You could see Senator Shaheen's pause. It stunned the Democrats that he would use that term because they think -- they didn't trust him that much to begin with, now they think here is this guy who's parroting the President and can we trust him to edit this report.

OLORUNNIPA: This is a smoke screen that we know this report is coming out and it's not going to be positive for the President. So this is another opportunity to have a different headline, a different thing that people can talk about, something that the President can latch onto and say, you know, this whole thing is about me being spied on by my political opponents when we know that this is a 400-page report.

There's going to be information that's not positive for the President. There's going to be information that Bob Mueller looked at the issue of obstruction of justice and he couldn't decide whether or not the President was guilty or innocent. He said this does not exonerate the President from the crime of obstruction of justice.

So having the spying issue out there as ancillary issue that other people can talk about, that Republicans can talk about, it gives them another headline, another thing that will make them look at rather than focusing on the fact that the President may or may not be guilty of.

KING: But once we get the report, that conversation will change. You write about this. "In 400 pages there's bound to be something the media will spin as embarrassing for the President. And that will be the story, said a White House official. But will it be collusion? Will it be obstruction? Will it be conspiracy? Will it be criminality? No, no, no and no."

But in the same story, "The confetti and streamers that followed Barr's letter last month were 'completely unfounded', said a former White House official, who called his former colleagues, 'blissfully unaware of what's to come'."

This is likely to deliver a couple of body blows for the President.

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": Yes. And White House officials know that there will be embarrassing and potentially damaging information in this report. That's why they started talking about this counteroffensive that relates to Barr's testimony as well as the President's own statements which quote, David Bossie, a close Trump ally also calling for investigations in this story.

And so that's going to be a big part of the White House message. They will tout the conclusions of the report that there was no collusion and that Mueller reviewed all of the evidence and he could not put together a case to charge the President with obstruction and say now we've got to look into why after two years Mueller couldn't come up with a crime.

[08:44:57] Why was the President investigated for two years then? And we need to look into that. That's going to be a big part of the White House's message.

ZELENY: And I think one the questions is how much of this report are we going to see? I mean -- I think -- you know, it's more than 400 pages. There could be large swaths of it that are redacted. I mean there almost certainly will be.

But the question here is what was Bob Mueller's intent? Was he intending to sort of present all of this on a platter for the Congress to decide what to do with it without this intermediate step of saying I'm essentially exonerating him without using that word?

This has been so framed already, it's hard for me to imagine what else could be in this to sort of unframe this. That's why the President has raced so hard to try and discredit this.

But for one it's not going to be a complete 400-page read. It might be 200, it might be 100 in terms of the non-redacted things. But what was Bob Mueller's intent for Congress to do with the whole thing. We'll see if we get to the bottom of that.

KING: And one piece of drama added to it this week, was the arrest of Julian Assange. And with the arrest of Julian Assange came to prove that the President will move when he thinks it's in his interest. President Trump who once loved WikiLeaks, not so much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable.

This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove.

WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you still love WikiLeaks?

TRUMP: I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Not his thing.

DEMIRJIAN: Not recently, at least.

I think the WikiLeaks and the arrest of Assange who's notoriously been very uncooperative of a person with law enforcement authorities but it (INAUDIBLE) to be that could re-open questions that were left unanswered by the Mueller report. And remember there's other things that are happening, other legal processes that are continuing beyond the actual delivery of this report, investigations, other processes.

(CROSSTALKING)

DEMIRJIAN: Other sources (ph) around the country as well.

KING: Right.

DEMIRJIAN: And I think the interesting thing is that, you know, you tried to conduct this report in a space free from politics and it's impossible

(CROSSTALKING)

KING: No, impossible. Impossible.

Our reporters share from their notebooks next including which 2020 candidate is getting some early comparisons to Barack Obama.

[08:51:59] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Let's head one last time around the INSIDE POLITICS table, ask our great reporters to share a little something from their notebooks, help get you out ahead of the big political news just around the corner.

Eliana.

JOHNSON: I'm watching White House planning for a third summit with North Korea. The President this past week hosted the South Korean President Moon Jae-in and during -- talking to reporters with him said that while a big deal with North Korea didn't work out in Hanoi a couple of months ago, he's open to smaller deals.

And that's the first time we've heard him say that. That's something that makes some White House advisers, particularly National Security Adviser John Bolton very nervous. But we have heard Secretary of State Mike Pompeo say that he would like to do a third summit.

We know the President would like to do that. So looking for plans for a third summit with potentially smaller deal on the table.

KING: Keep your eye on humanitarian gestures perhaps.

Jeff.

ZELENY: We've been talking this morning about South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Well, one thing that he's doing as well is occupying some space that for a while other Democrats thought would be occupied by Beto O'Rourke, the man of the moment, the people-powered candidate.

I was in Chicago for a couple of days last week and talking to a lot of former Obama aides. And they say they recognize, particularly in how he sounds, a lot of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, into what Senator Obama used to sound like.

He talks a lot about policy. Why he wanted to be president -- that intellectual sort of sound. Now it's too early to say that Pete Buttigieg is sort of running in the Obama lane, any comparisons to any previous campaigns always sort of fraught.

But there's no question at all that Pete Buttigieg is occupying a bit of that Obama lane, if you will among those Democrats. Beto O'Rourke's people are slightly concerned about this. His campaign manager Jen O'Malley sent out an e-mail on Saturday saying don't look at these early polls. We're right on track here.

But there is a sense that he may have squandered an early moment. Of course, the question of striking early isn't always good as well but watch that Beto versus Buttigieg, who is the Obama of this cycle.

KING: The big (ph) candidate. A lot of big candidates in this field.

KING: Toluse.

OLORUNNIPA: Monday is tax day. And I'll be watching to see how Republicans are still trying to sort to win the messaging war on the tax fight. They passed a big tax bill in 2017. They tried to run on it in 2018 and they really struggled. And polling shows that Americans still largely disapprove of the tax bill that passed. That's about 49 percent of voters believe that the tax bill was not a good idea.

Only about anywhere from 36 percent to 40 percent of voters support the tax bill. So you're going to see Republicans and specifically the President out on Monday trying to sell this tax bill. The President is going to be traveling to Minnesota to talk about the tax bill and focus on what he's done for everyday Americans and for their pocketbooks and trying to change those numbers.

Democrats obviously are running against the tax bill saying it was a big giveaway to the corporations and to the wealthy. But it will be very interesting to see as the President goes to Minnesota and tries to talk about the tax bill whether he can do what his advisers want him to do which is focus on the economy, focus on the things that he's done and not get distracted on what he really wants to talk about which is immigration and other divisive issues.

KING: We shall see. There's a road trip --

Karoun?

DEMIRJIAN: I'm really looking in addition to everything else, of course to the question about what the President is going to do on the Yemen war powers resolution bill and whether or not the United States is going to continue to support the Saudi effort there. I think everybody is expecting that he will veto this resolution that the House and Senate passed and sends to his desk. But the clock is ticking on that.

And right now even though there's only a very small number of Republicans who supported that effort to pull away from the Saudi-led fight, there are people who are rather close to the President. They are pressuring him to actually maybe sign this legislation.

But either way that that goes. If he says no, I'm not going to do it and sends his expected veto back to Congress, what is next? They can't override that veto but the momentum to do something about Saudi Arabia especially because people have not forgotten about the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is still there. It still has the leaders of the GOP in a bind even though they haven't actually pushed him to endorse any specific proposal.

[08:55:05] But do we start talking sanctions? Do we start talking about weapons transfers? It doesn't seem like this issue is going to go away even though it's been kind of pushed back because of everything else going on.

KING: The President has shown no inclination personally to get tough but we shall see.

I'll close with a play on "Jeopardy" and take political -- critical political geography for a thousand. It is the bellwether heartland city where Michael Dukakis road in a thank. It is in the county that made the term Reagan Democrats famous.

And in more recent campaigns, including this new one, it is the proving ground for candidates hoping to show they understand the stress of America's blue collar workers.

The President was there just a few weeks ago. And it was Trump country in 2016 even though Hillary Clinton visited this city to walk away from trade deals negotiated by her husband and by President Obama.

Bernie Sanders was in the same bellwether city yesterday, challenging the President to walk away from the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. Senator Sanders saying it's too weak and does not protect American workers.

The answer what is Warren, Michigan. If you want to pick one place on the map to study and watch to see if the President can win again, watch Warren, the largest city in Michigan's critical Macomb County.

That's it for INSIDE POLITICS. Hope you can catch us weekdays as well. We're here at noon Eastern.

Don't go anywhere. Up next, a very busy "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER". His guests include the House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler, Republican Senator Rick Scott, plus Democratic presidential candidate Congressman Eric Swalwell.

"STATE OF THE UNION" just ahead.

We'll see you soon. Thanks for sharing your Sunday.

[08:56:27] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)