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House to Vote on Resolution; Trump Defends Racist Attacks; House GOP Leaders Defend Trump. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 16, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: We'll see some other sort of launch. We'll just have to wait and see, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: No, that's exactly how it -- how it always ends with these government -- with this when it comes to North Korea.

Thank you so much, Michelle, I really appreciate it.

Thank you also for joining me this hour.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate.

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

The House votes this evening on a resolution condemning President Trump's racist tweets and words attacking four Democratic women of color. The president is showing the very opposite of remorse, or pause, insisting today he is not racist and tweeting that if you don't like it here, you can leave.

Plus, a new CNN poll releasing this hour shows more warning signs for the one-time frontrunner Joe Biden. The former vice president narrowly leads a very tight race in the first primary state, New Hampshire. And voters there do not see Biden as the best candidate on health care.

And, a little levity here. I think we could use some. Biden says he has a plan to prove his fitness on the presidential debate stage and, Bernie Sanders, not quite sure what to make of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I say, come on, Donald. Come on, man. You -- it's -- how many pushups you want to do here, pal, you know?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC HOST: Right.

BIDEN: I mean, jokingly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Warning he may challenge the president to pushups. SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have no comment

on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We begin this hour, though, with the president, who won't back down, won't back away from his racist tweets, communicating quite clearly this morning. The four congresswomen of color, the president thinks are whiners and complainers, the president says they can opt out of America. If you hate our country or if you are not happy here, you can leave. That a tweet from the president.

Today, the president facing a resolution in the Democratic majority House condemning his racist tweets from Sunday. This morning, the president tweeting that telling four American congresswomen of color to, quote, go back to their countries was, in his view, not racist. The president says there's not a racist bone in his body.

Read deeper into the president's Twitter feed today and listen to the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, their objective, more than clear, try to morph this now into a debate about socialism or impeachment. Try to leave the president's racist words behind.

The four congresswomen at the center of this, though, think the focus should stay squarely on the president and his go back demand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): The recent tweets and words from the president are simply a continuation of his racist, his xenophobic playbook.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Weak minds and leaders challenge loyalty to our country in order to avoid challenging and debating the policy.

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): This is the agenda of white nationalists. And now it's reached the White House garden.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's Manu Raju live for us on Capitol Hill.

Manu, the divide here getting wider, if that's possible.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely, because what we're seeing is Democrat after Democrat condemning the president's tweets, saying very clearly that they are racist. Elizabeth Warren, the presidential candidate, just told me moments ago that these words of the president, the behavior of the president is racist. She renewed her calls to begin impeachment proceedings.

Democrats are planning to bring this resolution to the floor this evening in the House, to condemn the president for making those statements over the weekend. But we expect most Republicans, if not all Republicans, except for a few, to vote against that resolution in the House, showing the party line. A number of Republicans are starting to defend the president more vocally, while some are making it very clear that they're not comfortable with the president's remarks. For the most part they're saying what the president did is borne out of what they say is frustration at inaction over immigration. One Republican senator, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who's up for re-election in 2020, who needs the president's support in a primary in his state, criticized those Democratic congresswomen, would not say if he had any concerns with the president saying that those congresswomen who are American citizens, three of the four born in this country, that they should go back to their countries. He would not say if he had concerns. He sized up -- when I pressed him on that -- on multiple occasions.

So, John, you're seeing this divide play out pretty clearly here and silence from some quarters on Capitol Hill. We have yet to hear from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on this topic. We do expect to hear him -- from him this afternoon when he addresses reporters. But for the most part, Democrats are trying to express their outrage in this vote this evening. Republicans are saying this is -- what they're criticizing the Democrats and we're probably going to see no resolution on this any time soon.

John.

KING: It's going to be interesting to see that Republican number, how big it is or how small it is when that resolution is voted on this evening.

Manu Raju, appreciate the live reporting on The Hill. It's a busy day up there.

With me here in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Jonathan Martin with "The New York Times," Asma Khalid with NPR, and Julie Hirschfeld Davis with "The New York Times."

[12:05:01] So the Democrats are going to have their motion to -- their resolution to condemn. If you look at the president's tweets this morning, he likes this fight, which is sad, sad for the country, but he likes this fight. Why?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's a two-pronged fight for him. One, it's about consolidating his party in the -- in -- consolidating his power in the Republican Party, making sure all Republicans know that in order to be comfortable in the Trump Republican Party, they must be willing to defend him in this particular case. He will not accept anything other than that. He's been actively praising Kevin McCarthy for his comments this morning. He is taking note. He's watching TV. He's paying attention to who's saying what on the Republican side.

But he's also trying to completely rebrand and, frankly, rewrite history around these tweets, saying that this was always about socialism and always about ideology, when, in fact, his tweet absolutely had nothing to do with ideology. If had everything to do with assuming that these four individuals were not Americans because they did not look like Americans and, in his view, because they criticized America.

JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": His view.

PHILLIP: And I think Lindsey Graham said it yesterday to a reporter, that if you -- if you are wearing a MAGA hat and you support President Trump, all of this would be fine. But, in this country, I think a lot of people believe that the right of Americans is to criticize the country without being criticized by the government.

KING: That's why they threw the tea in Boston Harbor. It's kind of the very beginning -- the very beginning of the American experiment is that you have the right to complain. It is the very beginning of the experiment that you have the right to complain against authority and against power. Our president seems to forget the history. Maybe that was something to do with the airports.

ASMA KHALID, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NPR: But, I mean, but Donald Trump, I would say has -- has essentially based his entire career off of the idea recently that -- that America has not been great and that there is a right to criticize. I think the argument is, he's made it very clear who has that right to criticize, right? And you go out and you talk to his supporters and this is largely a fairly popular belief. I mean in some ways the -- the comments he made I think were sort of these old, very generic, racist comments. I mean anybody who's not white has largely heard these comments. And we've often heard them even from his supporters.

So, I mean, he believes, whether or not it's successful you can debate, but he believes that the more he goes to this cultural-based conversation, it's what he did ahead of the midterms that it -- it's going to be a good playbook for him.

MARTIN: Let me jump in there.

I -- to that end, I actually think it's more indulgent than it is strategic. And I'm reminded of the midterms, actually.

I think he's watching TV and wants to get into the conversation and wants to be on TV. And he knows that this is his very incendiary way of doing that. And so he does it.

I don't think there's a lot of grand strategy involved. And you think back to the midterms and the way that he flogged the so-called caravan of the migrants coming up north. That wasn't helpful to his party. I don't think the NRCC was calling him and saying, we're trying to win in upscale suburbs around Houston and Dallas and Kansas City. Can you race bait Central Americans in the final weeks of the campaign and make -- and basically make this about race and identity instead of the booming economy because the folks are going to love that in Kansas City. Of course not!

JULIE HIRSCHFIELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think --

MARTIN: And I think that's his challenge, is that it's an indulgence that drives away voters his party needs to take back the House and keep the presidency.

DAVIS: I think you're right that he is -- that this isn't necessarily a strategic call. But I also think that Asma's right, that this is clearly where President Trump is comfortable. This is the terrain --

MARTIN: Absolutely, yes. Totally.

DAVIS: This is the terrain that he wants to play on. And I think you're right that he wanted to inject himself into the conversation. There had been this very sort of well-publicized fight going on between Nancy Pelosi and these four congresswomen who are freshmen, who are women of color, who had started to suggest that they were being targeted by their own leaders because they were women of color and he wanted to jump into that.

But once it got to the point where he is tweeting these things that are clearly offensive and that clearly have to do with their race and their country -- their families' countries of origin, that is terrain that while other politicians might shy away from, he is very happy going. And I think he does believe, on some level, that the more he can get Democrats to rise to their defense --

MARTIN: Yes.

DAVIS: The better that is for them because then they can paint all Democrats as socialists and they can, right, paint them all as extreme. And, in his mind, sort of dangerous. And that is messaging that, I think, while maybe not strategic is his favorite kind of messaging.

KING: I think it's -- it is important to note, to the point being made around the table, the president, after Charlottesville, when you had the neo-Nazis and nationalists marching in the streets, did not tell those people to go back anywhere.

MARTIN: Right.

KING: When he engages Bernie Sanders, he calls him a socialist, he calls him things -- he doesn't tell Bernie Sanders, a white man, to go back anywhere.

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: He only uses that language in this case. So anyone who says this is not racist, this is not targeted is not willing to accept the facts of the full context that the president is speaking --

MARTIN: It's clearly driven by race and that's why I think it is so lacking in strategy because a lot of voters who otherwise would be happy to vote for the Republican president, because, heck, they're doing pretty well right now. They're going to have pause because they don't want to side with somebody who's a racial demagogue. And that's why Democrats won 40 seats in the House because of where they want -- those people who are doing great in the economy. They can't abide the demagogic behavior and the bigotry and just the sort of chaotic conduct in general. And that's what I think is the real danger here for Trump is that he needs people who are not his base. It's not the guy in the diner, OK, but --

[12:10:23] KING: He doesn't -- I'm not sure he doesn't think that. He thinks I -- he's president and you're not.

MARTIN: OK.

KING: And he did it in 2016 and he thinks he can do it again.

DAVIS: Yes.

KING: Every second we sit at this table --

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: America becomes more brown, American becomes more diverse.

MARTIN: I know.

KING: Every second we sit here. But he thinks he can put his map together one more time.

MARTIN: Yes. I've got two words for you --

KING: If you talk about the -- go ahead.

MARTIN: Gretchen Whitmer.

KING: Right.

MARTIN: The governor of Michigan who ran and won overwhelmingly in a state that Trump carried. And, by the way, Macomb County, home of the Reagan Democrats, she flipped it in overwhelming fashion.

And so I think the point being the 2016 election is -- it doesn't tell us everything about where campaign and the politics are. 2018 can be very, very informative as well. And if Democrats offer voters an option that I think can bring them in and make them feel like I'm not siding with someone who's engaging in racial bigotry, that's going to be pretty tempting, you know?

KING: Which -- which is why, to the point, and no offense to the squad, they're four activist, liberal women who believe what they believe and they're pushing their agenda. They have not been able to convince Nancy Pelosi to impeach President Trump. They have not been able to convince Nancy Pelosi to bring Medicare for all to the House floor for a full vote.

So, as the president says, this is your Democratic Party, they are activists, they're important to the Democratic Party, but they have not had a policy influence as yet.

But today -- last week we were talking about Nancy Pelosi's war with the squad, her fight with the squad, her effort to manage, if you will, and contain the vocal opposition. Today she says they are our sisters. And other Democratic members of Congress, this is Tom Suozzi from New York, who often take issue either with their policy or with their tactics, today say I'm with them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TOM SUOZZI (D-NY): This is the problem of what Donald Trump does. He completely shifts the focus away from important policy issues to this racial divide in our country. I don't agree with all the politics of the squad. I'm a Democrat. I don't -- I don't agree with a lot of their politics. But, today, I want to be an honorary member of the squad because I want to fight against this un-American, racist type of behavior. This is not what our country wants.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: But is there a risk for the Democrats? They do all come together today for good reason, good reason. The president used racist language against these four women, period. Is there Cornell Belcher, the Democratic strategist, himself an African-American, says the president's trying to pick the battlefield here. Is there a risk for Democrats in this fight?

DAVIS: There absolutely is a risk for Democrats. And one of -- one of the risks is that they will all be painted in this -- with the same broad brush as the women in the squad whose politics not all of them shared and are not as broadly popular with the electorate as sort of the Nancy Pelosi agenda that she's trying to push on the House floor.

But the other -- but the other danger is that he is sort of leading them into this very kind of balkanized dynamic where they -- they are going to have trouble showing that they have an alternative to his policies because they're going to be so busy potential hitting back against all of these offensive things that he says. And if they spend all of their time talking about Trump, they understand that is not going to be an appealing message to give people an alternative against, you know, what he's putting out there.

MARTIN: Yes.

PHILLIP: I think the debate -- the debate has already been reduced to buzz words. It's already been reduced to anti-Semitism, socialism, communism.

MARTIN: Right.

PHILLIP: That is what the president has been trying to do all along. There is no nuance in this, and that is to the detriment of Democrats. As long as that's going to continue, it's going to be very difficult for them to elevate the debate back up again and say, actually, we're not all the same. We're not even -- within the squad they're not all the same, even though they're getting painted by the same brush.

MARTIN: Right. (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIP: But that's the president's skill here. He is breaking this down into tweet-size -- a tweet-sized debate about all of these really, really big issues. KING: But part of that is him trying to get there now. I'm going to

stick with where he began. Go back. You can have a debate about socialism. You can have a debate about anti-Semitism. You can have a debate about Medicare for all. You can have a debate about liberalism. He started with the words go back. That's a different debate.

Up next, we'll continue the conversation. The Republican leadership this morning lining up to defend the boss and try to deflect his words.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:18:52] KING: Change the subject is priority one, priority two and priority three for Republicans today. Gloss over the president's tweets, calling women of color -- telling women of color to go back, ignore the president's history of race baiting and suggest this new flare-up here in Washington is about anything but race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race. It has to do with the content of their policies.

REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): What they continue to do to go after him personally, to call for impeachment of the president from day one.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): But I believe this is about ideology. This is about socialism versus freedom. And it's very clear what the debate is happening. I understand when I listened to their press conference yesterday, they talked more about impeachment than anything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I get it, they're in a bad position and they are unwilling. We'll see what that vote is tonight by House Republicans. They're unwilling to condemn tweets that were clearly racist. So they want to change the subject.

But we -- again, as I said in the last segment, we can have a debate about socialism. We can have a debate about Ilhan Omar's remarks about Israel. Those are all fair game. Go back to women of color is racist.

[12:20:02] MARTIN: You know, there is no edit function on Twitter, as all of us here know. But those leaders there are trying to basically do an edit app there on the Trump Twitter feed and basically trying to sort of reframe what he said in a way that they don't want to rebuke him overly because they don't want to risk offending him and his supporters more to the point, but they also want to sort of nudge him oh so gently and say, maybe this is the better way to frame your approach to the squad, talking about their ideology. That's maybe more helpful politically for us.

They wouldn't say that out loud, but that's what they're basically getting at there. They want the benefit of attacking them without the backlash. But that's not Trump. Trump is never going to separate that. He's not going to sort of do the careful focus group attack. There is no stiletto in his arsenal, it's all meat cleaver.

KING: So who are the Republicans, and you think about House districts in America, most Republican districts are safe Republican districts. Most Democratic districts are safe too. That's how, unfortunately, they draw the districts so there's no competition in America today.

I just want to put up, you can see on the screen here, just about 20 Republicans who have criticized or condemned using different language the president's tweets. You see a lot of these faces you're about to see on the screen are in the United States Senate. Most of them. Not all of them. Some House members there. But most of these are Senate statewide candidates who say the president's off here.

What are we looking for? How big of a vote? Because most Republicans are afraid of the president's Twitter feed. Most Republicans are afraid of a primary challenge from the right. Some Republicans do represent diverse districts or, let me say, some Republicans actually have the pride and the principle to say, this is wrong, but it won't be a big number, will it?

KHALID: No. I mean and what we've seen I would also say has also been minority congressmen themselves, say like Will Hurd, right, actually being willing to speak up about this --

MARTIN: And stop (ph) -- yes.

KHALID: Because in some ways it's actually very personal.

MARTIN: Right.

KHALID: And -- and I think that's where we're actually seeing some of the rebuke is from people who have a personal stake in this conversation.

DAVIS: But others -- and I do agree that the number will be very narrow. I think others we're hearing from are the more independent- minded Republicans, the ones who have more moderate districts, who have staked out sort of an identity as more independent from their leadership and independent from the president. But there aren't very many of those left. And I think what we're more likely to hear, as you played in the clip, is sort of like an attempt to shift this entire debate. So you're going to have Democrats, probably to a person who use the word racist to describe what the president tweeted and what he said, and then you're going to have Republicans getting up there and saying, we're against socialism, we're against these policies, and they're just going to be talking past each other.

KING: Right. And so you see today -- it's interesting, the president -- the president and those Republican leaders trying to shift this to socialism, shift this to Medicare for all, shift this for, you know, some words, some anti-Semitic words that Congresswoman Omar has spoken. They want to shift it there, who will say this fight began because the president said go back. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the members of the squad today, doing her own little bit to try to broaden this -- broaden this beyond the women of -- the color part to the women part, tweeting, hey, Mr. President, remember when you bragged about sexually assaulting women, talking about feeling their breasts and their genitals because when you're a star you get to do it? And then she goes on, you're right, Mr. President, you don't have a racist bone in your body, you have a racist mind in your head and a racist heart in your chest.

Strong words there. Again, we talk, Julie, about the president seems just wanting to continue this fight. These members aren't going to back down either.

PHILLIP: No, and I think they also demonstrated why they have become such a problem for Nancy Pelosi. They are pretty skilled politically. If you go watch that press conference and you watch AOC talking about her father bringing her to the edge of the reflecting pool and telling her that this country is hers, her father who was an immigrant, these are people who understand the politics of their constituency. They are not afraid to go after President Trump. And they also don't think that Democrats broadly should be afraid to go after the president. And that is what has made them such a force in the party.

We're talking about four people, but we're talking about kind of a sense of a movement within the party where a lot of people want them to be less afraid and to go after President Trump more directly. They have won in a lot of ways. The fact that Democrats are willing to say, this is racist, the president is racist, is a shift over two and a half years.

KHALID: That's very true.

PHILLIP: And I think that that is -- that is a real difference from where we were in January 2017. What we have seen on the Republican side, however, is that while you have some people willing to call it out, you have a lot of Republicans only willing to say, oh, this is not helpful.

KING: Right.

PHILLIP: That is the same thing I think as endorsing --

KING: The Republican criticism after Charlottesville was a lot louder than it is today.

PHILLIP: Yes. Exactly.

KING: Many Republicans have just decided, he's not going to change, so we're going to hide when these things happen. We're just going to try to hide. We're not going to challenge it.

To that point, I just want to get this in, John Thune, the senator from South Dakota, who is a member of the Republican leadership, saying, I think the president needs to tone down the rhetoric, stop the personal attacks, rise above this kind of commentary and focus on the issues that matter to the American people. So we want to applaud those Republicans who do come out and say, watch it, Mr. President.

MARTIN: Watching the Republican reaction to this was kind of like watching a close vote, which all of us have done on Capitol Hill. It starts with a trickle, right, because nobody wants to be the first one to vote no on a sensitive bill or vote yes. And then once one or two come out and they punch their cards and they vote, then you see the rest.

[12:25:06] And that's what we saw. On Sunday there was such silence. I think what it is, is that they don't want to be the only one or the only two to be out there on the ledge because then they feel like Trump's going to go after you. It's harder for Trump to go after them when they're all saying that this is inappropriate.

But that does speak to the sort of lack of any profiles in courage up there in the House GOP conference that, look, they look around to see, what are my colleagues saying after Trump does this kind of thing. And instead of saying, you know what, this is wrong and I'll say it.

KING: What's the right thing to do? What's the right thing to do? What's the right thing to say? It should be -- should be the operating principle. But you'll watch this play out. Again, you heard Senator Thune there, he's a member of the leadership, a close deputy of Mitch McConnell. We'll see if that's Mitch McConnell's view when he speaks to this later today after a Republican meeting. But the Senate is a different beast than the House. The House much more pro-Trump, if you will, among the House Republicans.

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: We'll see.

When we come back, more -- big 2020 news. Joe Biden's calling card is that he's the one who can beat President Trump, but some new polling suggests he's going to have trouble beating his Democratic rivals first.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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