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Trump Changes on Background Checks; Trump Touts a Strong Economy; Trump Comments on Jews. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 21, 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] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Appreciate it from Florida for us.

And thank you all so much for joining me today. "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 a very busy news day with us.

President Trump speaking to reporters at the White House right now, confusing us again about his position on guns. He was for background checks after Dayton and El Paso. Then the White House yesterday said the president was retreating. Just moments ago, the president said, no, he want something. We will try on clear up the confusion.

Plus, new immigration controversy. The administration proposes a new rule that would allow it to indefinitely detain families crossing the border. The White House says this is necessary to discourage illegal entry. Critics call it cruel.

And remember the president not long ago said a planned trip to Denmark had nothing to do with his fantasy of buying Greenland. Now he's canceling that trip after the prime minister called the idea absurd and said Greenland is not for sale.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

METTE FREDERIKSEN, DANISH PRIME MINISTER: It is with regret and surprise that I received the news that President Trump has canceled his state visit to Denmark on the 2nd and 3rd of September. I'd been looking forward to the visit. Our preparations were well underway. It was an opportunity, I think, to celebrate Denmark's close relationship to U.S. and -- who remains one of Denmark's closest allies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's the prime minister of Denmark right there. The president of the United States just called her nasty for saying that. President Trump saying that as he speaks to reporters at the White House right now.

Some early highlights as we await. We'll bring you the tape as soon as we can. On the economy, the president says, quote, our economy is the strongest in the world. That despite some worries of recession warning signs. The Fed, the president says, quote, totally missed on cutting interest rates some more.

And on guns, this gets confusing. The president says, quote, we're going to be doing background checks, after saying yesterday he wouldn't be doing background checks. And the president says, yes, this is important. The president said, I do when asked if he thinks guns are a public health emergency.

With me this day to share their reporting and their insights as we wait to hear directly from the president, CNN's Abby Phillip, Heather Caygle with "Politico," Joshua Jamerson with "The Wall Street Journal," and Margaret Talev with "Axios."

It's going to be important, especially on guns, to hear exactly what the president says because you can be confused or you can have whiplash if you're trying to track the White House. And we went through this after Parkland. Now we're going through it again after Dayton and El Paso where the president wanted meaningful background checks, said he had spoken to the Senate majority leader and he was lining up the Republican ducks, if you will. Then a few phone calls with the NRA and conservatives in Congress and the White House said we're -- no, never mind. The president's saying we have background checks. Let's not get on a slippery slope. Now he's saying it is a public health emergency and he wants something.

Well -- I'm confused.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean I think we have to hear what he says. But let's keep in mind, this is not a White House where rank and file staffers who work for the president, work with the president, around him, his chief of staff and others, are particularly -- they are not interest in expanding background checks or crossing the NRA in any way. So it goes beyond just Wayne LaPierre calling President Trump or just Republicans on Capitol Hill saying no.

The Republican Party, by and large, is resistant to this and they largely occupy the White House. So even when -- if the president expresses some openness to this, there's some real questions about whether the White House is willing to put their muscle behind any kind of gun control effort on Capitol Hill because it will take an extreme amount of effort. And so far they really have not been -- they do not seem to have been willing to do that. And I think certainly given the phone call back and forth between the White House and the NRA, there is a lot of pressure being exert on President Trump to toe the line when it comes to, you know, Second Amendment rights and opposition to gun control.

KING: And the question is, heading into a campaign yes, is there something, Republicans have talked about red flag laws. If you don't have the federal law, at least create a federal program where you're giving grants to states that are trying to improve their own systems for making sure that people with known mental health issues, or known even misdemeanor criminal activity (INAUDIBLE) maybe can't get a handle on guns. States would decide that. The president did say -- and, again, we're going to hear from the

president directly. It's important the hear all of his words in exact language -- that he said Wayne LaPierre, the president of the NRA, who has tried to talk him out of doing anything aggressive, is for something. The question is, can Republicans come up with something narrow that they believe helps them prove, we're trying on respond to what's happening in America and not what the Republican -- their excuse always is, if we do one thing, the Democrats are going to ask for more.

HEATHER CAYGLE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": Well, you know, I think that's the question Republicans are asking themselves on The Hill right now just talking to them the last few days. Republican leaders were privately very relieved that Trump backed off of background checks.

[12:05:03] There's still a few more weeks of recess. They're hoping we can come back in September. Everyone's focused on finding the government. They're not worried about doing this.

I think for them, their goal is -- especially Mitch McConnell -- is to run out the clock between now and November 2020 with as little drama as possible and doing anything on guns invites drama.

KING: But the question is where you live, too. There are some Republican who would say, you know what, I have to answer to suburban voters, or maybe I'm running in a state that has a big city. And we have a brand new poll out later. We'll get through some of it throughout the hour depending on what the president has to say, but this is the president on gun policy. Disapproval in urban America, way off the charts. Disapproving of the president's performance. Now, the president doesn't get a lot of votes in urban America. As he's going into 2020, maybe that's not a concern to him, although that's a lot of votes against you, if you will, if gun control is a voting issue.

Suburban America, this is the fascinating question for me for Republicans. Again, depending on what state you're from. The suburbs have turned on the Republican Party under President Trump. But if you're a Susan Collins in Maine or a Joni Ernest in Iowa or a Martha McSally in Arizona, looking at the growth of the Phoenix suburbs, you're wondering, can we do something? Because a lot of suburban voters say we should act on gun control. And in rural areas, it's the only place where the president is above water, if you will, approval above disapproval on the issue of gun policy.

So I guess my question is, heading into the election year, in the wake of more tragedy and more killings in America, can Republicans find a sweet spot? The only way they're going to do it if the president is consistent. And he's been anything but.

JOSHUA JAMERSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": And that's exactly the point. I mean we see Republicans on The Hill all the time just want to know what the line is. And this waffling back and forth only confuses them. I think, like Abby said earlier, like, if the White House is -- does put some muscle behind a clear, specific plan. And The Hill now has to -- Republicans on The Hill now have to answer for that. I think it could make things at least interesting where we have to see now some senior Republican in states you just named, like Maine, Arizona, what do they think about some of the plans the president comes up with? But it would have to be consistent.

KING: Right. And do they -- do they come back and say, Mr. President, while home for the August recess, you know, I got an ear full. Here's what we want to do. Or do they come back saying, you know, I did not get an earful and so we don't need to do anything. I think that's sort of the key here.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I -- this is very difficult. When you're talking just about the politics and not about people's personal convictions, it's very difficult for a lot of Republicans to figure out. And I think all the evidence suggests that for the president, this is not a deep burning, personal conviction. He does not have -- there's no evidence he has a strongly held personal view on what's the right thing to do here because if he did, he might be willing to actually risk some political capital for this.

But for the president's team and the groups that support the president, they're looking at this through the lens of, how does it affect him in 2020? Does he get any points? Does he convert any voters if he use that political capital to push for something meaningful, or does it cost him? If it costs him, does it cost him so much that it erodes enough of his base to put his election in jeopardy?

The calculation for Republicans is something different. And it is state by state, district by district. The president has to think short term, can he win re-election. Longer term, if he loses the Senate, was it worth winning re-election?

But -- but there is actually the policy question here. I mean if you look polling wise, nationally, overwhelmingly it is at a tipping point. Americans of all stripes support some form of this kind of level of --

KING: Expanded background checks and the red flag laws.

TALEV: Yes, this sort of stuff.

KING: Those should be quote/unquote easy.

TALEV: It is --

KING: Nothing -- nothing in Washington is easy. And the Republicans are right, the Democrats would try to get more. They have this thing called a Congress. They could do this thing called vote. Vote and see who wins. But that's an old -- I guess that's old school to think that elected members of Congress, who are supposed to come here and take votes and show what they stand for, would actually take votes and show what they stand for. That's asking too much of our democracy, I guess. Forgive the snark.

The president also talking about the economy. And, again, we'll hear him, important. His railing against the Fed is nothing new. But he is especially mad at the Fed now because there have been some potential warning signs of recession. The president says, don't believe them. At the same time, the president himself confirmed yesterday, they're thinking about a payroll tax cut. You don't think about a payroll tax cut -- which I don't know if he can get through the congress -- but you don't think about that unless you're worried the economy is going to spiral.

That's one tool you can use in a recession, cut taxes. The other tool is the Fed could cut rates. They're already historically low, but he wants more.

Another tool is the government can spend to stimulate the economy, but just this morning, the Congressional Budget Office saying the federal budget deficit under this Republican president is growing even faster than expected and will pass $1 trillion next year. What are the president's options at a time, if you look, this is, again, from our new poll out just today, this has been the one good thing in the president's polling is that for some time now he has been around 50 percent and he's right at 50 percent. He's come down a little bit from a couple of months ago. He's at 50 percent when it comes to his handling of the economy.

However, people, for the first time, for the first time in the Trump presidency, and, again, this is more of a watch than a wow, but for the first time in the Trump presidency, people's views about the future of the economy. 65 percent say the future looks good as opposed to 70 percent back in May. Again, it's one number. But if consumers get nervous and pull back from spending, that in and of itself can accelerate either a slowdown or a recession. What are the president's options besides yelling at Jerome Powell?

[12:10:008] JAMERSON: Well, he's also come up with this idea about tying capital gains tax to inflation, which I thought was interesting on the front pages of "The Journal" today they were talking about how the tax policy scenario isn't (ph) even sure that that would spur economic growth. So the policies that they're considering, it's not even clear that they would work.

But I think it's interesting that, you know, when he's tied his re- election chances so closely to the economy, that there's a pack of Democrats running for president who are already kind of fine tuning how they would take him on in that message. You see Elizabeth Warren already predicting a recession. You see people like Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris putting the economy into their stump speeches already, saying that Trump spent so much time focused on the stock market and I think it's one of Kamala Harris' lines, that that's only good if you own stocks, which I think resonates with some Americans who see that as kind of not part of their everyday bottom line.

TALEV: But I think you do see the president, at a bare minimum, laying the groundwork to figure out who to blame if various things go wrong. Blame the Democrats. Blame the Fed, right?

When it comes to this idea that --

KING: History suggests that's a very hard thing for any president to do, but I get what -- I get what he's --

TALEV: You have to at least try -- you've got to at least try, right?

KING: Right.

TALEV: But you -- but when it comes to the payroll tax, on the surface, it looks like, yes, that would be sort of a tough haul in Congress. Everything is a negotiation. Everything's a deal. So the question is, if it got to the point where even Democrats and Republicans alike and enough Republicans felt like the payroll tax was an important lever to pull, what would Democrats want in exchange for their support. The problem is, a lot of what they would want would be very hard to get if you were in the chute on the way to recession because it would be things that cost money, like raising the minimum wage.

KING: And, again, in the -- in the department -- sorry, in the department of mixed signals, the president and most of his team, when the camera is aimed at them, say, everything's great, don't worry. "Politico" reporting that at a fundraiser in Wyoming the other day, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, did acknowledge that there was a possibility there could be a recession. He said it would be, quote, moderate and short.

To the history point I was trying to make earlier, we had a moderate and short recession the last time we had a one-term president, which was George W. Bush.

PHILLIP: Right. And the other thing that is such a large chunk of the uncertainty and of -- in the economic picture is the president's trade war. This is something he did to himself. And he did it based on the gambling that he believed the economy was strong enough to withstand a trade war with China.

The problem is, that might actually produce the environment that would hasten an economic recession. And it's too late for him. He might -- I think he believes it's too late for him to back away from that. This has gone so far that he cannot drop his demands entirely to China, even though he's kicked some of it down the road.

So this is a little bit of a crisis, in part of the president's own making. And you asked earlier, what can he do to improve the economic picture? I think if you asked businesses and Wall Street, a lot of them would say certainty around that one issue is just such a massive part of the picture, not only for businesses, but for American consumers. And it's an easy thing that the White House has complete control over, but they refuse to do that because this is a core belief for President Trump. He actually believes that tariffs work. We'll find out soon enough whether or not the economy of the United States can really withstand that long (INAUDIBLE).

KING: And we'll hear from the president on this and other issues momentarily. A long session with reporters. The president's on his way to Kentucky for some Republican fundraising. We'll hear from that.

We'll also discuss, when we come back, the president says if you are a Jew and you vote for a Democrat, you're either disloyal or dumb.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:18:13] KING: President Trump facing accusations today that he himself is babbling in anti-Semitic tropes. Just moments ago, speaking to reporters on the White House South Lawn, the president doubled down on those comments, saying he meant what he said when he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Where is the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they're defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That the president yesterday. Many critics and Jewish leaders pouncing when they heard the president say that, arguing Trump was invoking, quote, dual loyalty charges, which, over the course of history, has questioned the loyalty of Jewish citizens.

Avi Mayer of the American Jewish Committee tweeting this after the president, quote, here are all the circumstances under which it is appropriate for the president to comment on American Jews' loyalty. You see there's nothing there, dot, dot, dot. End of list. And, no, Mr. Meyer went on to say, it makes absolutely no difference who he's saying we're loyal or disloyal to. That we're even talking about this is insane.

Coming to the president's defense, the Republican Jewish Coalition. In their tweet they say, quote, President Trump is right, it shows a great deal of disloyalty to one's self to defend a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion. The GOP, the tweet goes on to say, when rarely confronted with anti-Semitism of elected members always acts swiftly and decisively to punish and remove.

Always acts swiftly and decisively. Steve King has been removed, but not swiftly. Kevin McCarthy, the current House Republican leader, has said some things that have been -- people have said contain anti- Semitic tropes, whether they were intentional or not.

What do we make of the president here? His son-in-law and his daughter are very observant Jews. Most of the knock on the president is that he's just not studying. He should know better. That he's not an anti- Semite but that he should know better than to pedal in this language. But there we are. Here we are.

[12:20:09] PHILLIP: It's notable that as Republicans scramble to paper this over for President Trump, make it seem better, you know, that statement that you just read said the president really meant that Jews were being disloyal to themselves. The president made it clear today, and we'll hear later, that he meant Jews were being disloyal to the state of Israel. That is the definition of the duel loyalty trope. And, you know, Republicans are right that when this was being pedaled

on the left, it should be condemned by Democrats and Republicans. When it's being peddled by President Trump, it should be condemned by Democrats and Republicans. But it also shows that President Trump doesn't seem to even understand what he was condemning in the first place. That he now peddles in the same trope, but for partisan purposes, essentially saying that if you are a Democrat and you're a Jew, you're disloyal to yourself as a Jew and you're disloyal to the state of Israel, that is the textbook definition of the kind of thing that everyone should be condemning.

KING: And in the middle of it, he retweets, I'm going to politely call this person a conservative whack job. I could go worse. Wayne Allen Root (ph), who the president tweeting, thank you for Wayne Allen Root for these kind words. Wayne Allen Root saying the Jewish people in Israel love him like he's the king of Israel. They love him. And he's the second coming of God. The same Wayne Allen Root offered to pay for President Obama to leave the country because he said he wasn't an American. I say Trump was too handsome to ever need to grope women. Said right -- immediately after the Las Vegas shooting that it was a Muslim terror attack before there was any information. And the president of the United States, who should know better when he chooses his words, should also know better when he decides to retweet.

CAYGLE: I think, as Abby noted, this is a case of selected outrage on The Hill, too, because Republicans are very quick to jump all over Democratic freshmen, rightly so, when they make comments that are interpreted as anti-Semitic and call for them to be condemned on the floor. But, as we've seen, they've mostly been quiet today, you know, or they attempt to spin it in a way that's more positive. And I think for Trump, I'm not sure if he's trying to woo Jewish voters. If anything, he's alienating them more. But I think he does see this as an opening the continue to exploit the divisions within the Democratic Party over Israel policy.

KING: You just made, though, I think, what is a critical point on every issue we go through heading into the election. You see the guns control and you say, why would the president alienate the suburbs? You see comments on race and you say, why would the president anger African-Americans or why would he anger Latinos? Then you see these comments and you say, is he trying to get votes or lose votes?

If you look at the history, this is from a Pew study back on 2014, 64 percent voted -- of Jews in American voted Democrat, said they were Democrats or leaned Democratic. Twenty-six percent said they were Republicans or leaned Republican.

If we look at exit polls in 2018, in the midterms, almost 80 percent, 79 percent of Jews voted for a Democratic candidate. Only 17 voted for a Republican candidate.

The president knows he's not going to get those numbers, but the president -- trying to appeal to a slice. Can I improve my margins? Especially if you look at younger Jewish voters have become more Republican. Can I improve my numbers, say, in a couple counties in Florida, in a few places in Wisconsin? The president's -- his campaign plays on the margins knowing we're

going to offend some people but we're probably not going to get their votes anyway. Can we get a little bit here just to juice the margins?

TALEV: When the president has looked at bolstering the Jewish vote, he's looked at it in two ways. Increasing support among American Jews and increasing support among evangelicals for whom Israel is a really core cause. And these are two different groups with some overlapping things of ideological importance. But you think, how could he expand the evangelical vote? He already has such huge turnout.

But evangelical vote in terms of population has been sort of slinking proportionately slightly and so it's important for him to maximize that turnout. That's a different group than the Jewish vote but Jewish voters matter in key states. Florida is one of those states. Pennsylvania may be one of those states. And he's done things, everything from calling Jerusalem the capital, moving the embassy, the Golan Heights, he's -- he's taken these steps, the first steps towards that peace plan, that he feels should be a reason to convert Jewish voters, to move Jewish voters into that Republican camp, or at least into the camp for him, and he's obviously very frustrated here. But the language that he's chosen is either accidentally totally tone deaf and insensitive and evocative of horrors that have happened in decades past, or strategically so and then that goes to the question of, who's he actually trying to turn out.

KING: Who's he trying to turn out?

And it's important to note, several -- many of the American Jews coming out to criticize the president have also been harshly critical of Congressman Omar and Congresswoman Tlaib, the two Democrats that the president is constantly attacking, mad at them for things they have said and things they have done on Israel-related issues. They're just saying that it has to stop. That this is just a partisan around Israel and about this faith. It has to stop.

When we come back, we're waiting for the president of the United States. A very lengthy session with reporters. Talked about a number of subjects.

[12:25:03] We should hear from the president in just a few minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:29:50] KING: We'll show you live pictures here. That's Marine One arriving just seconds ago, hitting the ground at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington. The president of the United States at Joint Base Andrews. He's about to head to Kentucky for a Republican fundraising event. CNN's Ted Barrett reporting he will not see the Senate majority leader while in Kentucky. Mitch McConnell recently had surgery to -- for a shoulder he hurt in an injury.

END