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Europe on Brink of Largest Armed Conflict Since World War 2; Biden, Harris Reaching Out to GOP Senators About SCOTUS Pick; Trump- Backed Candidates Struggle; Preview of "LBJ: TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY". Aired 8-9a ET

Aired February 20, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

(MUSIC)

[08:00:20]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice-over): Brink of war. The U.S. says Vladimir Putin could invade Ukraine at any moment.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As of this moment, I'm convinced he has made the decision.

PHILLIP: Plus, Democrats look for lessons from a San Francisco recall vote.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought the school board prioritized renaming schools over getting kids back into school.

PHILLIP: And the power of Trump. Is his support in a GOP primary as valuable as it once was?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump's endorsement does not guarantee victory, but he is much better at hurting candidates.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Abby Phillip.

And at this hour, as many as 190,000 Russian military forces are in or around Ukraine. Ukrainian officials say they are ready for any scenario as violence and shelling erupt in the eastern part of the country.

President Joe Biden is set to meet with his National Security Council today after warning on Friday that he believes Putin has decided to invade, perhaps using a false flag operation as a pretext for war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We're calling out Russia's plans loudly and repeatedly, not because we want a conflict but because we're doing everything in our power to remove any reason that Russia may give to justify invading Ukraine and prevent them from moving. Russia has a choice between war and all the suffering it will bring or diplomacy that will make a future safer for everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And this morning in Munich, Vice President Kamala Harris warned of the real possibility of war in Europe. Yesterday, she met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and threatened Russia with unprecedented sanctions should they invade.

But Zelensky yesterday assailed western countries for not doing enough to defend his country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): But you are telling me that it's 100 percent that the war will start in a couple of days, then what are you waiting for? We don't need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen and after our country will be fired at or after we will have no borders and after we will have no economy or part of our country will be occupied. Why would we need those sanctions then?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And joining me now on all these latest developments, Vivian Salama of the "Wall Street Journal," Amy Walter of "The Cook Political Report", and Hans Nichols of "Axios".

So, Vivian, all signs are point to go an invasion. President Biden did not make a mistake when he intentionally made Putin has made a decision on Friday, but Putin and Macron, the president of France are still planning to speak today. Blinken and Lavrov are speaking as well.

What's the point of continued talks when we believe Putin has already made that decision?

VIVIAN SALAMA, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, the U.S. and the west have made the calculation that diplomacy is going to be on the table until it's not. Until an invasion actually happens and if it happens they are looking for an 11th hour breakthrough. This is what we're seeing now, they're ramping up in these potentially final hours before an invasion, trying to find some sort of breakthrough, some area where they can at least agree to continue talking, kick the can down the road perhaps if nothing else.

But, you know, it I point it's looking very dire. Intelligence officials we speak to, defense officials we speak to say that it is essentially starting to move, Russian forces are starting to move at this point and it's looking very dire.

PHILLIP: Starting to move toward --

SALAMA: Toward Ukraine.

PHILLIP: What is it, though, that we could even offer to Putin that would appease him? Maybe appeasement is not the right word, but offer to him to bring him back from the brink?

SALAMA: Well, that's just it. At this point he has put some almost nonstarters on the table in terms of not having Ukraine ever be a member of NATO and other factors with regard to European security.

But the U.S. still sees opportunities to cooperate with Russia and they believe Russia wants to cooperate on issues like nuclear armament, on European security in general, and other things like that where they do feel there are windows -- potential windows where they can cooperate with the Russians and are using it to dangle in front of the Russians and say, listen, we're willing to work with you on this.

But first, you have to show us your good will and the fact that you have no intention of just going and bombing Ukraine.

PHILLIP: I mistakenly used the appeasement, but Zelensky believes that is exactly what has been with Russia over the last several years, not just in this crisis, but in the -- since Crimea.

[08:05:02]

Is he right about that? I mean, he's clearly frustrated with the West and how this is being handled writ large.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: He has a lot of frustrations. He has frustrations with Russia. He has frustrations with the way the Biden administration has been so public about warning, and he has frustrations perhaps most acutely just directly to his West and that is with European not allies, they're partners, they're NATO allies for America. He's always wanted more. He's wanted more assurances. He's wanted an open door that he can join NATO and that door at least from NATO right now is not, as you hear over and over from administration officials publicly and privately, that's not on discussion. That's what he wants.

So he's been disappointed, I suspect the disappointment will continue and as we plainly saw in that video he's frustrated.

PHILLIP: Yeah. President Biden and his administration have used the strategy of just putting it all on the table, putting Putin's cards on the table so that the world knows what's going on.

What do you think the reaction has been largely to that strategy from a domestic audience watching this play out, watching the president come out and say, hey, we believe now there's going to be a war in Europe?

AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Yeah, I've been struck by a couple of things. First, the reaction from sort of the establishment or the elite media, if you want to call it that, saying, look, this was the Biden administration showing that they learned something from what happened in Afghanistan, being able to say, look, we are not going to do this behind the scenes, we're going to be very transparent about what we're seeing, how we're planning for it, being methodical for this which we didn't see in the run up to Afghanistan.

At the same time there's a lot of push back, hour' seeing from our allies and friends and even domestically about how do we know we can trust this intelligence? We've already been burned once obviously very high profile burn in the Iraq war. What you're -- the sense that I keep getting is this -- we talk a lot about -- on shows like this about the lack of faith in institutions and that people are no longer using the word that we give them as United States as being -- you know, having that level of credibility that once did. You can feel that.

The world is definitely watching what we say but also doing so with that big question mark about how much we can take what they're saying as serious.

PHILLIP: And Putin is trying to exploit that.

WALTER: Absolutely.

PHILLIP: It is true as Antony Blinken said at the U.N. that they are trying to stop a war but that doesn't mean that the receipts shouldn't be there for the rest of the world. I mean, I do wonder about some of the things that they are saying. Russia is going to pursue a false flag operation, a propaganda campaign. You are already hearing Russian media talking about genocide.

We all know that that's coming because the Biden administration has told us that that would be coming but what's the point? Is it for us or is it for Russians to justify an invasion when it happens?

SALAMA: It is 100 percent to justify an invasion when it happens and there were a lot of concerns in the last couple of days because there was some violence -- there was an uptick in the violence in Donbas, the region in eastern Ukraine that has been essentially under siege for the last eight years, and that was believed to be a Russian employ to essentially then say, well, look, they are attacking us. It's not the other way around. So we are justified to defend ourselves.

This is the underlying issue for Russia which it keeps on justifying all of its aggression toward Ukraine and some of its other neighbors, is that our security is under threat and so we have to act in order to preserve that security.

PHILLIP: I mean, help us understand that this works? I mean, the Russian -- I mean, this is basically an unfree, closed society and so you're basically saying that these things that are seemingly false on its face are still being believed.

SALAMA: But the thing is that they don't necessarily have access to understand that these are false things. Their government is telling them that these are legitimate videos and activities that they are seeing and what their government is telling them is true and so they believe it. And, ultimately, the Russian population, I mean, obviously now with the internet and kind of access to -- in the outside information, there is a burgeoning opposition to Vladimir Putin.

But he has such a tight control over his country that it is so hard for anyone to say, wait a minute, I question what you're saying to me and sort of push back on that.

So this has been one of the issues. And ultimately, Vladimir Putin for as long as he's been president has said Ukraine is part of Russia's orbit. Ukraine is not a real country. He has not changed his view about Ukraine's self-determination or independence from Russia and from the soviet orbit.

PHILLIP: Meanwhile, I mean, Kamala Harris the vice president is there, leaving this morning, but she is in Munich and has been one of the faces of the administration although Secretary Blinken is there.

[08:10:00]

You know, Jake Sullivan is there as well.

What do you make of what she was able to accomplish either for herself or for the effort to push back against this war?

NICHOLS: She probably got a lot of intelligence, right? I mean, when diplomats, vice presidents, presidents, when they talk to their counterparts, they listen a lot. And I suspect there is a lot of listening in the conversations and she can report directly back to the president.

She'll be participating. She'll be in the air when she flies because but will be participating in that national security meeting. The main thing that the White House wants to do, they want to have a suite of sanctions and get everyone on board within Europe to make it as strong as possible.

Now, they are not going to let us know where they ended up on the dial. If they wanted to go to ten and only got to six, we probably won't know that in real-time. What they really want to do is make sure that everyone in Europe is on the same page. That was Harris' task, we will likely see how successful she was only if the really bad thing happens and that is an invasion.

SALAMA: There is he a also that effort to kind of put her on the world stage, which has kind of fallen short since President Biden took office. And so they're really trying to lend her that credibility on the world stage that she can take on the international issues.

PHILLIP: The stakes literally could not be any higher. On the sanctions front, one of the main points Zelensky has been banging the table about is that he wants those sanctions now, the president made it clear that's not happening.

So up next for us, the White House is reaching across the aisle as Biden's deadline for naming his Supreme Court nominee looms.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:49]

PHILLIP: Democrats are in the dark about deliberations over President Biden's Supreme Court pick and some of them are getting antsy. The Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin says he hopes that Biden names a pick that's more -- more quickly than by the end of the month which was his deadline. It has been 26 days already since Justin Stephen Breyer announced his plans to retire and that is already longer than it took to nominate three of the most recent justices.

CNN's Melanie Zanona joins us the conversation.

There's a little bit of -- I mean, this was already in the ether before, right? People were nervous that Biden had laid out this timeline that seemed a little long and now it's getting louder and louder. What is going on with the timeline? Why is it taking so long and what's the tea leaves on Capitol Hill?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Joe Biden doesn't want to be rushed into this process, he does want to take his time. We're hearing he does plan to name a pick by his State of the Union Address which is March 1st. Democrats really see that as a prime opportunity for him to tout this historic nomination, to tout this political win, and they're hoping to get this person confirmed by Easter.

But really, all of that depends on whether this nominee has been vetted previously by the Senate, that could help speed things along. But to your point, Abby, Democrats are getting really nervous about this. Senator Ben Ray Lujan, he's been out recovering from a stroke, he is expected to be back in time for the final vote, but it is just a reminder of how tenuous their majority.

PHILLIP: And Durbin is concerned about this Easter break, right, that's going to lengthen the timeline by a couple weeks potentially. And the Biden administration is also trying to do some outreach on the Republican side. There have been a bunch of calls, White House aides, the president and the vice president to a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill, and the objective obviously is to try to get someone -- I mean, is consensus pick really a possibility or just someone on the other side of the aisle?

NICHOLS: Yeah, define consensus.

PHILLIP: Exactly.

NICHOLS: I don't know.

WALTER: Fifty-one?

NICHOLS: Yeah.

PHILLIP: Is 51 really a consensus, I don't know.

NICHOLS: It's bipartisan. I mean, if they get a couple Republican senators, allow them to make the argument they've been bipartisan about it and this nominee has bipartisan support. Whether it's one or three on 30, I suspect it's going to be on the lower end of that band.

WALTER: So, the politics of this are fascinating, right? On the one hand, a fight with Republicans over a Supreme Court pick is not good for the president or Democrats, especially a president who came in saying unity, unity, unity, I'm the guy who can bring us together.

Just hearing from voters around the country, the thing that they talk about a lot is just how much dysfunction and how dismal it is in Washington, right? They didn't believe that Joe Biden was single handedly going to fix this, but they did think he was going to turn the temperature down. That's not what they're seeing.

So that's a reason why you don't want to get into a place where you only have 50 votes and it becomes contentious.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

WALTER: On the other hand, a contentious fight, especially if it looks like Republicans are overreaching, motivating Democratic voters, coming into a midterm election, they say, we have this really qualified woman and look what Republicans are doing, they're attacking her. They just are committed to X, Y and Z, you have to get out and vote, this is so important.

We will never have another Supreme Court pick if you don't keep the Senate in Democratic hands.

PHILLIP: There is, of course, not unanimity among Democrats about who Biden should pick and nor should there be, everyone is entitled to their opinion. It's been interesting that one of the candidates Michelle Childs being pushed by Majority Whip Clyburn has been the recipient of some of this -- I mean, I will call it opposition research. Look at some of these headlines from the last several weeks about accusing her of being anti-labor, talking about a sentence of 12 years for someone selling weed.

There is some discontent in the Democratic ranks and Whip Clyburn tells the "Washington Post" I always said it would be a plus if Biden were to pick Michelle Childs but it's not a must.

[08:20:01]

I don't believe in ultimatums. I may be disappointed for the rest of my life, but I'm not going to give an ultimatum.

So is this the end, maybe, for Michelle Childs? What does it signal?

SALAMA: I mean, right now, the White House is saying that they're open to all potential choices and Michelle Childs is one of them, she may not be the front runner but something they are considering. She is a very contentious choice among Democrats who believe she might be weaker on more of the progressive issues. But at the same time, she is the one that could possibly break that consensus issue that we're talking about, where she not only has the backing of someone like Jim Clyburn but a lot of -- a number -- I wouldn't say a lot, sorry, a few Republicans. PHILLIP: Potential backing from the Republicans.

SALAMA: Lindsey Graham, Tim Scott, they've said that they are open to supporting her. She is, of course, a child of South Carolina and they are very much behind that, also the fact that she didn't go to an Ivy League school is something they find very appealing, kind of switch things up from the judges -- the justices sitting on the court now, but it's a real stretch for Democrats.

PHILLIP: One of the problems for the Biden administration is going to be figuring out whether talking to Republicans and getting, you know, a little bit of happy talk from Republicans actually means the votes.

SALAMA: Right.

PHILLIP: Lindsey Graham might say nice things, Tim Scott might say nice things but will they cast the vote? I think that's the big question.

Stick around, everyone. Coming up next for us, the big city school board recall that is prompting Democrats to do some soul-searching.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:02]

PHILLIP: San Francisco is the bluest state in the bluest -- blue city in the bluest state in the nation. And so, when voters -- they recalled three liberal school board members, it is news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They should have been focused on reopening schools like most districts were thinking about and doing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These kids had only about six weeks of in-class instruction last year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I saw the school board prioritize renaming schools over getting kids back into school.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, Republicans say this is why you can't elect Democrats because they would rather take names like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln off of schools rather than get kids back inside of them, but -- and some Democrats are actually worried that this will stick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN PFEIFFER, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: This tiny fraction is being weaponized against Democrats, painting with this broad brush to say this is what most Democrats look like or act like. I think the results of the recall prove the opposite of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So to be clear this was about those issues, it was also about other issues including many local issues, but I want to play something from San Francisco's mayor, London Breed, about the issues of crime and how she's managing it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MAYOR LONDON BREED (D), SAN FRANCISCO, CA: This is not working. We can't keep doing the same thing. We have added all these additional resources, the street crisis response team, the ambassadors, the services, the buildings we purchased, the hotels we purchased, the resources.

But we added all these things to deal with food insecurity, all these things, yet people are still being physically harmed and killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Back to the basics.

WALTER: Always back to the basics.

PHILLIP: Right? Voters are angry when the people they elect don't get things done and the party about this the Republicans are seizing on is what they might be doing instead. So that's problematic for Democrats but the solution is -- it seems -- get things done for the people who elected you.

WALTER: Right. It's always the basics that trip politicians up and I think, you know, you are allowed by voters to maybe push the boundaries a little bit regardless of what your position s you're in Congress, you are a school board member. If everything else is going well the streets are cleaned, et cetera, you're a mayor, you can maybe try new things, be more transformative. But when things aren't going well you can't.

When I talk to Republicans, too, what they argue is -- especially about schools -- what this entire experience has given parents is a way to sort of look under the hood at schools, okay? So it wasn't necessarily that it's critical race theory or the ways in which teachers are talking about certain issues or asking certain things of students.

But they were so frustrated by schools being shut down, the ways in which distance learning didn't help their children, that they dug in even deeper and now these other issues are coming to the fore.

So it is a combination of those things, it's not one of those things, but because the basics weren't working, now everything is getting questioned and I think that's the bigger challenge now, more on a local level for schools, but it does branch out for Democrats broadly because --

PHILLIP: It's a national messaging challenge for them.

WALTER: Exactly.

PHILLIP: Okay. On messaging, I'm just -- I'm just framing this because the former presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, was back on the scene. She is not running for anything despite what people would like to say, but she is offering this message for Democrats to potentially take to the 2022 midterms.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Republicans will claim they are on the side of parents and family values, but they will do nothing for actual parents or families, nothing on child care, nothing on paid leave, nothing to help working moms and dads get by and get ahead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Does it work?

NICHOLS: Well, as a secondary argument, right? I mean, the argument in San Francisco isn't about paid family leave, paid sick leave or universal pre-k, although those are all discussions that are taking place in the context of Build Back Better.

The San Francisco argument and the broader concern Democrats have around the country is are schools open? Are they doing the job? It's kind of back to your primary things.

So look, in theory that's -- I mean that's part of Build Back Better. That's part of what Biden wants to do when he hits the trail is talk about the need for universal pre-k, talk about child care.

But Republicans are focused on the first order and that is are schools open, are kids learning and now are masks coming off. And that's where the debate is heading.

ZANONA: And I will say Democrats are starting to recognize that this is a real issue, these frustrations are real, it is not manufactured. Notably on Capitol Hill we have seen Democrats start to call for the easing in mask mandates, that's a huge shift for them.

Obviously it's because the environment and the situation on the ground has changed but you have to wonder whether the public perceptions are playing into that as well.

But I think the struggle for Democrats is they are still trying to figure out how do we continue to preach a responsible message on the pandemic, some of our base still wants these restrictions in place while also addressing the concerns of parents and they haven't figured that out yet.

NICHOLS: You said recognize Democrats, I feel that Democrats are afraid at this point. In the normal instrument readings you have for what's going on out in the country, town halls, the instruments aren't necessarily reading accurately.

So I mean I sense in the last few weeks concern on Capitol Hill.

PHILLIP: Yes. Well, they are staring down the possibility of -- I mean, losing both chambers, I mean let's put it that way. And the map is narrowing in certain ways. We are getting these rural Democrats, red state Democrats, ringing the alarm and it's for this reason.

2009 there were 14 red state Democrats, today you're looking at two.

WALTER: Yes. Well, the good news for Democrats if we want to put a silver lining is they don't -- because they don't have any red states, they don't have to defend any red states this year.

PHILLIP: But they're defending a lot of purple states.

WALTER: They're defending purple states.

PHILLIP: I think the challenge for Democrats, what they are worried about, is that the party itself is just losing entire swaths of the electorate. It's not just white voters, it's people in rural parts of the country. It's working class black and Latino voters. It's a big problem that's bigger than just red states and blue states.

WALTER: That's absolutely right. And you know, it becomes harder and harder, becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right, when your caucus is only from one type of environment, mainly urban and densely suburban areas, and that's all -- the only people they talk to day in and day out, it becomes very difficult to get that caucus to understand, well, there are other concerns outside of that.

Look at the top three issues for Democrats and Republicans in poll after poll. They aren't on the same planet, right. They are -- it's not just like, oh, we need to find a solution to the problems we both agree are out there.

It's, no, our top problems are these three things, you think your top problems are these three things. How does that ever get bridged?

PHILLIP: And Amy, I know you've written on this but Biden is coming up on his State of the Union, how does he even attempt to bridge? Does he attempt?

WALTER: He has to because that was one of the things that voters, even those who are disappointed with him, they say they kind of like him personally, they don't think he is a bad guy. He has an empathetic -- you know, that's really sort of his thing, right, is being empathetic and also having that message about wanting to be a unifier, wanting to bring people together.

So finding a way to take that message, take that piece of his persona that already is strong and push that. I hear from Democrats say you've got to sell more, you have to be like Trump. Trump sold and sold and sold, but that's who Trump was.

And to sell something that's not happening first of all doesn't work but also that's not -- lean into the thing that you're good at.

PHILLIP: Yes. You definitely can't hit someone over the head with a message that doesn't ring true to them.

Coming up next for us, as Trump tries to reshape the GOP, some of his top candidates are struggling to win their primaries.

[08:34:22]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), MINORITY LEADER: It's just an example. This Republican Party is a very big tent, everyone is invited in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: That was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy last February defending one of his then closest allies, Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Since then their relationship has soured after she was ousted from her leadership post and became her party's leading anti-Trump voice.

And on Thursday McCarthy twisted the knife, endorsing her primary challenger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCARTHY: Wyoming deserves to have a representative who will deliver the accountability against this Biden administration, not a representative they have today that works closer with Nancy Pelosi, going after Republicans instead of stopping these radical Democrats for what they're doing to this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: It's funny because Liz Cheney was standing right next to him in that first clip. As he said it's a big tent and now she's under the bus. What is he trying to say to the world, frankly, about where, you know, the politics of the Republican Party stands?

ZANONA: Listen, everything Kevin McCarthy does between now and November should be viewed through the lens of the speakership. That is all he cares about, winning majority and becoming speaker.

And he was under a lot of pressure from his right flank to take some sort of action against Liz Cheney. He rejected calls to kick her out of conference and so he has settled on this strategy trying to boot her out of conference.

And yes, it's extraordinary, yes it's really rare. Some of the establishment members in the Republican Congress don't want to see him take this step but he knew that this is what he needed to do politically and he's already getting some praise from it.

[08:40:00]

ZANONA: Donald Trump put out a statement on Friday praising him and Elise Stefanik for going this route. PHILLIP: This is about Trump at the end of the day. And in other races

like, for example, in Georgia, Trump has created this Republican civil war in that race basically because he is in a grudge match with Governor Kemp for not endorsing the election stealing lies.

And it's causing a lot of Republicans to be really confused. Here is one Republican operative who says a lot of Republicans don't understand why you would challenge an incumbent Republican governor.

It's very obvious former President Trump has an issue with that governor, but that's not really a compelling reason. It's not.

WALTER: Right. Right. Well, for voters, you have to give them a reason to do this and there are a certain segment of Republicans who do believe that going against president Trump is enough of a reason to oust them from their job, but the most recent polling that's come out in Georgia has Perdue, who is the challenger, trailing Governor Kemp by about ten points.

So right now Perdue who, remember, he lost his reelection in Georgia --

PHILLIP: The Senate and now we have a Democratic Senate.

(CROSSTALK)

WALTER: -- to the Senate. And now he's trying to come back, exactly.

PHILLIP: Yes.

WALTER: It's always hard to try to come back after losing, especially when your loss meant a Democratic Senate.

But the other thing I talked to a Republican operative the other day, he said, look, the endorsement by Trump is still super important, ok. It's something that you do want as a Republican in a primary.

At the same time you still have to run a good campaign. You still have to be a good candidate. And if you don't have the endorsement you can still find a way to win these things. There are examples where it's happened.

So you still have to -- we go back to basics all the time, but you still have to run a campaign. And I think many of these candidates thought I got the Trump endorsement, what do I need to worry about? Everything is going to come pouring to me -- money, love, votes. It doesn't work that way.

PHILLIP: It's a lot more complicated than that. In Missouri another example, a Trumpy candidate who has Trump aides working for him, Eric Greitens who has a very checkered past, wants that Trump endorsement so badly but our latest reporting is that Trump is holding back because maybe he doesn't want to back a loser at the end of the day.

The chair of the NRC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee Rick Scott says my goal for Trump and not just him, for Republicans, is to endorse people who can win a general election.

There is a real risk here that Greitens could not win but Trump may very well endorse him.

SALAMA: He may. But you know, we also see that -- you kind of giggled when you said that he doesn't want to back a loser. This is something that's very important for Trump for his own reputation and legacy. I mean it's sort of personal. It's not about, you know, the party at the end of the day for him.

But he takes these things very seriously. And so with the case of Georgia it was interesting because you had these grudge wars kind of taking place where, you know, the former president was trying to kind of push these grudge wars, you know, bigger picture.

Missouri is a little bit of a different scenario. But at the end of the day he's also sort of trying to support his underlying arguments with this notion that the 2020 election was illegitimate, that he was sort of duped out of winning the race.

And that seems to be waning with a lot of his supporters as well. And so at the end of the day if President Trump is not going to get into substantive issues and is going to base a lot of his endorsements mainly on grudge issues and on that illegitimate claim about the election, it doesn't seem to be taking effect.

PHILLIP: I do want to -- speaking of the big lie, I mean there's one place where it's not waning and that is Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, Republicans are trying to really do -- have a redo and undo the results of the 2020 election.

And this is the headline from the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel". "Wisconsin Republicans seek to jail more officials as part of their review of the 2020 presidential election".

They want to put Democrats in jail for not participating in this fantasy that Trump won the 2020 election.

NICHOLS: It's deeply troubling, right? I mean, I don't think that's profound for me to say but when you are talking about jailing election officials, and I haven't read the article or seen the sourcing of the reporting, but that is deeply troubling.

And you look at sort of the changes that are taking place, the big issue when you talk to even Republicans on this is what's happening at these secretary of state races. You know, we have a lot of ancillary conversations.

The big issue is you have certified election results that are overturned by an election official. And does that then gets them to Washington? And that's the big issue. And that's like everything else pales in comparison.

PHILLIP: I think no matter what Republicans in Washington want, it is still true that many Republican local parties are organizing themselves around this principle of that lie led by Trump. That's not going away anytime soon.

[08:44:58]

PHILLIP: But coming up next for us, a sneak peek at the new CNN series LBJ's behind-the-scenes negotiations to get the Voting Rights Act for black Americans one way or another.

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LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But it's not just negros but really it's all of us who must overcome the cripple legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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PHILLIP: August 6th, 1965 President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs a landmark piece of legislation, the Voting Rights Act, outlawing the discriminatory practices that prevented many black Americans from voting. But not everyone was certain that this day would ever come, including Dr. Martin Luther King's attorney Clarence Jones and his top lieutenant Andrew Young.

They were with Dr. King when he went to meet with President Johnson in December 1964 and here they are recounting that day in the new "CNN ORIGINAL SERIES, LBJ: TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY".

[08:50:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARENCE JONES, FORMER MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. ATTORNEY: Johnson he says, look, I've done all -- you know, I got my hands full, blah, blah, blah. I don't have the power to do that.

ANDREW YOUNG, FORMER MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AIDE: He said I know we need this, but I cannot do it right now. I just don't have the power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to play something for you, Ambassador Young. You had that meeting on December 18th of '64. This is a phone call four days earlier, December 14th with Attorney General Katzenbach.

JOHNSON: Try to figure out what I can do to get 100 percent of the people to vote. We're going to try to get everybody to register, and those that don't register, we can register postmasters. I basically believe that if we can have a simple, effective method of getting them registered -- now, if the state laws are too high, they disqualify a bunch of them, maybe we can go to the Supreme Court and get them held unconstitutional.

Let's find some way that we --

JOHN KATZENBACH, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: That's a big problem, you know, under the constitution.

JOHNSON: Yes. That's right. I know that. How can we beat it? Let's see what you can do. And we're going to need it pretty quick.

YOUNG: I wish we had known that. I had not heard that. But that was before we got there.

JONES: My god. I mean it's unbelievable. If there ever was Exhibit A of being a masterful politician, that was it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Joining us now is Mark Updegrove, presidential historian and executive producer of this "CNN ORIGINAL SERIES".

So Mark, it's not every day that you get to effectively surprise people who were there for this history with that piece of information.

In that clip, LBJ is basically talking about his Plan B for if the Voting Rights Act was not put into place. Tell us about his thinking behind wanting another alternative if the legislative route did not work.

MARK UPDEGROVE, CNN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "LBJ: TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY": That's a stunning moment in the film, Abby. As you see those great civil rights leaders reacting to this tape of Lyndon Johnson talking about this alternate plan.

Lyndon Johnson had expended his political capital on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, out of which he stripped a very potent voting rights component. And he did it because he knew the Civil Rights Act would not pass. It would be top-heavy if it had that voting rights component in it.

If we looked at civil rights incrementally, let's break the back of Jim Crow first and then move on to voting rights. When he had that meeting with Clarence Jones and Andrew Young in December of 1964, he was right, he didn't have the power, he didn't have the political capital to push through a voting rights law.

But he wanted them to think that it was all on them to show Americans the very worst of voting suppression in order to turn the tide on the American conscience, to get Americans rallied around voting rights.

He didn't want them to know what he was doing behind the scenes to try to uphold voting rights without getting a Voting Right Acts through because that was Plan A. He really wanted a Voting Rights Act to go through but he was doing everything behind the scenes to ensure that voting rights were upheld in Congress. It's a remarkable (INAUDIBLE).

PHILLIP: It really is. And what's also fascinating about LBJ is, this is a man who was from the south. He is a Texan from a rural part of the south and yet he became the champion of civil rights in this era. How did that happen?

UPDEGROVE: You know, well, through sheer political courage and indomitable will. As you know, LBJ came up through the political ranks in Texas. He was first a congressman and then a senator. If you didn't toe the line on Jim Crow segregation in the south at that time as a politician, you were not viable. You simply weren't viable. So Lyndon Johnson had to do that. It wasn't in his heart I'm confident.

When he did have the power to make a difference on civil rights, when he became the all powerful majority leader in the Senate, perhaps the most powerful majority leader we've ever had, he pushed through the 1957 Civil Rights Act, largely impotent, but for its significance as being the first civil rights legislation to go through since Reconstruction.

But when he became president and he was able to take the vote -- the Civil Rights Act that John Kennedy had proposed but wasn't able to get through Congress and push it through using the martyrdom of John F. Kennedy, he did so without thinking about it.

In fact, he said to his aides who advised him against it, what the hell is the presidency for? If you can't do big things, don't come to the presidency.

[08:55:00]

UPDEGROVE: So he used that martyrdom of Kennedy to get the civil rights through and then went on to voting rights the following year.

PHILLIP: There's always a lot of talk about, you know, comparisons -- historical comparisons between President Biden and LBJ to some extent. Do you -- you know, what do you think is a fair comparison there? How do you think that this current president, in terms of what he wants to accomplish and has accomplished, stacks up against what LBJ did in his five years in office?

UPDEGROVE: You have to be careful of those comparisons in my view, Abby, because the circumstances are so different from Lyndon Johnson in 1965. He had two-thirds majority in the House and Senate. There was a great faith in government among the American people, and there was this flowing tide of liberalism in the John F. Kennedy era that spilled over into the Lyndon Johnson era.

So he was able to get a lot of things done that perhaps Biden is not able to do given political circumstances. But I think what you can learn from Lyndon Johnson is he understood masterfully, as you heard from that earlier clip, timing and what his political capital looked like.

He was a master at political calculus, knowing the right time to get certain things passed and to push certain things through Congress.

Both Lyndon Johnson and Joe Biden are creatures of the Senate. They understand that body and the legislative process.

PHILLIP: Right.

UPDEGROVE: We don't know what's on Biden's mind, but I think that political calculus is invaluable, and Lyndon Johnson understood it intuitively.

PHILLIP: Thank you so much Mark Updegrove. Excellent documentary premiering tonight, two hours.

And that's it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. And don't forget, you can also listen to our podcast. Download INSIDE POLITICS wherever you get your podcasts. Just scan that QR code at the bottom of your screen.

Coming up next on CNN, "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Dana's guest s include Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Colorado Governor Jared Polis.

Thank you again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. Have a great rest of your day.

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