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Inside Politics

Haley Swerves on Trump Indictment; Mike Pence Says He Cannot Defend Trump; Hard-liners End McCarthy Battle for Now; Republican Rep Slams House Freedom Caucus in Expletive-laden Speech; Joe Biden Plans to Project Calm Amid Trump Indictment; Jill Biden Frames Election as Choice Between the Chaos of Trump or Stability of Biden. Aired 12:30- 1p ET

Aired June 14, 2023 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Very much early.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think it's significant, particularly saying that his son is a Marine and he's following in the steps of what Nikki Haley said, also drawing a national security point to it. Look, for all of the drama that surrounds this and the Trump going to Versailles, going to Bedminster, we should remember, this is about the case at hand.

This is about what's in the indictment and national security circuits were put at risk. I think that is what, if you read the indictment and the Former Vice President went on to say, when he read the indictment, read the indictment, John Bolton said the RNC should send the indictment to every Republican voter. That obviously won't happen, but when you read the indictment...

BASH: But the RNC should do that?

ZELENY: John Bolton said the RNC...

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: ...should...

BASH: OK.

ZELENY: Yeah, he was saying that people should read it. And when you do read it, the national security risk here, I think that is something that will matter to some Republican voters.

BASH: By the way, I just want to say, he didn't actually go to like France, to Versailles...

(LAUGHTER)

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, EARLY 202 CO-AUTHOR AND POLITICAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Right.

BASH: ...to the Palace Versailles.

CALDWELL: The restaurant the Miami.

BASH: The restaurant in Miami, that had a very, very good Cuban coffee, go ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Right. Well, it certainly was a different tone that you heard -- from what you heard from the Former Vice President last week. He was cautious at that time as well. But he did criticize kind of what was starting to come out. But I think for Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and some other Republicans as well, this is the fundamental job of a Commander-in-Chief. It is to protect your country, the citizens of your country from harm. And I think that's why the allegations here, and what President Trump is accused of doing has gone too far for some Republicans.

BASH: OK. So you mentioned Nikki Haley, I just -- before you jump in, Leigh Ann, I want to put up on the screen what we've seen and heard from her over the past few days. On Friday, people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach. Monday, if true, Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security. We've got to have someone that can win a general election. And then yesterday, I would be inclined in favor of a pardon.

I was saying earlier, it's almost like you're taking the journey with her on the political battlefield trying to avoid all of the land mines.

(LAUGHTER)

CALDWELL: Well, yeah. I mean, so, the challenging thing for these Republican candidates is trying to figure out what the Republican base that is still relatively loyal to Donald Trump, where they are. So I'm going to be cynical and skeptical here, I really want to see the internal polling that these candidates are seeing, especially as Mike Pence and Nikki Haley kind of takes a more critical turn of the former president. Maybe they're seeing something where his support is actually softening in this fix (ph) because, ultimately, they're trying to win an election and polling matters.

BASH: Well, somebody who has money for pretty extensive polling is Ron DeSantis. And I mean, I think CNN.com's headline, sub headline really sums it up. Don's everywhere, where's Ron?

(LAUGHTER)

Those close to DeSantis campaign view the reluctance to take on Trump as consistent with his hopes of eventually winning over Trump supporters. If that changes, that will be the telltale sign that you're talking about.

CALDWELL: Well, yeah, absolutely. He's obviously in the Trump-light category, trying to out-Trump Trump.

ZELENY: Actually, in the commercial break, I got a text from the DeSantis campaign, trying to raise money off of Joe Biden.

BASH: I thought they were going to be talking about our coverage. That's too bad.

ZELENY: No, they're not.

(LAUGHTER)

Biden is -- he's trying to turn the focus on that. So, one of the reasons the candidates are not out there quite as much this weekend and next, is because it's almost the end of the second quarter for fundraising. So it's a critical time for fundraising. But look, if they wanted to be out there, making noise, they certainly know how to do that.

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: Ron DeSantis will be in Nevada over the weekend. We'll see if he says anything to that point. But, look, they're also tiptoeing to see where they're going. But there is a lane and a market among some Republicans for someone to stand up for this.

BASH: Well...

ZELENY: We'll see if anyone steps into it.

BASH: Boy, do you have my card here...

(LAUGHTER)

ZELENY: Mind blowing (ph).

BASH: You know, exactly, you just teed it right up for me, it's really amazing. Let's hear from Chris Christie, because I feel like because there was so much...

ZELENY: Right.

BASH: ...news yesterday, this is very telling to what you're talking about, what he told Anderson in CNN's Town Hall, Monday night?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST OF 'TOWN HALL WITH MIKE PENCE' AND 'ANDERSON COOPER 360': Why do you think they're not addressing what's actually in the indictment?

CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AND FORMER GOVERNOR, NEW JERSEY: Because it's indefensible and they're playing games. Look, you all need to know this. They're playing political games with you. Because they think, if you kind of like Trump a little bit, and I don't see anything bad about Trump, and then Trump kind of implodes and goes away, then you're more likely to vote for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then another road map for Republicans, most Republicans, a lot of, you know, Americans read "The Wall Street Journal" but it's known for its conservative editorial board. Last week, "A Destructive Trump Indictment. Do prosecutors understand the forces they are unleashing?" But yesterday, last night, "The document indictment is misguided, but he made it easier for his enemies, as he always does."

ZELENY: "Self-Destructive Trump." I mean that is a bumper sticker message if you ever heard one. Of course "The Wall Street Journal" editorial pages have been editorializing against Trump for quite some time.

BASH: Fair, fair point.

ZELENY: But it is something that shows you that there is an audience and a lane for this. So, we will see come August, when that first debate happens, how many Republican rivals and candidates are willing to take that step. That will tell us a lot.

[12:35:00]

BASH: OK, everybody stand by. We'll be back. I'm not trying to be Arnold Schwarzenegger here. That's actually a threat from GOP hard- liners in Congress, following a rebellion that shut down action on the House floor for days. We're going to discuss that and give you some new reporting, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Impasse over, for now.

[12:40:00]

The House actually voted for the first time in a week yesterday, after Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a temporary deal with the right wing of his own party. Yes, the hard-liners are ending their blockade, but they insist talks will continue over a new power sharing agreement. CNN's Melanie Zanona and our Capitol Hill team have really great new reporting today and it says the following.

The stalemate is at an end for now, but tensions continue to erupt in the House Republican conference, including from moderates frustrated and angry at conservatives for halting floor action. Melanie Zanona joins us now from Capitol Hill with many more details from her terrific reporting. What's going on behind the scenes there?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Dana, I would describe it there is a truce between Kevin McCarthy and the right wing of his conference, but it's a very fragile and temporary truce. And what they really want is more power, they specifically want more say in the upcoming appropriations process. They want less spending. They want to use those spending bills to go after agencies like the DOJ and FBI.

So, that is potentially setting up a huge clash with the Democratic- controlled Senate raising possibility of a government shut down in the fall. And if they don't like what they see, those conservatives, if McCarthy is forced to cut another deal that involves Democrats, they're threatening to use their hardball tactics to not only hold up the floor again, potentially even remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.

And meanwhile, there is a lot of sour feelings inside the House Republican conference over the House Freedom Caucus and their antics. In fact, there was a heated conference meeting yesterday, where I'm told multiple lawmakers stood up and complained about their Freedom Caucus colleagues and said how unfair it was for them to hold everything hostage. They didn't vote for a week, remember, because of this blockade on the floor.

Don Bacon, a Congressman, said it was a bit of a slugging in the room. I'm told there were multiple f-bombs dropped in some of the speeches and then following that meeting, there was another meeting involving the various factions within the party, a group known as the five families, which is a movie reference to "The Godfather."

And I want to read you what Congressman Ken Buck told my colleague Annie Grayer about that meeting. He said, it was five families, but I think someone pointed out that four of the families died at the end of the movie. So, I wasn't happy being there. I wasn't sure which family I was in. That, Dana, really sums up the mood inside the House GOP right now.

BASH: And for those who don't know, that is a Godfather reference.

(LAUGHTER)

ZANONE: Yes, yeah.

BASH: Melanie, thank you so much for that reporting. Everybody can read a lot more on CNN.com. But I want to just bring it back to the table and give one other quote from the reporting. Representative Derrick Van Orton got up at the mics and said his daughter -- this is absolutely horrible. His daughter is dying of cancer and yet, he still shows up to work every f'ing day, and complained that he has been trying to introduce bills to save lives, specifically a train bill but it's not blank that gets on Fox News. Wow!

CALDWELL: Right.

BASH: You walked those halls. You have for years. I used to walk those halls with you, Leigh Ann. What do you make of this?

CALDWELL: This is the ongoing challenge that Speaker Kevin McCarthy is going to consistently have. And gelling to Melanie's point about how there's now frustration among moderates, the thing that I'm going to be watching is what do the moderates do as Kevin McCarthy continuously repeatedly tries to appease the far right members of his faction -- of his conference who have successfully held things up and forced things from Kevin McCarthy.

The moderates have stood by and watched and watched, but they say they're the majority-makers and they could just get as frustrated and deploy similar tactics, and it's going to be an increasing growing challenge for McCarthy.

MIN KIM: Right. It's been really interesting, because it's been pretty clear that Speaker McCarthy will do whatever he can to appease conservatives. And I remember when it was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she acknowledged that those majority-makers for her party were the ones who got her the majority and she would work to make them happy. Right now, the moderates that won the majority for Kevin McCarthy aren't too happy right now.

And I think the other -- so that's a tension that we're going to be watching in the coming weeks and months. And I think another really important point from Melanie's reporting is the fact of a -- is the potential for a government shutdown. You have appropriators in the House, starting to write bills that are actually not abiding by the agreement that was struck between the White House and Kevin McCarthy.

BASH: Which was --

MIN KIM: As part of that --

BASH: Just, what, five minutes ago.

MIN KIM: Yeah, basically...

BASH: It didn't take that long.

MIN KIM: Literally, five minutes ago.

(LAUGHTER)

And as part of that agreement to lift the debt limit. And the White House was actually stern in its warning yesterday, the Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told us that, look, we are playing to keep up our end of the deal. House Republicans should too.

ZELENY: And nevermind the Senate. Of course, like any budget deal...

MIN KIM: Right.

ZELENY: ...any spending deal has to be approved by the other side. So, look, I think up until now, Speaker McCarthy has done a pretty masterful job navigating all of this. But it is, you know, the challenge continues. And the hard days are ahead.

[12:45:00]

BASH: And, of course, Democrats are -- I mean, they want to get stuff done, just like the moderate Republicans are saying that they want to get things done. Jim McGovern who is not a moderate, he, I think, would describe himself as a proud progressive. He is the Ranking Member of the Rules Committee. He said this to the great Carl Hulse of the "The New York Times."

"In what world should the 11 most extreme people in the Republican Party get to dictate the entire agenda of a legislative body that represents 332 million people?"

CALDWELL: Yeah, and there's a lot. The Democrats are sitting by and watching all of this take place. And to be clear, the House after they pass the Debt Limit Bill, there was not a lot of things that they're talking about or putting on the floor that has any chance of passing the Senate.

They're passing a lot of -- they're doing a lot of messaging bills, but like Derrick Van Orton said in the closed-door conference meeting, there are bipartisan things that they're trying to move forward and there's things that they're working on. And if the freedom -- the far- right faction has said that they're willing to do this week after week after week if their demands are not met, if McCarthy reneges on his promises.

And so it's just an ongoing battle, an internal structural battle that's going to be continuing.

BASH: When you have a majority of four, this is what happens. And it is...

CALDWELL: Yeah.

BASH: You're right, it is going to continue in various ways. Everybody stay with us. We want to look at how Biden, Joe Biden and his re- election campaign are responding to Trump's indictment. I'll give you a hint, silence. We have new reporting on the Biden strategy, after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:30]

BASH: Now, new CNN reporting about the Biden White House. Their hush- hush approach to the Trump indictment. An administration source tells me that "We see no upside in engaging on this," despite the fact that Trump indictment fundraising emails would no doubt help raise a lot of campaign cash for the Biden re-election campaign. And watch here, the stay silent strategy, it's pretty obvious.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Would you comment on the arrest of the former president, sir?

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That was our own Jeremy Diamond, who is -- you see him, he's here, and he not only asked that question, but he has some new reporting along with our team, Isaac Dovere and Kevin Liptak, about what exactly they're thinking inside the building behind you. Jeremy, tell us what you're learning?

DIAMOND: Well, listen, Dana, as you saw, that message discipline from the president appears to be sticking. That was at least the fifth time that the president has been asked about the former president's indictments or arrest, and he is simply declining to comment here. And what we know is that as soon as news of this indictment dropped, the White House already had a very carefully formulated strategy for how they would approach this. And that would be to simply not comment on this.

It's important to note that this White House views this as a responsibility of the president, who as the Head of the Executive Branch has oversight over the Justice Department and, therefore, doesn't want to be seen as interfering with its independence. Restoring that independent was, in fact, a key goal for the president when he came into office. But it's also very much a strategy as well, where this White House doesn't want to feed Republican attacks that this is some kind of a politicized prosecution, trying to maintain as much distance as possible.

And that has even extended to the Democratic National Committee and the presidential re-election campaign, both of which have been entirely silent on this subject and decided, as you noted, not to fund raise off of this, and that is a deliberate decision. They think that, ultimately, the risks of doing so outweigh the potential benefits, even though typically, as you noted, Dana, you would look at that as a potential gold mine for a political opponent to fund raise off of this and remind their supporters of the stakes of this election.

BASH: No question. Jeremy, I have to ask about one person who is not abiding by this and that is the president's wife, the First Lady. What is she saying?

DIAMOND: Yeah, that's right. The First Lady has weighed in on this more than anybody else close to the president. On Monday night, at a fundraiser, she said that it was shocking. She found it shocking that Republicans appear to be sticking by the former president and she also said that they don't care about the indictment, speaking about Republicans.

And then last night, once again at a fundraiser in California, the first lady talked about MAGA Republicans, she talked about the chaos and corruption that another Trump Administration would bring and pointed to that contrast which, again, is part of the aim here, to draw contrast between that chaos of Trump and the stability that Biden is trying to portray right now. Dana?

BASH: Jeremy, thank you for that fantastic reporting. Appreciate it.

And North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is running for president and he is spending big money to make sure you know it. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:59:15]

BASH: Topping our Political Radar, how much good can $3 million do? Well, Doug Burgum intends to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. DOUG BURGUM, (R) NORTH DAKOTA: I grew up in a tiny town in North Dakota. Shined shoes, worked on the farm, caught the grain elevator, and it has a chimney sweep. Woke was what you did at 5:00 A.M. to start the day. Why run? First, fix this crazy economy. Second, unleash American energy production. Third, rebuild our military to win the cold war with China.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: The North Dakota governor who sold his software company for more than $1 billion dollars is putting big money behind the two new ads in Iowa and New Hampshire. The hope that he can go from barely a blip in the polls to familiar by broadcasting his face and his message to almost every TV inside those early voting states.