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New Day
Diverse Democratic Field Readies to Challenge Trump; Maduro Claims Venezuela is Victim of U.S. Conspiracy; Trump Rips Into FOX News Over Shutdown Coverage. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired January 28, 2019 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), CANDIDATE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT: I stand before you to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.
[05:59:29] HOWARD SCHULTZ, FORMER STARBUCKS CEO: I am seriously thinking of running for president as a centrist independent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary Clinton is not closing the doors to the idea of running in 2020.
ROGER STONE, INFORMAL CAMPAIGN ADVISOR OF DONALD TRUMP: I expect to be acquitted and vindicated. This indictment is thin as piss on a rock.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: He's presumed innocent, but these are very specific allegations of lies and intimidation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't really answer what Roger's motivation is.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, January 28, 6 a.m. here in New York.
Happy Monday.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I made it. I made it in today. A small victory already.
CAMEROTA: Well, congratulations.
BERMAN: Notch one for the good guys.
CAMEROTA: We're off to a good start. The 2020 race is heating up. Election day's only 645 days away.
BERMAN: Oh, come on. CAMEROTA: Democratic Senator Kamala Harris officially joins a growing
list of candidates who plan to challenge President Trump. Harris formally kicking off her campaign in California and taking aim at President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Who are we as Americans? So, let's answer that question to the world and each other right here and right now. America, we are better than this!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: And former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also says he is preparing, possibly, to make a run, but as an independent. And that news is already causing concern among some Democrats who fear an independent bid could split the vote and hand Trump a second term.
CNN also learning that Hillary Clinton may want to revisit her Oval Office dreams. Insiders tell our Jeff Zeleny she is not closing the door to a 2020 run.
BERMAN: Meanwhile, a big morning for some 800,000 federal worker -- workers. It's the first Monday back on the job after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But they better not get too comfortable, because the countdown to the next shutdown is on.
Overnight, President Trump told "The Wall Street Journal" the chances of a new deal being reached in the next three weeks is less than 50/50. His chief of staff said the president is definitely considering another shutdown if he doesn't get the wall funding he wants. And if he does not get it from Congress, the president might invoke some kind of executive powers.
CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now is Harry Enten, our senior writer and analyst at CNN Politics; Jess McIntosh, she was director of communications outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign; and Mark McKinnon, former senior advisor to the George W. Bush and John McCain campaigns. He's also the creator, executive producer and co-host of "The Circus," which premiered its fourth season on Showtime last night.
Congratulations on that.
MARK MCKINNON, CREATOR/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/CO-HOST, "THE CIRCUS": What a week to launch.
CAMEROTA: Exactly. Right.
Great to have all of you here. Harry, let's just look at a status report of who's officially running, who is considering a run, who has an exploratory committee. So here is the 2020 field as we know it at the moment and Kamala Harris making it the most official over the weekend. So, from where you sit, where's the energy? How do you see this field? HARRY ENTEN, SENIOR WRITER/ANALYST, CNN POLITICS: I mean, if you look at those crowds out on the West Coast of this week, I think the energy is with Senator Harris at this point.
You know, Chris Cillizza and I do these power rankings. She has been consistently at the top of that list the last few months. If you look at who the Democratic Party has been nominating, whether it be in 2016 or 2018, Senator Harris meets a lot of those sort of different attributes. She's a woman. Obviously, 2018 was the year of the woman. She's progressive, though perhaps some on the left don't necessarily like her and we know that the Democrats have been coming further and further to the left. And we also know that African- American voters play a major role in Democratic primaries, and she is African-American.
MCKINNON: And California primaries moved up, which is a big deal.
BERMAN: It's a big delegate pile right there in early March, so it matters in ways it hasn't mattered before.
You know what else matters? To Donald Trump, at least, the crowd size. I think we have pictures here. Hopefully, we can show people the crowds there at this event in Oakland, which is Kamala Harris's hometown. She was born and raised there, big crowd. And I know Donald Trump has been watching that kind of thing. and he takes notice.
The other thing that I noticed was the language that she used. The deliberate word choice. Listen to how many times she says "we" here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: We must answer a fundamental question. Who are we? Who are we as Americans? America, we are better than this!
Our United States of America is not about us versus them. It's about we, the people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Jess, that jumped out to me, because you have a president who is very much about "I, I, I. I alone can fix this." It seems she was trying to strike a contrast.
JESSICA MCINTOSH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, sure. And I noticed that Brian Stelter pointed out on Twitter another word that she used very much in that speech was "truth."
I think she did an incredible job setting herself up as rhetorically opposed to Donald Trump. She did it without really going after him personally or doing it at all his style. But you walked away from that speech entirely confident that she could take on Donald Trump.
I think the other two things that make me feel pretty good about her candidacy, as somebody who very much wants to see a Democrat in office, is that she looked presidential. There was just no two ways about that. The woman has a ton of class and projects that. And she's got that broad-based coalition that we're going to need that Harry was talking about to get it done.
CAMEROTA: While we're at it, Hillary Clinton, who you of course, worked for.
MCINTOSH: Yes.
[06:05:02] CAMEROTA: Do you think that she is seriously considering?
MCINTOSH: I don't know. I don't have a red phone that I can pick up and talk to her about -- with this many candidates in the race --
(CROSSTALK)
MCINTOSH: With this many candidates in the race, in order to preserve sanity, I think it's important to focus on the ones that have already announced, because they're laying out plans.
That said, we wouldn't be in this moment right now with all top three frontrunners women in the Democratic primary without Hillary Clinton. And frankly, without Shirley Chisholm before that. And there are lots of people who still want to hear from her. So --
CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, she won the popular vote, let's just remind people. So I -- I would understand if she feels like she needs another bite at the apple, but I just don't know if the times have changed since then.
MCINTOSH: I'm curious to see what she wants to do. I hope that we have her voice this year in whatever capacity she wants to do.
BERMAN: Hey, Mark, you watched that rollout yesterday. You've seen a few of those in your time. What do you make of it?
MCKINNON: A-league. First-class. I mean, that's a bunch of people who knew what they were doing. She definitely is now, I think, firmly at the head of the pack of frontrunners.
But look at all of the people that have yet to announce. I mean, this is going to make "The Circus" look like a zoo. First of all, we've got the killer "B's." We've got Biden, Bloomberg, Booker, and Beto, who are sitting out there. And just this week we'll have Howard Schultz and I think Bloomberg's got an event. I think we've got -- Sherrod Brown has got an event. People talk about Bernie going.
So it's going to be fun. I remember 20 years ago when I met you, another presidential campaign. This is wild.
CAMEROTA: The killer "B's," I like this. Punk rock. Sounds like a punk rock band.
BERMAN: It does sound like a punk rock band.
CAMEROTA: But also just how many people have "B" names in this race. Let's listen to Howard Schultz. So he was on "60 Minutes," and he's
considering an independent run. So he -- we know him from Starbucks. Let's listen to him now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHULTZ: I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent outside of the two-party system. We're living at a most fragile time. Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president, but the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what's necessary on behalf of the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Harry, here's his argument. More people identify as independents right now than do as Democrats or Republicans. Does his math work?
ENTEN: I mean, that is technically true. More people -- more people self-identify as independents rather than Democrats or Republicans. But then you ask them which party they're leaning to, and most of them say they're leaning toward one of the two major parties.
Howard Schultz can do whatever he wants. My job here is to give you the God's honest truth. And at this particular time, I think he would face a very uphill battle in the general election. I'll also note that there are a lot of Democrats who fear that he might split the vote with them in the anti-Trump vote.
CAMEROTA: She's sitting right there.
MCKINNON: Right. And I would say to you is, look, whether a president has an approval rating around 40 percent, anyone extra who adds into the formula could potentially mess it up.
But if you look back to 1980 with John Anderson or you look back to 1992 with Ross Perot, you see that they didn't really split the vote either way in terms of who they were taking more from, whether they be Carter or Ronald Reagan in '80 or 1992 with George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
And even if you look back in 2016, you look at the exit polls, the pre-election polls, it didn't really seem to me that the third-party candidates were taking disproportionately from one side or the other.
MCKINNON: But, you know, this is a democracy -- the world's leading democracy. Why just a binary choice? Why just Diet Coke or -- why just Coke or Pepsi? Why not Mountain Dew? I mean, if --
ENTEN: Or Diet AMW Cream Soda.
MCKINNON: And if you're worried about him, go beat his ass with your ideas.
MCINTOSH: I feel like, one, I'm hopeful that he's selling a book, which is something that he's doing, and saying that you might want to you might want to be the leader of the free world seems to be a good way to boost your book sales.
Other than that, I actually agree that the two-party system in this country might not be the best thing for democracy. But right now, we have infrastructure built for two parties.
The Independence Party doesn't have a way to contact its voters, it doesn't have a voter file. It doesn't have the kind of 50-state party system that is required right now to win an election. And when you have somebody coming in, I appreciate -- I appreciate the reassurance, I really hope that you're right. At this point, I think every Democrat, every progressive that I know is just focused 100 percent on trying to beat Donald Trump; and this seems like it would be a major distraction to that endeavor.
MCKINNON: I think in modern media, in the culture we live in today, you don't need party infrastructure. You just need ideas and get out and there whip it up.
BERMAN: I mean, look, I came in prepared to be incredibly cynical about the Howard Schultz thing. I was going to say he's the answer to the question no one has been asking. I was going to note the fact that I like Dunkin' Donuts coffee more. And then in the green room --
MCKINNON: Bad, John.
CAMEROTA: But you're not going to do ANY OF that.
Berman: I'm not going to do any of that, because Mark in the green room convinced me that there is a serious argument to be made that the party system in this country needs to be shaken up. So --
MCKINNON: Well, imagine if it's Donald Trump and, say, Elizabeth Warren as the nominees. That leaves a huge hole in the middle for somebody to run.
CAMEROTA: I mean, it does seem like people are clamoring for a third choice.
BERMAN: I think that -- see, that's where I think it's not true.
CAMEROTA: Anecdotally.
BERMAN: I hear no -- I hear no clamors.
CAMEROTA: Anecdotally. And you're not going to the cocktail party.
BERMAN: Well, that's the problem, is that Howard Schultz -- Howard Schultz is the candidate of the cocktail parties, which is like a hundred people, right? It's not --
[06:10:08] CAMEROTA: Fabulous.
BERMAN: It's not hundreds of thousands or hundreds of millions of people. CAMEROTA: I guess, except that back to my more people self-identify
as an independent and that means I hear you that it's not set up that way, but somebody has got to be a disrupter. At some point you have to blaze a trail.
self-identify as an independent and that means I self-identify as an independent and that means I hear you it's not sell the up that way but somebody has to be a disrupter. At some point, you have to blaze a trail. It's not just forever.
MCKINNON: This year we're literally talking about whether or not we halt a slide into authoritarianism. Like, we always say the stakes have never been higher. Sometimes we're lying when we say that. This year that's not the case -- the stakes have never been higher. This isn't the time to be experimenting with another white billionaire who decides that he wants to become president.
BERMAN: Can we play -- there was one candidate, Howard Schultz, who spoke to one person yesterday; and there was a different candidate and who spoke to some 20,000, you know, screaming people yesterday.
If we play a little bit more of Kamala Harris in this roll-out, you pick the bite you want to play, because I do think it's significant what she did and the message she's sending.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: And as we embark on this campaign, I will tell you this. I am not perfect. Lord knows I am not perfect. But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: If you are this long list of people who has yet to jump in, because there are only a few declared candidates so far, does this give you pause, Harry? Do you look at that and say, "You know what? I've got better things to do for the next two years than run against someone who can get a crowd like this?"
ENTEN: I certainly have better things to do. I can't -- look, I can't speak for the people who aren't in this race right now, but I will say that's, I think, part of the reason Senator Harris got in the race so early, was to try and scare some other people. They had a good game plan to put together.
But the other thing I'll note is, look, Donald Trump, who I said many foolish things about before he ran in the 2016 campaign. I said, "Oh, there's no chance, there's no chance."
Look, I think if you want to be the president of the United States, you should run. We now know that we should be much more cautious in analyzing primaries, whether they be on the Republican side or the Democratic side.
But I will say that the time to me seems a-ticking as the resources get swallowed up by the different campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, and even, yes, out of California.
BERMAN: Is time running out?
MCKINNON: No. There's plenty of time for anybody to get him, but she threw down a marker last night. I was interested in the message part of that announcement, was it reminded me a lot of George Bush in 1999. We're going to run to return honor and integrity to the White House. It's a character message, which could be very compelling given the environment that we're in.
MCINTOSH: I also enjoyed the message of inclusivity. I thought it was -- it was telling that she used her first speech out of the gate to make sure that she was hitting a message of unity and togetherness and just sort of highlighting the divisiveness that the president seems to be taking us down.
CAMEROTA: All right. Jess, Mark, Harry, thank you very much for all the insight.
We have a programming note for you. Be sure to watch Senator Kamala Harris tonight as she joins Jake Tapper for a live CNN town hall from Iowa. It's 10 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.
MCKINNON: Nice move, CNN.
BERMAN: You like that? All right. Now, to the crisis in Venezuela, self-proclaimed acting President Juan Guaido told "The Washington Post" the opposition is in talks with sympathetic military and civilian officials to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
This comes as Maduro has blamed what he alleges is a U.S.-led coup for the political upheaval in that country.
Our Stefano Pozzebon is live in Caracas with the very latest. What's the situation this morning, Stefano?
STEFANO POZZEBON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. That interview with "The Washington Post" all but confirming that there are, indeed, talks between Juan Guaido, the self-proclaimed entering president of Venezuela who swore himself in last week, and the members of the military. The armed force are increasingly seen as the only arbiter who could eventually define who will win this power tussle here in Caracas.
But also last night, late last night, Guaido called for yet other street protests for this week. There will be marches across Caracas next Saturday and more gathering next Wednesday. So as soon as in the next couple of days, we could see, again, pressure building up on Nicolas Maduro to open up a negotiating table and own the military to deal -- to lead a way out of this dramatic crisis, John.
BERMAN: Stefano, thank you so very, very much for that. Ahead on NEW DAY, we have an exclusive journey inside Venezuela. We see the devastation causing the people to rise up.
So the shutdown is over but another one could be three weeks away. What President Trump's bar bargaining position is now. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: The federal government, it is back open this morning, but guess what? A new shutdown crisis is looming.
CAMEROTA: Oh, goody.
BERMAN: The deadline for congressional negotiators to strike a deal over border security is February 15, but President Trump overnight told "The Wall Street Journal" that he doubts that he would accept any compromise that includes less than $5.7 billion for a border wall.
Joining us now is John Avlon, our senior political analyst; Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary; and Toluse Olorunnipa, White House correspondent now for "The Washington Post." Congratulations on that, Toluse.
CAMEROTA: Congratulations.
BERMAN: A big move for you.
John Avlon, we have a new shutdown looming three weeks from now. The president says it's less than 50/50 that these congressional negotiators will come up with anything that he likes. Where is this headed?
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, he's cheerleading it already. It's appropriate Groundhog Day exists right in the middle, because that is what we are seeing.
And yet now, it's really interesting, because to some extent, the Sword of Damocles he's holding over the Senate and the country is semantics. What will qualify as a wall?
Is he going to dig in and say 5.7 billion without anything for the DREAMers, a hard-right position? Then we're going to get nowhere. The thing is, I think the appetite for a shutdown, let's be honest, is limited even and perhaps especially in the White House. So I think what you could see is the president going the emergency route. Problem with that, of course, is it could get shot down in the courts.
But we all live to fight another day here, but there's a lot of scar tissue. And the fact that we're all set up to do it again, let's hope cooler heads prevail in Congress. But, you know, that would be the triumph of hope over spirit.
CAMEROTA: Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all but said that he was willing to do -- I mean, he did say it, that he's willing to do an emergency declaration, if they're still at an impasse.
[06:20:07] So Toluse, what changed strategically over the past 35 days? Has either position that they were so dug into, change so that we won't have another shutdown on February 15.
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Not very much has changed. One of the things that has changed is that we got to see Nancy Pelosi sort of putting her foot down and seeing the president, basically, agree that he did not have authority to move things forward with Nancy Pelosi saying no.
Now they have put together this bipartisan group of lawmakers that are going to try to come up with some sort of solution, but at the end of the day, President Trump has the veto power. In the past, there have been bipartisan solutions that have been put forward, and the president has shot them down.
It's not clear that the president is willing to back down. He did an interview with the "Washington" -- with "The Wall Street Journal" last night where he said that there's less than a 50/50 chance that this would actually produce something that he could sign, and he would not move back from his $5.7 billion offer.
So it does look, as John said, like we're getting closer to the emergency option where the president would declare some sort of national emergency and try to find money elsewhere in the budget.
Now, there are a number of Republicans that are very opposed to that, including Senator Marco Rubio who said that that would be a bad precedent, and it would sour things with -- with Congress, who has the power of the purse.
So the president is potentially going to be on his own here if he decides to go out and do a national emergency where he's getting pushback not only from Democrats and people who are going to be filing lawsuits but also some Senate Republicans and some Republicans in the House who do not think that's the right way to go.
BERMAN: Two things on that. No. 1, there's a difference between saying it publicly -- "Oh, I don't think the president should use executive powers or emergency powers" -- and privately, because there is some reporting that privately, everyone's saying, "You know what? If he does this, fine. We just have to get the shutdown off the table."
The second thing is not only did Mick Mulvaney say the president was considering emergency powers, he also said the president would absolutely shut the government down again if he felt it was necessary. So it did not rule that out. The flip side of that, Joe, is now that you have these 17 congressional negotiators behind closed doors, starting today. And Nita Lowey, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, is running these meetings.
Do you think that the Democrats will -- I'm not asking you should, because I think I know your opinion on should they give any money to the wall? Do you think the Democrats will give any money for new barriers between the United States and Mexico?
JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think the Democrats will come and offer as much as Donald Trump is looking for on border security. And it is -- comes down to a semantic game, but it is more than semantics.
What Trump is doing, this wall has become a litmus test for the country. What kind of country are we?
I think the Democrats will be able to work with Republicans to put something together that Republicans feel like Trump can accept. He's already backed down. It's not like he has to worry about caving here. He's already caved.
The question is, I mean, you know, some of -- it's -- I look at this from how do you message these things from the White House? They've already lost the messaging battle on the emergency, because if it was an emergency, we would have already acted. It's his, like, saying, "It's an emergency, but I'll give you three weeks to talk about the emergency."
So it's -- the Democrats are not going to move on the wall issue as in "We're going to build Trump's wall. They will move, and I think they would gladly move on providing a bunch of money for border security.
CAMEROTA: So 5.7 billion that you think that -- they had already worked their way around to it last week. And we are already hearing, OK, so 5.7 billion you think Democrats are willing to give if it's fencing or slats and not a wall, which the president had already worked his way around to. So he will get a win of his last stated goal?
LOCKHART: Well, he'll -- he'll declare victory, but it won't really be a victory. And, again, it's -- we will continue the policy that we've had.
Remember, immigration, illegal immigration is at historical lows. There is no crisis at the border. So you've got to start from the place that everything the president's saying is fiction. So it's very hard to negotiate with someone who's dealing with a made-up problem.
So they will continue, and they will put more resources. Again, this has been building up over the last ten, 12 years. More money, higher, you know, better technology, more Border Patrol, and it's going to be -- the president is just going to have to figure out a way to say, "Hey, I got what I wanted" and move on.
Or, go to the courts, which he could have done 38 days ago, and see if the courts let him to do it.
BERMAN: The interesting thing is the debate's going to be about new fencing. The Democrats have already said we will repair the fencing that's there. I don't know that the Democrats will agree to any new barriers or new fencing.
CAMEROTA: I think that some of the 1.6 billion in the spending bill back in March had a little bit of new fencing.
BERMAN: Last year?
CAMEROTA: Uh-huh. I think had he had already agreed to a little bit. Not 2,000 miles.
BERMAN: Well, the president -- the president -- the irony is the president had already claimed they were building new border walls with the money he had.
CAMEROTA: Right. Which was not true.
AVLON: And now they're talking about smart fencing, smart wall. Right? So it's -- I think what Joe's trying to say, it depends what the definition of "wall" is, and that's where a lot of the big fight is.
I can say, though, you know, the president all along, and Jared Kushner, there's been terrific reporting on Jared Kushner thinking he was going to get something from the Democrats here, that they were splitting and they were confused. It appears the folks who were confused this morning and split are some of the president's conservative allies.
[06:25:14] AVLON: Yes.
BERMAN: So listen, listen to what some of them have said in the divergence over the last couple days.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANN COULTER, COMMENTATOR/AUTHOR: He promised something for 18 months and he lied about it. That's how you get Trump. It's not this Russia nonsense.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S "HANNITY": The president, well, he showed leadership, rose above the partisan bickering in the swamp, offering relief to federal workers, all while sticking to his commitment to secure our border.
LOU DOBBS, HOST, FOX BUSINESS CHANNEL'S "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT": She has just whipped the president of the United States.
He just reversed himself. That's a victory for Nancy Pelosi.
JEANINE PIRRO, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S "JUSTICE WITH JUDGE JEANINE": He did not cave. He made a tactical decision, a strategy decision to pick the ground to fight on.
Folks, the war isn't over yet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: You can tell -- you can tell very clearly from this who still wants to go to Mar-a-Lago.
AVLON: Yes, seriously. "You stop pick on my friend Donald," says Jeanine Pirro. It's a Fabian retreat, damn it.
LOCKHART: The difference there is you've got two people, Ann Coulter and Lou Dobbs who have been on this forever, and I think they believe it.
And then you have two people who are creations of the FOX News marketing department and know their audience, took a poll and said, "We better still be with the president."
So it is true belief versus --
AVLON: But Ann Coulter discovering the president lies, that's -- that's good stuff.
BERMAN: I've got to say Pirro versus Dobbs, I mean, that would be a good face-off there.
CAMEROTA: Don't give them any ideas.
BERMAN: So Toluse, what does the president --
AVLON: Sell tickets to The Villages.
BERMAN: When the president watches this -- and you know he watches, probably watching now, but what does he hear when he hears those diversion opinions?
OLORUNNIPA: Yes, this is the president's kitchen cabinet. These are advisers that the president sometimes listens to more so than the people in his actual cabinet. And I think he's hearing that he has to stick to this fight and that he can't give in, he can't cave again to Nancy Pelosi.
And that's why we're more likely than not to have either another shutdown or a national emergency declaration, because the president realizes that these are the people that he believes speaks to his base and speaks for his base and that, if he loses them, then he's sort of dead in the water when it comes to his re-election.
So I think the president is listening very closely, especially to voices like Lou Dobbs. We know he watches that show pretty regularly in the residence. And when he hears words like "cave" and that he was losing this fight to Nancy Pelosi, it has to sort of grit on his ego a little bit and cause him to think about how hard of a fight he's going to take to the Democrats in the next three weeks and how much of a redline he's going to draw.
Even if Democrats and Republicans come up with some sort of bipartisan compromise, the may want to fight even harder and make sure that he can please his base and please the folks in the FOX News ecosphere just so that he's not seen as someone who caved or who lost the battle to a Democratic woman.
LOCKHART: But if he wants to govern, he's got to be able to take on Ann Coulter, and you know, that's -- that is the key.
CAMEROTA: I think he is. You can already see, they're already in a Twitter spat or whatever. So I think that he has taken on Ann Coulter.
But I don't know if -- what it would be like -- would it what it would be like when Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro are at odds.
I can't imagine. BERMAN: His words about Ann Coulter, this is what the president said to "The Wall Street Journal" about Ann Coulter, just so people know. "I hear she's become very hostile. Maybe I didn't return her phone call or something." Standing up to Ann Coulter.
CAMEROTA: Gentleman, thank you all very much.
BERMAN: All right. A major award for one of the most popular films ever. Could the Oscar be next?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
