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Inside Politics

Trump's Ohio Trip to Focus on Manufacturing and National Security; Poll Shows Biden and Sanders Lead the Dems; Sanders Beats O'Rourke in Contributions. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 20, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:27] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

President Trump about to leave the White House for Ohio. It's a state essential to his re-election road map. They'll celebrate a boost in work at an army tank factory, while in a public feud with GM about jobs lost at a plant the president promised would not close.

Plus, Beto O'Rourke hits New Hampshire and details his early fundraising success. Our new CNN poll tells us he starts in a solid position. And Senator Kamala Harris gets a decent bump, too.

And, maybe Kim and Kanye can mediate this one. The president says Kellyanne Conway's husband is a loser. He says the president is nuts. And she says it wasn't always this messy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: George was so excited, literally crying with joy in his MAGA hat, black not red, but his MAGA hat, on election night. And so, in that way, he's changed. He's changed his opinion on, I guess, matters where the president -- the presidency, but I haven't and Donald Trump hasn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We'll get to the reality TV part of the show in a moment.

But we begin with jobs and politics. President Trump getting an early taste of the 2020 climate today, leaving shortly just a few moments from now to leave the White House for a trip to Ohio. It's his tenth visit to the state since he was elected president. And as he looks to cement Ohio as the foundation of his re-election map, a public feud with General Motors over a shuttered Ohio plant is front and center.

Now, Ohio's economy overall is quite strong, but there are pockets of concern. Look at today's "Columbus Dispatch" who frames it this way, Trump returns to a state facing a closed GM plant, possible military cuts, $458 million loss in soybean sales.

The president's big event is at a factory that manufactures Abrams tanks for the Army. His message today, a test-run of his re-election theme. That, he says, he is delivering on his promises to boost the economy and to boost the nation's military might. And that those promises work together when it comes to American manufacturing. We could hear from the president as he leaves the White House. We'll bring you that as it happens.

Here with me to share their reporting and their insights today, "Politico's" Eliana Johnson, Jonathan Martin with "The New York Times," CNN's Michael Warren, and Seung Min Kim of "The Washington Post."

It's an interesting challenge. We focus a lot on the Democrats because they've been so active on the campaign trail. Here goes the president to the middle of the country to a state that is absolutely essential and you see sort of the tensions in the map, if you will, and then if you look at the overall numbers, Ohio's doing great. If you look at pockets of Ohio, there are warning signs for the president.

ELIANA JOHNSON, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "POLITICO": Absolutely. And the president's visit to Ohio comes as there's an internal debate in the White House over whether to impose auto tariffs. And that's something central to the people of Ohio. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is in Ohio today, likely to be with the president, pressing him not to do this, and something that could really affect the economy of Ohio if the president chooses to do it.

KING: You have some reporting on this, some exclusive reporting today, about an internal White House report. We know the president's instinct, his reflex on trade has been pretty consistent. He believes the United States gets the short end of just about every trade deal. He likes tariffs. The industry does not like tariffs. Some workers like it. Some of his base thinks he's standing up to China. In this case, it would be standing up to the Europeans.

Here's -- every automaker would be impacted in some way, shape or form. If he just assumed that we have declared a national security threat and the president imposes broad, sweeping import tariffs of 25 percent, then you would naturally see the prices of all these cars increase in a range of $2,000 to $7,000. More than anything, our companies like certainty and predictability, and they're just not finding much of it these days. That from Jennifer Thomas who works for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

They're like the stock market. They want to know what the plan is, not every month have a change.

JOHNSON: Exactly. And the point that these automakers and executives make is that there's no such thing as an all-American car. American cars use foreign parts and foreign cars use American parts. So American brand cars are going to feel it if the president imposes tariffs on foreign car manufacturers. And there's a lot of anxiety given the uncertainty about what the president will do and a lot of Republican senators, I think potentially setting up another big clash between Republican lawmakers and the White House if the president decides to do this. JONATHAN MARTIN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK

TIMES": It's still a free trade party, and that's certainly reflected in the U.S. Senate. But the rank and file of the party is sort of less free trade than the elites of the party, which Trump certainly tapped into.

But this is like one of the few domestic issues where this president really does have a deep conviction.

KING: Right.

MARTIN: Since the start of his presidency, he's been asking his advisers, as you know, where are my tariffs? Where are my tariffs? He wants to impose tariffs. And there's been this fight to stop him from both Capitol Hill and from his more internationalist pro-free trade advisors since day one and they've fended him off for the most part. Can they keep fending him off through 2020 and keep him from doing what he really wants to do, which is impose tariffs?

[12:05:22] KING: Well, one of the arguments that the Republican establishment would make, the free trade part of the part, Mr. President, you've got a pretty good deal right now. You can go out to these states -- and all of the battleground states key to his map, the unemployment rate is down.

MARTIN: Exactly.

KING: It's down nationally. It's down in each of those states.

MARTIN: Right.

KING: Just look at Ohio right now. Since the president took office, construction adding almost 13,000 job, manufacturing adding more than 17,000 jobs, the auto industry down 400 net jobs. But let's even show you that in more detail. Because if you're a Democrat, you'd say, ah- ha, Mr. President, you promised to keep those jobs. But look at the detail. It went down early in the administration and then it jumped back up. Now it's down a little bit. So net it's about the same, or up a little bit during the administration.

So they're -- overall, again, there are pockets of stress, a lot of farming in Ohio too. It's a very big, diverse state. That's what makes it so interesting. Pockets of warning signs but, overall, the president has a pretty good story to tell.

MICHAEL WARREN, CNN REPORTER: It does suggest sort of just an inherent weakness of the president's case for himself. Remember, Ohio in 2018 over performed, Republicans did there, than they did throughout the rest of the country. This, again, should be a place where the president should be strong. This is sort of the bulwark for him, not like the other Midwestern states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and yet this is where he's going first. It does sort of suggest that his team really does understand that he's in a weird way really on defense, even in places where Republicans seem to be strong.

Politically, this divide within the old party, the free trade side of the party, and the workers, the sort of new Trumpian side of the party. I talked several months ago with the South Carolina Republican when Trump first talked about, you know, sort of adding tariffs to German cars. BMW has a big plant there. I asked this Republican, well, don't -- aren't the workers concerned? There's a lot of manufacturing in South Carolina that's dependent on this that could go away. They said, those workers, they listen to talk radio. They watch Fox News. They're Trump fans. So there's a big divide between the base of the party and Trump's era and -- and sort of the management, which is the old party.

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": And speaking of Michigan, I mean there are clear warning signs, if you just look at public polling for the president in that state, which he obviously won narrowly in 2016. There was a poll out a few weeks ago where they said 49 percent of Michigan voters said they would definitely not vote for Trump this time. That is not a number that you want to see at this point. Granted things could change with the ebb and flow of the economy.

But on the economy, I mean, it could have been a blip on the -- blip in the trend, but the jobs numbers that were released earlier this month, when the economy only created 20,000 jobs last month, is something that I'm sure the White House is watching very closely.

KING: Right. So you have the mix in the data.

Here's one thing, he's going to be in Ohio, which is the home of former Governor John Kasich, one of the Republicans who says he may or may not challenge the president in the primaries. Good luck. Good luck with that in the sense it's very, almost impossible, based on any data you see today, to beat the president. The question is, do you want to run a campaign and make a point.

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: Do you want to make a message about, your point, about we should be for trade --

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: Or we should be for the NATO alliance or what is the party going to look like after Trump? That's one thing.

In our new poll, there's some very -- yesterday we told you, 71 percent of Americans think the economy is doing good. That's a 20-year high. That's a 20-year high. So that's good news for an incumbent president. Yes, there are issues and warnings signs, but that's good news.

Here's also good news. The percentage of Americans who say they're proud Donald Trump is their president goes up in our poll a bit and it is driven by this. Look at this. More Republicans now say it and more Republican-leaning independents. Independents who lean Republican say it in the sense that whether they've just gotten used -- those are the voters who in 2018, in some of the suburbs, ran from the president. They don't like the tweets. They don't like say attacking John McCain or things like that. But you see them now. Either they're getting used to it or comfortable with it or just decided we're going to keep it or there's an election and they're coming home.

MARTIN: I think it's a -- I think it's a fourth thing. I think that is a reflection of their views on the Democratic opposition.

KING: Right.

MARTIN: I think that that's driven by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the ascent of a new, much more outspoken progressive left. And I think it's a reaction more to that than it is anything affirmative about the president. It's the fact that my contempt/unease with the other side is growing. Negative partisanship.

JOHNSON: And that's how the president won the first time, too.

KING: Right.

JOHNSON: It wasn't that people liked him. It was that they preferred him to Hillary Clinton. But, John, you know, on the matter of a primary challenge, the president is very unlikely to be defeated in a primary, but it's an issue of resources for Trump.

MARTIN: Yes.

JOHNSON: The Trump campaign doesn't want to have to expend financial or energy resources batting down a primary challenge. They have an enormous advantage over the Democratic competition right now in terms of money. And they simply don't want to be spending that defeating a Republican primary.

KING: Right. And to your point --

MARTIN: A wounded -- yes.

KING: You don't have to beat an incumbent to hurt an incumbent.

MARTIN: Yes, as we know.

KING: Ask Jimmy Carter. Yes, ask Jimmy Carter. Ask George H.W. Bush, our last two one-term presidents faced internal primary challenges that caused some wounds, caused some issues --

[12:10:06] MARTIN: Ford too. Yes.

KING: I'm fascinated to see the president, though, in Ohio today to the point, does he focus on the strong economy, does he stay focused, does he do the other Trumpian thinks that some people don't like but that he thinks got him elected?

MARTIN: George Conway tweets maybe, you know.

KING: We will -- we'll get to that.

Up next, Democratic voters share their latest thoughts on the 2020 horse race in our new CNN poll. But first, the House speaker not so thrilled here to be giving a play-

by-play of who's jumping into the race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Madam Speaker, since you talked about so many presidents, I wonder how you'd feel about Bill de Blasio running for president?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: I think the mayor is serious about it, but when he makes his announcement, then I'll answer your question. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well handled.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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KING: We have some new early numbers today in the Democratic race in 2020 for the Democratic nomination. And a bit of a warning sign for one of the candidates near the top of the pack.

[12:15:05] Let's take a look first at the numbers. We asked Democrat voters, Democratic-leaning independents, who do you want for president? This is a national poll. Joe Biden still on top, Bernie Sanders second at 28 percent, Senator Harris was 4 percent in our last poll when we asked, so she has jumped up as she's gotten into the race and been active campaigning. Beto O'Rourke just go in. His 2018 brand clearly helping him. Look at that, he's in fourth place. Elizabeth Warren. John Kerry hasn't ruled it out, so he is on our list. Not sure how Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar feel about coming in behind John Kerry, who's not running to the best of our knowledge but he hasn't ruled it out yet.

Let's take a closer look. Again, Senator Harris up from 4 percent to 12 percent. Why? She rose 10 points among those who describe themselves as Democrats, 10 points among those who say they're liberals, 10 points among minorities, and nine points above women. So a good introduction, if you will, a bit of a bump for her in the early weeks of her campaigning.

Now, a bit of a warning sign here for Bernie Sanders. He's second in the national poll, but 33 percent of Democrats say the party would be better off with Sanders as the nominee, 56 percent say better off with somebody else, concerns about his electability. More on that in a second.

Fifty-one percent, we expect Joe Biden to get in soon. More than half of the party says the party would be better off with Joe Biden, about four in ten. Some doubts there still about Joe Biden. He would enter the race as the frontrunner. He'd have to answer those Democrats there.

What do Democrats care about most? Nearly six and ten, 56 percent, say a strong chance of beating the incumbent, President Trump. Only a little more than a third say most important to them is that the candidate shares their positions or their values on the issues. But part of the challenge, because all of the Democratic candidates know this, their party wants to beat Trump. Listen to some of the candidates defining just how they might do that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The reality is, when you take one look at me, my face is my message, right? A lot of this is simply the idea that we need generational change. That we need more voices stepping up from a generation that has so much at stake in the decisions that they're being made right now.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The reason why I'm going to beat President Trump is this, my story. I won that campaign by a 24-point margin. So the reason why I will defeat President Trump is my entire time in Congress I have chosen to bring people together. I have chosen to reach across the aisle, to get things done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So, it's early. And one of the things I'm going to repeat like a broken record is, don't put too much -- you know, don't invest in the horse race numbers so much in the poll, but who's moving up and who's moving down? If you're Senator Harris, you have to feel good about that. If you're Beto O'Rourke, that poll taken pretty much before he was out on the road. You have to think, OK, I start at 11 percent. That's pretty good. That's his brand from 2018.

What about that warning sign of Bernie Sanders there? Second in the national poll. We know he has a dedicated base of supporters out there, but a lot of the party worried about the electability issue. How do you deal with that?

MARTIN: Look, I think the -- of the candidates in the race, he is somebody that most people in the party would have a difficult time with as their nominee. I think he knows that, and I think that's part of the reason why in his stump speech now, John, he is saying, whoever is the party nominee, I will support. It's important that we beat Donald Trump. That's not an accident that he's including that in his stump speech.

But, look, there are still raw feelings from 2016 that are left over. And especially among the more kind of elite-level operatives and activists, the folks who were hyper-engaged in politics. They do not like him. They don't like his campaign and they would rather him not be the nominee. It's not just his policies, although I think there's concern about that. It's just that they don't like the fact he's not a Democrat and how the race against Hillary Clinton went.

I don't know if that's fixable among some voters. Not all voters, but certainly some voters are never going to be warm to him. And I think that's reflected there in your poll.

WARREN: And I think it's striking how relatively soft both support for Sanders and Biden, who seem to be at the top of these polls, mostly based on name recognition. The people who -- all the Democrats and all Americans really know. I think those are very encouraging numbers for Kamala Harris, who's all over TV, had, I think, a really good, tight rollout of that campaign. And as you say, Beto O'Rourke, you know, the political Twittersphere sort of bashed that rollout, but those fundraising numbers that he released and that result right there suggests that he's got a lot of that heart candidate stats.

KING: Right. And even as I agree with you, though, Kamala Harris has a good rollout so she's seen. It's name recognition too.

WARREN: That's right.

KING: Beto O'Rourke is remembered because he ran against Ted Cruz last year. So you -- the challenge is to keep it. She's moving up. That's good for her. The question is, can you keep it as other people spread out?

You mentioned Beto O'Rourke. He's made his way to New Hampshire. And today, yesterday, a woman who's a Sanders supporter confronted him at Penn State saying, I want to know more about your fundraising. So, today, Beto O'Rourke answered the question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As you know, we were so fortunate to receive so much help in the first 24 hours of this campaign. More than 128,000 unique contributions made in the first 24 hours from every state in the country. $47 was the average contribution. All of it came from people. Not a dime from PACs or lobbyists.

[12:20:15] We've had more donations since then, and I do not know what that total is. We'll obviously be filing by the filing deadline and at that point we'll make that information public.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So a little bit of comparison here, because he's proving he has a grassroots fundraising base.

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: If you look -- so he's -- he raised $6.1 million in the first 24 hours from 128,000 individuals, 47. You look at Bernie Sanders, who raised about the same amount from more people, smaller contributions, more people. So Bernie Sanders has that carryover, if you will, from 2016.

But that's pretty impressive for Beto O'Rourke right out of the box there. And so it proves number -- you know, a lot of Democrats saying, oh, come on, you know, it proves, number one, people weren't just giving to get -- to beat Ted Cruz.

MARTIN: Right.

KING: They like this guy. Now he's running against Democrats. They're giving him money.

KIM: Yes, clearly, I mean he has the broad base of grassroots support that he's already been able to prove the first day. I mean I look for -- I mean even for more comparison purposes, some of the one-day fundraising totals for some of the other candidates topped 1 million, and those were great numbers. But 6 million is a pretty remarkable number right out of the gate.

KING: And you talked about how sometimes the Twitter world, forgive me Twitter world, is wrong about real America -- about real Americans. So here's the question, can Beto O'Rourke sell this?

Our K-File team did some great reports just looking back at his speeches, back at his record in Congress, back at things he said in his prior campaigns. Here are a couple things from 2012 that -- can he sell this? In today's Democratic primary electorate. He's not running for a House seat in Texas any more. He's running for the Democratic presidential --

MARTIN: Or against Ted Cruz.

KING: Yes.

Are cuts important over the long term? Absolutely. You have kids. I have kids. Every dollar they pay in in taxes is going right out to China or to someone else who's financing our extravagant government. So there's a deficit concern from a Democrat.

March 2012, there are certainly places in the federal budget we have to look at reorganizing, where we have to look at cutting. We really don't have a choice. We need to elect people who are going to go up there and make some tough choices.

You could imagine Bill Clinton saying those things years ago. Can you imagine a Democrat in today's primary electorate, can you sell that?

JOHNSON: You know, it's not just Beto. I think he will have a difficult time selling that. But we've seen several of these candidates have to reckon with things that they've said previously and apologize for them. So I think it will be interesting to see whether he stands by that or whether he is forced actually to pull back from the sort of moderate-sounding noises that he's made.

WARREN: But to your point about the difference between Twitter world and the real world, you can also see that being very well received among the actual Democratic base and sort of the backbone of the Democratic Party. You know, African-American women form that. And that's an extremely important constituency. The sort of Bernie-bro stereotype, obviously very loud on Twitter, very loud on the Internet, they're going to be angry about that kind of thing. You'd better believe they're going to bring that up. But there's some -- I mean it is still Bill Clinton's Democratic Party as well. There is a level of --

KING: I'm not so -- I'm not so sure, but that's -- I think that what makes 2020 so fascinating because the question -- the challenge for Beto O'Rourke --

MARTIN: Well, it's Barack Obama's Democrat Party here.

WARREN: Fair enough.

KING: But -- but there are pieces that -- but if --

MARTIN: (INAUDIBLE).

KING: But if -- let's say Beto O'Rourke holds his ground. If he holds his ground on what he said, yes, I mean that. The question is, he's got some -- you know, this is going to be where the debates matter.

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: Someone's going to turn to him and say, OK, what would you cut? Are you talking about food stamps?

MARTIN: Right.

WARREN: Right.

KING: Are you talking about education?

MARTIN: Yes.

KING: What are you talking about? Now, that's where the rubber's going to meet the road.

JOHNSON: And I would say that that hasn't been his posture thus far out campaigning. Out campaigning, he's been saying to voters, you know, you tell me. He hasn't been adamant on policy positions. So I think it will be interesting to see, moving forward, if -- how concrete he is about the policy positions that he holds. He will have to be at some point.

KIM: And speaking of people who will have to explain their past, you know, actions, policy positions, words, Joe Biden will definitely, at the top of the list, you know, the Anita Hill hearings, his past comments on desegregation. There may be some --

WARREN: Climate (ph).

KIM: Yes, there may be renewed looks at even just some of the policies of the Obama administration. I'm thinking about the comments that the Congresswoman Ilhan Omar made a few weeks ago to "Politico" magazine when she criticized the Obama -- President Obama for its immigration policies, the drone strike policies.

Once -- if and when Vice President Biden gets into the race, he's going to be the candidate that's most closely associated with those policies. And it will be interesting to see how the rising left would react to that.

KING: So you're saying we shouldn't wait until the summer for the debates. MARTIN: Just real fast to that point. I think the constituency in the

Democratic primary that's gettable will not going to be anti-Obama. I think that the folks that look back at the Obama years with regret are already in a certain candidate's column, and that candidate is a certain junior senator from Vermont.

KING: Right.

MARTIN: And they're not leaving that column.

I think the rest of the primary, the other 70 percent of the gettable Democratic primary voters, look back with great admiration for the Obama years. And I think they chiefly want a win. I -- that's the overriding litmus test that I hear on the campaign trail is, we want to win.

[12:25:05] KING: If you look at those numbers, again, it's a national poll and it's early. But if you look at those number, Biden and Sanders are holding so much that if you're down below and you want to grow, that's where it has to come from. That's where it has to come from. It has to come from one of them.

You make the point about the dedication of Bernie supporters. We'll see if he can keep them. And we're still waiting on an official word from Joe.

A quick programing note. CNN holds a town hall tonight with another of the Democratic presidential contenders, John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor. That's tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

And, before we go to break, candidate Kirsten Gillibrand gets in on the joke. Remember that encounter earlier this year with an Iowan who squeezed by Gillibrand at an event to get some ranch dressing? Gillibrand posting this video asking followers if they like her new workout shirt. Look closely. Just trying to get some ranch.

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