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In New Poll, Biden Has Commanding Lead Over Democratic Field; Trump Sues Banks to Block House Subpoenas for Records; Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is Interviewed about New Investigation Into NRA. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 30, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Democratic voters say Biden is today their top choice.

[07:00:06] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Bernie Sanders, he is in second place right now, a full 24 points behind Joe Biden. He's at 15 percent.

All this as the former vice president begins his first official campaign swing to Iowa.

Want to bring in CNN political director David Chalian with these new poll numbers and a big bounce for the former vice president, David.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Big bounce indeed. We should note this is the first national poll taken entirely after Joe Biden entered the race. So clearly, seeing some effect of a positive rollout for him. The horserace numbers again, as you just noted, Biden way out in front with 39 percent, 15 percent for Bernie Sanders.

The next four -- Warren, Buttigieg, O'Rourke and Harris -- all down in single digits. I want to compare this to how they performed last month in our poll. And take a look at that growth for Joe Biden since just last month. That's an 11-point gain. Again, a positive response to his rollout, clearly.

The only other candidate to make that kind of a leap is Buttigieg, who went from 1 percent in our national poll last month to seven percent now.

But you see Sanders, O'Rourke and Harris, all going down a bit. Obviously, all the Biden and a bit of Buttigieg's effect.

Take a look at what's sort of underneath the numbers and fueling this? Joe Biden in our poll, John, is winning all across almost every demographic group. But when you break it down by race, I think this is really key. Among white Democrats, Biden is still leading, 29 percent to 15 percent, so a narrower lead than overall.

But look at Biden among non-white voters, a key constituency among Democrats. Fifty percent are for Biden. Next is Sanders at 14 percent. This is a huge advantage, and it was -- it is what is powering his lead. I also want to just caution here for one moment: we're still early.

Sixty-four percent of Democrats in our poll say they might change their mind. Only 36 percent say they are definitely supporting the candidate they're with right now.

We also tested some candidate qualities. And look what comes out on top. The chance to beat Donald Trump, 46 percent of Democrats say that is extremely important. Electability is key.

The right experience then comes in at 31 percent, saying extremely important, working across party lines. But electability, way out in front.

And issues matter, too. Take a look at the issues that are dominating inside the Democratic nomination race. Climate change, 82 percent of Democrats say it is extremely important. Medicare for all, 75 percent. And it goes down then from there. Guns.

But look at this. Free public college, impeaching the president, paying reparations, voting rights for felons, they're much lower. It is climate change and Medicare for all that are animating this race for the nomination -- John, Alisyn.

BERMAN: All right, David Chalian, a fascinating look on where things stand on April 30, 2019.

CHALIAN: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Early days.

BERMAN: I understand there's a long way to go, but still, it's very interesting with Biden just entering the race a few days ago.

Joining us now, Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for "The New York Times" and a CNN political analyst.

You know who's looking at the Biden candidacy closely?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think I know where you're going with this.

BERMAN: I think it's the president of the United States.

HABERMAN: I think you might be right.

BERMAN: I mean, he is all over Twitter. I'm not going to read these tweets out loud. But he seems to be fixated on Joe Biden as a candidate.

What's going on here? And are the president's advisers happy about this? Because you can make a case, this is elevating Joe Biden.

HABERMAN: Some are happy and some are encouraging him, and I think others think this is not the way you handle a new entrant into a massively crowded Democratic primary field, when the party is figuring out who they want and how effort their nominee and how they want to challenge the president.

Donald Trump believes that he can brand anyone. He's watching the coverage. He's getting frustrated. He thinks that what this race really needs right now is him shaping it.

What he's doing is elevating Joe Biden and basically turning this into a one-on-one race between himself and Joe Biden 18 months ahead of time. This is the kind of thing you would see a presidential candidate for re-election do in the summer of the election year, typically.

This is now taking place right now. It might not end up mattering, but this is not the way veteran political operatives would handle this.

CAMEROTA: What is President Trump frustrated about. Is he frustrated that Joe Biden seems to be sticking it directly to him, or is he frustrated about the coverage?

HABERMAN: It's a little of both. He thinks that Biden can play to the white, working class voters who elected him last time. And he know that that swath of voters would -- remember, we're talking about,, you know, a couple of tens of thousand votes across three states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That is what gave him the presidency. He is eyeing those constituencies very carefully.

Joe Biden came out of this very clearly, out of the gate with his campaign, he is going to make an appeal for working-class voters. He had the firefighters' union. It's not the same as the AFL-CIO, but he is trying to send a message. And Trump is aware of that.

BERMAN: The appeal -- the direct appeal to union voters from Biden is interesting. And people forget: to his credit, President Trump, in the campaign last time -- Paul Manafort helped --

HABERMAN: That's right.

BERMAN: -- did make a direct appeal to union voters.

[07:05:04] HABERMAN: They absolutely did. I mean, one of the, I think, the under -- underreported on episodes in that campaign in the fall, it didn't relate to Russia, didn't relate collusion, but it did relate to a lot of what Paul Manafort was involved in: playing on decades-old political contacts, where he was working to try to pave some ground for Donald Trump with people he knew within the AFL-CIO.

You know, people within the Trump campaign always claimed it helped. I don't know if we're ever going to know whether it really did or didn't. But at minimum, it gave them some link toward union workers, who they badly needed.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about this lawsuit from President Trump, from his adult children and his businesses against Deutsche Bank and another bank to try to block them from complying with a subpoena from Congress.

So what's their basis? Why don't they want Deutsche Bank to be able to turn over any records at all?

HABERMAN: I think, realistically, they don't want Deutsche Bank to turn over any records, because it's going to reveal a plethora of information about Donald Trump's finances, which as we know, he has spent a lot of time trying to keep out of the public eye. He has not released his tax returns, the first president not to do so in many decades.

The stated purpose in the lawsuit is this is an overreach, and these subpoenas have no legislative function. This has nothing to do with legislation, which is what Congress is supposed to do. And it's rejecting the idea that congressional oversight would apply here because a lot of this relates to time prior to the presidency.

What's interesting is we are seeing this strategy emerge, and we have seen this at other points in the last several months, where Donald Trump is trying to be both president and private citizen.

The suit goes on and on about his rights as a private citizen, and this is infringing upon it. Now, you can argue that it is infringing upon some of the rights of spouses or children who the documents would apply to.

And Deutsche Bank, to be clear, had made clear to the Trump family they were going to start complying with the subpoena on May 6. That's very soon. So there is no injunction given. That will still happen.

But it is going to be harder for the president to argue that he is a private citizen. And it's going to be hard, frankly, for Ivanka Trump, who works in the White House, to argue that she is a private citizen, or her spouse, Jared Kushner.

BERMAN: This also crosses the red line the president laid down for Robert Mueller. Mueller is not working anymore. The red line, as the president explained to you, questions you were asking, said he didn't want people going into his finances. This clearly does.

Big day at the White House today. A really interesting day. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and the entire Democratic leadership going over to talk about infrastructure.

You could have imagined a Trump presidency --

HABERMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: -- where these types of meetings happen a lot. And they focused on areas where they agreed on a lot. Infrastructure happens to be one of them. That's the policy side of it.

The politics of it today are also fascinating. I don't know if we're going to get to see it live.

HABERMAN: No, not yet.

BERMAN: But last time, Chuck and Nancy, as the president likes to call them, were in the office, that was, you know, the famous moment -- well, let's play it. This is the moment where Chuck Schumer got the president to own the shutdown.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I also know that, you know, Nancy is in a situation where it's not easy for her to talk right now. And I understand that. And I fully understand that. We're going to have a good discussion. And we're going to see what happens.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Mr. President?

TRUMP: We have to have the border secured.

PELOSI: Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Elections have consequences, Mr. President.

PELOSI: Let me just say --

TRUMP: That's right. And that's why the country is doing so well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Again, we don't know if today will be televised. Maybe they don't want to --

CAMEROTA: We can only hope.

BERMAN: We can only hope. But what do you think comes out of today? What are you looking at?

HABERMAN: What we're looking for, obviously, among other things, is televised, which would be for us the best possible outcome.

We're looking at how do -- how do Pelosi and Schumer approach this meeting? It's really interesting because this is about infrastructure, to your point. Because there was a time during the transition where Chuck Schumer, in particular, was afraid Donald Trump was going to come out of the gate doing an infrastructure deal that was going to be very hard for Democrats to say they would not go along with.

It's two and a half years later, and many Infrastructure Weeks later, I'm not really sure you can recapture that mojo, but that's how they're going to do it, No. 1.

No. 2, we're watching for how does the president handle them? Is he going to be conciliatory? Is he going to raise the House investigations? Is he going to start talking about impeachment, out of concern? I doubt he will do that when cameras are rolling, but there will likely be a portion of this meeting that isn't televised, even if some of it is.

Those are the things we're looking for. I don't think that anybody really expects much substantive is going to get done. Democrats also need to look as if they are working -- looking to work across the aisle with him. They also are facing a number of elections in key states and in key districts next year. And they have to look, especially, at swing districts as if they can try to forge some compromise with the president. And it's not all just about investigating him.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the other problem is that whatever they agree to today sometimes just gets changed.

HABERMAN: Very true. Very, very true. It is not as if these things are, you know, ironclad when they're agreed to in the room.

BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, scoop machine, you do have another scoop in "The New York Times" overnight, which is that the White House is considering, or there is an internal debate about whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a movement inside Egypt and, frankly, throughout the Middle East in the Arab world, as a terrorist organization. What's going on here and where does it stand?

[07:10:08] HABERMAN: This came up in a -- in a bilateral meeting that the president had with El-Sisi several weeks ago, privately, not when the cameras were rolling. El-Sisi raised this as something that he would like to see done.

And the president offered, to your point, about when things are real when they're agreed upon in the room or not, the president offered words that sounded to some as if he was making a commitment. Other people said that it was a little softer. But I think it was in the ear of the beholder.

And the president was leaning into this pretty strongly, that he felt this was something that should be done. Remember, there was an effort to do this very early in his presidency, and it was dropped amid a bunch of other executive order messes.

But this is something that I think the president thinks makes him look strong. He thinks that this is something that will play well with his base. It is something that is causing an enormous amount of consternation for a lot of career foreign policy professionals, national security experts within the government who are trying to find a way to slow it down or narrow it in scope. Because they think there could be a lot of unintended consequences as a ripple out.

CAMEROTA: Maggie Haberman, thank you for sharing all of your reporting with us this morning.

HABERMAN: Thanks, guys.

CAMEROTA: All right. Former Vice President Joe Biden trying to get an extra boost from President Obama. He's just put out a new online video with a new message to voters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:18] CAMEROTA: OK. Breaking news. A new CNN national poll on the 2020 Democratic race, just out, shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a big bounce at 39 -- he now has 39 percent. Senator Bernie Sanders is his closest competitor but is way behind in second at just 15 percent.

So joining us now with all of the developments this morning, we have CNN political analyst David Gregory; and Joshua Green, national correspondent for "Bloomberg Business Week."

David Gregory, that is obviously good news for Joe Biden, because nobody knew what was going to happen after his -- announced. Nobody knew if it was just going to sort of sputter, or if he was going to get a bounce. And look at what has happened in just the past month.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, a lot of positive developments. There was a little bit of angst building up, about him taking so long to get in, but that just kept -- kept building the anticipation.

He comes in with a ton of name recognition, obviously. The former vice president has been around politics for a long time. He's getting a lot of media attention.

And what you see amplified in this poll is the priority on who can beat Donald Trump as being the No. 1 priority for Democrats right now. And that's where Biden can really take advantage of such a big field.

And his ability to consolidate the race. If you look between him and Bernie Sanders, getting near 45 percent of the Democratic electorate, according to this poll, it makes it a lot easier to get more establishment support on board so early in the process. And that's what Biden is counting on.

BERMAN: If defeating Donald Trump is his No. 1 goal, and the goal he's trying to put forth to Democrats. I want you to hear, Josh, this brand-new interview. Joe Biden sat down with Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America." We're getting some fresh sound from it, and it goes right to that issue. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBIN ROBERTS, "GOOD MORNING AMERICA": The president has a motto: "Make America Great Again." Do you have one?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Make America moral again. Make America return to the essence of who we are.

JILL BIDEN, WIFE OF JOE BIDEN: Dignity.

JOE BIDEN: The dignity of the country. The dignity of our people, treating our people with dignity. And this godawful deliberate division that's being taken in order to -- separating people to aggrandize his own power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's not going to fit on a baseball cap. BERMAN: Well, "Make America Moral Again" would be MAMA. I'm just

saying.

CAMEROTA: There you go. That's catchy.

BERMAN: It would be MAMA.

CAMEROTA: That is catchy.

BERMAN: The second part of it would be too many letters there.

CAMEROTA: Too long. Too long.

BERMAN: But that aside, Josh, you get the sense of where Joe Biden is trying to position himself. And you've been doing a deep dive on this in terms of what voters he's attracting and how. What have you seen?

JOSHUA GREEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, what I see, first of all, is you know, Biden is someone who has a lot of good will from Democratic voters. We see that reflected in the poll.

There was some concern with Biden's rocky pre-rollout, the issues with inappropriate touching of women. A lot of us wondered, is that really going to knock him down in the polls?

I think this poll shows, no, it hasn't. There's a lot of good will there. I think the other factor here is people think Biden is electable. And when I'm out on the campaign trail, that's what they want, somebody to go up against Trump and defeat him.

The piece I did was looking at the senior surge, the surge of voters age 65 plus, in the midterm elections. I think it's one of the under told stories of this Democratic primary race. There were more senior voters in 2018 than there were in the 2016 general election. Biden is most popular with older voters. So if that surge continues into the Democratic primaries, I think that could be really good news for Biden, to an extent that a lot of analysts haven't factored in yet.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory, just one thing. I just want you to comment on this, also. OK, so older voters might like Biden, but it's been very interesting, because Joe Biden is an older white man. News flash. And they -- there was a question about how -- if this is the moment for somebody who is more diverse. Well, here's the poll about race.

Fifty percent of non-white respondents are choosing Joe Biden over their other choices. That is a really interesting finding in this poll.

GREGORY: Well, it is interesting. And I think it speaks to a couple of things. It speaks to longevity. It speaks to name recognition, and it speaks to qualifications.

You know, again, we spend a lot of time talking about where the energy is in the Democratic Party, and how we measure that is, in part, is who's active in social media, who's active in grassroots campaigning, who's making themselves heard, putting -- making certain issues a priority.

But some of those younger, you know, activist voters don't always vote in the same numbers. And I think older voters who are Democrats are looking at this through a slightly different lens at the moment.

And you know, I think it's striking. The issue of qualifications is really important. So on the one hand, you have, who can beat Trump, right? So there's a lot of Democrats who say, "I don't want to roll the dice on somebody who could be cast as a socialist or out of the mainstream." Because Trump is good at that.

[07:20:11] And two, who can you see doing the job? I mean, I realize in the age of Donald Trump, we say, "Well, geez, anybody could be president." And I think that's true.

But let's not discount the fact that voters take a look at people and say, "Can I picture that person in the Oval Office?"

Joe Biden has been in the Oval Office as vice president. He's been around for a long time. There's no question that he's qualified to be president. That matters to people.

BERMAN: No. 2 on that list, and the poll numbers we showed up there, was "has the right experience," which gets to exactly what David is talking about there.

The Biden campaign just put out a new campaign video. I want you to take a quick look. We're not going to play the whole thing. But pretty quickly, Josh, you can see the message that Biden is trying to send. Let's put this up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Joe talks to auto workers whose livelihoods he helped save. We hear the son of a man who once knew the pain of having to tell his kids that he had lost his job.

When Joe talks about hope and opportunity for our children, we heard the father who rode the rails home every night so he could be --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So Josh, whose voice is that talking right there?

GREEN: What stands out to me about that ad is the narrator; and that, of course, is former president, Barack Obama.

And I think when we look at Biden's really outstanding popularity numbers with African-American voters, I think that that is due, in large part, to the implicit character reference that Biden has, in having served as Obama's vice president for eight years. A lot of people remember that. That's the association they have with Joe Biden, with Barack Obama.

You know, it's interesting to me, going back to that "GMA" interview with Biden, essentially, what he is proposing is a kind of candidacy of restoration. Not the kind of restoration of the '50s and '60s that Donald Trump pitched, but just one from four or eight years ago, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in the White House. And I think for most Democrats, they would think those were better times and were eager to get back there.

I think that explains a lot of Biden's appeal, at least early on in this primary process.

BERMAN: I just want to make one thing perfectly clear. Obama wasn't necessarily narrating. That wasn't an ad or something.

CAMEROTA: That was taken from previous things that he said.

BERMAN: That was taken from --

GREGORY: Yes, but the point is how do you -- but how do you know? But the point is, how do you know? They didn't say, "By the way, this was something that he said a long time ago."

We understand it. He was vice president, so he's got a close relationship with the president.

GREEN: Exactly. Yes.

GREGORY: But the point is that you're not going to hear President Obama speak about any other candidate this way for a long time.

GREEN: Exactly, yes.

GREGORY: Until they're the nominee. But he saying about Joe Biden today because he said it before. So that -- you know, that's important.

There's the other thing, too, that there's a few images in that video, including same-sex marriage. Marriage equality.

BERMAN: You know about this, David, specifically.

GREGORY: I know about this, because I did the interview when I was at "Meet the Press" with Joe Biden, when he changed the administration's policy on gay marriage and came out for it, before the president, much to the consternation and anger of a lot of people in the White House at the time. But now we'll see if he embraces that as a guy who was really on the tip of the spear, you know.

CAMEROTA: I mean, who needs President Obama's endorsement when you have a glowing -- when you have that? I mean, that -- that just works better, obviously.

BERMAN: I'm not so sure, by the way, that there are going to be people within Obama world who aren't a little bit uncomfortable with that.

CAMEROTA: Well, let's hope he called them before he called Anita Hill about this. Let's hope they're not once again putting something out before checking.

BERMAN: Josh, what do you think?

GREEN: You know, it would be hard for the Obama people, I think, to -- to you know, somehow withhold or have a problem with the fact that Obama said very nice things about his vice president.

I mean, Biden's greatest qualifications, in a lot of the ways, is the fact that he served for eight years as Obama's vice president. Obama obviously thought highly of him. They have a true connection.

I think that's something that a lot of Democratic primary voters have priced in. And it's helped raise their estimation of Joe Biden as a presidential prospect. I think that's why we see him at the top of the CNN poll.

GREGORY: I just -- the one caveat, and John, you've been adding caveats this morning which I think are appropriate, and what I would add to that is, remember this march toward inevitability, a march toward consolidation of establishment support, will create some backlash. And it's kind of reminiscent of what Bernie Sanders supporters were feeling about the Clinton campaign in 2016.

This idea that Joe Biden has a lot to answer for as a politician in the public eye for 30 years plus. And whether it's policy positions, relationships, you know, crossing the aisle and so forth, there will be some purity tests that we haven't even begun to hear of yet.

CAMEROTA: Not only that. I mean, I totally agree with that, in terms of how the press should be covering it. Three hundred and sixty-five days plus is a long time. A lot can happen. And so you can't start a march of inevitability right now.

BERMAN: No, no. The flip side of that is, during the Republican primary in 2015 and 2016, when Donald Trump kept on leading, people said, "Oh, this is going to go away. You know, sooner or later it will go away." And it didn't. So you don't know there.

But in terms of the backlash, if people want to see it, just check out my Twitter feed to the poll right now.

GREGORY: Yes.

BERMAN: And there are people who aren't necessarily happy about the coverage. How's about that for a tease?

[07:25:06] CAMEROTA: Wowie.

BERMAN: Josh Green, David Gregory, great to have you with us. Thanks so much.

GREGORY: Thanks.

BERMAN: Crisis at the NRA after a bitter leadership battle. And a new investigation launched in New York state. Governor Andrew Cuomo joins us next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Turmoil at the National Rifle Association after its president, Oliver North, stepped down after a power struggle with the long-time CEO Wayne LaPierre over the organization's finances.

This comes as New York's attorney general has launched an investigation, a new investigation, into the NRA.

Joining me now is the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.

Governor Cuomo, thanks so much for being with us. You have been at loggerheads with the NRA for some time, specifically for over a year for an insurance policy and plan that they proposed. This investigation is something different.

Can you explain to me what it is? The New York attorney general confirmed its existence over the weekend.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Yes. Good morning, John. Thank you for having me.

I've been at loggerheads with the NRA for more than a year. I've been at loggerheads with the NRA for about 20 years, for very good reasons. I believe the NRA is counterproductive.

[07:30:00]