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Colorado GOP Appeals Trump Ban; Trump Demands Recusal in Maine; Haley Responds after Civil War Comments. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired December 28, 2023 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:55]
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump's allies taking their fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Their appeal to get his ban from the ballot in Colorado overturned.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, what caused the Civil War? That was the simple question posed to presidential candidate Nikki Haley at a campaign stop overnight. Her answer, that confused some voters, failed to mention slavery.
SIDNER: And today the Idaho home where four college students were brutally murdered will be torn down. Why some of the victims' families, though, do not want that to happen.
I'm Sara Sidner, alongside John Berman, finally. Kate Bolduan decided, you know what, if you're going to be off, I'm going to be off.
BERMAN: She couldn't be here if I'm going to be here.
SIDNER: She said, I'm -- I'm done.
This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.
BERMAN: This morning the $2,024 million question, will the U.S. Supreme Court weigh in on whether the U.S. Constitution can keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot. Overnight, the Colorado Republican Party appealed a state court decision that says Trump is ineligible to run because the 14th Amendment bans insurrectionists. Other state supreme courts have rejected similar efforts, including Michigan just 20 hours ago. Maine, the state of Maine, could make a decision any minute now. Trump is demanding a recusal in that case. Just 18 days now till the Iowa caucuses, 68 to Super Tuesday.
CNN's Katelyn Polantz is with us this morning with the latest on Colorado, the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
Where do things stand, Katelyn?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, welcome back, John.
BERMAN: Thanks.
POLANTZ: So many developments here in all of these cases related to the 14th Amendment and this clause that says insurrectionists are not eligible for office whenever voters are going to the polls. The question right now, in all of these states is, does that apply to Donald Trump because what he did in 2020 related to the Capitol riot, trying to challenge the election and block the transfer of power.
Many states that have looked at this have either said, our courts are not getting involved, or Trump can stay on the ballot in some way. Colorado is the one state that has not said that, where their state courts have determined he is not eligible and that they have the ability to take him off of the primary ballot. That's what's before the Supreme Court right now because the Colorado Republican Party has filed a petition yesterday saying, please, Supreme Court, settle this. Everybody is doing different things here. And we don't think what Colorado did is fair to Donald Trump or to voters.
Here's what they write. "By excluding President Trump from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court engaged in an unprecedented disregard for the First Amendment right of political parties to select the candidates of their choice. With the number of challenges to President Trump's candidacy now pending in other states, there is a real risk the Colorado Supreme Court majority's flawed and unprecedented analyst will be borrowed and the resulting grave legal error repeated."
So, we're waiting to see what the Maine secretary of state does. We're waiting to see how other challenges like these play out in other states. And the important thing to remember here, John, is that what the GOP in Colorado is asking the Supreme Court to look at is whether there is even the power for a court or a secretary of state to remove a candidate off of the presidential ballot. We're still waiting to see what Donald Trump does here, if he too goes to the Supreme Court and asks them to look at whether he is eligible, whether they can qualify him as an insurrectionist and thus keep him off the ballot.
John.
BERMAN: Look, we are still waiting to see if the Supreme Court will take the case, will weigh in, and exactly what they will weigh in on if they choose to take a look at it. All of these open questions now.
Katelyn Polantz, great to see you. Thank you.
SIDNER: And this morning, as you might imagine, Donald Trump weighing in on the Colorado case and the Supreme Court. He's been bragging also about his win in court in Michigan, but is setting his sights on Maine for the next legal battle.
CNN's Kristen Holmes has more on this.
Trump is really starting to look towards what are the next battles coming forward.
[09:05:05]
One of them being Maine. What's he saying?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, well, Maine is different than some of the other states that we have seen. Before it even goes to a court system, the secretary of state will decide whether or not Donald Trump stays on the ballot. Now, Donald Trump himself and his team are asking her to recuse herself, pointing to old posts on social media that that say make her politically biased.
Now, it's unlikely that she's going to recuse herself. And, of course, Donald Trump's team will have the option to appeal anything that she says. But one thing I want to point out here, of all the legal battles that Donald Trump is facing, whether or not he's going to be on the ballot is not one that they are widely concerned about. They believe, given what we have seen in various states, Arizona, Minnesota, as you mentioned, just Michigan, that ultimately he will be on the ballot in all 50 states.
Now, he did mention the Supreme Court weighing in in an interview. Here's what he said about that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It seems to be that we're 33 and one. And the one is hopefully going to be overturned by the Supreme Court because nobody can understand why they did it. I guess maybe they did it for publicity.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
TRUMP: Maybe they did it for the very liberal, radical left governor. Maybe they did it for some other reason. I don't know. Nobody really understands it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: This is one of the things that, you know, when Donald Trump actually says what we've been reporting out loud, they were pretty surprised that the Colorado Supreme Court issued this ruling. They thought it was possible that they would rule against him in a lower court, but they weren't as sure that that would happen in the Supreme Court in Colorado because they just are so confident. Again, ultimately he'll be on the ballot.
SIDNER: All right, I do want to ask you about some of the inner workings of Trump's campaign. You've got some reporting on that. What are you learning?
HOLMES: Yes, so, it's been really striking covering the campaign for the last year because what we have seen is that currently they have the most disciplined team -- and I am not talking about Donald Trump himself. They know who their candidate is. He is off doing his thing. But in terms of the actual campaign, it is led by Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, these veteran Republican operatives.
And what they've really tried to do is manage the messaging coming out of Trump world. And sometimes that means picking up the phone and making calls, telling people, stop talking to the media, because what they're trying to do is stop those internal leaks that really plagued Trump not only in 2016 but throughout his tenure in the White House. That is becoming increasingly difficult for two reasons. One of those reasons is, as Donald Trump has inched towards the GOP nomination, I am told by advisers that people have, quote/unquote, "come out of the woodwork" trying to show their influence, trying to get close to the president, be part of the action, and then running off and talking to media. So, that's one part of what they're navigating.
The other part of what they're navigating is the candidate himself. We have an anecdote in that story, I did this with my colleague Alayna Treene, in which he announced at a fundraiser, who do you think should be my vice president, and started just batting around names with donors, who then called us to talk about the conversation. So, it's hard to control a candidate who is out there asking a lot of opinions, as well as a large span of Trump allies who want to maybe have a shot at a second Trump administration.
SIDNER: Kristen Holmes, thank you for all that reporting. Great incite.
BERMAN: Yes, lobbying him through us. Very interesting there.
All right, with us now, CNN legal analyst and former White House ethics czar, Norm Eisen. He served as special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump's first impeachment.
Ambassador, great to have you here.
I want to talk about the Colorado Republican Party appeal of that state supreme court decision to the Supreme Court on the issue of the 14th Amendment. What do you think the significance of the appeal is?
NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the significance of the appeal, John, is that there is a very substantial, unresolved question about whether states can themselves apply the 14th Amendment. I thought the Colorado courts, both the trial court and the Colorado Supreme Court, made a powerful case that Donald Trump had engaged in insurrection, pointing to things like his 187 minutes of inaction while the Capitol was under attack, and indeed calling out the insurrection, both through remarks on the Ellipse, but at 2:24 a tweet that directly targeted Mike Pence really put him in danger of his life.
The question is not so much the factual one, whether Donald Trump is -- did insurrection or even the legal one, whether it was 14th Amendment insurrection. But what power do the states have, particularly in the primary process under their own law to apply the 14th Amendment. And that's why you're seeing these divergent views. Michigan saying, no we don't. Colorado saying, yes we do. And now we'll get an answer from Maine and perhaps the Supreme Court will weigh in and say whether Colorado was correct, whether the 14th Amendment can be executed by the state, or whether there's other means such as Congress doing it.
[09:10:10]
BERMAN: Norm, it's so interesting how you answer that question because it illustrates how complicated that issue is, and how many different questions the U.S. Supreme Court could choose to take up. You brought up the issue of whether states have the power to cite the 14th Amendment, to keep people on or off the ballot there, but what are some of the other questions that the U.S. Supreme Court could and maybe should weigh in on?
EISEN: Well, the number one question in the Colorado Republican Party's filing with the Supreme Court late last night is, does the 14th Amendment apply to presidents at all? It doesn't expressly mention presidents. It talks about officers of the United States. Is Donald Trump an officer of the United States? Was he, as an -- as an ex-president or not?
The weight of scholarly opinion, including those arch conservatives who wrote the definitive law review treatment of the 14th Amendment, Professors Bowden (ph) and Paulson (ph), say yes, Donald Trump was an officer. Of course the president is an officer. If the president's not an officer of the United States, who is? Not so fast say other scholars. It's the minority opinion. That was not intended to cover presidents. If it did intend to cover presidents, it would have said so.
I think the better argument is that the president is an officer. But, John, the lower court in Colorado, while it found Donald Trump was an insurrectionist, said he was not covered. The Colorado Supreme Court reversed that. So, those are the kinds of thorny legal questions we're getting into for the first time because of Donald Trump's alleged misconduct on and leading up to January 6, 2021.
BERMAN: So, you used the word "alleged" there, which is also interesting for the Supreme Court because Donald Trump hasn't been charged with insurrection exactly has he? Does the Supreme Court, should the Supreme Court weigh in on whether Donald Trump committed insurrection or aided those in the act of insurrection?
EISEN: John, you clearly brushed up on your law books while you were on break. The -- the Supreme Court clearly has a duty to make this assessment. They're going to have to do it because it's percolating up from all of the courts.
But one very important legal matter, there's no obligation for an individual to be prosecuted or criminally convicted before the courts, perhaps up to and including the Supreme Court, make the finding that that person was an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment.
And here, John, this is probably the clearest area under the law because of the comments on the Ellipse, because of that tweet targeting Mike Pence, because of the 187 minutes of inaction, because of the findings, which Colorado did consider, of the January 6th Committee that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection. There is very powerful evidence to ground the Colorado courts finding in that regard, whereas in Michigan they didn't make a finding on that because they said, hey, in a primary, we don't have the power to make this constitutional determination. By the way, the court -- lower court in Michigan noted could be different in the general election.
So, it will be very interesting to see what questions the Supreme Court answers, if any, and what guidance it provides. And we may be back up there in the run-up to the general election on these same issues.
BERMAN: Yes. I think "if any" may be the right framing here, in which off ramp the Supreme Court uses to maybe avoid the huge questions here.
Ambassador Norm Eisen, always an education. Thank you very much.
EISEN: Thanks, John.
SIDNER: A question with a seemingly simple answer. Why Nikki Haley's being called out for her answer to this voter's question, what was the cause of the Civil War? The one word she failed to use. That's ahead.
And a very productive meeting in Mexico. Top U.S. officials are hinting that some sort of agreement has been reached between the two countries to help drive down the illegal border crossings. The crisis at the border, we'll discuss next.
And the house where four Idaho college students were murdered is scheduled to be torn down in about an hour. The families of the victims making a last-minute emotional plea to stop this demolition. That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:19:06]
BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is on the radio right now, as we speak, doing a sort of cleanup following questions last night at her rally in New Hampshire. She was asked last night, what was the cause of the Civil War? What was the Civil War about? I want you to listen to her answer from last night and note what it does not include, which is any mention of slavery.
Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?
NIKKI HALEY (R), 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, don't come with an easy question, right? I mean I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn't do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: And she did go on there, and there was no mention of the word "slavery" in her answer last night.
[09:20:01]
Today, again, as we speak, on the radio with something a little different.
CNN's Jessica Dean here with us in studio now.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In the flesh.
BERMAN: What's Nikki Haley saying now?
DEAN: Well, so I'm just getting this in right now because, as you mentioned, she is on the radio, but she's saying, of course the Civil War was about slavery. But then she said this -- she was talking about what it means today. And she says it's about freedom and individual rights. I think we have that sound. So, I'm going to let you listen to it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIKKI HALEY (R), 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, two things on this, Jack (ph). I mean, of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That's -- that's the easy part of it. What I was saying was, what does it mean to us today. What it means to us today is about freedom. That's what that was all about. It was about individual freedom. It was about economic freedom. It was about individual rights. Our goal is to make sure, no, we never go back to the stain of slavery, but what's the lesson in all of that?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: OK, so doing a bit of cleanup. She also, John, said it was definitely a Democratic plant who asked this question. The voter was a Democratic plant. She says that's why I later asked, what does it mean to you? And if you listen to the longer, extended clip of that, she says, you know, what do you think and what do you want me to say about this, what do you want me to say about slavery?
Our reporting from my colleague and our embed there, Ebony Davis, who was -- who was filing from there, said that the voter was -- said that they just looked at her previous comments on this when she was running for governor of South Carolina and wanted to see if -- if she still said the same thing. He said it was roughly the same thing. He said he was not political but that he just wanted an answer.
The overarching fact here, though, is that this is what Nikki Haley is talking about today when her campaign wants to be talking about a million other things. But Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are more than happy for her to be dealing with this.
BERMAN: Well, look, I mean -- and I've covered a lot of campaigns before. The speed with which she came forward now with this clarification or clean up, or whatever you want to call it, it tells you how serious the campaign thinks it is. They can't leave this out there. They decided they had to get her on the radio talking about it.
DEAN: Right, immediately. And so now we have this -- we have this clip. I would imagine we're going to have a clip of her on television. As soon as she starts making the rounds that she will talk to the cameras. But it's worth noting, she doesn't do a ton of -- of what we call gaggles, but just when you're on the roads and they -- the candidates will just talk to the press. So, it will be interesting to see too. Watch for that if she does that today.
BERMAN: Jessica Dean, great to have you again here with us.
DEAN: Thanks. Thanks. I'm thrilled.
BERMAN: Very exciting.
DEAN: Couldn't be happier.
SIDNER: You know who's also here with us? John Berman.
BERMAN: I --
SIDNER: It's nice to see you, John. I'm glad you decided to come back.
BERMAN: It was like I took -- I took a week off.
SIDNER: I mean, it was too long.
BERMAN: OK.
SIDNER: You know what I'm saying? It was too long. That's it. That's all I'm saying. I mean all the bosses agree.
BERMAN: Yes.
DEAN: Right.
SIDNER: Joining us now to discuss all of this, and John Berman's absence, CNN's political commentator and former South Carolina state representative, Bakari Sellers, and CNN's senior political commentator, and former special assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings.
Hello, fellas.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Morning.
SIDNER: I'm going to start with you, Bakari, because you are a South Carolina boy. What happened here? One of the things that really struck me wasn't just that she didn't mention it, but at the end, when the voter asked her, you know, this question, and then she said, well what -- where do you think slavery -- what do you think this is all about, and he said, well, I'm surprised you didn't mention the word slavery. And she said this, what do you want me to say about slavery? Bakari.
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, no, I'm embarrassed as a South Carolinian. I think that this is when Nikki Haley gets in trouble. And everyone who will -- who knows Nikki Haley knows that she's immensely talented when it comes to just the skill set of politics. However, she gets into this thing where she doesn't really stand for much and she turns herself into a pretzel on very, very simple issues, simple questions.
And the fact remains that she's from South Carolina. We knows that when we seceded from the union, the first line of that order, secession, actually dealt with non-slave-holding states having hostility towards slavery. I mean this is like -- this also frustrates me because we take history out of schools. We have probably the second or third leading candidate for the Republican primary and this shows you the importance of history because she just fumbled it. Not only did she fumble it, but she was historically inaccurate. She was intellectually dishonest.
And so for Nikki Haley to do that on one breath and then champion taking down the confederate flag and all of these other things in South Carolina it just -- it doesn't really match. She needs to get her story together. And her response this morning was just utterly disappointing. This wasn't a war about economic freedom. The economic freedom of what, the goods produced by slavery. This war wasn't about state's right. A state's right to do what, enslave people.
[09:25:02]
I mean so it's silly. I know she wishes she was talking about something else. But this is why she's not ready for the big limelight against somebody like Donald Trump.
SIDNER: Scott, I want to get your take on this because sometimes people will look at this and say, well, she's trying to kind of not say a bad thing about America and play to the base. Is that what you see happening here?
JENNINGS: I think it was just a gaffe. I mean I think if she had it to do over again she would have said, of course, it was fought over slavery, and moved on and continued to talk about the things that are -- that are motivating her campaign.
A couple of things jump out to me about this. Number one, in New Hampshire there's a semi open primary, so she's really hoping a lot of independent voters come into the Republican primary and vote for her. My guess is, this is not what they want to hear from her.
And, number two, just as a campaign tactical issue, this takes you off message and off cycle now for, you know, probably a couple of days as she tries to clean this up. And she had been enjoying several days in a row of sort of momentum process stories. Like, she is the one on the move. She's got the momentum. You know, people are rallying behind Nikki Haley. Poll numbers going up. And now you're dealing with this self-inflicted wound here from this gaffe at this town hall.
So, it was an easy one to answer. She flubbed it. It's also an easy one to clean up and just say, I misspoke. This was -- obviously slavery was the cause of the Civil War and I want to talk about the future of this country, et cetera. And so, we'll see how she handles it today moving forward.
SIDNER: Yes.
JENNINGS: But you don't have that much time left to continue to -- you know, to be off message, off the message you want for a campaign that's drawing to a close. SIDNER: And I just want to point this out because back in 2015 there
was also an issue in this same line of questioning. I want to let you listen to what she said back then because it does mirror kind of how she dealt with this question, which makes me wonder if it was a flub or just trying to figure out, as Bakari said, putting herself in a pretzel trying not to say something that might upset the base voters.
Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIKKI HALEY (R), THEN-GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA (2015): A flag is living and breathing. And so it represents something. I think it should be in any museum setting. I think it should be at Fort Sumpter. I think it should be in those places of historical settings, not in places that represent all people. You know, if someone wants to travel to see it, that's one thing, but it shouldn't be in front of someone's face to where they have to feel it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: So, that's when she took the flag -- the confederate flag down after the horrific church shooting that killed so many black Americans there in South Carolina.
Is this something that you think that the other candidates, like DeSantis, potentially, or Ramaswamy or Donald Trump, will someone pick this up and go with it or are they just going to stand back and let her deal?
SELLERS: Well, I -- I don't think --
JENNINGS: Well, my -- my assumption is they're just going to try to let her deal with this. I don't know what Bakari thinks. But I -- as a campaign matter, if I were in their shoes, Bakari, I would -- I would just let her try to deal with it. There's no reason to pile on today. She's -- she's made a big mess. It's hard to make it any worse.
SELLERS: Yes, there are a couple of things about Nikki Haley, though. You go back to 2010, when she was running for governor and she was sitting down with -- I can't recall the organization, but it was a patriot organization, or a confederacy organization here, and she was -- she was having issues with this question as well, trying to appease the questioners. And so you see what happened in 2015 as well and then you get to this answer. You see she kind of meanders and doesn't really have a solid answer depending on who the audience is.
But if -- if I was DeSantis listening to Scott Jennings today, I would definitely just let her continue to wallow in this kind of self- inflicted wound that she created. Ramaswamy, he can only make it worse for himself and her. I don't think he has the capacity or depth to even deal with issues of race. And so I think that the individuals who -- and no telling what Donald Trump will do. You should stay out of it, which means Donald Trump probably will jump head first into it.
SIDNER: Bakari Sellers and Scott Jennings -- Scott's like, I'm done. Like, I can't -- I can't go there today. It's Thursday. We're almost at Friday. I just want to live my life.
Thank you, gentlemen, so much for that analysis. Appreciate it.
SELLERS: Thank you.
JENNINGS: Thank you.
BERMAN: And with pressure building on the Biden administration over the recent surge of migrants at the border, overnight word of a, quote, "very productive meeting" between officials from the United States and Mexico.
And, Pierce Brosnan, "Remington Steele," in trouble with Yellowstone National Park. The sign says, "stay on the trail."
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