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China Trade Negotiations Continue; Huge Spending in Democratic Presidential Campaign; Impeachment Fight. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 26, 2019 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:03]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: And a programming note now, as you make your New Year's Eve plans. Ring in 2020 with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, two best friends, one epic night.

"New Year's Eve Live" begins at 8:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

Top of the hour now. Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Dean, in for Brooke Baldwin today. And you're watching CNN.

The goodwill President Trump called for this Christmas didn't last long. Just hours after he urged a -- quote -- "culture of deeper respect" this Christmas, he tweeted Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is -- quote -- "crazy."

That insult part of a stream of messages in which he rages against his impeachment and the impasse over it, and the tweets show that, while he may be on vacation in Florida, President Trump has yet to take a break from Washington and what waits for him when he returns.

And right now, it looks like he will face the ongoing uncertainty about when the Senate impeachment trial will start. House Speaker Pelosi is withholding the two articles of impeachment from the Senate amid concerns Republicans will not hold an impartial Senate trial.

Today, the Democrats' chief deputy whip defended the speaker's actions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): She's making the right decision. The House of Representatives is not absent from the Senate trial. We're not sort of bystanders to it.

We have to appoint impeachment managers and organize the case around the structure that the Senate arrives at in order to present our case in the most compelling way. Determining who the impeachment managers in part is going to be determined by how the Senate organizes the trial.

But I think Senator McConnell needs to stop playing games. He has an important responsibility, under the Constitution, not just to defend the president, but to conduct a trial in a dignified and open and fair fashion. So, when he's willing to do that, then, obviously, we will appoint

managers and send that information, the articles, over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: CNN's Sarah Westwood is standing by near the president's Florida resort.

And, Sarah, CNN has been reporting Trump staffers were anxious about how the president would use all of this unstructured time down in Florida. It appears some of those concerns could have been warranted with this Twitter rant this morning. What are you hearing?

SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right, Jessica.

So far, it seems like President Trump is using at least some of his time to demonstrate how agitated he is about the uncertainty surrounding his Senate trial. He's clearly eager for his symbolic day in court.

But while President Trump is impatient for this to get started, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still signaling that he is not eager to get this ball rolling. This week, he said he is not anxious to get it started. And he's continued to make the argument that Speaker Pelosi is not exercising leverage by withholding something from the Senate that senators would rather not deal with.

But that is putting pressure on President Trump, because, again, he does not just want to be acquitted by the Senate trial. He wants to be vindicated. He wants a chance, in his eyes, to make his case to the American people in a way that the White House feels it was not given the opportunity to do in the House.

Now, as you mentioned, some White House officials were a little concerned about whether the duration of the president's trip down here to Mar-a-Lago would affect Senate trial preparations, because while the president's at Mar-a-Lago, it's a little bit of a more unstructured environment.

And his informal aides, his allies, advisers, friends, they have access to him in a way they just don't at the White House. So officials had feared that perhaps these people could play to his instincts, perhaps convince the president that he should advocate for something like live witnesses in the trial, which McConnell has worked hard to convince the president he should not support for his trial.

So President Trump clearly wants to get the trial started. But he is caught in this intense standoff between congressional Democrats and Republicans, Jessica.

DEAN: Yes. All right, Sarah, you will keep an eye on that for us. Sarah Westwood in West Palm Beach, thanks so much.

All right, let's do the deep dive on all of this now.

We have got Lauren Fox, our CNN congressional reporter. CNN contributor Michael D'Antonio has written several books on Donald Trump. And CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers is a former federal prosecutor.

Thanks to all of you for being here with us to talk this through.

Lauren, let's start with you.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski made headlines saying she's disturbed by the coordination between Mitch McConnell and the White House on the impeachment trial. What kind of pressure are moderate Republicans like her under to go along with McConnell? And how will the majority leader keep his party united in all of this?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, you have seen President Trump, Jessica, really sort of tweeting about these moderate members, including Susan Collins, in recent days.

He's really trying to launch a charm offensive to keep his Republican members with him. But, remember, Lisa Murkowski is someone who has an independent streak. And that really resonates with her voters back in Alaska.

There's a very strategic reason that she didn't just criticize McConnell, but she also criticized the Democratic process in the House of Representatives. She is someone one who has voted against the president's interests in the past, both voting against Brett Kavanaugh and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, two very important issues to President Trump.

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But I will tell you that she is just one of the moderates to keep an eye on. Of course, Susan Collins is the other one from Maine. Then you have Cory Gardner in Colorado. You have Thom Tillis in North Carolina, all of those three up for reelection in 2020, Jessica.

DEAN: Yes, it's going to be interesting to see how that plays into all of this.

Michael, since you have written several books on President Trump, I'm interested to hear from you. Today's Twitter rant follows the president's Christmas message urging Americans to what he said strive to foster a culture of deeper understanding and respect.

And it also comes a week-and-a-half after that blistering six-page letter where President Trump questioned Speaker Pelosi's faith.

As someone who's studied Donald Trump, is this solely about impeachment, you think, for him, or is there a deeper anger that the president feels towards this speaker and being in this position?

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think it is about a very deep and longstanding issue that he's always had, especially as it regards authority and women in authority.

He's never been comfortable with strong, independent women. He loves to go after them. But it's also difficult for him, because he has trouble making it stick with someone like Pelosi.

She's very powerful. And she's demonstrated that she understands how the system works. She understands that the House of Representatives is an equal partner with the White House in governing the country. And she's not afraid to use her authority.

So this is both about impeachment, but also a demonstration of who he is and who he has always been. And it really would have been a Christmas miracle if he hadn't done this. This is how he is. This is the nasty, brutish, difficult man that he's been all his life.

DEAN: He kind of exerts his power that way.

Jennifer, today, the president pointed out Democrats held an impeachment vote citing urgency and the 2020 election. We heard that from Democrats as their reason for pushing forward, but the president noting that they're now holding up transferring these articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Do you think that move by Speaker Pelosi undermines that core argument that could be used at trial, that we're trying to do this because we have this sense of urgency?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think she can get away with it for a short while, because what they're saying is, we need a fair trial here. There's no point in moving forward right now if the Senate is going to insist on a show trial that's just an automatic acquittal, and we all move on.

They really want witnesses. They want to be able to present their case, present more evidence, evidence that has been denied them by the White House and the administration.

So I think they can play that out a little bit. But I think you're right. At some point, it becomes, this is an election security issue. Here's a man who not only has committed grave misconduct that puts our election at risk, but he has made extremely clear that he will continue to do that.

So ,at some point, you do have to press ahead and say, this is an urgent matter. It's just that, if it's all just a big show, and it's a predetermined result, there's no point in pushing now.

So, yes, she can push, but, at some point, it has to come to an end.

DEAN: Right. So, you're essentially saying she's got a little bit of time to work.

And is there anything legally, though, that's keeping Mitch McConnell from just starting this trial without that formal handoff of the articles?

RODGERS: There's not a lot of detail in the Constitution about how this process works.

But it does seem clear that he can't just start it on its own, that the House has to actually present the articles of impeachment to the Senate for the trial. So he doesn't hold those cards right now. Nancy Pelosi does. And he has to wait to conduct the trial until she hands it over.

DEAN: All right, Lauren, I want to go to you.

Let's take a look at this tweet from President Trump.

It says -- quote -- "Why should crazy Nancy Pelosi, just because she has a slight majority in the House, be allowed to impeach the president of the United States? Got zero Republican votes. There was no crime. The call with Ukraine was perfect with no pressure."

And you hear him there talk about a slight majority for the Democrats.

Fact-check that for us, and how much of a majority the Democrats actually, have how much power they have when it comes to the House, obviously, opposed to the Senate, where the Republicans hold the power.

FOX: Well, it was really a striking when Jessica in 2018, when Democrats took back the House of Representatives.

And I will tell you, by the popular vote, they won in a range that was bigger than anything we'd seen in a midterm election since Nixon. So they did win a significant number of votes in 2018, and not just to mention the number of votes they won; 31 of the Democrats came from districts that President Donald Trump won in 2016.

So this just wasn't liberal Democrats winning. This was some moderate Democrats winning in places that Donald Trump had won in 2016. So I think that this was a tough vote for many of those moderates. You saw many of them struggling with it. You also saw many of them wanting to discuss any other issue but impeachment.

[15:10:12]

But I will tell you that this was anything but just a slight majority, Jessica.

DEAN: Yes.

And, Michael, some Democrats are -- have said that they're fearful that, if acquitted in the Senate, that President Trump is going to be emboldened moving forward in a 2020 election.

What is your sense about that? Was that letter or the tweets, any of that a preview of more behavior to come? I know you said that, from your perspective, this is kind of intrinsically his personality.

D'ANTONIO: Well, the letter was, I think, a signal about what's to come.

But he is quite desperate to be reelected. There are a number of things on the table for him, including his legacy. Rudy Giuliani may not care about his, but I'm sure that Donald Trump does care about history's regard for him.

He's already stained and humiliated by impeachment, which puts him in a very small club of presidents who have suffered that fate. And I also think he's concerned about crimes that he may have committed that he will not be prosecuted for as long as he's president.

And he'd like that period to run out for a full eight years. So there's a desperate quality to this. And that means that 2020 actually will likely be worse than 2016, when we think about the awful rhetoric, the nicknames, the nastiness.

What he demonstrated then, I think, is not even half of what he will do to whoever is nominated by the Democrats in 2020.

DEAN: All right, well, we will have to see what lies ahead in the next year.

Lauren Fox, Michael D'Antonio, and Jennifer Rodgers, thanks so much to all of you.

Still ahead: The next Democratic nominee for president could come down in part to how much money he or she can raise -- $200 million has already been spent between just two of the candidates. How will the others keep up?

Plus, phase one complete -- President Trump following through on his word to work with China and bring down tariffs on American goods. Who will benefit in the end?

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DEAN: They have already spent a combined $200 million in their quest to win the White House, and not a single vote has been cast.

I'm talking about Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, the billionaires who jumped into the 2020 race long after many better known politicians, in a year where big money has become a big wedge issue between centrist and progressive Democrats.

Will their investment pay off?

Catherine Rampell is a CNN political commentator and "Washington Post" columnist.

Catherine, great to see you.

Bloomberg has spent about $120 million, Steyer spent just over $80 million, of their own money, by one report. The closest candidate to those two, Pete Buttigieg, who spent $19 million.

What do you make of all this money that's being spent? Is it just specific to these two candidates and what they're trying to do? Or do you think this is where the political landscape is headed for the cycles to come? CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I would say most

candidates don't have pockets quite as deep as these two billionaires, right?

DEAN: True, yes.

RAMPELL: That's why they're called billionaires. They have a lot of money to throw around.

So, I think this is absolutely unprecedented.. Whether anybody else could come close to emulating those kinds of ad blitzes, I think, is quite unlikely.

I will say that I'm not sure that the messaging, the overall messaging that is -- is coming off of these vast sums of money is particularly helpful, particularly in a primary in which there doesn't seem to be a lot of clamoring from the base for deep-pocketed billionaires on the ticket.

What these candidates are trying to do, of course, is to just saturate the airwaves, buy a lot of support. And maybe that will get them more name recognition, at the very least. But the optics of it, of these huge amounts of money, I'm not sure will be particularly helpful.

DEAN: Effective, yes.

And Bloomberg particularly is skipping the early states, in favor of going all in on Super Tuesday and really hoping, to your point, that all of these TV commercials, just inundating, flooding the airwaves in these Super Tuesday states, is going to get him where he wants to go.

For the record, that strategy's never been successful. Why do you think Bloomberg thought this would work this time? Is it just because of where we are in this 2020 race and how fluid it's been?

RAMPELL: Well, I presume it's of necessity, right?

If he had made this decision earlier on, the decision to run, that is, if he had made the decision earlier on that he was going to run, his strategy probably would have been different. He would have been going after the early states in his ad buys, just as Tom Steyer has, just as the other candidates with low -- smaller sums of money have been doing as well.

But this is his only chance. He kind of jumped in the race too late, of course, to have a hope of winning Iowa or New Hampshire or the like.

DEAN: Right.

RAMPELL: So, he's going after those big superdelegates states, the Super Tuesday states, that is, that might award him enough votes.

I think it's still a very unlikely strategy at this point. But even if he had jumped in the race earlier, Tom Steyer's experience, his record so far suggests that it may not have been a winning strategy there either.

Tom Steyer hasn't spent quite as much as Bloomberg, but he has still spent multiples...

DEAN: A lot, right.

RAMPELL: ... of what the other candidates have spent.

DEAN: Right, right. And he's been there on the ground in Iowa as well. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Catherine Rampell, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

RAMPELL: Thanks for having me.

DEAN: Yes.

Up next: progress with China -- President Trump making good on his plan to cut down Chinese tariffs on American goods. But the deal isn't done just yet.

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We will have the details for you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DEAN: The first phase of a trade deal between the U.S. and China could be imminent.

President Trump says he expects to sign a deal next month that will slash many tariffs on the Chinese and will force Beijing to buy more American goods and commit to other promises. Now, this is just phase one.

[15:25:02]

What happens afterward is a major geopolitical question.

Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director for the Center for Sustainable Development at Colombia University, joins me now.

Great to see you.

JEFFREY SACHS, DIRECTOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EARTH INSTITUTE: Thank you. Great to be with you.

DEAN: President -- yes, thanks for being here.

President Trump says a deal is near. Beijing has not confirmed any specifics, but a signing ceremony is set for phase one next month.

What exactly do you think phase one means? And who should we anticipate is going to benefit from that?

SACHS: Well, what Trump was doing, raising tariffs on Chinese goods, and then China was retaliating by not buying American agriculture, was hurting both sides.

Trump was going into elections. And so he decided to stop the useless policies that he was pursuing. There's -- there's no victory here, except stopping what was stupid, basically. Trump's whole policy towards China has had no benefits. It's been costly. It created a lot of uncertainty.

Fortunately, there's a truce, because Trump realized he didn't want to go into the 2020 elections with all of the uncertainties that his own policies had created. So there's nothing momentous here, except that Trump has stopped doing dumb things that were hurting the world economy.

DEAN: Does it seem to you like it's almost a return to neutral, not necessarily going forward, but just taking us back to neutral?

SACHS: It is.

It doesn't take us quite back to neutral, but it's a good description that you're making.

DEAN: Yes.

SACHS: It's basically taking us back before Trump was hitting the U.S.' head against the wall, as it were.

But we still have lots of pressures that Trump is still creating. Even as the tariffs are coming back, he's telling other countries, don't buy Chinese goods and so forth.

So there's a lot of uncertainty that he's created, most of which is on completely misunderstood basic economics. The U.S. runs a big trade deficit with China, but it runs a big trade deficit all over the world, because we spend so much and because we have tax cuts, and tax cuts that give Americans and businesses money to spend, so we spend more than we produce and we run trade deficits.

And then Trump says that's because the others are cheating on us. It's just that we're spending a lot. So he's kind of an economic illiterate, but it ends up resulting in silly policies that he has to suspend.

DEAN: And I want to talk about your op-ed for CNN.com too.

In that op-ed, you seem to suggest that the president is intentionally ignoring real dangers of climate change in order to win votes in the upcoming presidential race.

How do you see the climate crisis impacting the 2020 elections, as we head into 2020?

SACHS: All over America, people are suffering. They're suffering from droughts, forest fires, extreme storms, flooding.

We have had $100 billion or more years of losses from climate damages. What does the president do? Not only does he not do anything. He does the worst, which is trying to promote more fossil fuel emissions of carbon dioxide, coal, oil and gas, instead of what the American people want, which is renewable energy.

Why does he do it? Because big oil and big coal funds the Republican Party, and because he's trying to carry a few coal states on the line that he's telling them, that this is good for them.

It's not good for them. It's not good for anybody. But he is endangering all of us in the United States. It's very sad and very worrisome.

DEAN: Yes, and I hear you saying that, but it is an effective message to summon his base, that, to your point, do live in these states, and politically is advantageous for him.

SACHS: Yes, but the real point is not even the base. The point is the money, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Koch Industries, big bucks funding Mitch McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate.

That's the real story here. This is about corporate greed that is destroying the climate and hurting Americans. And the vast majority of Americans know, but they don't necessarily understand how the money is flowing from big oil to the Republican Party.

DEAN: All right.

Well, Jeffrey Sachs, your op-ed there on CNN.com. Thanks so much for being with us this afternoon.

And we will be right back.

SACHS: Great to be with you. Thank you.

DEAN: Thanks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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