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House to Vote on Democrats' Police Reform Bill; Polls: Trump Trails Biden in 6 Battleground States; Nearly 1.5 Million More Americans Filed 1st-Time Unemployment Claims Last Week; White House Economic Advisor Says He Expects Shutdowns in Some Places. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired June 25, 2020 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: That meant that $1.4 billion in direct stimulus checks went to descendants and not people who were eligible for that money because they were deceased -- John?

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Lauren Fox, accountability is important. Let's hope the lessons are learned.

Lauren, appreciate that reporting.

Police reform again the focus on Capitol Hill today. The House is voting today on a sweeping Democratic plan. It's almost certain to pass but prospects of legislation clearing both chambers look bleak.

A Senate Republican plan failed a key vote yesterday when only a few Democrats were willing to offer their support.

The House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this morning urging Senate Republicans to accept the House proposal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Pass this bill. The Senate will have a choice to honor George Floyd's life or to do nothing.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY); This is not the time for half measures. It's not the time for them to study. It's not the time for sham fake reform.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's senior congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, on Capitol Hill.

Wishful thinking on the part of the Democrat model that the Senate Republicans will change their mind and say, sure, we'll take your bill?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No. The Senate Republicans say this bill is not acceptable to them. And the Democrats have said the Senate Republican plan is not acceptable to them. So we're basically at a point of gridlock. And we expect that there's not had a bill that will be passed before the November elections.

Recall how rapidly this has all changed in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. This suddenly came on Congress's agenda. Nowhere on Congress' agenda before that. But Democrats pushed forward on their bill and Republicans initially didn't want to move forward on their own plan. But then decided they wanted to have -- offer their own proposals.

So suddenly, it looked like there might be some bipartisan agreement that something needed to be done. Well, there's not a bipartisan agreement on what needs to be done and how to solve this problem.

One thing the Republican bill leans on is national mandates, a key provision that bans and has a national ban on the federal level for -- against no-knock warrants in drug cases.

It also outlaws certain police tactics such as chokeholds. And it also refers qualified immunity in order to sue police officers in civil court.

None of those provisions like that are in the Republican plan. Instead, the Republicans don't believe the qualified immunity provision should be overhauled particularly in the way the Democrats are proposing. They don't believe that these federal mandates should go into place.

Instead, the Republicans have pushed to incentivize this on the state level by withholding funding before the states if the states do not enact things such as a ban on chokeholds. The Democrats say that's not good enough for them.

So we're at a point here, John, where both sides, essentially, while they are saying that something needs to be done, they privately will acknowledge that likely nothing will be done before November -- John?

KING: You shake your head at that. One would think that this would be the right time, given what's happening in the country for conversation and compromise. But as you know, Manu, better than most, Washington doesn't always listen to America.

Manu Raju, live on Capitol Hill, appreciate that very much.

Still ahead, the president on the road today as the polls show him in deep trouble in many of the states critical to his 2020 victory.

But first, this week's "IMPACT YOUR WORLD." How hundreds of volunteers help to protect businesses in Minneapolis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Like so many people here, all the tech people here are unemployed or furloughed and people working behind the sets, building sets, doing lights, people who have a high skill set in construction.

We originally started boarding up businesses to protect their windows and doors. That also meant that we would have to custom cut. There were a lot of people who were asking for our help so we had crews going out all day all over the cities.

Over the last two weeks, we've helped 200 businesses board up and we're now taking that plywood down. And we're asked by other organizations to go back out into the field and paint plywood boards so that they had a nice base coat so that a mural artist came through and can beautify them.

We've also taken on a number of special projects on request. We've built a six-foot-by-five-foot chalkboard for the site where George Floyd was murdered. The community has been using it to write dreams, wishes and drawings.

We were asked to build stages for Juneteenth performances with the plywood that we had left over as well as the off-cuts that we had. So we built stages in multiple locations across the city.

Our people in general are highly skilled at collaborating, which means doing what is asked of them, problem-solving in the moment.

[11:34:40]

It felt really good to be able to go out and help people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Striking new evidence today that President Trump's path to re- election is a difficult one because of big struggles in states that were essential to his big 2016 upset.

The "New York Times" and Siena College polled six key battleground states, all carried by the president four years ago. He trails Joe Biden in all six today, and in several of them by wide margins.

[11:40:09]

Take a look, President Trump, down seven points in Arizona, down six points in Florida and down 11 points in Michigan. In North Carolina, it is a nine-point deficit. Trump down 10 points in Pennsylvania and 11 points in Wisconsin in this "New York Times"/Siena College polling.

The president's struggles include voters who were part of his base in 2016, And his struggles have Republicans worried, very worried. They could lose their Senate majority as well as the White House.

Let's discuss with Alex Burns. He's national political correspondent from the "New York Times." And also Laura Barron-Lopez, national political reporter for "Politico."

Let me start with you, Alex.

If you know you have a problem, you have time, you can fix it. But the president's problem, looking into these numbers, is he's down among white voters and seniors and he's down among men. And so he has many problems to try to fix all at once.

ALEX BURNS, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK TIMES": Well, that's right, John. There's very little good news for the president in any of this polling.

And if you are an embattled incumbent, even someone who is not terribly popular, where you would want to be at this point at least having a very, very solid political base of your own.

And then four months left in the campaign to make your case to people who aren't necessarily inclined at the start to be for you.

Where President Trump is right now is he has lost even some people who were inclined to be for him a year ago. You're looking at, you know, again, not a majority, but important clusters of white voters, white men, senior citizens. These are constituencies that Republicans need.

One way to think about the swing state polls, John, that you just read off, Trump could gain eight points across the map in every swing state. And he would flip some of them back into his corner.

But he would still lose the election overall because that's how far down he is in the midwestern states and North Carolina.

KING: Right. That's what makes it so hard. He has so much to do. He has time. There's four months. But he has so much to do both state by state and constituency by constituency.

Let's look a more closely at the white voter struggle for the president. It's all the more critical to him because we know he struggles among Latinos and African Americans.

And cannot count on building his supports in Florida. Trump is up 16 in Florida with white voters but beat Hillary Clinton by more. Only up five in Arizona. Biden is plus-five among white votes in Pennsylvania. And Biden has plus-eight among white voters in Wisconsin.

If those numbers don't change and change significantly, this president can't count on getting help from the rest of the electorate, if you will.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": That's right, John. Trump's base is very small to begin with. And it is, as you mentioned, predominantly white and conservatives.

So if he isn't able to win back some of those voters that are now shifting towards Biden, he could potentially have a lot of trouble come November.

The impact of that is also on the Senate, which we see in that poll where Biden is helping a number of Democratic candidates in these battleground states.

Trump is trying, as you mentioned, to win at the margins some black voters and Latino vote, remember. But, again, the vast majority of them are going to vote for Biden per the polls that we've seen so far. One of the striking numbers also from that poll that I noticed was

that Biden is ahead of Trump by roughly about 17 points in terms of registered voters who didn't vote in the 2016 election.

And so, again, that is good news for Biden because he is also trying to win back some of the voters that voted for Obama and sat out in 2016 and didn't vote for Clinton.

KING: Both campaigns trying to go after those voters who didn't come out last time. This is a number to keep watching.

Alex, there's no mistaking here that Republicans are nervous not because they would like to keep a Republican in the White House, even though many Republican members of the Senate roll their eyes at this president, but they would like to keep their Senate majority.

And if you look at the battleground polling, you go to Michigan, Gary Peters winning quite comfortably in his race. Arizona, Mark Kelly, the Democratic challenger, is ahead over the incumbent Senator Martha McSally.

And North Carolina it's very close, but your incumbent there is Thom Tillis, the Republican, you could at the moment call it a Democratic lead or statistical dead heat.

But the map does not look good for Senators either. And we know there's very little ticket-splitting, so the Republicans are nervous that the president is dragging them down.

BURNS: That's right, John. Those Republicans knew that they were going to have tough races at the start of the cycle.

But basically every Republican Senate candidate on the map, except for maybe Susan Collins in Maine, made the calculation to tie themselves pretty completely to the president and trust him to keep the presidential race close enough that they could pull through on ticket- splitting.

[11:45:03]

And as you see in North Carolina, that's possible for Thom Tillis. I don't know that it looks good for an incumbent Senate to be under 40 percent.

But in Arizona, there's not the kind of ticket-splitting going on to keep Martha McSally close in that race and doing callbacks with voters who participated in this poll, doing deeper interviews with them over the last few days.

I've spoken to quite a few moderate and even somewhat conservative voters, you know, a small sliver of people who describe themselves as conservative. But in a presidential election a small sliver of your own base defecting is a really big problem.

And these people saying, you know, they are fed up with Trump and they are fed up with his party. They didn't like the impeachment trial. They don't like that when the president goes out and does things that they consider outrageous, that you hear silence from Senate Republicans or people covering for him.

KING: Interesting road ahead. A bigger road ahead looking at these numbers.

Alex, Laura, appreciate your coming in today. We've got a ways to go. So much of the campaign before us. Thanks so much.

Coming up for us, weekly jobless numbers show businesses are still shedding workers despite many companies now beginning to reopen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:35]

KING: Nearly 1.5 million more Americans filed first-time unemployment claim last week, bringing to a stunning more than 47 million the number of Americans who filed for jobless benefits since the pandemic hit in mid-March.

CNN chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, breaks down the numbers.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: John, states are reopening but unemployment claims are still in the millions. Almost 1.5 million workers filed for unemployment for the first-time last week. That brings it to more than 47 million over the past 14 weeks, either laid off or furloughed.

Of people working before the pandemic, the pre-pandemic labor market, 29 percent now have filed for unemployment benefits.

Some states hit harder than others. Georgia, 52 percent of the labor force filed. In Kentucky, almost 50 percent. In Oklahoma, more than 41 percent.

First-time claims declining since the peak in the final week of march, but we are still seeing numbers really stubbornly high here.

Another thing to pay attention to, continuing claims. Those count workers who filed for benefits for at least two weeks in a row. That number is 19.5 million. Coming down but very slowly.

These numbers after a dire forecast from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF now expects global GDP to contract by nearly 5 percent this year. The U.S. economy is expected to shrink by 8 percent.

Even as the U.S. economy reopens, the layoffs keep happening. Bankruptcies at Chuck E. Cheese, GNC and 24-Hour Fitness. These need layoffs for thousands more. Retailers don't need the same number of workers during the pandemic so you're seeing layoffs there, as well -- John?

KING: Christine Romans, thank you for that report. Wish it was better news. Still ahead for us, as COVID cases spike, some big businesses are

hitting the pause button.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:57:05]

KING: A modest but important concession today from a top White House economic adviser. Larry Kudlow, normally bullish on recovery prospects. And this week, he said there will be no second wave. But a shift as he even comes to grips with the surge many states now facing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KUDLOW, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER: Well, there are spikes and hotspots. There's doubt about that. And there will be some shutdowns in individual places or at certain stores.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN politics and business correspondent, Cristina Alesci, with us now on more of these, several of the, Christina, economic adjustments you might call them.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN POLITICS AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Kudlow can't deny the facts but he's still trying to deny them.

The facts are -- and I'll give them to you straight, John. The facts are that these closures are happening in the biggest states with the biggest economies and impacting the biggest companies. And that's why we're reporting on this.

Apple just yesterday saying that it's going to shutter, reclose seven stores that it had happened in Texas because of the increase in cases there. That comes on the heels of the company saying last week that it was going to close stores in Texas and Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina. That is a big deal for the company.

And then we have news that Disney is grappling with its own reopening plans. It had planned to open its flagship parks in Florida and California. Last night, Disney saying it has to re-evaluate the plan in California now because it's working with local authorities on guidelines.

Now the company is also facing pressure from employees about reopening the Florida park because the employees still don't feel safe, especially with the surge in cases there.

Look, at the end of the day, businesses need certainty, certainty to expand and hire. And all of that is going to be put on hold until they know what's happening with their existing businesses.

So this undermines the argument that we will have a strong economic recovery here -- John?

KING: To that point, Cristina, the president talks of this as a "V" or rocket. He says, OK, we have to shut down but now we'll take off like a rocket.

When you see a few examples, but seeing growing examples, does that call that into doubt?

ALESCI: Absolutely. You cannot ignore this. He said -- you're referring to rocket ship comment, saying a few weeks ago, there's going to be no letter to describe the economic recovery because it is not a "V" but a rocket ship.

The fact is no one knows how we will recover. Likely an up-and-down version as the companies really grapple with how to keep their employees and customers safe and also reopen. And until they have those questions, they're not going to grow.

[11:59:55]

Now, the numbers will look better because we are at such a low point. But what he's saying is, sure, the numbers of unemployment may look better over time because we're starting from a low point, but it's not going to be the same as it was before. And this is more evidence of that.