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Inside Politics

Obama Calls for "Courage" to Oppose ObamaCare Repeal; Centrist Macron to Become Next French President; McCain Slams Tillerson on Foreign Policy. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 08, 2017 - 12:30   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:30:05] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Former President Obama accepting an award at the JFK Library, the Profile in Courage Award. He didn't say anything during the House debates. How influential is his voice? Do Democrats need his voice? They seem pretty far enough opposed to this anyway but will that matter?

JACKIE KUCINICH, THE DAILY BEAST: It adds another layer, but I don't know that it changes anything. I think you're right, I think Democrats are fired up on their own. And, you know, frankly they're looking for someone else to lead them at this point. But just by how this bill went through and what is in it, I think has fueled them more than one any person can at this point.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: And the Senate Republicans will have their own problems. I mean, you people who come from Medicaid expansion states who don't like the deep cuts in Medicaid that are in the House bill. People like Rob Portman of Ohio announcing he's concerned what the House bill. Then you have the conservatives like Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul who are pushing very hard to move that to the right and caught in the middle. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitch McConnell cannot lose more than two votes in order to get this through.

And then you add to that the Senate rules which actually prohibit how much they can do by circumventing a filibuster that's just being tying it to the budget process. So it's really unclear what the product would look like. There going to be (inaudible) with the House on it.

KING: And McConnell is a magician. If anyone can figure this out, he can. However, as you mentioned, you have the ideological and partisan restrictions and you have the rules about does this impact the deficit. Do we need 60 votes, do we need some Democrats?

Let's just go through for some of the big controversial changes now. If the senate gets this now, in the House bill, some of the things they don't like in Senate could cost millions of people their coverage. We're going to wait a week or two before it gets officially scored by the Congressional Budget Office. But also scales back the pre-existing condition guarantees, higher premiums for older Americans. You mentioned the caps on Medicaid spending. And into that, down in the 52-48, that's the math Mitch McConnell is looking at.

So he has Tea Party members like Rand Paul, Mike Lee saying this doesn't repeal ObamaCare. This has way too much government in it. Then moderate Susan Collins who says the House bill is just not fair.

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SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: The Senate is starting from scratch. We're going to draft our own bill and I'm convinced that we're going to take the time to do it right. I don't think that low income women should be denied their choice of health care providers for family planning, cancer screenings and well women care. It's not the only issue in this huge bill, but I certainly think that it's not fair and it is a mistake to defund Planned Parenthood.

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KING: So if Mitch McConnell has to give Susan Collins most of what she wants to get a bill that can pass through the Senate, then what happens if it passes, and that's still a big capital "if" question mark. What happens if they pass a bill that has Planned Parenthood funding that includes this, you know, guaranteed health benefits? Then they walk back over to the House conservatives and say here it is, the best we can do, take it or leave it.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, capital "I," capital "if" it does get through the Senate, that's what's going to happen. You know, it could be that we have a traditional conference meeting of the House bill, the Senate bill, they go to point negotiators, they sit and they work it out. But it's hard to see that happening given the nature and the atmosphere of the House Republican conference.

My sense is the most likely scenario is that it would go to the House and it would be up to the president and up to Republican leaders and individual members to say this is the best we're going to get, this is what we're going to do, we're going to get there. But I think that the first step getting it through the Senate is going to be so, so fascinating to watch. Because it is a very different dynamic. You do have -- you don't just have individuals represents gerrymander districts, particularly on the conservative side. You have somebody from Maine, you have somebody from Alaska, you have Rob Portman from Ohio, you know, a purple state where they have a very big opioid epidemic and he is determined not to leave those people high and dry by cutting their medicaid. So it's almost -- I think it's really in some ways unfair to a lot of House members to say that the adults are in the room. But I think by nature of the way the Senate is made up, that is the case.

KING: And yet McConnell back when he faced his own Tea Party challenger couple of cycles ago promised to rip ObamaCare out by the roots. This is what he said back in Kentucky in those days. But as you tried to do that now because it's been in place so many years, because some of these drug treatment programs, Planned Parenthood funding in parts of the country are very popular, that's the defining issue. And add to that how many governor races next year? Three dozen governor's races and the House bill passes the buck to a lot of governors, would you opt out of this, would you into that? John Kasich, Republican governor of the state of Ohio says this bill is horrible.

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GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), OHION: Eight billion dollar is not enough to fund a -- it's ridiculous. And the fact is states are not going to opt for that. See, I think the fundamental issue here are the resources.

[12:35:00] I don't want to give you exactly the numbers but about half the resources in this bill that were in ObamaCare. Now, I can tell you that we can do with less resources but you can't do it overnight and you can't -- and you cannot give people a $4,000 insurance policy. You know where they're going to be? They're going to be living in the emergency rooms again.

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KING: Conservatives are banging their head off the wall when they see a Republican governor from a critical state, you know, saying we need more resources. However, politically when you're trying to take something away, trying to scale something back and you have to answer a governor like Kasich, a senator like Collins, this is the box they are in, yet again.

Are you saying that health care is complicated?

(CROSSTALK)

MICHAEL BENDER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: And it's going to fall on McConnell's shoulders almost entirely here as you were saying earlier Dana. We were talking to some White House officials over the weekend about their plan for pushing this through the Senate. We saw them -- we saw a Trump White House go through a learning process in the House. But as -- the points been made here several times that the Senate is a different beast. McConnell gave Trump a win and Gorsuch by changing the rules.

And one of the big things the White House is hoping for here is that there's further breakdowns in the health insurance market to give this thing some momentum. That's a risky card to play and also not just playing with people's health insurance there but also assuming that is going to motivate the senators to pass your bill.

RAJU: Exactly. One person to watch will be Dean Heller, the Nevada Republican senator who's probably the most vulnerable Republican senator there is right now up for reelection in 2018. Where does he go on this? And if it moves too far to the right he could bail on this. And if he's the one vote who could actually allow this to go forward, he'll get a lot of pressure from conservatives in his own party. He's already hearing a lot from activists back home at his town halls. So this is going to be a big issue for him and Mitch McConnell is going to be thinking about that very closely as well.

KING: And Republicans are right when they say there are huge structural issues with ObamaCare at least in certain parts of the country. You know, insurers pulling out in Virginia, insurers pulling out in Iowa. The question is, if they just let that keep happening and that Trump keeping saying that's the Democrats fault, that's Obama's fault. He's the president of the United States.

If you're, if you're swimming because this is happening to you and the president of the United States drives by and says this what happened to the life president, I'm not going to throw you a life raft. Can he get away with that?

KUCINICH: It's really hard if Republicans control every lever of government to just let people drift.

KING: And so if they can't figure it out, does the president blow it up and say, let's have a bipartisan summit. If the Senate and the House connected together?

BENDER: Maybe that's the courage that President Obama was talking about.

BASH: It would be nice. I mean, that would b, that would be nice and, you know, after the House -- the first time the House vote fell into pieces, that was the prevailing in some corners in the White House and on Capitol Hill. At least we heard Paul Ryan say forget it, we're going to let ObamaCare live and that's the law of the land and that's the end of it. Because people in the White House in particular realize wait a minute, we can't do this, because we will own this.

We are the ones who are not giving the life raft. That's why they switched gears and they push today through. Presumably that's still the thought process going in and going all the way through a potential bill signing, but you never know when it gets hard.

KING: If it gets hard. The problem is bring Democrats --

BASH: When it gets hard.

KING: Yes, when it gets hard, won't you bring Democrats into the equation you have to say you're fixing ObamaCare, not repealing it. So don't wait for that movie. That will not be in theaters this summer.

Up next, Emmanuel Macron is the winner in France but nearly 11 million votes for the far-right candidate. Nonetheless, it sends a message.

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[12:42:37] KING: Welcome back. Emmanuel Macron will be inaugurated president of France this Sunday. A quick transition after his dramatic election victory yesterday. Macron is a centrist, a former investment banker who's never held political office.

He won convincingly getting 66 percent of the vote against Marine Le Pen of the National Front who ran on anti-immigration, anti-globalism platform. So as he claimed victory, Macron acknowledged the frustration of the voters drawn to his opponent.

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EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT-ELECT (through translator): I understand the anger, the anxiety, the doubt which many of you have expressed and it is my responsibility to hear that. Protecting the most vulnerable, organizing solidarity, fighting all forms of inequality and discrimination in struggling, fighting implacably for your security and by guaranteeing the unity of the nation.

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KING: He's a political newcomer, but Macron's win cheered establishment forces who are worried France might be sweep up in the same tide that lead to the Brexit vote in the U.K. But Le Pen's defeat does not wipe away the anti-establishment mood.

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CONDOLEEZZA RICE, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: I really believe that these populists are changing the character of the politics just by being there. So even mainstream candidates are having to respond to their agenda. You see fewer people talking about free trade. You see countries talking about industrial policy and protectionism.

It's hard to defend immigrants almost any place in the world today. And so the rise of populism and nativism really which they rather go together, the rise of nativism is having an impact on the politics even if the candidates aren't winning.

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KING: That's interesting point from the former secretary of state, former Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that yes, in this case the centrist, the more pro-establishment candidate won, but that doesn't wipe away people's fears about what's the economy of tomorrow. People's fears about security and terrorism. People's fears about immigration and national character, if you will.

The question is -- you know, France is one example. Britain is still pulling out of the U.K. This country we're still dealing with Donald Trump in trade and all the issues we have here.

[12:45:11] RAJU: Yes, and the trade point was absolutely correct. Hillary Clinton called the TPP the gold standard and was forced to retreat from that position during the campaign completely backtracked because of the way that it makes a lot of people feel, particularly in those (inaudible) states that she did not do as well as she needed to win. So that, you know, tide is you can see that playing out not just here in the U.S. but internationally as well. And for now the E.U. seems to be intact because of Macron's win, but maybe not for long given the rise of this populace sentiment.

BASH: I remember covering George W. Bush, her old boss, back when it was a given that Republicans were for free trade. And when he was pushing for the first time, the immigration reform bill, and him saying privately that he was worried about xenophobia becoming more rampant. Well, guess what, he was right.

But I think what -- I mean, obviously I wasn't there covering the French elections but just observing it from here. You've got to wonder if Donald Trump were not elected whether or not Marine Le Pen would have succeeded. Meaning, whether or not there was such a reaction, maybe over reaction to what they have seen in the United States --

KING: And from the Brexit vote. Almost a backlash to the backlash.

BASH: Exactly. A backlash to the backlash. I mean, there were other things in her campaign where she obviously was from a party founded by her father that was historically very extremist and beyond extremist. Down right racist. She's trying to get away from it but she couldn't.

BENDER: People are talking about this now, this sort of (inaudible) movement not as a trend but as, you know, what their influence is on politics now. And in France I think you're seeing both sides being able to claim a victory here.

For liberals it's certainly at least a reprieve, right, not a salvation. And for conservatives and for people -- I mean, inside Trump's White House had people who been comparing this to Reagan in '87. You know, almost, you know, maybe next time. You know, probably next time.

KING: And there was a last minute hack in that campaign which proved a little familiar. The front runner's campaign was hacked. Documents were posted on line. In this case some of the documents were legitimate and some of them were fraudulent.

Hillary Clinton tweeted in response to this. I want to read this. "Victory for Macron, for France, and the E.U., and the world. Defeat those interfering with democracy." And then in parentheses, but the media says I can't talk about that. That was because blow back she received after saying last week she would have been president had not James Comey letter and the WikiLeaks stuff come out. She's seems to be too sensitive about that.

KUCINICH: I don't think anyone is saying she can't talk about it. And she talked about it last week. But, you know, I can't remember who said this, but James Comey and WikiLeaks didn't tell her not to go to Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. So --

RAJU: It'll be interesting to see later this week in Senate Intelligence Committee is going to have a public hearing in which all the national security leaders are going to testify about worldwide threats. Comey -- well, James Comey will also be part of that panel. How they talk about what happened in France and any connections that they have between what happened in France and they draw that to what happened in the United States last year will be fascinating to see. We have not heard that yet. KING: Because this is with us. This is whether you like it or not. Whether it's -- in this case, we don't know yet. There were suggestions the Kremlin again. The Kremlin said that's pure speculation and a smear. We don't know enough about this one yet but there's no question this is going to be with us.

Our elections and the German elections coming up next. We'll watch it as it place out there as well. Everybody stand by. We're moments away from the White House briefing. We'll see how they administration will respond to the revelation of President Obama personally warned then president-elect Trump, do not hire Michael Flynn.

Plus, Senator John McCain is really, really mad at the new secretary of state. We'll tell you why, next.

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[12:51:48] KING: Welcome Back. Senator John McCain is hopping mad about this.

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REX TILLERSON, SECRETARY OF STATE: Now I think it's important to also remember that guiding all of our foreign policy actions are our fundamental values, our values around freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated. Those are our values. Those are not our policies. They're values.

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KING: Senator McCain's translation spelled out today in a New York Times essay, quote, with those words Secretary Tillerson sends a message to oppressed people everywhere. Don't look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight. And when it's convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interest which are not related to our values. So of you happen to be in the way of out forging relationships with your oppressors, that could serve our security and economic interest, good luck to you. You're on your own.

John McCain picks a lot of fights with presidents and he's picked a lot of fights with this president and -- you know, just let me turn this to (inaudible). But this has been a very important issue for him for a long time. As a former POW, when he travels the world, political prisoners, political dissidence came out because of his personal experience and because of his history speaking out of these issues. But he's picking another public fight with the Trump administration.

RAJU: Yes and I think that you're seeing concern because of the number of things that the administration is doing with some of these strong men who have records of human rights abuses in their own countries, but doing this clearly because they view things in a more transactional way the administration does. Not necessarily alarming folks who believe that -- I mean, stand up for American values, American -- and McCain would say this is an American policy. But there's a different view from this administration in the sense that if I can get something from you without criticizing publicly your human rights record, I'm not trying to get something from you. And that clearly rubbed McCain the wrong way.

BASH: It does. And look, he sees himself as the voice on these issues but more broadly the voice who has the, you know, maybe credibility, capital, whatever it is, who can stand up and say no, Mr. Trump, you are wrong. No, you secretary of state, you are wrong in a way that Democrats would sound partisan but from him it doesn't. Because he is the, you know, a senior senator but also because of the fact that he has experience with human rights violations.

KUCINICH: And what the administration would say is that they intervened in Syria. Well, this is another problem with them not really having a set doctrine. And it seems like it's adding up there are more actions adding up on the side you were talking about where they're sort of turning a blind eye to the things that are going on in this country. So they're cozing up to strong men than in and intervening when you see your children being gassed in Syria.

KING: We've seen administration -- every president has to do business with bad actors around the world. You have no choice. You're the president of the United States, you have to (inaudible). But (inaudible), people like Senator McCain is when you praise the Egyptian President el-Sisi who has a horrific human rights record. When you say President Xi of China is a good man, tell that to human rights activists or democratic activists in China. You can praise the president of the Philippines Duterte says he can come to the White House and see me.

[12:55:00] And so that's part of the criticism. He says -- McCain says in this if by realism, they mean policy that's rooted in the world as it is, now (inaudible) they couldn't be more wrong. So he's trying to be the idealist. Can I be a little bit of conspiracy theorist?

This comes days after word is floated that the State Department is they're considering Cindy McCain for a high profile job. Some sort of ambassador at large, human rights or children's right issues around the world. She does amazing work for children around the world. Well, we make that clear in her philanthropy. Am I wrong to try to connect those dots that the timing seems a little odd?

BASH: But are you saying that he doesn't want her to get the job?

KING: I didn't say that but that's one of the things I thought.

(OFF-MIC)

BENDER: Maybe Trump doesn't notice -- maybe doesn't notice this out. I mean, it really is a remarkable to hear from the senator. I mean, with all due respect to the honorably senator from Arizona -- I mean, outside of Senator Sanders, he's one of the biggest cranks in the Senate. So when he gets on -- you know, when he speaks any sort of high tones and appeals to idealism, it's remarkable and he knows what he speaks here. KING: Some of us think cranking has a place in the world.

That's it for "Inside Politics." Thanks for sharing your day in the room. Thanks for sharing your day at home. The White House briefing just moments ago. Wolf Blitzer -- may moments away, excuse away. Wolf Blitzer picks up our coverage right after this.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1 p.m. here in Washington. Thanks very much for joining us.