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Sanders Draws the Line Between Himself and Biden; Kushner Previews Outline For Middle East Peace; Dream Act Stalls Over Division Among House Dems. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 03, 2019 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:00] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If Biden actually said that, that's a very dumb statement.

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JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Now Team Biden says all the former vice president meant was that American economy is far stronger than China's economy so American will be just fine. But Sanders is using China and trade as dividing lines as he aggressively draws contrasts.

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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our trade policies over the years have been disaster for workers in this country. If you add the job losses as a result of NAFTA which Joe voted for -- Joe is a friend of mine, and we're going to have this policy discussion in a very civil way. But Joe voted for NAFTA, he voted for PNTR with China, and those two trade policies together, you're probably talking about the loss of more than four million jobs and, by the way, a race to the bottom --

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KING: Early, aggressive, Bernie Sanders' own decisions. CNN Ryan Nobles reporting the other day saying, look, I'm going right after Biden. I'm not waiting. Why bother waiting?

JONATHAN MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the (INAUDIBLE) some say in it too. But it's striking that Monday and Thursday night you see a top candidate for president going on cable TV here on CNN Monday night with Anderson Cooper and then obviously, with Chris Hayes on Thursday night and by name targeting the frontrunner. Nobody else in the race is doing that. So why is Bernie doing this?

I think it's because he wants to try to consolidate the left. He knows there's a lot more folks buying for that this time than there were three years ago. I think it's also because he wants to stay in the conversation. You know, he needs to have his name mentioned with Biden's and with all these, you know, candidates. And this is a way he knows that we in the press when we see a candidate attack somebody, we're going to cover that. He knows, that and this is the way to sort of stay I think in the conversation right now. But there's real risk, John, in doing this. You know well. If you attack somebody else in a multi-candidate race, oftentimes you don't benefit from it, somebody else does.

KING: And to that point the difference is in the race. I'm going to do this backwards, I'm going to go back and show you some polling. This is May 2015 if you look at the polling up here on the tally. May 2015, Hillary Clinton at 57 percent, Bernie Sanders at 15 percent, right. Joe Biden didn't end up running, he's at nine percent in this poll, Lincoln Chafee and Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb, you see them at the one percent. This essentially turn into a two-person race, Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders.

Now, he was at 15 percent then, right, 15 percent then. Let me clear this off. He went on to do just fine. The lighter blue states are the Sanders states. She was nominee but Bernie Sanders won a lot of states so he can make the argument, you can go from 15 percent to winning a lot of states. Here's the problem.

Here's where he is today. In today's race, he's at 15 percent, exactly the same point he was at in the -- in 2015 heading into it, but Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Beto, this is only one screen, I could show you another screen of the Democratic candidates. It's not going to be a two-person race. He doesn't get a clear straight shot and you mentioned he's going after Biden, but that's Bernie vote.

How much of that is Bernie vote, how much of that is Bernie vote? How do you play the chess here in a crowded field? It's very different.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and I think a lot of these candidates are sitting back and waiting for Bernie to suffer from going after Biden. I mean, he's going after Biden and he's being careful in his criticism and not very personal, Bernie going after his views on policy. That's how he's trying to shape the race so we'll see how much backlash he ultimately gets.

But that's why a lot of these other candidates are not engaging directly with the frontrunner. They're waiting for Bernie to do it and waiting for maybe someone else do it, and then perhaps they will have benefit ultimately. I think we'll see a lot of that play out during the debates of what, 20 people in two consecutive nights. But, you know, it'll be interesting to see when Bernie starts getting whacked from folks who are concerned that he's trying to consolidate those.

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: And Bernie has to -- just has to look at this very differently than last time. Because I recall last time, it took much longer for him to wan tot draw a contrast. He really try to kept the focus on his policies, his record so he's being much more aggressive much earlier. And some of that also is because he's coming off of a previous race but it's just such a different landscape.

MARTIN: Yes. Just real fast, I want to emphasize a point you made showing these folks in the poll. You've got multiple candidates splitting one share of the Democratic primary which is high education, affluent, mostly white, liberal-leaning. That is not the entire Democratic primary, that is a slice of a primary. It's one that's very engage right now, especially online, but it is not the totality of the primary.

The challenge for Bernie is that you've got so many candidates appealing to those kinds of voters, Warren for one. Buttigieg, Beto, they're all sort of, you know, playing for those sort of voters, and there's not a lot of those voters to go around when you've got four to five candidates all playing for them.

KING: Right. I just want to show you again. I didn't show these candidates. I just want to be fair with them but you've got Castro, Swalwell, Gillibrand, Williamson, and Inslee, Yang, at one percent. And you come back over to the larger group, Biden 39, 15, eight, seven, six. It's just -- it's harder to play the chess game when it's not just -- I used to say in the 2016 race, you had Bernie with the PT boat, Hillary Clinton was the aircraft carrier. It's a lot more complicated this time.

HEATHER CAYGLE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Yes, sure. And you know these candidates are -- there's no downside to them sitting back and letting Bernie try to throw different things at the wall and see what sticks with Biden, right?

[12:35:01] He's trying trade right now. That might work, that might not. What will he try next? And they just sit back in the shadows and let him potentially take the fall for it, you know, and.

LUCEY: But also if -- I mean, if they do start as a group, attacks pick up, this gets more negative. This plays into exactly what Republicans and the Trump campaign is hoping, that they spend the next year plus just bloodying each other and the eventual nominee emerges, you know, I think just withstood a lot of the tags.

KING: And it's not just the whos, they had some serious whats to deal with, Medicare for All, Green New Deal, do you fix ObamaCare, (INAUDIBLE), the policy whats. We get caught up in the who sometimes and the personal back and forth but we shall see.

Before we go to break, here's a little fun between two guys who have a history. Ted Cruz taking a dig at fellow Senator Michael Bennet calling the Democrats 2020 presidential campaign quote, a "Seinfeld" campaign about nothing. That's what Ted Cruz says. Bennet not to be outdone tweeting back with this "Seinfeld" gif. Oh, we'll have more from Michael Bennet, next.

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[12:40:28] KING: Topping our political radar today, the Democratic presidential hopeful Jay Inslee unveiling an ambitious 10-year to battle climate change plan. It aims for more than 100 percent clean energy with zero emissions in cars and buses, zero-carbon pollution from new buildings. It would end U.S. coal production by 2030, and the Washington governor says it will create new jobs through clean energy projects. An important milestone for 2020 candidate, the former Housing Secretary Julian Castro. He announced he's reached the 65,000 donor threshold you need to qualify for the Democratic debates. Earlier, his campaign releasing a statement saying we're about to prove that despite being an underdog he is worthy of a shot to be president too.

And just a day after jumping into the 2020 presidential race, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet has some feedback for fellow Democrats telling MSNBC the party and voters actually need this big field of presidential contenders to figure out what the Democrats stand for.

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SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The American people really don't know at this moment what the Democratic Party stands for. And we have the chance now to have a real competition of ideas in the party. The country needs that competition of ideas. It actually needs it between a normal Republican Party and the Democratic Party as well, but among Democrats we need to do it.

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KING: Up next on the global stage, Jared Kushner says his new Middle East peace plan will hopefully lead to a breakthrough. And as a bonus he says it will make his father-in-law, the president, quote, proud.

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[12:46:04] KING: Jared Kushner told a Washington audience last night he still refining the White House Middle East peace plan but he's close to having a final version of what he called an in-depth operational document. As a reminder, Kushner two years ago next month said the plan would be ready soon so it's been a long wait. But we rarely hear from the president's son-in-law and what we did hear makes clear the Trump is going to toss aside the long-standing language of peace attempts. And veterans of those long-standing attempts see that choice as very revealing.

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JARED KUSHNER, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT TRUMP: A lot of the discussion and a lot of the disagreement seems to be about these high level concepts, the two-state versus one state. You're just -- you know, can't say two-state. I realized that means different things to different people. If you say two states, it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians.

So we said, you know, let's not just say it. Let's just say let's work on the details of what this means.

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KING: Joining me at the table, CNN global affairs analyst and former State Department negotiator Aaron David Miller and CNN Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Michelle Kosinski. We've been waiting a long time for this. Let's start with what we just heard. To the Palestinians, when you say we're going to stop talking about two states, they think an administration they have seen as being putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel from the beginning is doing -- going even further. Can they interpret it any other way?

AARON DAVID MILLER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: No. And I think the plan is definitely designed to re-conceive and reformulate traditional American approaches to peacemaking. No, state, no real capital in Jerusalem. Maybe bits and pieces but no real capital in east Jerusalem. And maybe even a green light for Israeli annexation of significant parts of the West Bank.

KING: And so let's listen to more. To that point, let's listen to more of this in the sense that while we've been waiting for this plan, the Trump administration has moved the embassy to Jerusalem, essentially settling and giving the American stamp on what used to be a so-called final status issue. Let the Israelis and the Palestinians figure out what Jerusalem is.

You also had now the administration saying and Benjamin Netanyahu says he's going to name a Trump settlement in the Golan Heights because the Trump administration has said, you know what, you've had it for a long time, why don't you just keep it. Here's Jared Kushner.

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KUSHNER: Long term I think it helps because what we need to do start doing is just recognizing truths. And I think that when we recognize Jerusalem, that is a truth, you know. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that would be part of any final agreement anyway. Same thing with recognizing the Golan Heights.

I don't think there's real any question that the Golan when things are resolved that it should be part of Israel, and so we recognize that, too. And I think that we're in a position now, obviously Prime Minister Netanyahu just won I think a very good election. He'll build hopefully a strong coalition and we'll work with him to see what we can do.

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KING: Maybe I'm just nuts, but in most negotiations, OK, so we're going to give the Israelis this, we're going to give the Israelis that, where was the part about what the Palestinians get?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Well, this administration is at the point where they feel like the time is right and with Arabs on board for the most part to say basically to the Palestinians take it or leave it at this point. You rejected plans where you got more in the past, now you've walked away because you're angry at what the U.S. has done. You know, the administration considers what they have done, you mentioned with the embassy and other points as common sense and just stating facts. So now Palestinians, take it or leave, and what you get out of it, according to our diplomatic sources would be money, money to improve their situation.

We're hearing it would be to the tune of $30 billion to $40 billion initially, that the U.S. would contribute some but this would be a lot of Arab money. And that this is not going to be the detailed peace plan that many might expect, that this is going to be very economic- centered, that the political things and boundaries, that's going to be left open-ended and open to negotiations. What the Israelis tell us is that they expect to make some concessions, but it's not exactly clear what those would be.

[12:50:01] They would expect that to be something along the lines of settlements, but, again, a lot of this remains to be seen.

KING: Back when you were doing this a long time ago.

MILLER: Very long time ago.

KING: It has always been the case that the other big Arab nations sometimes use the Palestinians in politics, you know. You can't do that, you can't abandon the Palestinian people, then they roll their eyes and don't have a lot of faith. But in this environment where you're saying Israel gets Jerusalem, Israel gets the Golan. Israel gets to keep the settlements in the West Bank.

Is the rest of the Arab world willing to say the Palestinians too bad, you get some economic apparatus but you're not a viable state. You're not going to get a ton of land out of the deal here, take it or leave it.

MILLER: I mean, I think the punitive king of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman, if it wasn't for his father, King Salman might be inclined actually to go a long way toward endorsing this point. But no, he urged, you'll get a yes but nobody wants to alienate Donald Trump. Just to put a point a context here, the first time I met Mr. Kushner I said I wish my father-in-law had as much confidence in me as your father-in-law has in you because he's given you mission impossible. And John, that's a point, this process was near death long before the Trump administration got ahold of it.

The question is are they going to make it worse, and are they going to make American credibility in tatters, and I think the answer is there's a distinct possibility that they will fail and fail big time.

KOSINSKI: Right. But if they fail at this, that could still be a win for the Trump administration because they could then say, well, the Palestinians are not a negotiating partner, it's their fault. And then that would allow Netanyahu to possibly annex more as a sort of, well, OK. Here's what we're going to do now and then that just builds the Israeli vote for Trump in 2020.

MILLER: A critical point. Everything is seen in the context of 2020.

KING: You view this all as much more as domestic politics.

MILLER: I think it's been that way from the beginning, that and the president's determination to be first at many different things. And he's demonstrated with respect to the Israeli/Palestinian issue, I think negatively, that in fact he's created some historic but very problematic firsts.

KING: It would be nice if we finally get the operational document as they call it and we can study the details. Maybe there's some surprises. Thank you both for coming in.

Up next, could more Democratic Party infighting derail the Dream Act?

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[12:56:55] KING: Democratic hopes of passing the Dream Act through the House may be derailed once again by another battle between progressive and moderate Democrats. The struggle is over whether to offer citizenship to undocumented immigrants with criminal records which Politico reports has, quote, Democrats scrambling to draft language that can secure enough votes in committee and on the floor without exposing further divides within the caucus on the thorny issue.

Now plans to advance the legislation next week are now on hold. The House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn acknowledging there's, quote, always issues when it comes to immigration. That's an understatement but he says, quote, we'll get through it.

All right, Heather Caygle, how? How do they get through it.

CAYGLE: Well, that's a big question. So the Judiciary Committee Democrats had a meeting to talk on Tuesday to talk about this markup next week and then they realized, whoa, we don't even have the votes to get this out of committee right now much less to the floor. And so everything is on hold while they try to work out this language. You know, what -- the issue is Republicans and they most certainly will in committee and on the floor, bring up very thorny amendments that make it very hard for moderates to vote against and they're trying to guard against that.

KING: And so this is one of these issues with the House Democrats know they're going to pass something that doesn't have a prayer in the Senate. They're just hoping to get on the record saying this is what we would like, and then in the 2020 elections, be on president and the House and Senate races saying look at the contrast. But, it's another issue on which Nancy Pelosi has a bigger flock, call John Boehner, call Paul Ryan, that can be difficult.

RAJU: Absolutely, and she learned the hard lesson the last time she was speaker when they pushed through ObamaCare, they got it to law but she also pushed through cap and trade legislation that was not helpful to some of her moderate members. She has to be concerned about these issues that she's going to bring to the floor. If she's interested in bringing to the floor that could expose these members to difficult votes, hurt them, moderate members in these key races, even if they have no chance of becoming law which is why she's pushing back against the notion of bringing the Green New Deal to the floor, Medicare for All potentially because of those exact divisions. KING: And who are the forces pushing that undocumented immigrants with criminal records? Is there a debate about what kind of criminal records? Are we talking about traffic offenses? Are we talking about non-violent drug offenses? Are we talking about that includes violent offenses?

CAYGLE: Sure. So right now the issue is, it's misdemeanors. Three misdemeanors and then you're disqualified from speaking the path to citizenship, right. But some Democrats, even some super liberal ones on the Judiciary Committee have looked at that and they're like, whoa, there are some misdemeanors like DUIs that look really bad the way -- depending on how Republicans word these amendments.

Like maybe we should narrow this down but the immigration rights groups, they don't want to touch the bill at all. They argue that it's already too conservative and we need to leave it alone. And the progressives have said, you know, if the immigration rights group pull out, we're pulling out, too. And there goes your votes on the floor.

RAJU: I mean, immigration is just such a difficult issue for both sides.

KING: We used to talk about how it's quicksand for the Republicans. It's equally quicksand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

RAJU: No question about it, because there's also a debate within the party about whether you do go for offer -- be more limited in what you can do or be supportive of a broader more sweeping measure which opens up a whole host of other issues. An example of why neither party has been able to solve this for so many years.

KING: The governing thing. It's complicated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Majority is hard.

KING: Who knew.

Thanks for joining us today on the INSIDE POLITICS. Hope to see you Sunday morning. Don't go anywhere, busy news day. Pamela Brown is in for Brianna Keilar, and she starts right now. Have a great afternoon.

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