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Trump Topics on Campaign Trail; Harris Releases Equal Pay Proposal; Trump's Iran Whiplash. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 20, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:19] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

President Trump off to Pennsylvania today for a re-election rally in one of those big electoral prizes he turned from blue to red back in 2016. Aides want him to talk up the economy. The president says that puts his crowds to sleep.

Plus, lightweight and loser, those the Twitter insults dished out by the president after Michigan's Justin Amash becomes the first Republican member of Congress to say the Mueller report details impeachable offenses.

And 2020 Democratic hopeful Senator Kamala Harris invokes her single mom as she pushes a new plan to guarantee women equal pay for equal work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We were often there before she -- you know, came home from school before she came home from work. She would cook dinner and she would stay up at the kitchen table doing work, figuring out how to pay the bills. So it is my intention to correct what has been wrong about the way we have designed the system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We begin the hour with the president hitting the road, looking to recreate this, his 2016 map amid some signs of 2020 trouble. Pennsylvania is the venue tonight, and the president will be there just days after being told by his campaign team that if the election were today, he would lose.

Now, team Trump believes there's plenty of time to right the ship and plenty to sell voters from the president's first term. The booming economy is the most obvious calling card.

Let's look at the venues for the last four Trump rallies, including tonight, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, all four of these states went for President Obama. See the blue in 2012. Went for Trump in his big surprise win in 2016. They are absolutely critical to the president's map coming 2020. And look at these numbers. Look at these numbers. Why should the president talk the economy? In those four states alone, all four key to his electoral map, all four have lower unemployment right now than when the president took office. So aides say talk it up. The president says, it's not a crowd pleaser.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I actually do talk a lot about the economy. I don't get credit for that. You know, but you can always say, we have the greatest economy.

If I stood in front of 25,000 people, because you would say nobody's every in the history politics gotten the crowds that we get. If I stood there and talked about the economy for that long a period, let's say the economy's great, unemployment's low, we're doing wonderful, we have the most number of people ever (INAUDIBLE) --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just say it's boarding to just talk about that.

TRUMP: They'd start falling asleep.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: With me this day to share their reporting and their insights, Jackie Kucinich with "The Daily Beast," Michael Shear with "The New York Times," CNN's Manu Raju and Heather Caygle with "Politico."

He fashions himself as a producer from his TV history and he thinks it puts people to sleep. It's his best asset in a campaign. We're going to see him on the trail again tonight. He just had a political briefing the other day where, don't get me wrong, they think they have plenty of time. They think there's plenty of room in the polls to build and get there. But if the election were today, they said, Mr. President, you will lose. What are we going to see?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean he's there to put on a show. I mean we forget what rallies were like before Trump, these political rallies that even President Obama would have when he was on the trail. They bear no resemblance to what we have now.

You know, if the president -- I mean his advisers probably want him to focus on the economy, but that's not this president, and it backfired in 2018 with the focus on immigration. We'll see what they decide to focus on this time. But, I mean, you're right, exactly what he said there, he doesn't think it's exciting to talk about the economy.

KING: And the question is, especially because he's in Pennsylvania, the president maybe doesn't like talking up the economy. He does like a fight. This is Joe Biden, the Democrat team Trump told him they view, at least at this moment, they view Joe Biden as the biggest threat. This is Joe Biden in Pennsylvania over the weekend saying, sorry, Mr. President, you don't get the credit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: President Trump inherited an economy from Obama/Biden administration that was given to him, just like he inherited everything else in his life. And just like -- just like everything else he's been given in his life, he's in the process of squandering that as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Looking to get under his skin with that one.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and he's looking to undercut his central message for re-election. This is the one area in which voters give the president credit for the economy, over 50 percent in most polls, unlike virtually every other issue. And if the president were to be successful going against Joe Biden who's he's losing against Pennsylvania according to his one poll, Quinnipiac has Biden up big, the president should draw a contrast probably on issues like trade, where the -- Biden has been a supporter of free trade policies in the past, a supporter of NAFTA. He was in the administration that pushed the transpacific partnership. The president can certainly draw a contrast, but can he stay on message in doing that? That's the problem.

[12:05:09] KING: It will be interesting to see, to that point, will he, in the rally tonight, talk about what he talked about on Twitter this morning, to your point about trade. It looks like Bernie Sanders is history. Sleepy Joe Biden is pulling ahead. That's his nickname for Joe Biden.

And, think about it, I'm only here because of Sleepy Joe and the man who took him off the 1 percent trash heap, President O. China wants Sleepy Joe badly. So the president focusing on this.

You mentioned the Quinnipiac poll. Let take a look at it here. This is in Pennsylvania. And, again, Biden, 53, Trump 42. Biden running well ahead with white voters with a college degree. Biden running behind, white voters no college degree. That 38 percent for the Joe Biden, though, when Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, she got 32 percent. So Biden at least running a little bit stronger in the Trump base.

HEATHER CAYGLE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": And this is an area where, you know, Trump kind of whiffed in 2018, even though he wasn't on the ballot, the Senate candidate that hugged himself as tightly to Trump as he could got beat by double digits by Bob Casey, right? So, obviously, the president's team says there's not -- we're not worried. There's a lot of time. But they are laying their groundwork to keep going back to these rustbelt states, right, and try to engaged the base that elected him in 2016.

KING: And here's why the aides want him to talk more about the economy. They get it. They know the president wants to do immigration. He's going to do his wall lines. He's going to do some insults because that's what he does and that's what fires up his crowd.

But, again, look at these -- look back here. This is the Quinnipiac poll again and look at the president's numbers in Pennsylvania. Fifty- four percent disapprove of his job performance in the state of Pennsylvania. A state that he won last time that is critical to his map this time. Fifty-four percent disapprove and yet 54 percent of Pennsylvanians say they're doing better. They're doing better. It's the old Ronald Reagan, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

He has a case to make. You're doing better. Give me some credit. Yes, Joe Biden's right, we have 100 plus consecutive months of job growth so it went back to the Obama years. But any president would love these economic numbers. Why can't he make the connection?

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, he can make the connection. He doesn't -- he -- but we -- we think of these rallies as one-way messaging where the president talks at the people. It's actually, for this president, it's a two-way -- it's a two-way dynamic and he gets as much from these rails as he gives, and he -- and he calibrates what he does by the response that he gets. That's how he feeds. That's the political energy that he feeds on. And so if he can get to the point, if Joe Biden ends up attacking him on the economy and the other Democrats attack him on the economy and that becomes the kind of message that whips up the crowds, that he can attack and the crowds feed him back, then you'll see more of it. And, if not, then he'll go back to the immigration arguments and he'll go back to the attacks and the personal insults because he needs that from the crowd.

KUCINICH: Well, and here's the thing, people who are going to a Trump rally aren't the ones whose minds are going to be changed going into this election. Those are the base of the base and that's who he's -- if that's who he's pulling his cheers from, right, if they are cheering on the immigration lines, that doesn't necessarily reflect independents, maybe some softer Trump voters who aren't happy. But I'm not just saying just on the issue of immigration. What that tells me is that the president himself is hurting himself.

SHEAR: And you know -- and you know --

RAJU: Yes, and that's the challenge because if he goes -- levies those insults that actually energizes his crowd, it does put off those same voters that he wants to attract. And it goes to the character argument that Joe Biden is making in particular saying that, you know, he may not be -- you know, the economy may be doing well but look at the president, the man in office and people don't like him.

SHEAR: He also doesn't -- he also doesn't buy those -- I mean when he is -- when his advisers deliver him those numbers, he doesn't believe them. He doesn't internalize them because he just thinks that they're wrong and that he doesn't believe the polls. He thinks he's --

KING: He thinks he's on the ballot this time, so it won't be the same as 2018.

SHEAR: Right.

KING: But here's why, again, if you're -- if you're President Trump and you look at this now, 54 percent of the people in Pennsylvania think they're better off and yet the president has a 54 percent disapproval rating if you look at those numbers. On the one hand, if you're the Democrats, you're happy, and that's why Joe Biden is winning in the state right now. That's why most of the other Democrats are winning the state. But -- but, we are very early in the campaign.

If you're the Trump campaign, you say, OK, we need to tell these people, you're better off, they will raise your taxes. They will do -- you know, the socialist line. They will do things that will undermine that. So that's why team Trump, they told the president for today you lose, but they see a lot of things in these numbers that they think they can use to their advantage. The question is, you know, who's your Democrat? How do you frame the argument against that Democrat?

SHEAR: Right. And, let's face it, the campaign ads haven't started, right? So even if you -- I mean, as a campaign, you have multiple ways of talking to people. The president is obviously one and probably the best way of talking to people, but they will run zillions of dollars' worth of ads in Pennsylvania tell them about the taxes that are going to go up and the like.

KING: And our White House team reporting today, look for more of these rallies, that they say the president is tired of looking up at the television and seeing the Democrats on TV. That he wants to get out on the road because the Democrats are getting attention.

You know, we've seen him in the Rose Garden. It's interesting, he's an incumbent president. He has a great economy. Yes, he has problems out there, but he also just -- it's not easy to beat an incumbent. We've had three two-term presidents in a row. It's not easy to beat an incumbent. Is that the right approach, get out there in America, or should he be laying (ph) back in Washington?

[12:10:03] RAJU: Well, I think it makes him feel better. He needs to hear the crowds gushing over him. He does not like to be holed up in the White House dealing with all the incoming, dealing with the daily fights now with Democrats and feeling like he's under siege. He needs the crowd to adore him. And this is what he -- will help him personally, you know, to get that reinforcement on the campaign trail. And he -- look, he may just be -- I'm surprised, actually, we haven't actually seen more of these rallies. He's been running for re-election since basically he came into office.

KUCINICH: Right.

KING: Right.

SHEAR: Right.

KING: All right, up for us next, one of the Democrats, Senator Kamala Harris unveiling a plan to close the gender pay gap. Would also help her -- will it help her close in on her 2020 rivals?

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[12:15:21] KING: Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris hoping a new economic proposal will give her campaign a boost. Her proposal aimed at closing the gender pay gap the senator says for good. Here's what's in the plan. Corporations will be required to hand over their employee pay data to the government proving that women and men are paid equally for equal work. The government would then certify that the company is complaint and companies would have to prove any gaps in pay are not based on gender. For every 1 percent gap in pay, the Harris administration would fine companies 1 percent of their daily profits. The penalties would help increase funding for guaranteed family leave and medical leave.

CNN's Kyung Lah joins me from Los Angeles.

Kyung, you spoke to Senator Harris about this plan. How does she plan to pass it, number one, and why does she think it's so important?

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Let's start with that how, that first question you have. If Congress fails to act, she says that she will move forward on this via executive action. She hasn't put an exact timeline of how quickly she would take that executive action if elected as president, but that she would move unilaterally if Congress fails to act. Here is essentially her plan.

You kind of went over the bullet points there, John, but it essentially shifts the burden from the employee, who had to file the complaint, who had to file the lawsuit, to now aiming it at corporate America.

Here's what Harris said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I am proposing is we shift the burden. It should not be on that working woman to prove it. It should instead be on that large corporation to prove they're paying people for equal work equally. It's that simple. It's literally that simple. And this then is not only about fairness and equality, it's about transparency. Let's -- show us what you got. That's it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: And so when we asked her, are you prepared for the looming battle should she even get to this point from tech companies, from banks? She said she is used to making these fights and used to winning them, John.

One other thing is that she also says that you just have to look around the globe. There are at least two examples, the U.K. and Iceland, where they've already taken this and scaled it up in their -- in their countries, John.

KING: Kyung Lah live in Los Angeles. Appreciate it. It's an interesting plan. We'll see what it does in the race.

And to that point, we're heading into the debate phase here. Senator Harris has been struggling in the polls a bit, but you want to have something to talk about on the debate stage and you also have an equal pay proposal now in a Democratic primary in which we know the majority, and in some cases 60 percent of the primary voters in these early states are going to be women.

KUCINICH: So I just want to point out one thing really quickly before we get into that is the -- that the fact this is the second time she's talked about using executive action if she can't get it through Congress.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: A member -- a sitting member of Congress who is talking about bypassing Congress.

KING: Right.

RAJU: Yes.

KUCINICH: And that I just think is notable. I haven't -- I hadn't heard that from presidential contenders until right now and it's just --

KING: She says on guns as well.

KUCINICH: Yes, on guns as well and it just speaks to how little faith people have in Congress. And maybe that's obvious, but it did -- it did strike me this is the second time that it --

RAJU: And also it's -- you know, they're using what Trump did over the border wall. This is exactly what the president -- that Republicans had been concerned about, that a Democrat would come in and use executive action, ignore Congress, do everything on their own to try to just essentially implement a very liberal agenda.

Now, we'll see what the courts ultimately do on the fight over the border wall. Maybe they'll prevent Kamala Harris from doing something similar if she were to win, but that's -- clearly they're looking at what Trump is doing and some are emulating it.

KING: And the approach here is kind of like -- you mentioned Trump, it's kind of like e-Verify, where you have this system on immigration where the employers are supposed to verify somebody has validate information. This would flip under the current law, the Lily Ledbetter act. If a woman says, wait a minute, you know, I'm getting screwed here. Somebody's getting paid more money that -- a man's getting paid more money for the same work. That woman has to document the case and present a claim and go to court and essentially the burden is on the woman to prove it. This would put the burden on the company to document everything.

CAYGLE: And I think for Harris that's a really important point that she's trying to make because we've seen other Democratic candidates address gender pay gaps so far, but hers is the most aggressive, right, because she would actually fine these companies, whereas the other candidates are like, we would require them to be more transparent. And so I think for her in a way she hopes that that allows her to stand out above all the others talking about this because she's like, I'm the most aggressive. She wants to be above the fray.

And the other point I want to make is, last week she spent time answering questions about if she wanted to be Joe Biden's vice president, which is obviously not the position she wants to be in, and I think this helps her change that narrative a little bit.

KING: That's a good point. The problem is real. You know, it's up to the voters to decide what they want in a solution and to listen to the candidates, but here's the national median annual pay, men, $52,126, women $41,977. So the issue is real. The question is, can she -- a, will people view her plan as credible and, b, can she then use that in the primaries to move up?

[12:20:07] SHEAR: Well, and the -- and the challenge, I mean this is a perfect example of the kind of challenge that Democrats are ultimately going to face, whoever they chose to face off against Trump, which is the further they embrace, you know, the aggressive -- the more aggressive responses to a problem, I mean, there's clearly a problem, so the question is, how do you respond to it. The more they embrace the more extreme, more left-leaning answers to that, the more opportunity they give President Trump ultimately to run against them, because the country may not be the full country when -- when the general election comes around may not be and is likely not going to be where the -- where the electorate is during the Democratic primaries.

KING: Right, and this has been one of the questions in the primary where you've had Senator Warren, for example, who more than any other candidate -- again, at home, you can agree or disagree -- more than any other candidate has put out detailed positions on a number of issues and how to pay for them. You have other candidates who are saying we're still in the getting to know you phase here.

But we're now just a few weeks, a little more than a month away, a month plus, from the first debate and the Democrats are having an interesting policy debate. We do focus a lot on whether it's climate change, whether it's fix Obamacare or go to Medicare for all, whether it's a whole host of other issues, there are a lot of issues on the table and there are a lot of disagreements between these contenders.

SHEAR: Right. Right. And the question is, where do they end up? And do the -- do the candidates that embrace the more left-leaning ideas win the primary and then put themselves in a position that they can't win?

KUCINICH: But it's also going to be interesting to see who gets the most agreements on their proposals.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: Because you will see some candidates look at this, on what Kamala Harris has put out, and say, that's a great idea. You'll see it with Elizabeth Warren. You'll see it with Bernie Sanders. So who ticks up the most people kind of on their side is also going to be really fascinating to watch.

KING: And, if you're Senator Harris or Senator Warren for that matter, here are the numbers. Joe Biden at 35 percent, Bernie Sanders at 17 percent, Warren at 9, Buttigieg at 6, Harris at 5, O'Rourke at 4.

If Joe Biden just stands there on the stage and says, that's a great idea, that's a great idea, you know, where is the -- you know, where it is going to be? How do you -- how do you take away -- how do you shrink him and grow you if he just says, oh, yes, you know, that's -- I want to look at that?

RAJU: They have to push him to detail exactly where he wants to take the country. I mean you've seen a little bit of Joe Biden start to roll out some of his ideas, but he is a late contender in this race and what exactly does he want to do, besides being the most electable candidate, which is clearly what he's trying to pitch voters on, what is he actually going to implement? And that's where some of the Democrats may see some vulnerabilities with him, like an Elizabeth Warren and here with Kamala Harris. And that's going to be -- it will be interesting to see how he deals with that because he probably will agree with both of these ideas.

KING: I'm not sure which school I buy into, those who say these first two rounds of debates in June and July critical for the lesser knowns or those lower in the polls to take Biden down a little bit, or whether it's, wait a minute, nobody votes until, you know, January or February of next year. I'm not sure which two school -- which school is right, but it's a big debate among the Democrats.

Next for us here, a big Twitter threat, but is the president looking for an off ramp when it comes to Iran?

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[12:27:39] KING: Today, fresh evidence that the president's consistently inconsistent approach to foreign policy. The president wants to avoid wars, he says, and he complained to advisers last week -- he complained to advisers last week that his national security team was too eager, in his view, to ratchet up tensions with Iran. So this weekend tweet from the president caused what you might call whiplash. Quote, if Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again.

That warning to Iran, coupled with what the administration believes is an olive branch to the rest of the Arab world. The president's long promised Middle East peace plan starts with an economic pitch. He wants to secure tens of billions of dollars in investments in the Palestinians. One problem, the Palestinians say they have not been consulted and have no interested in working with the White House until it stops leaning so heavily pro-Israel.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski and CNN military and diplomatic analyst John Kirby joining our conversation.

Let start with Iran. The president's tweet, muscular, after a week in which -- at least the week ended with us hearing that the president was telling the defense secretary, I don't want a war, let's dial it back. He tweets that, don't you dare essentially from the president. Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, tweeting back today, goaded by the "b" team, President Trump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis and other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall from millennia while aggressors all gone. Economic terrorism and genocidal taunts won't end Iran. Never threat an Iranian. Try respect. It works.

Forgive me. Are these just belligerent tweets or does this matter in the sense that, what's the off ramp here at this time of tension?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.), CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: It's both, John. It is belligerent tweets and rhetoric, but it does have an actual impact because not -- you can't count on everybody reading into the message of those tweets accurately. And so there's a real risk of miscalculation by proxies, by militias that aren't sort of completely controlled by Iran, who could go off and do something dangerous. We don't even know who it was that now fired rockets at our embassy in Baghdad. Could be one of these proxies.

So, yes, there's a real impact to this. And, look, this never threaten an Iranian. I've heard Zarif actually say that in the room during the Iran deal. I mean that's -- that is a frequent tirade of his.

[12:29:50] MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and it's -- it's just going up and down. I mean just when you think that the president is the one who's going to keep saying, oh, I'm the one who tempers the hawks on board. I'm the one who tempers John Bolton, the renowned Iran hawk and says I want to talk to Iran and repeats that message, then you get these tweets that are hardline

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