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GOP Purge: Liz Cheney Set To Lose House Leadership Spot; Biden To Meet With Congressional Leaders At White House On Wednesday; Even Out Of Office, Trump Remains Dominant Force In GOP; Will Schools Mandate COVID Vaccinations?; Caitlyn Jenner For Governor. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired May 09, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[08:00:43]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST (voice-over): A GOP purge. House Republicans are ready to dump Liz Cheney for fighting Trump's election lies.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: I have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the message.

PHILLIP: Plus, President Biden hits the road to sell his infrastructure plan.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A blue collar blueprint to rebuild America -- to super-charge our economy.

PHILLIP: But Republican leaders aren't eager to negotiate.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.

PHILLIP: And Governor Jenner? The reality TV star and transgender activist says she's ready to run the state of California.

INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters, now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIP (on camera): Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Abby Phillip.

Liz Cheney is about to lose her job as the number three House Republican. Her crime, standing up to Donald Trump's election lies.

History is watching us, she writes in "The Washington Post." The question before us now is whether we will join Trump's crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election with all of the consequences that might have.

The loudest voices in the GOP have made clear which side they're on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Anybody in here vote for Joe Biden?

CROWD: No!

GREENE: Do you guys really think he won?

CROWD: No!

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): We have never abandoned Trump and he has never abandoned America. Our way, America First, will rule the day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: And joining us now with the reporting and their insights, Astead Herndon of "The New York Times", CNN's Kaitlan Collins, "Time Magazine's Molly Ball, and Paul Kane of "The Washington Post."

So, guys, thanks for being here at the round table again.

P.K., what is the status of Liz Cheney going into this week? It seems that everyone is resigned to her basically being out of this job at this point?

PAUL KANE, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON POST: Abby, first of all, thank you for having me back on set.

Liz Cheney, I think, has pretty much accepted her own personal fate in this. She's not really rallying her allies. She's not really working hard behind the scenes to try to win this vote. I think she understands Wednesday morning, they're going to get together at 9:00 a.m. in a basement conference room. And at some point, somebody will make a motion to basically vacate her from this number three leadership position.

She knows that she's going to lose that vote and her bigger long-term goal now is defeating Trumpism within the Republican Party. But in the short run, she's going to lose that vote. She's going to lose her leadership job. They will have an election to succeed here.

It's unclear how quickly they'll do that. There is Elise Stefanik of New York is the presumption front-runner, but at least by the following week, I think she'll be voted in to succeed here.

PHILLIP: And just to remind everyone, this will be a secret ballot.

KANE: Absolutely. It's a closed door meeting, a closed door meeting in the auditorium of the Congressional Capitol Visitors Center. And it's a secret ballot. She won the secret ballot three months ago.

PHILLIP: By a healthy margin.

KANE: One forty-five to 61, I think. Nobody told me there'd be math today, but those were the numbers.

PHILLIP: But the tide has turned. What's interesting just in weekend "The Washington Post" had a fascinating story about what is going on behind the scenes in the Republican Party that she's pushing back against.

And they got their hands on some internal polling numbers that found that Donald Trump is a real drag in battleground districts. And in the meeting in which this was not presented to members, Liz Cheney was, according to "The Washington Post," alarmed and she later told others it demonstrated that the party leadership was willing to hide information from their own members to avoid the truth about Trump and the possible damage he could do to Republican House members.

[08:05:03]

So this is about Trump being, in her view, from a moral perspective, not able to lead the party, but also a political drag on Republicans.

MOLLY BALL, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. She's trying to -- she has been saying behind the scenes to the party, I'm trying to do this for your own good. Let's all, you know, save ourselves here from the political burden that this represents.

But the fact that she has lost that battle shows you not only, you know, we've all talked plenty about Trump's hold on base of the party, but he also has a hold on the institutions of the party.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

BALL: You have here the staff, the institutions, the messaging apparatus all taking sides in this fight and I think the most interesting question is going to be, does Liz Cheney continue this fight when she's out of leadership? After that vote happens, how much does she become more or less outspoken?

How much is she trying to continue to carry this political message inside the party behind the scenes to say, guys, if we want to stay in power, we want to, you know, make gains in power, here's what I think we have to do?

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it is fair to see this as a culmination of events that happened since the insurrection. There was that window of reflection for Republicans after January 6th, that was saying is Trumpism gone too far, is the party gone too far in one direction.

And you have on the state level, people who are speaking out about that, blaming Trump for the events on January 6, get outed on the state -- I remember being in Michigan for a couple of folks on state Republican Party who are pushing back and actually lost their seats in that state party.

And they're seeing that filter up to the point now as you're saying, Republican leadership has gotten to the point where someone in their own caucus is not able to draw the connection back to the president, former president.

I think that is a political calculation, as you're mentioning. Trump being the base of the party and him having that hold on them. It is also a personal calculation for these folks if -- by absolving Trump, and also absolving themselves and their connection to him over the last four years.

PHILLIP: And to that point by January 6th, a key part of Elise Stefanik, who is the front-runner. She went on Steve Bannon's podcast and she's been with Sebastian Gorka.

She has been endorsing the big lie. This Arizona audit that's going on. You've got a Capitol insurrectionist literally counting ballots. You've got people looking for bamboo in the ballots to make sure they are not coming from Asia.

And this is what she told Bannon this week on the podcast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-NY): I support the audit in Arizona. We want transparency and answers for the American people. What are the Democrats so afraid of?

Transparency is a good thing. We need to fix these election security issues going into the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: She voted against certification. She is unapologetic to this day and that is why Republican House members are voting to make their number three top leader in the House, it's really an incredible thing.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think there are some Republicans who are concerned about ousting someone like Liz Cheney who comes from a dynasty of a family. She's obviously conservative. I don't think anybody questions that.

But this is an alternative to a Liz Cheney. It's someone who is willing to voice those lies, to say things like there needs to be transparency. We need to make sure these issues are fixed. There are no issues to fix, no widespread fraud, no evidence of that, especially in Arizona where they are doing these recounts.

I think more broadly this is a picture of how do Republicans navigate the Trump aspect going forward. And we're seeing how each of them are taking this.

Look at what Mitch McConnell has been doing this week. He's been asked about Donald Trump. He's been asked about Liz Cheney, he is side stepping it completely and talking about Biden and his agenda and where that's going because a lot of them don't want to have to answer questions about this.

So I think it's between navigating that and then that, quote, I can't remember which Republican congressman to "Politico" said, you know, you don't have to stand up every day and echo Trump's lies about the election, but you can't also wake up every day and give him the bird and expect Republicans to fall in line with you.

PHILLIP: I mean, you -- here is the reality. Is that when you are silent, you're basically complicit in the lie. That is how this works.

But, P.K., give us a sense of what is going on with Elise Stefanik, because as Kaitlan pointed out, she's not as conservative as Liz Cheney, does not have as conservative a voting record, but something has happened in the last couple of years after the first impeachment when she was the standard bearer in defense of Trump, her district is changing, she's raising a lot more money. What is going on there?

KANE: So, her allies have said to me, hey, she's moved for Trump the way a lot of Republicans have moved toward Trump. There is nothing unusual about that. But you look at her resume, no one has this resume who has moved that close to Trump.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

KANE: She was Harvard undergrad, immediately went into the Bush White House, was an executive assistant for Josh Bolton, George W. Bush's final chief of staff.

[08:10:09]

She went to work at the RNC in 2012.

PHILLIP: As establishment as you could get.

KANE: Yes. Worked debate prep for Paul Ryan in 2012 ahead of the vice presidential debate and became this acolyte of Paul Ryan.

When Paul Ryan became speaker, he had a big speech to a bunch of young GOP staff. He picked Elise Stefanik to introduce him.

Now, you flash forward to impeachment, 2019, she's this moderate Northeast Republican who gives a very viral moment, has a clash with Adam Schiff, and all of a sudden, Donald Trump takes notice. Wow, she's great.

Within days, thousands upon thousands of dollars are pouring into her campaign. All of a sudden, she's this conservative rock star even though her background is moderate Republican.

PHILLIP: So she said that she's not going to run for a second term as conference chair if she wins that post. She wants to be the chair of a committee.

KANE: Education.

PHILLIP: Education and Labor. So what's the goal here? Is she just trying to build up power? What is she trying to really accomplish?

KANE: So, if she wins this race, she'll get to be the person who leads a meeting in which everybody usually complains. PHILLIP: It's not a great job.

KANE: And then she gets to lead the press conference after that meeting. It's a job that you only get noticed if something goes wrong. And she has smartly realized that this is a position that I joke is like the spinal tap drummer. Just spontaneously combust.

So, she's already -- before she's even got this job, she's looking ahead to how to get out of this job.

PHILLIP: And there are rumors that maybe she wants to run for governor of New York. So we'll see how that goes.

But coming up next, President Biden may have a hostile guest when he welcomes Republicans to the White House this week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:33]

PHILLIP: Welcome back.

President Biden said he's ready to compromise on his infrastructure -- he's not ready to compromise on his infrastructure plan. This week, Biden will host top Republicans at the White House. And among them, Senator Mitch McConnell who recently signaled that he's not ready to do business.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCONNELL: One hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So McConnell, I guess we say these days, said the quiet part out loud. How does Biden go into a meeting with Mitch McConnell but also House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, which is a problem for a lot of other reasons, when he knows that the other side really just wants to obstruct. That is the strategy, right?

KANE: He knows that. But those two have a long relationship, McConnell and Biden. McConnell famously said that his number one goal in the first administration -- first Obama administration was to defeat Obama and it was a couple of weeks after Obama won re-election that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell sat down to negotiate the fiscal cliff, a big budget deal.

So they have enough history that they could talk politely. I think the more clashing type of relationship is going to be Biden and McCarthy. Because McCarthy was part of the two-thirds of House Republicans who wanted to invalidate Biden's election victory.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

KANE: That is a interesting dynamic for you to watch. PHILLIP: There is a long list of -- I shouldn't say long, there is a

list of Republicans who are coming to this meeting led by Shelley Moore Capito. You've got John Barrasso, Roy Blunt, Roger Wicker, Mike Crapo and Pat Toomey.

Is the White House expecting that this is a group that they could play ball with?

COLLINS: Well, this is a group that has proposed that alternative to his infrastructure plan. And so, whether or not how that ends up in this meeting, I don't think anyone is expecting to walk out with a deal on their hands on the idea of inviting Republicans into the Oval Office that have voted against the legitimacy of his election, essentially.

This has happened before, and I already asked Biden in the room once, and he kind of laughed it off, because, of course, they're seated in the Oval Office with the president. But I do think when it comes to what they're talking about with infrastructure this week, it's not just the size of the plan, it's how they want to pay for it, that is also a sticking point they don't agree on right now.

And so, I think this is actually going to be a critical week for the White House and for the Capitol Hill, between the meeting to oust Liz Cheney, inviting the congressional leadership to the White House, having this meeting with Republicans on infrastructure after a weak job's report, it's going to be a pretty critical challenge for the administration and whether or not they're actually going to be able to work with Republicans and what that's going to look like.

HERNDON: And we know this is an administration that wants to show itself as working with Republicans at least from the start. I think what we learned from the COVID relief package is that this administration is willing to break from that and doesn't see itself as beholden to this group. And so, it's a negotiating tactic. It is also a little bit of a political theater.

We know from the White House that folks want to see them reaching out to Republicans as a kind of first step. But there's a shared understanding from the administration part and the Republicans that this is a White House that also has a escape hatch that they feel that they're not completely have to be dictated to by this Republican group and that has certainly caused some friction.

We know Republicans are saying, hey, you promised coming together and we don't see that in the COVID relief and this is a White House that said, we define unity as what the American people have seen as the mid point, not necessarily elected officials in the Republican and Democratic side.

PHILLIP: So, Mitch McConnell kind of relishes his reputation as the grim reaper in Washington. But did he put his colleagues in a box by saying out loud that he wants to stop everything? I mean, if you're in that group and you're Shelley Moore Capito, are you in a position now where you kind of show that you are actually willing to come to the table otherwise all of this rhetoric about wanting unity on getting stuff done is empty.

BALL: You know, I think -- you have to look at the context in which McConnell made that comment. He's talking to his own party when he says things like that, trying to get them off things like the election lies, off the Liz Cheney squabble, off all of this Trump stuff that we know where McConnell is on Trump and he doesn't want to talk about that, and he was getting asked about all of this stuff when he commented because woe like the Republican Party to come together around stopping the administration but they haven't.

We have not see the Republican Party on Capitol Hill or anywhere else mount a successful message that is primarily about stopping the Biden agenda, stopping the rescue plan, stopping the jobs plan. That has not been the message. They've been unsuccessful in making the plans unpopular, making the American people see them as partisan.

And I think the fact that they're going to the meeting shows that they are not 100 percent committed to stopping the administration or they wouldn't go to the White House to try to have the discussions. They clearly see a political upside in trying to appear -- just as the White House does -- trying to appear as if they're playing ball.

PHILLIP: Well, to the point of what is going on is among Republicans, I mean, if you look at the recent CNN poll, 70 percent of Republican voters did not believe that Biden legitimately won this election.

And, Kaitlan, you were mentioned how President Biden shifted on this. Listen to, I mean, this has been an evolution. Joe Biden thought that he could change Republicans or Republicans would change when he came into office. Things have changed for Joe Biden it seems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We'll fundamentally change things with Donald Trump out of the White House. Not a joke. You'll see an epiphany occurred among many of my Republican friends.

I have no idea whether there'd be Republican Party.

It seems as though the Republican Party is trying to identify what it stands for. And they're in the midst of significant sort of mini revolution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So where is his head at right now, Kaitlan?

COLLINS: I think that he has for so long said he did believe that once Trump was out of office, Republicans would shift, things would change in Washington and we have not seen that happen because Donald Trump still does still have such a grip over the party. I mean, I don't think that is surprising to people, the grip over voters, which gives him that grip over the party.

And so, I think that is the question for President Biden, is what this is going to look like, how they're going to experience this. And when he was talking to us there in the state dining room this week, he said that he thought that Republicans would have a shift when Trump left Washington and they would figure out what they're identity was going to be but he didn't think it would take this long.

And I think you're seeing this play out nationwide, where it is a question of, you know, Liz Cheney is being ousted, what do the Republican Party stand for because it is not the ideals that she's pushed for so long. We're seeing Democrats defend Liz Cheney.

That is stunning and that's something I think many people thought they would never see. But I think it speaks to the transformation that is underway. And how it ends up, I don't think people are prepared to answer that.

PHILLIP: And even for someone like Joe Biden with, you know, 30-plus years under his belt in Washington, this is a generational shift in the Republican Party that he is not witnessing and coming to terms with himself. So it's a different world even for Joe Biden.

Coming up next, how Trump's big lie is making it harder to vote in the next election.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:39]

PHILLIP: From top to bottom, the Republican Party is being remade in the image of Donald Trump. In Congress, they're purging Liz Cheney from party leadership for speaking out against election lies and the Capitol insurrection. And in state houses, they're using the big lie to push laws making it harder to vote.

Florida is the latest state restricted early in-person and mail voting. Texas could be next. The state house passed a bill adding new restrictions and penalties.

So what happens when a major political party abandoned truth for lies? What is going to happen to the Republican Party at this point?

BALL: You know, I feel like I have been covering the civil war within the Republican Party for more than a decade now. And it just keeps going. It is an endless war. It is like Afghanistan or something. They just keep fighting and nobody ever trains their forces well enough to actually win the thing.

So I -- for all of the well this is going to have to come to a head and it will explode or fall apart, I think they just sort of limp along like this.

[08:29:41]

And, you know, they have already clearly shown that there is still enough popular support out there for this party that they can winning elections even in their disordered state, even with all of the divisions and lies and arguments that they're having. PHILLIP: But this has devolved into fantasy land. I mean we were

talking earlier about the Arizona audit. This is the explanation for the search for bamboo in the ballots in Arizona. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BRAKEY, HELPING OVERSEE ARIZONA AUDIT: There is accusations that 40,000 ballots were flown in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Into Arizona?

BRAKEY: Into Arizona.

And it was stuffed into the box, ok. And it came from the southeast part of the world, Asia, ok. And what they're doing is to find out if there is bamboo in the paper.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: I mean beyond that being pretty racist, it is also -- I mean, it is complete fantasy land and this is going on led by Republicans in the state, cheered on by Donald Trump. I mean this is a party that is devolving. It is more than just lies. It is fantasy land.

COLLINS: It is. And I mean what you're watching happen in Arizona, you hear all these Republicans say we're doing this for transparency. We want people to feel confident in the elections.

I think when you step back, the bigger picture concern is that this is going to become so hyper partisan that all of these demands for recounts when there have already been recounts or audits that have proven there is no fraud, that's actually what is going to undermine confidence in elections going forward and I think that is people's big concern.

And you're seeing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's calling for another recount in her state of Georgia. They've already done two recounts including one by hand.

But none of the answers are good enough. Like until they can continue counting and find something, it won't be good enough for a lot of these Republicans who've been pushing this.

And I think that is a lot of concern for moderate Republicans, for moderate Democrats, for all of these people who want to have confidence in the election. And you're letting people, you know, sow confusion with accusations like that that have zero basis.

HERNDON: It is a solution in search of a problem. And I think Georgia is a great example of this. I will never forget the kind of two months I spent in between election day and the Georgia Senate races where there was such a different in the base line of reality from these two bases, right.

You will from a Democratic event to a Republican event and just have a massive disconnect on a baseline of facts. I remember being at an Ivanka Trump event in the Georgia suburbs where you would think that there would be this conservative first message, this economic message that could appeal to voters and they were chanting "stop the steal".

I mean that was what the base wanted and that's what she had to deliver. That is what Kelly Loeffler had to deliver at that event to appease the folks who were there.

And so I think that we have a party that is not just in a war but the war has been won, by one side --

PHILLIP: Right.

HERNDON: -- and they're demanding officials react in kind.

PHILLIP: This is the argument that is being made by former Congressman Denver Riggleman who left the party because of this stuff. He is still in, you know, Virginia talking to voters and in his community and this is what he's hearing from them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENVER RIGGLEMAN (R-VA), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: They're absolutely sure the election was stolen. It is everybody down here. And that belief that Donald Trump is really the chosen one, he's the one that has been chosen to take the flag of the American dream. He's blessed. It is a messianic type of conspiracy theory or cult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: A messianic type of conspiracy theory or cult. So are Republican lawmakers responding to that or are they feeding that, is it both?

KANE: There has been a complete generational shift inside Congress where I work. You have a House Republican conference in which 50 percent of them never served a day with John Boehner, who only left five and a half years ago.

And all of the newcomers are mimicking what they saw and to them they saw Donald Trump, wow, he was successful, that is how he did it, so they're almost behaving that way. But the state lawmakers, Florida -- Republicans won.

PHILLIP: Texas, they won there too.

(CROSSTALK)

KANE: Yes. Trump had the biggest margin in 2020 of any Republican, I believe this century. What went wrong in Florida? What are they trying -- your point about a solution in search of a problem. They won, they won the House races, they won the state legislative race and they're still trying to change the law even though they did great there.

PHILLIP: And speaking of -- speaking of Florida, down in Mar-A-Lago, former President Trump is, you know, playing golf but spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to defeat other Republicans. This is really extraordinary. Of the people who voted for impeachment -- you've got seven out of ten serve House members who have been censured or rebuked in some way by their state or local parties. Six out of the seven senators who voted for impeachment have been censured or rebuked in some way by their state or local parties. To Astead's point, this war has been won.

What is Donald Trump's next move? I mean is he just trying to blow this whole thing up?

COLLINS: I think he wants revenge. I think the is still upset about the fact that he lost the election. He maintains publicly that he didn't lose the election. Of course, he is back home at Mar-A-Lago and not at the White House.

And so I think his way of responding to this is not what Mitch McConnell or even ultimately someone like Kevin McCarthy wants which is to have Donald Trump and use his support to win back the House.

[08:34:57]

COLLINS: We know Kevin McCarthy wants that. He flew down to Mar-A-Lago just weeks after the riot on Capitol Hill to ask for Trump's donor list which I was told at the time Trump refused to give to him because Trump knows the power that he wields.

And it is a power that is not over moderate Republicans as we were talking about that polling earlier, but he has the power to cause a Republican to lose an election, be censured in their own state even though they've done things for that state for decades.

People like Mitt Romney in Utah -- look at what happened with him just last week when he was booed on stage.

And I think that is -- it is a negative reinforcement with Trump. It is that he can make you lose an election and that is the fear that Republicans have.

PHILLIP: On top of that Trumpism is sort of fed by this, you know, the culture wars. The anti-wokeness arguments. Is that the best platform for Republicans going into the next election -- 2022, 2024?

BALL: They clearly believe that it is. And you have a lot of Republicans trying to turn that into their political message and they believe that it has some traction.

But again, as long as they're arguing about the last election, as long as Trump is making this about punishing his enemies and making that continue to be the axis of what people like former Congressman Riggleman have called, a personality cult, that is going to be what they talk about, not even -- it's amazing, but it is as if, you know, the more substantive alternative to this would be Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head, right.

At this point that is substantive compared to these arguments about the lies in the election. You know, this is something that happened now six months ago. That we're still -- that Republicans are still continuing to argue about as the rest of the world has moved on.

So in a state like Georgia that Republicans didn't win, where they did blame a lot of this in-fighting for that fact that they then lost the Senate seats and lost the presidential election, do they look at things like that and say, ok, if we want to keep winning elections in swing states we have to start talking about things voters actually care about or not. Because at this point they don't seem to feel like they have to do that.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean have questions about whether Republican voters actually care about, you know, smaller government or taxes or all that stuff. It just doesn't seem like that is something that is motivating them and energizing them and that is why you're seeing this phenomenon going on in the Republican Party.

But coming up next, the government is on the verge of approving COVID vaccines for millions of children but will schools require the shot and will parents allow it?

[08:37:25]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: By the end of this week, younger teens could be getting vaccinated against COVID-19. The FDA and CDC are set to authorize Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use in kids 12 to 15.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The efficacy of the vaccine in 12 to 15 years old was essentially 100 percent and it was really quite safe. So it has a good safety profile and it is highly efficacious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: But a lot of parents aren't in a rush. Just three in ten say they would vaccinate their kids as soon as possible.

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner joins our conversation. So Dr. Reiner, we require a lot of vaccines for kids. Should parents be required to vaccinate their kids against COVID-19 once these vaccines are authorized?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: It is an uphill battle. It is amazing to me that, you know, a year ago we were begging and hoping that we'd be in a place where we'd have such a remarkably effective vaccine and now we have one that for kids is basically completely effective.

And yet only three in ten parents say they will definitely vaccinate their kids, another 25 percent of parents say they're going to wait and see. which means we have almost 50 percent of parents right now who will not vaccinate their children.

And when you look at the poll, and this comes from the Kaiser Family Foundation, it really tracks how the parents feel --

PHILLIP: Right.

DR. REINER: -- overall about the vaccine. So we still have a long way to go in this country to break down some of these hurdles.

PHILLIP: And, of course, as with a lot of things related to this virus, it's become partisan. You take a look at this recent poll. Democrats, 76 percent say that they would support vaccines for their kids, but just 38 percent of Republicans I mean. So this is the next, you know, so-called culture war over COVID-19.

HERNDON: Absolutely. We've seen this break down on partisan lines from every step of the process, from mask wearing to the vaccine rollout. And I think that we can expect that to continue even if you look down in Florida at Ron DeSantis, part of that reason he has kind of gained that stature in the Republican Party is by defying the COVID precautions that CDC was putting in place in kind of the political aspect of that.

And that's been a real driver. The question is will that continue on for another year? If you have a Republican Party organizing around keeping kids in schools and things like that, is that still a salient political issue come next year?

We don't know that yet. But we do know that this has been part of, as you said, that culture war that the Republican Party is increasingly defining itself through.

PHILLIP: What's tough about this is that, you know, the partisan -- there is sort of a partisan argument about reopen all the schools but at the same time Republicans are very reluctant to vaccinate themselves and their children.

But, you know, there has been a big conversation this week about reopening. And we talked a little bit about this last week with Dr. Reiner. Should the CDC go further and will doing that help what actually seems to be reluctant liberals get to the point where they're ok with, you know, going outside without a mask, especially if they're vaccinated but even potentially if they're not vaccinated?

DR. REINER: You know, we've done such a good job in some circles over the last year in hammering this message that if you're going to be safe and you're going to protect your communities, you need to wear a mask that it's hard to undo that message to a lot of people. And I think in some circles there is a little bit of virtue signaling.

PHILLIP: Right.

[08:44:53]

DR. REINER: People are reluctant to not wear a mask when they go out for fear that people are going to sort of label them with a political label that they've worked hard not to have.

So we need people to understand that these vaccines are incredibly effective. They really work. They work better than advertised. You are immune if you are vaccinated.

So like last night, you know, my wife and I and two friends, we ate in a restaurant unmasked and unashamed to be seen outside without a mask. And I think that is the message.

Last year the message was, vaccine -- that masks work. Now the message has to be vaccines work. Trust the vaccines. If you have been vaccinated and your children have been vaccinated, it is safe for them to go to school. It's safe for you to go outside. It's safe for you to go to a restaurant and be part of society again.

PHILLIP: There is a great article in "The Atlantic" this week that talk about how, you know -- a lot of this is because Trump was perceived to have really mishandled the COVID pandemic and it says in the piece if he said quote "keep schools open", then we were going to do everything in our power to keep schools closed, Monica Gandhi a professor medicine at UC San Francisco told me.

Gandhi describes herself as left of left but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a clear time line for the end of mask mandates."

So at some point do Democrats, self-described liberals, need to kind of like take a deep breath and realize ok, the science is changing, the reality may need to change for them too in terms of precautions.

BALL: Well, they're not facing a lot of political pressure to change these stances and I think it's a missed opportunity for the Republicans and it has been since Trump sort of cannonballed into the school reopening pool, you know, a little less than a year ago. Because the Republicans never articulated a message of responsible reopening.

They could have been the party that was saying when you're vaccinated, you can do everything. They have a legitimate case to make saying that this administration is doing too much to model cautiousness, whether it is in the messaging from the CDC, or in the administration in the way that they conducted, you know, the state of the union with everybody masked and distanced even though they've got vaccines if they want them.

But you do not have a Republican Party that's advocating a message of let's get everybody vaccinated and reopen responsibly because of all the turmoil that we've been talking about, because of the crazies and fringe and the anti-vaxxers that have been welcomed into the party.

That used to be a liberal new age thing being opposed to vaccines but it is increasingly becoming part this anti-science Republican (INAUDIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: It did not have to be this way, obviously, for a lot of obvious reasons.

Thank you all for joining us today.

But coming up next, reality star Caitlyn Jenner's shaky start to the California governor's recall race.

[08:47:43]

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PHILLIP: California hasn't even set a date yet for the gubernatorial recall election, but the campaign is already turning into a circus, maybe literally.

One Republican candidate businessman Johns Cox campaigned next to a 1,000-pound bear on Tuesday. But the real star of the show so far is Caitlyn Jenner. She did her first major campaign interview with Sean Hannity this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAITLYN JENNER, REALITY STAR: My friends are leaving California actually -- the guy across (INAUDIBLE) he was packing up this hangar. I said where are you going? And he says I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona. I can't take it in anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Ok. So for context, that interview was conducted in said airplane hangar.

COLLINS: Talking about someone else at an airplane hangar.

PHILLIP: Packed up his airplane hangar, is going to Arizona. I guess the question a lot of people are asking is, is there really anything real to this, to this bid? Does she really know what she's doing?

COLLINS: I think in the age of Donald Trump having just been president people are not willing to count Caitlyn Jenner out and whether or not she can actually win this. I think it's a possibility and this idea of celebrity is obviously something that's been at play in California before.

But I was reading this morning -- and different is Arnold Schwarzenegger when he won had been spending the year before campaigning for Proposition 49 in the state, pushing for that. He was kind of a known entity in not just a political -- or not just a celebrity Hollywood way. And I think that obviously benefited him.

The question is whether or not it can do that for Caitlyn Jenner.

PHILLIP: Yes. And to that, not only was Arnold Schwarzenegger a different type of celebrity candidate but California was in a different political position.

In 2003 there were 1.3 million more registered Democrats than Republicans. In 2020 there are nearly 5 million more. So it's a much more -- Democrats have a huge advantage in that state.

BALL: Well and the other that Arnold Schwarzenegger did -- like yes, pretended to actually be interested in politics before entering said field. But he also was running as much more of an Independent force.

It's such a curious decision on Caitlyn Jenner's part to tie herself so tightly to Trump and to Trumpism and to this Trumpist Republican Party that as you say is much more unpopular in California than that same Republican Party a decade ago.

But you know, you had Arnold saying let's smash the status quo. And that's what these celebrity candidates are usually about. It's a referendum on the status quo. It's asking the electorate, do you, in fact, want to get back to like normal governing? All these things that we have been talking about post-Trump.

Or is there still this appetite for everything is terrible, and we just want to upend the applecart.

PHILLIP: And she's gotten caught in the middle of this big debate within the Republican Party about trans rights. She told TMZ she doesn't think trans athletes should be able to, you know, participate in girl sports or boy sports. She herself participated in a women's golf tournament according to the "L.A. Times".

So it seems like she's kind of twisting herself a little bit to fit into this new Trumpian Republican Party that she's living in.

HERNDON: I think we know that there's only one model for running as a Republican right now and it's to follow that kind of Trumpist playbook. We also know that that doesn't really play that well in the California electorate at large. The reason the Schwarzeneggers of the world were able to succeed was ability to build that type of coalition.

I think that Caitlyn Jenner has shown an ability to run as a conservative celebrity maybe and that's why, you know, on Hannity as a first step. But we don't know if that's a full an attempt to build a winning coalition.

What we do know is true is there is a wave of anti-Newsom anger in the state.

PHILLIP: Right.

HERNDON: And that's true across conservative and maybe some progressive voices too that are upset with hypocritical leadership. Does that translates with her campaign? That's obviously unknown.

PHILLIP: Right.

P.K., does she have a chance.

[08:54:47]

KANE: A long time ago, I had a dinner out in California with your CNN colleague Mark Preston with a Democratic consultant who explained a lot of statewide races in California. They just come down to it's all advertising, all advertising. There's no retail in California.

And they know well in advance who can win and who can lose. They run the numbers. They do focus groups. But sometimes rich Californians still want to make a point and that just means the consultants on both sides make a lot of money.

PHILLIP: Really, really rich. Absolutely.

COLLINS: Maybe enough to get an airport hangar.

KANE: Yes.

PHILLIP: All right.

Well, tune in tomorrow night on "ANDERSON COOPER 360" when Dana Bash is going to sit down with Caitlyn Jenner to talk about her campaign.

But that is it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. Join us back here every Sunday at 8:00 a.m. Eastern and the weekday show at well at noon Eastern.

Coming up next, "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Among Jake's guests this morning is White House COVID response coordinator Jeff Zients, House Majority Whip James Clyburn.

And thanks again for sharing your Sunday morning with us.

For those of you in the U.S., have a very Happy Mother's Day.

[08:55:56]

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