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Key GOP Senators Dismiss Biden's Infrastructure Counteroffer; New Book: Obama Advised Biden Throughout Campaign. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 24, 2021 - 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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[12:30:44]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Bipartisan infrastructure talks on the brink of collapse as Republicans balk at the White House latest $1.7 trillion counteroffer, this just days before President Biden's Memorial Day deadline, that's when he said he wanted palpable progress. His press secretary, today just moments ago, trying to put pressure on the Republicans.

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JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Our concessions went 10 times as far as theirs. So the ball is in their court. We are waiting their counter proposal. We would welcome that. We're eager to engage and even have them down here to the White House.

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KING: Back with us CNN's Manu Raju, POLITICO's Laura Barron-Lopez. So Laura, let's start with that now it's -- we're in the inevitable finger pointing phase. Republicans say the President has to do more but the White House says the Republicans have to do more. Let's just show the gap, the money gap right here. The original White House proposal 2.25 trillion, the President counters with 1.7 trillion. He says I'm being reasonable. I'm coming down.

The Republicans right now publicly are at 568 billion, although several have said they're willing to go I think even Leader McConnell on the Senate side, maybe somewhere in the ballpark of 800 billion, but that's still less than half. So they are miles apart on money, miles apart on definition. And a lot of people are starting to say, you know, fish or cut bait, cut a smaller deal, Mr. President, then try to do something else with Democrats or just say this ain't going to work, which is it?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there's an increasing number of Democrats that are telling Biden that they should just cut bait and push everything through reconciliation. But of course, Biden genuinely would like to get a bipartisan deal if he could get one. But as you said, John, they're a trillion dollars apart. That's just the top line. They're also a part on pay for is how they're going to pay for the bill. And Biden's red lines on that that he doesn't want to tax anyone that's making less than 400,000. So given that, and that Republicans want to go towards user fees, it's really hard to see where they come together, especially by this coming weekend, which is the so called, you know, self-imposed deadline where Biden wanted to reassess where they were at.

KING: Right. Welcome to the 2022 politics that overlay every conversation, but including this one, the White House press secretary just said that it's the Republicans trying to raise taxes on working class Americans through these user fees, tolls, things like that. So let's listen to a couple of the key Republicans here. If you're trying to cut a deal, you want Susan Collins, right. She's the Senator from Maine who's always bipartisan. Roy Blunt, he can make deals. He's leaving you think he might be inclined to cooperate.

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SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I was glad that the President put a counteroffer on the table. We're still pretty far apart. But this is the test. This will determine whether or not we can work together in a bipartisan way on an important issue.

SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-MO): Our biggest gap is not the money. Our biggest gap is defining what infrastructure is.

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KING: On the last point, you know, the White House proposal, they call it human infrastructure, health care to home health care for senior citizens, for example, other things that might -- you might not consider physical infrastructure, like roads and bridges, and broadband internet is now a part of that. But to Senator Collins point, you know, we're just talking about police reform. It's a major national issue everywhere, rural communities different than urban communities, but it's a major issue ever. She singles this one out, if we can't agree on this, then we can't work together on anything.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, the infrastructure has been an issue that has actually divided the two parties for some time, and it's all about the financing. And that is why they have -- you think that roads and bridges and everything that people could get together behind but they can't because of how to pay for it.

Now, there's also a problem for Biden on the Democratic side on this, because on the politics and the process, because the concern among people like Joe Manchin is that they don't want to do this all alone. They think that they need to work with Republicans, and they're not going to support going through this procedure, budget reconciliation, that can avoid a fellow Republican filibuster, so they can pass it just with 51 votes in the Senate.

But there's also a process problem because the senate parliamentarian who decides what can be included in reconciliation might limit the scope of Joe Biden's ambitions ultimately here. So it's difficult, which is why the White House is trying to get that bipartisan deal. It's the first priority, but still, can they get there? It just seems unlikely at the moment.

KING: Right. And Bernie Sanders, you've mentioned Joe Manchin in the middle of the Democratic Party, or to the right of the Democratic Party in the middle of the Congress. And then there's Bernie Sanders, who says if they're not coming forward, we've got to go forward alone, so this was supposed to be the big week. We shall see as we go through it.

[12:35:04]

Up next several researchers from a lab in Wuhan, China hospitalized back in 2019. Does these raises new questions about the origins of the coronavirus?

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KING: New questions today about the origin of the coronavirus CNN has told there was U.S. intelligence noting that several researchers at a lab in Wuhan China had to be hospitalized back in November 2019 after getting sick with an unknown illness. The Wall Street Journal was first to report this intelligence detailing the mystery illnesses at the lab. This reporting now again, raising questions about when and where the coronavirus started spreading. Let's check in with our CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood, she's following this from the State Department. Kylie, what do we know?

[12:40:12]

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well -- report --

KING: Sorry there. We're having some issues with Kylie's shot. We'll take a quick nap back. We'll have a quick break. We'll be right back. Sorry about that.

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[12:45:10]

KING: A new 2020 campaign book includes some fascinating new details of several major twists in that campaign from the behind the scenes role of Barack Obama to Joe Biden's last minute hesitation over picking Kamala Harris to the late maneuvering that led to that primary endorsements that changed everything for then candidate and now President Biden. You can see the book cover here, "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump."

It's my Atlantic staff writer Edward-Isaac Dovere who is with me right now. Thank you so much for this. I'm going to hold up my copy here. For a political reporter, we call these candies, right? This is free candy, because it was a great, fascinating campaign, this incredibly diverse Democratic field. So even if you think you know the dynamics, you read a great book like this by a great reporter and you're learning these new things, including Joe Biden would not be president today, if not for the endorsement just before the South Carolina primary of Congressman Jim Clyburn.

Joe Biden had lost New Hampshire, lost Iowa, lost Nevada. And you say there was a chance at least a slight chance it wouldn't happen, when Biden was tailspinning after New Hampshire, Clyburn's top political aide, Antjuan Seawright, headed to New York for a meeting at Mike Bloomberg's campaign headquarters. We're trying to get my guy to endorse your guy, Seawright told an aide, explaining his presence and he made his way out of the meeting. After Bloomberg's belly flop in the Vegas debate and the Nevada results, Clyburn was back leaning toward Biden. We would live in a different world. But that not happened.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: We probably would. Biden was probably going to win South Carolina no matter what, but to win it by as big of a margin as he did, and in the way that he did that change the entire race, that race remember that South Carolina primary Saturday, Super Tuesday is three days later, and everything changed in the 72 hours there, the chapter title is 72 hours to change the world. And Clyburn was a huge, huge piece of that.

If Biden hadn't gotten to second place in Nevada, Clyburn was wavering, thinking he can't endorse even as much as he likes Biden and wants to endorse him. He was determined to stop Bernie Sanders from being the nominee. And he wasn't going to be just throwing on to a campaign that wasn't working on its own.

KING: You mentioned Bernie Sanders. So I'm going a little bit out of the order I planned here, which is one of the great things about campaign books is they take us back, but they're also relationships in the here and now --

DOVERE: Yes.

KING: -- that these people read about, and it's like you thought, what back then. And so Chuck Schumer is the Senate Democratic Leader right now the majority leader, Bernie Sanders is one of his senators. And you talk about during the campaign, Chuck Schumer was telling Democratic colleagues that Sanders at the top of the ticket would lose the White House and more Senate seats, but then he didn't feel he could assert that publicly. It must be fun meetings now once Bernie reads this.

DOVERE: Well, I hope a lot of people read it. The thing about this campaign is that we were living through a period where obviously, most of the attention was on Donald Trump because of what was going on every day. But there was this whole campaign unfolding and this whole existential process going on for Democrats that of course, they're the ones in power now.

It seems to me like most of what happened was missed. And thankfully, I've been able to get a lot of the reporting that gets to other points in this. You know, for Republicans, this is a book that tells you about what it is that they're facing now. For Democrats, it's how they got to this point.

KING: Right. And where do they go from here still because many of these conversations that we're playing out in the primaries will continue through the Biden presidency. One of the interesting connective tissues, if you will, is the role of Barack Obama, the last Democratic president. Every candidate wants to at least be on his good side, right? If you're Joe Biden, you're his Vice President. So I want to read about this, that relationship as you go through Obama advising Biden throughout.

Biden was fine with forgiving Harris for going after him in the debate. He's the only Irishman who doesn't hold a grudge, Anita Dunn said of him. But he worried that their past would get in the way of turning the intimate relationship he wanted to recreate. Obama tried not to have a choice of his own, but he nudged Biden to move on. You called me unqualified to be president, Obama reminded him, which he did.

DOVERE: He did. And you know, at this point in the Obama-Biden White House at 12 years ago, Obama and Biden were not getting along very well. And that first year was rough times for them. And that was another thing that Obama had reminded Biden that the brotherly relationship that they developed which is so strong and so emotional and reaches into their families, too, is something that developed over time.

And Obama was saying to Biden, look, you need to pick a candidate that's going to help you win the presidency. And this idea that you need to be best friends right away, give it time it can develop, it happened with us.

KING: I love this piece where Pete Buttigieg is talking to the former president, and he hears one thing the former president thinks he's saying something entirely different. Obama saw the call as starting to talk Buttigieg down, pushing him to consider that as impressive as his caucus wins had been, he should be thinking -- he should still be thinking ahead to how to be in a good position when he lost. This was another case of Obama's inflated sense of his own Jedi powers. He was trying to guide Buttigieg toward thinking about dropping out, but that's not the message Buttigieg heard.

It is true, and I love the way you put it there. He was the first black president. He is a huge presence in the Democratic Party, but sometimes he does think he has these Jedi powers.

[12:50:00]

DOVERE: Well, and all of the candidates were turning to him as a report in the book over and over again and he was checking in in this way that had never been reported before with Bernie Sanders, with Joe Biden, with Elizabeth Warren, with Pete Buttigieg constantly saying, hey, how's it going, getting ready for a moment that he knew would come when he would probably have to steer the primary toward a resolution.

He saw the divisions in the Democratic Party. He knew that he was going to probably be the only one who could solve it. But even as he's talking to them, some of the candidates say like, oh, it's a great honor. And they're sort of overwhelmed by it. But Pete Buttigieg wasn't ready to get out of the campaign just quite yet.

KING: Not just yet. And you mentioned another piece of Obama, when Joe Biden was thinking about a running mate, and he had Susan Rice on his list, Obama's former national security adviser. And he said, yes, be a good governing partner. But Obama's advice was you report Harris would be better politically in the election, and they would build the relationship over time.

You also report about how the Biden thought about Elizabeth Warren, highly is a chance that, Biden's inner circle remained suspicious. Warren could be a pain who rarely saw a line between right and self- righteousness, and the notion of a vice president who would be forever on a mission and who carefully studied how to lean on the levers of power gave them nightmares of late nights in the West Wing, wondering what she might be up to over in her office. Could they trust her?

So there was a Warren dynamic you report in the very end. There was also could it be Governor Whitmer in the end before he got to Harris?

DOVERE: Yes. Well, Warren, of course, Biden had spent a lot of time talking to her even before the 2020 campaign, you go back to 2016, or even 2015, when Biden was thinking about getting into the 2016 race, and I reported the book he had gotten very close. And to -- saying to Elizabeth Warren outright, why don't you just be my running mate? We'll announces a ticket together. And he continued over the 2016 race to say she would have been great if I had run, she would have been with me, urging, saying Hillary Clinton should have picked Warren as the running mate.

And then when it gets to 2020, as Biden last summer is thinking about a running mate. He was very drawn to Gretchen Whitmer. They had developed this really close rapport very quickly over the course of just a few years of knowing each other. And Biden as a report in the book, it came, he invited her to the beach house that he has in Delaware, was talking with her, connecting with her over her father dying of the same brain cancer that killed his son Beau and seeing her as an ideological partner. Very different kind of choice than Kamala Harris ultimately was.

KING: And lastly, an issue we're still living with now with this Arizona quote unquote, audit. You do write about how the Biden campaign understood that if Trump lost it would not be calmly.

DOVERE: Right. They knew early out there was planning going on from almost this point of last year for what would happen if it were a very close result, or even if it were a definitive result, as it was to see how Trump would try to fight this. There were lawyers working for the Biden campaign, not officially but who put together model briefs and all sorts of other information so that they would be ready. Whatever court filing was done by Trump ally, they would have a response essentially ready to go. And that was something that they knew they would probably need. They didn't turn out exactly as they anticipated. Nobody was expecting the Capitol riot.

KING: Nothing does turn out exactly as you anticipated. Edward-Isaac Dovere, this is the book folks, you should pick it up, it's a lot of fun, not only about the campaign pass, but about the current dynamics in the Democratic Party. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.

DOVERE: Thanks John.

KING: Thank you.

[12:53:21]

Up next for us, Ryanair calls it an act of piracy. More on the international outrage over flight safety after a plane was unexpectedly forced to land in Belarus this weekend.

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KING: Topping our Political Radar today, global condemnation and outrage excuse me for the authoritarian leader of Belarus over alarming steps taken to arrest and opposition activists and journalists. That activists removed from a commercial airliner intercepted by a fighter jet forced to land in Minsk. Ryanair calls what happened in active state sponsored piracy. The White House Calls it shocking, noting that American citizens were aboard that plane. There's now an international call for an investigation into whether it's still safe for any airlines to fly over Belarus.

President Biden today dispatching the Secretary of State Tony Blinken to the Middle East, Secretary Blinken will visit Jerusalem and Ramallah. Spokesman says this is a follow up on the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire and hopefully to reduce the risks of more violence.

A new watchdog report today reveals that back during the Trump administration, immigration and customs enforcement deported some parents without giving them the opportunity to take their children with them. That report from the Homeland Security Department's inspector general says ICE removed at least 348 parents without documenting that they wanted to leave their children here in the United States that contradicts Trump administration claims at the time that those parents opted to leave their children behind.

Another audit of 2020 ballots now moving forward in Georgia's most populous county, a judge ruling absentee ballots in Fulton County can be unsealed for examination. Georgia election officials, important to note they are Republicans, insist there is absolutely no merit for these claims of fraud.

And an Arizona the so called audit in Maricopa County restarts today. Arizona Secretary of State says the voting machines being probed will now likely need to be replaced at taxpayer expense for future elections. All thanks to the big lie.

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KATIE HOBBS (D), ARIZONA SECRETARY OF STATE: Across the board voters in Arizona, across political party lines realize that this is really making a mockery out of our elections and a mockery out of Arizona. Again when the people in charge of our elections running the elections become more focused on the outcome than the process, we are in huge trouble. (END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:00:09]

KING: Thanks for joining us at the start of the work week. Hope to see back here this time tomorrow. Don't go anywhere, busy News Day, Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.