Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

House Freedom Caucus Wrestles With Its Future Amid Split Over Tactics And Trump; Schiff Raised $8.1 Million In Previous Quarter In Senate Race In California; Biden Has Put Family At The Center Of His Public Life. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired July 10, 2023 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:07]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You are still running around the Capitol every single day. Have you seen these cracks become bigger and bigger?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no question about it. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is a prime example of it. She is obviously someone on the far right of her conference, but she is not viewed as welcome within the House Freedom Caucus because of her alliance with Kevin McCarthy.

She's made a strategic decision to ally with them. She wants some key committee assignments. She supported him. But as a result, these members of this group simply just do not trust her, which is why she got kicked out of the group, which is a pretty remarkable statement in and of itself.

And it's not insignificant to talk about this because they are the ones who can really hold things in limbo in the House. Just a few weeks ago, a handful of them decided to essentially paralyze the House for about a week because they did not get their say on the way things should go moving forward on spending.

As a result, Kevin McCarthy had to cut a deal and to agree to move forward on spending levels to fund the government at a much lower level than what he agreed on in the debt limit deal. And that could potentially lead to a big shutdown fight in the fall. So these members and what they decided to do and their tactics have huge implications in Congress and on Washington.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE: But you do see this from you and I covered Congress together. You've seen this in the past too, right? There are conservative leaders that sometimes decide they want to actually have the controls and get things done. We saw it with Jeb Hensarling, who is the head of the Republican Study Committee.

You saw it with Mike Pence, who went from the head of the Republican Study Committee into Republican leadership and went into the fold. And by doing that, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene has done, just like Jim Jordan has done, you do risk eroding your cred with the more rabble rousing types. BASH: Yes, John Boehner started out as a rabble rouser and then he

became speaker of the House. But I think that it's important to talk about what this means in the broader scheme of things within the Republican Party.

Because as I'm reading this and we're talking about this, I'm thinking about the fact that the Freedom Caucus was formed to be a fiscally conservative group and to keep the Republican leadership on track on that. And just like so much of the Republican Party, it has been subsumed by the personality cult of Donald Trump.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I was actually wondering this because I haven't covered Congress, so I'm curious about how much of these cracks within the Freedom Caucus really started happening when it came to former President Donald Trump, because that's what you end up seeing.

At the end of the day, when you're hearing these various parts of the Freedom Caucus talk, it always seems to come back to the former president. Even if you look at the Speaker's fight, right? You had people that were saying in the Freedom Caucus who were saying, we don't want to back Kevin McCarthy. Then you have Trump out there saying it. Then you start to see some members of the Freedom Caucus who are actually close to former President Trump. Marjorie Taylor Green, one of them, really coming out strong for Kevin McCarthy, just like Trump did. And then you start to see that break in unification.

So it makes me wonder how much of these cracks started with the former president.

RAJU: Most of it did.

HOLMES: Yes.

RAJU: The difference between ideology versus personality, because there are lots of ideologically driven members who believe in smaller government cutting spending going much further than their leadership is going.

Donald Trump grew government. He grew spending, and they still align themselves with Trump. And in talking to a number of those members, a lot of them simply won't say they'll support Trump again or they're backing someone else, like Bob Good or Chip Roy. Not Chip Roy backing Ron DeSantis, for instance.

BASH: Yes.

RAJU: A big change in the way they dealt with them.

BASH: OK, I want to be sure to get to some new fundraising numbers that we have. The end of the quarter happened at the end of June, and now we're starting to see campaigns put out their numbers.

First of all, let's just look at the broader. Look at that. Adam Schiff, who's one of three prominent Democrats in the United States House running for Senate even though there's no open Senate seat. Maybe there will be eventually.

But Adam Schiff, $8.1 million. $8.1 million. And then you have Colin Alred, who is running for Senate in Texas, and then it goes down. By the way, John Tester, $5 million, that's a lot of money in Montana. Montana is not expensive.

OK, the other thing we want to say is that if you look at all of those names, keep it up there. You know what we're missing? A Republican.

All of those top fundraisers, they are all Democrats. The Republican who came the closest is Bernie Moreno, who is running for Senate for, for the Senate seat in Ohio. He wants to run against Jared Brown. He got $2.2 million.

It's kind of incredible how much the Republican I mean, excuse me the Democrats have pulled in when it comes to their fundraising haul.

KUCINICH: And I'm sure Democrats hope these points to some early enthusiasm for their candidacies. Now, Schiff had boost because the House decided to censor him, and --

BASH: Yes.

KUCINICH: -- that definitely was an inkind donation to his Senate campaign.

[12:35:08]

But you know, when you look at someone like Tester, when you look at some of the other senators, I think it's setting us up to be a very pricey and competitive 2024 in those races.

BASH: Yes, it is. And I also just want to say and we could talk about this another time that Republicans in Nevada got candidate that they're hoping will be somebody who can eventually win the primary and beat the incumbent Democrat.

There so much to talk about. This is so much fun.

Up next, a column underlines a family issue that contradicts Joe Biden's image. We're going to talk about that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:40:13]

BASH: Family is the beginning, middle and end. Those are President Biden's words. But how much they are worth depends on how you count. That's Maureen Dowd's argument in this weekend's New York Times. Her column Saturday Headline is stinging it's seven Grandkids, Mr. President.

The headline is a rebuttal to a piece of reporting from the papers Katie Rogers about Hunter Biden's daughter, the four-year-old lives in rural Arkansas. Her mother sued for child support and reached a settlement with the President's son. According to the Times, the President does not acknowledge the girl

and he expects his staff to follow his lead. Quote, in strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren. That's according to two people familiar with the discussions. Again, according to the Times.

Dowd finds that anathema to decency and to the Biden brand. Quote, The President's cold shoulder and heart is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it's out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead. And our panel is with us now.

This is a story that is sad and disturbing on so many levels. Yes, it is political for a couple of reasons. Number one, yes, Republicans are using it and are going to take advantage of it in a way that is unfortunate and inappropriate.

But the reason they are doing that is because and able to do that is because of the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be. Because it's who he says he is and it's somebody who is a family man. That's what we see all of the time. This is what Joe Biden said just in April, at the end of April.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Best part of it all, I have six grandchildren and I'm crazy about them. I speak to them every single day. Not a joke. Matter of fact, I just got finished going through the calls and only one of them answered the phone. Guess what? They're crazy about me because I pay so much attention to them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It's complicated. Families are really, really hard, especially when you have issues that we have seen in this one. But he's also the president. And again, he also has a political brand.

KUCINICH: And I think the striking thing in that great Katie Rogers piece if you haven't read it, you should read it is that this is all revolving around a four-year-old who has knowledge of who her paternal grandfather is. And that, I think, is the hard thing to reconcile both politically and just reading it as a human on this earth. It is so incongruent to who we've been told Joe Biden is for ever.

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: Well, and also just who he has presented himself as I was at Bo Biden's funeral. I was covering it for the White House at the time, for CNN, and I just remember watching him walk down to that casket with all of his grandkids hanging off of him with his children around him. I mean, he was the clear patriarch of the family, and it was clear how much he cared about them and they cared about him.

And so it's not just what we've been told about him. It's also how he's presented himself. And when you listen to that after reading the story, it does break your heart out of the political realm because you know that there's a 7th grandchild out there who is listening to that or might listen to it at some point and know that she's not getting a call every day.

BASH: Let me read a little bit more of Maureen Dowd's column. She said, but the President can't defend Hunter on all his other messes and draw the line at accepting one little girl. You can't punish her for something she had no choice about. The Biden should embrace the life Hunter brought into the world, even if he didn't consider her mother the dating type.

RAJU: Yes. And the President's going to have to answer questions about this. It's going to come up on the campaign trail. The White House has not wanted to engage about these questions, given how sensitive it is, given that it's a family issue, given that there is a little girl whose life is being discussed around all of this.

But he is the President of the United States. This is his image, and this is a question that he's going to continue to come up on the campaign trail. The question for me is how does he address us and does he embrace her as his 7th grandchildren?

BASH: And, you know, I've heard from Democrats who've said two things that seem contradictory, but both can be true. On the one hand well, wait a minute, this is MAGA and Republican lawyers have gone to this woman who is a mother of this child and helped support her and help support lawsuits.

[12:45:09]

Maybe that's true, but does that matter when you're talking about a four-year-old girl? And then on the flip side, I've talked to Democrats who very much love Joe Biden, who say that this is kind of devastating to the image of who he is.

KUCINICH: And how he addresses it is going to matter. It really will. And you're right, Manu. He's going to have to, because they can't control that access, you know, in perpetuity because we're talking about a presidential campaign here.

BASH: Again, families are complicated. This is all complicated. And I guess we'll just leave it there. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:25]

BASH: It's the 2024 battle of the Bros. From Francis Suarez to Vivek Ramaswamy, even 69-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. candidates are framing the race for the White House as a CrossFit competition. POLITICO put it this way the 2024 presidential contest has careened into kind of a testosterone primary, a frenetic, fit boy summer sidequest in which candidates are drawing fewer contrasts on policy, improving more keen on comparing feats of strength.

All the while, the leading candidates are 77 years old Donald Trump and America's first octogenarian President Joe Biden. Let's discuss this. Let's start by just putting up a tweet from Mayor Francis Suarez. Name another presidential candidate who can play 6th in a 5k with a 24 and a half minute runtime. Go name them.

RAJU: I can't.

KUCINICH: That alone is really the -- that's going to be what makes him break through. But no, listen, I think because of the age of the top candidates.

BASH: Yes, that's why.

KUCINICH: That is why you're seeing this. Look at me vitality. Look at all the sports I do.

HOLMES: What do you mean? Former President Trump is the healthiest man that's ever lived.

KUCINICH: According to his doctor.

HOLMES: According to his doctor.

BASH: Yes, but on that, ASA Hutchinson is 72 years old.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: It's actually kind of surprised me, and that is what he wants people to see, of course, when he talks about his fitness.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ASA HUTCHINSON (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I still play full court basketball, and so I've been blessed with good health. Now, it's also a question of what the alternatives are. Whenever you look at Donald Trump and you look at Joseph Biden, I'm bringing youthful vigor to the campaign.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, look, this is all part of the narrative about Trump and Biden's age. It started with Nikki Haley or suggesting that there should be competency tests for people over a certain age while affecting, of course, Trump and Biden. And, you know, would do voters -- how much do voters' care about whether you can run, how fast you can run at 10k? That's one thing.

But it will be the argument perhaps the candidate can make that generational argument. Maybe they can win over some voters in primaries, but that's one --

BASH: Are they onto something here? Should there be an actual race instead of just a metaphoric race strength?

HOLMES: Maybe. That looks more fun.

BASH: Battle of the network start. You guys have no idea.

RAJU: World's Strongest Man competition.

KUCINICH: I was going to go full American gladiator.

BASH: Okay, but in all seriousness. No, there is no seriousness. In all seriousness. It is a question of whether or not what they are doing with the running, with the tennis, with the weightlifting, with the full court basketball, whether that does matter when it looks like, unless something dramatic changes, you are going to have two people.

And by the way, there's no argument that Joe Biden, for his age is not a very physically fit person. I mean, that's not the question. The question is whether or not people want somebody who is going to physically run or somebody who is going to know how to run the country.

HOLMES: I don't know that it matters at the end of the day, in terms of physicality. I think that there is an argument to be made about generational change. Right. I mean, just in terms of policy and understanding younger generations that are literally going to be the voters for the next several years, particularly as this president, next president takes office.

So I think that is a real argument. But whether or not people are going to base that off of how fast you can run a 5k in Iowa, I don't see that happening.

RAJU: I mean, it's also a risk. It's a risk of being mocked, right? As if you --

BASH: Isn't that what's happening right here?

RAJU: Yes. Exactly. You want to promote how young and youthful you are, but then you get ridiculed in the process. There's a little bit of balance here, but you're right. They're trying to show that they can connect with younger voters, people who don't relate to the 70- year olds and 80-year olds in the race. But a lot of that's going to have to do with the issue. It's not just about how much you can pump in terms of how -- much iron you can pump.

KUCINICH: I just keep on thinking about the Paul Ryan photo shoot. It was like part lifting, part jazzer size. But -- so -- it is a gimmick for sure, but I think the acuity and how we see them on the debate stage is probably going to matter a lot more than --

BASH: Than a bro off.

KUCINICH: Than they're benching.

BASH: Do you really think so?

KUCINICH: Yes.

BASH: This is why Jackie comes to the table for her political analysis.

[12:55:04]

Thanks, guys. Up next, the chain of command broken by a Republican blockade. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Topping our political radar, a break in the chain of command for the first time in more than a century. It's happening because of Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville's protest of the Pentagon's abortion policy.

[13:00:03]

Moments ago, Defense Chief Lloyd Austin waded directly into that political fight, one that's leaving the Marines without a Senate- confirmed leader.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We have a sacred duty to do right by those who volunteer to wear the cloth of our nation. I am also confident that the United States Senate will meet its responsibilities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Thanks so much for watching.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts now.