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New Polls Show Major Problems For Biden Campaign; NYT Poll: Biden Losing Ground With Key Demographics Like Women, Young Voters, Black Voters, College Graduates; Now: Trump Speaks On 14th Amendment Decision. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 04, 2024 - 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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[12:30:20]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Looking at live pictures from Mar-a-Lago where any moment now Donald Trump is expected to speak on today's Supreme Court decision. We're going to bring that to you when it happens. But first, tomorrow could mark an all but official end to the GOP primary season and the start of the general election campaign.

And while Team Biden maintains that they are confident in their game plan, a weekend's worth of public polling has Democrats on edge to say the least.

CNN Political Director David Chalian is here at the magic wall to break it all down. The floor is yours.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. So take a look here. We got four polls over the weekend, all in the field last week that meet CNN standards for reporting. And what you see is a very similar story across all of them, Dana, which is that Donald Trump is numerically ahead of Joe Biden.

Nationally, 47-45 in the Wall Street Journal, a couple of polls, New York Times and CBS just outside the margin of error. Wall Street Journal and Fox have Trump ahead inside the margin of error. No clear leader. And if you average all the polls together, our CNN poll of polls has it 48 percent Trump, 46 percent Biden.

Again, this is national. We know about the path to 270. This is a national snapshot. And another thing to look at inside the New York Times poll is where Joe Biden is underperforming some key demographic groups that he had with him in 2020. So, again, I want to say this is a poll and these are exit polls of actual voters.

Those are two different things, but instructive to look at. Under 30, in the New York Times poll, Biden's a 12 point advantage. That's half the size of his advantage in the 2020 exit polls. Female voters tied with Donald Trump. He had a 15-point advantage. Black voters, a 43- point advantage for Biden. That was a 75-point advantage in the 2020 election.

And you see a similar story here with non-white no college voters. So voters of color without a college degree in the New York Times poll, Biden's advantage is six points. He had a 46-point advantage in the exit polls there. College graduates are the one place. The New York Times poll has a Biden advantage of 16. That's a little bit better than what he did with college graduates.

BASH: Yes, I mean, this is stunning. Just -- we're going to talk about what Democrats are saying in a second, but just women, they're going to argue and they are arguing what happened between 2020 and now is that there was a Supreme Court decision, which we can -- and then they're going to use that. We can talk about that in a second.

But one of the things that is concerning Democrats besides the demographics and the overall horserace question is the number of supporters from 2020 who now say that they don't want to vote for Joe Biden anymore.

CHALIAN: Yes. So take a look at this. In the New York Times poll, they asked voters to recall their 2020 vote, right. So among Trump 2020 voters, 97 percent say they are a Trump 2024 voter. Really, almost none of them are going to Biden in 2024.

BASH: Of course.

CHALIAN: But for Biden voters in 2020, 10 percent of them say that they Trump 2024 voters. So 10 percent of people who say they voted for Biden 2020 are now voting for Trump in this poll. 83 percent of Biden 2020 voters remain with him today.

Obviously, we always look at how people are responding to the economy. Part of this is a very positive memory on a part of a lot of voters of the Trump economy. 65 percent in the CBS poll say the Trump economy was good. Only 28 percent say it was bad.

BASH: OK, so let's talk about the question of abortion and what Democrats are saying overall. I'm sure your phone has a lot of text messages --

CHALIAN: It does.

BASH: -- your email, your inbox is quite full with Democrats saying, yes, but yes, but yes, but certainly concerned about these polls, especially in totality. But looking for a lot of silver linings as you would expect them to do, one of them is how they think abortion will still propel their voters.

CHALIAN: And beyond the polls, they point to election results --

BASH: Election results.

CHALIAN: -- on the abortion factor since 2020, in special elections, in the 2022 midterms. But in this question here in the CBS poll, Trump overturning Roe v. Wade. 19 percent say he deserves credit for that. 33 percent say he deserves blame, nearly half say neither blame nor credit.

I guarantee you, whether Joe Biden wins this election or not come November, his campaign is going to spend the entirety of the next eight months getting this number, deserves blame for overturning Roe v. Wade, much higher.

BASH: Yes, and they already are.

OK. David, always interesting. Thank you so much.

CHALIAN: Thank you.

BASH: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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[12:39:29]

BASH: As we wait for Donald Trump -- op, here he is. Let's listen.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- important decision were very well crafted. And I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs. And they worked long, they worked hard. And frankly, they worked very quickly on something that will be spoken about 100 years from now and 200 years from now.

Extremely important. Essentially, you cannot take somebody out of a race because an opponent would like to have it that way.

[12:40:03]

And it has nothing to do with the fact that it's the leading candidate. Whether it was the leading candidate or a candidate that was well down on the totem pole, you cannot take somebody out of a race. The voters could take the person out of the race very quickly, but a court shouldn't be doing that.

And the Supreme Court saw that very well. And I really do believe that will be a unifying factor because while most states were thrilled to have me, there were some that didn't, and they didn't want that for political reasons. They didn't want that because of poll numbers, because the poll numbers are very good.

We're beating President Biden in almost every poll. New York Times came out yesterday with a very big poll for us. So they didn't like that, and you can't do that. You can't do what they tried to do. And hopefully Colorado is an example will unify. I know there's tremendous support.

They brought our support up very strong in Colorado because people thought -- people in Colorado thought that was a terrible thing that they did. And while we're on the subject and another thing that will be coming up very soon will be immunity for a president and not immunity for me, but for any president.

If a president doesn't have full immunity, you really don't have a president because nobody that is serving in that office will have the courage to make, in many cases, what would be the right decision, or it could be the wrong decision. It could be, in some cases, the wrong decision, but they have to make decisions, and they have to make them free of all terror that can be rained upon them when they leave office or even before they leave office.

And some decisions are very tough. I can tell you that, as a president, that some decisions to make are very tough. I took out ISIS. And I took out some very big people from the standpoint of a different part of the world. Two of the leading terrorists, probably the two leading terrorists ever that we've ever seen in this world.

And those are big decisions. I don't want to be prosecuted for it. Another president wouldn't want to be prosecuted for it. It had a tremendously positive impact. It stopped everything cold. And sometimes you have to make those -- they were tough decisions. Sometimes you have to make decisions like that.

When you make a decision, you don't want to have your opposing party or opponent or even somebody that just thinks you're wrong. Bring a criminal suit against you or any kind of a suit when you leave office. I have that right now at a level that nobody's ever seen before. I have rogue prosecutors and I have rogue judges.

I have judges that are out of control. And it's a very unfair thing for me, but I'm serving perhaps as a sample to others of what should not be happening. When you make good decisions, and in my case, the economy was great. We didn't go into any wars. We totally defeated ISIS.

We provided the largest tax cuts in history. We provided the largest regulation cuts in history, but think of it, no wars. We beat ISIS 100 percent of the caliphate. Then there were no wars. We did a job that was great, but maybe I wouldn't have done that.

The caliphate, defeating them, was very powerful. It was going to take four years. It took me four months. But it was a very strong dictum that I gave. I said, get them. Defeat them. End it. We were fighting for 20 years against ISIS, and we did it very quickly.

I don't want to be prosecuted. In that case, it worked out very well. There will be some things that perhaps don't work out so well, but I don't want to be prosecuted because I decided to do something that is very much for the good of the country and actually for the good of the world.

A president shouldn't have that on his mind, and he has to have a free and clear mind when he makes very big decisions. Or it's going to be nothing more than a ceremonial post. You'll be president, it'll be a wonderful thing, and you won't do anything because you don't want to be hit by your opponent or hit by somebody else.

Because who wants to leave office and go through what I've gone through? I'm being prosecuted by Biden, my opponent. Because every one of these things, whether it's Fani Willis or Bragg, these are local and state, but they're in total coordination with the White House. You can't do that. It shouldn't be done.

I mean, a thing like that in the case of the D.A.'s office, they put one of the top people, maybe the second person in the Manhattan D.A.'s office to get Trump. They had a Hillary Clinton lawyer leave the law firm, very prestigious, big law firm, leave the law firm to go into the D.A.'s office to get Trump Pomerantz. It's the Pomerantz.

[12:45:05]

So he goes in to become a prosecutor, worked for the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton, goes in to prosecute Donald Trump at a local level, in total coordination with the Department of Justice, meaning Biden. And then you have the Fani Willis, or as she would say, Fani, Fani, F-A-N-I, Fani.

And she hired somebody, knew the person long before this horrible prosecution took place, and she went out and she paid him an unbelievable amount of money, more money than he ever dreamt possible. Much more money than other people that are -- that do that for a living. He never did it at all, had no experience in it at all.

And they had obviously a conflict. We don't have to go into that, but they were able to get a lot of money because it was a high profile person. Me, I'm a very high profile person. So they were able to pay him close to $1 million when he was not equipped to do the job, and she's not equipped to do the job, and that case should end immediately.

That case is so conflicted, nobody's ever seen anything like it. And then you have deranged Jack Smith, who's a Trump hater, and represents all the Trump haters. And he's going wild. He's just a wild man. He's been overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court. Went after other people over the years. He's a great failure.

But he's mean, he's nasty, he's unfair. And the judges on these cases, they're all Trump haters. Other than we have maybe one or two that I think can be fair. But you look at New York, what's happened. I mean, these people have tremendous hatred. You can't do this to a president.

And again, I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about in the future. A president has to be free. A president has to be -- if the president does a good job, I did. Some people would say a great job. But if the president does a good job, a president should be free and clear and frankly celebrated for having done a good job.

Not indicted four times, and not gone after on a civil basis, and not demanded to be to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines on something that was absolutely perfect, where there were no victims, where the financial statements were absolutely flawless, where you have disclaimer clauses.

I mean, nobody's ever had a thing like this. I wasn't given a jury, and I had a clubhouse judge just come up with this number on a perfect loan and very conservative financial statements. But even at that, if you look, the disclaimer says, don't rely on the financial statements in any way, shape, or form. Go out and do your own work.

The bank in question had the most sophisticated lawyers in the world, frankly. A very top, one of the top law firms anywhere in the country. And they can defend themselves. What guys like Bragg and Letitia James and Fani and deranged Jack Smith, what they should be doing is fighting violent crime.

And that would lead me to the end. I will say that President Biden, number one, stop weaponization. Fight your fight yourself. Don't use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent, to try and damage your opponent so you can win an election. Our country is much bigger than that.

The other thing I say to President Biden, close the borders now. This is not sustainable for our country. It's not sustainable for our cities. Our country is under siege. This is a violent thing that you've done and many people are dying. Many, many people are dying.

They die on the trip up. They die going through the border and they die in our country. But many of the people coming up are from prisons and jails. From mental institutions and insane asylums, many are terrorists, you see it, many, many are terrorists. And I believe the real number that we have right now is probably closer to 15 million people.

And by the time -- the term ends, I believe the president's term ends, I believe you'll be at close to 20 million people. That's almost larger than any state in the union. Our country, it is not sustainable. Many of these people are tough. Many of these people are bad. They come from some of the roughest countries in the world and some of the roughest prisons.

We have prisons in the Congo, in Africa coming. We have people coming from all parts of the Middle East. They're coming from Yemen, and yet you are bombing Yemen. You have to stop. You have to close the border. You have absolute authorization. You don't need Congress.

[12:50:02]

I had the safest border in the history of our country, and I didn't use Congress for it. And then I built hundreds of miles of wall. And the reason I built it and how I built it was I considered it an invasion of our country. And I took the money from the military and the Army Corps of Engineers did it with me. And we did a great job.

And we had the safest border we've ever had, and now we have the most unsafe border anywhere in the world at any time. There's never been a border like this at any country anywhere in the world. They would have fought with sticks and stones to stop the horrible situation that's occurring.

Our people can't stand it, and the people coming in really can't stand it, because they're dying. Many are dying on the trip up, and they're dying in the country. And also many of the people are criminals and they're doing tremendous harm. I call it migrant crime. It's migrant crime. It's a new category of crime.

They're hurting our country horribly and we've become a laughingstock all over the world. So I say respectfully to President Biden, you have the authorization right now. I did it. I didn't go to Congress and say, do I have the right to close? I fought Congress on it.

Close the borders. You can do it right now. You have everything. Use my policies. My policies were great. Everybody said it. Use my policies.

So just to finish, I have great respect for the Supreme Court and I want to just thank them for working so quickly and so diligently and so brilliantly. And again, this is a unifying factor. Everybody now is together and they can go after me.

As a politician, they can go after me with votes, but they're not going to go after me with that kind of lawsuit that takes somebody out of a race who's leading in this case, but even if the person wasn't leading. And I want to thank you all for being here.

Do we have any questions? Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, the poll numbers are massive for you going into Super Tuesday. We found a lot of people that were agnostic to politics in general. Seeing these legal cases --

BASH: OK, we've been listening to Donald Trump and we're going to continue to monitor as he takes questions from reporters there in Mar- a-Lago. We have been hearing him first and foremost talk about the fact that he is obviously very pleased about the Supreme Court decision to keep him on the ballot or prevent Colorado from taking him off the ballot and therefore other states as well because of the actions that he was involved with in and around January 6th.

Then he veered into lots of other areas where we definitely have to fact check. Daniel, I want to first just say the last thing he was talking about immigration, which of course, has nothing to do with the Supreme Court decision today. He said a number of things that I hope that you get into, one of which was 20 million people he believes are in this country.

We don't have any evidence to back that up and going on about the need for the president to use his executive authorities to, quote, unquote, "close the border." There is an antiquated immigration system. Congress in a bipartisan way in the U.S. Senate tried to update it at least a little bit. And it was killed because the president did not want to give Joe Biden that political win.

But let's start by talking, if you will, Daniel, about the allegations with absolutely no evidence that he was making against President Biden that he is behind all of the prosecutions that we are seeing both on a federal and state level. There is absolutely no evidence to back that up. In fact, there are -- there is a special counsel to provide not one, but two layers of distance between the president and these investigations. And that's just on a federal level.

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: That's correct. So the claim is false. Even in terms of those federal cases, there's no evidence that President Biden, you know, ordered or was behind these prosecutions. But the claim is especially nonsensical when it comes to, you know, state and local cases. His civil lawsuit from the New York attorney general. A case is brought in Georgia and New York by local district attorneys. There is zero evidence whatsoever that President Biden has somehow orchestrated these. So it's just conjured out of thin air.

I think this, as many Trump speeches are, was kind of a where do you start kind of speech from a fact check perspective. You talked about immigration. He said, you know, I didn't need to go to Congress. I just -- he suggested that he just shut the border with his own executive authority.

In fact, he tried in 2019 to impose essentially an asylum ban on people crossing between ports of entry from Mexico. And it was blocked by the courts. It was blocked by the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court declined to lift that block. So the idea that he just did it so Biden can do it is not true.

[12:55:02]

He talked about a new, supposedly new category of crime called migrant crime. This is basically propaganda. There has always been some crime by immigrants. All of the data suggests that immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than native born Americans.

And I think, Dana, it's worth noting that in 2023, preliminary data published by the FBI shows that the U.S. is either at or around the lowest violent crime rate nationally, since 1970. So this idea of a crime wave is nonsense. And then I'll just add quickly, he went through a bunch of his old favorites, so I defeated ISIS in four months.

In fact, the caliphate, so called caliphate, was liberated about two years into his tenure. He said he passed the largest tax cut in history, in fact, on a percentage basis, it's nowhere close to the Ronald Reagan tax cut. He said there are people from insane asylums all over the world coming across the border. He's provided zero evidence for this, even when I've directly asked his campaign.

So false claim after false claim, as per usual.

BASH: Daniel, thank you so much for being here to provide that kind of fact checking that only you can. Appreciate it.

We're going to quickly talk to our panel, CNN's Manu Raju, Laura Barron-Lopez of the PBS NewsHour, Seung Min Kim of the Associated Press. I'm glad that one of the many things that Daniel just said was about this notion that President Biden can use his executive action.

I had the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on yesterday and I asked about any future executive action that they will use and he made that point that Daniel did that Donald Trump did use his -- the power of his pen without Congress and the courts overturned him.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And look in the senator who -- the Republican senator who led that effort the bipartisan bill that Donald Trump effectively killed said that that deal needed to go into law to give Joe Biden the power to effectively close the border.

He says that essentially what we are seeing in the last several months that would not happen if that deal were to become law but that is obviously not the message that you're going to hear from Republicans and Trump who came out and killed that even before it was even revealed.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, there is -- the president and the White House is considering some type of executive action, which Seung Min has also reported, but I mean, again, it would likely face lawsuits from the progressive wing, from immigration advocates, and so that's something that we're seeing the president try to more forcefully act on. But, of course, it's not going to be without legal challenges.

BASH: Seung Min, let's go back to the reason why he gave this speech and the reason why we took him live, because there was a monumental Supreme Court decision that happened this morning, directly about his ability to be on the ballot for -- generally speaking, but in the short term contest that are going to happen tomorrow.

The Supreme Court says, yes, he can be on the ballot, Colorado was wrong to take him off. And then that was a sweeping decision.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure, sure. And yes, a big decision or a big victory for President Trump. And listening to his remarks, I was really interested on how much of the -- of his remarks he spent focusing on the immunity case, which is kind of his next big legal hurdle that will be facing aside from the hush money payments, a criminal case starting in a couple of weeks, because that shows you where his mind is.

He is really thinking about the fact that he is trying to make the case that president, no matter what I -- what -- no matter what he does, is immune for his official acts in office. And that is just -- that goes to this whole legal strategy of how he's been trying to delay every single proceeding possible.

Obviously, having the Supreme Court hear those arguments in the week of April 22nd, delaying those federal cases further is part of that strategy, and hopefully -- he's hoping that strategy takes him all the way through November and beyond.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: Go ahead.

RAJU: In that immunity case, let's not forget what they argued in the D.C. circuit that Donald Trump, if he were president and -- if a president ordered the execution of an opponent from SEAL Team 6, that he could not be prosecuted unless he were impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate, then the prosecution can actually occur.

That's one level of argument. That we'll see how his opponents take advantage of that if they do. And I think what's also been -- also is Trump comes out and rails against all the prosecutions, the fact that Joe Biden has not said really anything about any of these criminal charges, they've tried to show that they had no involvement whatsoever, that has essentially created a vacuum of sorts, allowed Trump to come in and sort of define all these criminal charges or prosecutions against him as a political witch hunt.

Will Joe Biden change that strategy --

BASH: Yes.

REID: -- as we head into November?

BASH: Yes. So far they're allowing the -- their allies to do that and he's trying to stay away from it. That's a good question. Will that change?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Two other quick points on things that Trump said. On the migrant crime wave, which I know Daniel tackled and there is no migrant crime wave occurring, I was just down at the border and I spoke to some migrants that were coming across through the CBP 1 app that the administration has asked them to use.

They were young mothers, 22-year-old mothers who came alone with their children on this difficult journey and just were looking for this better life and trying to find jobs. And so that's on that. And then also on him attacking prosecutors and judges, we've seen where this has led before, which is when he does that, they then deal with death threats --

BASH: Yes.

BARRON-LOPEZ -- and they also are doxxed, and it's a lot of impact on those prosecutors and judges themselves.

BASH: Yes. Very, very important points. All of them. Thank you so much for being here to walk us through it. Give us your reporting and all of the context that you have based on your reporting.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.

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