Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Today: Trump Attacks Migrants, Warns Of "Biden Border Bloodbath"; Biden Giving Remarks on Lowering Health Care Costs; New Poll: Trump Leads By 20 Points On Economy, Immigration; Biden Holds 12-Point Lead On Abortion, 1 Point On Democracy; FBI: Crime Nationwide In Last Quarter Of 2023,Biden's Appeal To Muslim Americans Interrupted As Doctor Walks Out Of White House Meeting In Protest; Biden: "Israel Has Not Done Enough To Protect Aid Workers"; Sanders: Situation In Gaza Will Hurt President Biden; Primaries Show Biden Underperforming in College Towns. Aired 12p-12:30p ET

Aired April 03, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Elizabeth, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining me here in the CNN newsroom. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. I'll be back later tonight, 6:00 P.M. Eastern in the "Situation Room" right here back tomorrow morning, 11:00 A.M. Eastern in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Stay with CNN. INSIDE POLITICS with Dana Bash starts right now.

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Today, on INSIDE POLITICS, what future are Americans more afraid of? Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden try to win votes on what Americans are most worried about.

Trump stokes fears of American carnage at the hands of migrants, while Biden warns of an America where abortion is unavailable and health care is at risk.

Plus, Joe Biden puts out a blistering statement after the Israeli government apologizes for unintentionally killing aid workers. But some fellow Democrats say words are no longer enough.

And the special counsel does something remarkable. He puts pen to paper, blasting the judge presiding over the classified documents case for what he views as making basic mistakes that may cost him at trial.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and INSIDE POLITICS. Up first, Donald Trump is betting that he can scare voters on what he calls migrant crime into choosing him in November.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I stand before you today to declare the Joe Biden's border bloodbath, and that's what it is. It's a bloodbath. They tried to use that term incorrectly on me 2 weeks ago. You know, it's all about misinformation. That's all they do is, cheat on elections and disinformation, misinformation. Fairly closely related those two words. It's a border bloodbath, and it's destroying our country. It's a very bad thing happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Let's get straight to CNN's Alayna Treene. Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, Dana, this is clearly messaging that Trump is going to continue to use as he moves closer to November. He's leaning into his inflammatory, incendiary, and quite frankly, violent rhetoric to play on voters' fears about immigrants.

And I do want to be clear about what he's trying to do, because it's the same type of strategy we saw him use successfully in his 2016 campaign. He's using dehumanizing language to describe undocumented immigrants as violent criminals, even though available data does not support the idea that migrants are contributing to increases in crime.

And he's doing this really to drive home his point that Biden isn't protecting Americans with the way that he is handling the southern border. Take a listen to what he said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This is country changing. It's country threatening, and it's country wrecking. They have wrecked our country. We will stop the plunder, rape, slaughter, and destruction of our suburbs, cities, and towns.

The treasury will be raped, plundered, and robbed to bear to pay for welfare, free health care, free housing, food stamps, Medicaid.

I will end the carnage, bloodshed, and killing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, Dana, he's clearly trying to paint this doomsday picture of America, and it also gets into how he framed his remarks yesterday. His campaign had labeled that first again event in Michigan as, quote, "Biden's Border Bloodbath." Again, their words.

And it's a play on the language that Trump received immense backlash for just a few weeks ago when he used the term bloodbath to describe the state of the auto industry and the country if Biden were to win in November.

Now part of his strategy yesterday as well, which we have seen Trump deploy in the trail before, is to use specific stories of people who were killed by migrants who have entered the country illegally. Trump has really seized on these high profile crimes involving immigrants to try to make inroads in key battleground states.

And I do think it's also important to point out here that this is the fear mongering, that we're seeing is working. Polling shows that immigration in the border is a top issue for voters in several states, including those like Michigan and Wisconsin that are hundreds of miles away from the southern border.

BASH: Yeah. And we just saw it play big in a New York special election, also not very close to the southern border. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate it.

And while as we just heard from Alayna's report, Trump is making immigration, again, the cornerstone of his campaign. President Biden is hoping the election is about something else, health care, abortion rights.

This morning, he is at the White House. He's actually speaking right now, about what his administration has done on health care issues, specifically to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

We're going to monitor the President as he speaks. In the meantime, I want to bring in my great panel to discuss all of this. CNN's, Priscilla Alvarez, Dave Weigel of Semafor and Bloomberg, and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson.

Nia, how do you see this as different from 2020 with regard to, the framing of these issues? I don't think Trump is very different. How about Biden, aside from the obvious that Roe wasn't overturned?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. Listen, I think we have seen in this post Roe world, this be an issue that really works for Democrats. And you see Biden trying to lean into what's happening in Florida, what's happening all over the country.

[12:05:00]

Donald Trump is now kind has his back against the law. Right? He's talked about a 15 week ban. He's talked about a 16 week ban. He now says that he is going to say something about this next week. We'll see if it's different, than whatever else he said.

But you can see the Democrats really wanting to tie him in on the reality where we live now, which is the Dobbs America, where there is a patchwork of abortion rights and restrictions in many, many states. And so we'll see what happens.

You know, I think with Trump, he is very much the Trump of 2016, right? With all the rhetoric and fearmongering. And you have Democrats trying to say that abortion is part of a kind of radical agenda that Trump and Republicans will bring to America. I don't think they hit that strongly enough all the time. I think, that is I think the goal for them, and you saw that work, I think, in other elections, particularly in 2022.

BASH: And, Dave, I want to bring up part of your piece today, or maybe it was yesterday, but it really goes on to explain this bloodbath line from Donald Trump. "Trump has been warning about migrant crime and telling gruesome murder stories since he entered the 2016 presidential campaign. What's new this year, as seen in the bloodbath messaging reboot, is the confidence that doing this will cost him nothing with non-White voters."

That is so interesting. I want you to talk about that and also something we see often from Trump, which is taking a term that, Democrats, the Biden campaign used to say, look how look how horrible he is. He's he used the word bloodbath and trying to turn it on its head and apply it to his opponent.

DAVE WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Right. Which Trump started basically 48 hours after he made those bloodbath remarks after the Biden campaign started to attack. They released a video saying this, and they had this is also important for 2024.

Every Republican who commented on the issue was using the same language. Chip Roy who didn't even want to vote for Trump in the primary talked about Biden's border bloodbath. And Republicans across the country, I point out in the piece that Kelly Ayotte running for governor of New Hampshire wasn't -- couldn't even bring herself to support Trump in 2016, is now running almost every day on the threat of quote, unquote "migrant crime."

And so the entire party moved his direction, and that was really what changed in 2020 because he improved in South Texas and South Florida, because we've seen -- go to Hialeah, Florida they've road named after Trump. Because he seemed to lose nothing with Latino voters by talking this way, it became safe for everyone in the party to talk about it politically from their view.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, 30,000 foot view here. There's a candidate that talks about things in violent terms, and there's a candidate that doesn't. That's where we see a lot of this rhetoric.

Now when it comes to the use of bloodbath and migrant crime, et cetera, and Latino voters, ultimately, in talking to voters and going to some of these -- and the President's rallies, they want solutions. They kind of glaze over the rhetoric. It is alarming to them, but they want to see a solution. Something that, former President Donald Trump said was every state is a border state. He's been saying that for a while. A lot of Republicans have been saying that for a while. But frankly, they see it in a way that they didn't before.

People are seeing it in Denver, in New York City, in Washington, D.C., in Philadelphia. So you have these constituencies who are laying eyes on migrants in a way that they frankly didn't before. And so they see this as mismanaged. They see it as a problem. So while they take issue with the rhetoric, they ultimately want to see the White House provide some sort of solution.

And in the absence of that, they also don't disagree with the or they don't agree with the way that Democrats and the President are handling the issue.

BASH: And they're seeing it in large part, and I think we can't say this enough because of what the Texas Governor, Mike Abbott, did.

ALVAREZ: Yeah. Exactly. WEIGEL: Right.

BASH: Politically successfully, never mind the actual policy, but politically, he has had great success --

ALVAREZ: Yeah.

BASH: -- Sending, migrants to, blue cities, blue states. You said that people who you talk to at Biden events want solutions. Let's talk about a new Wall Street Journal poll which comes up with a lot of the very important issues that voters are likely to go, to the polls about and ranks them when it comes to Trump versus Biden.

The economy, Trump is up by 20. Immigration, not surprisingly, Trump is up by 20. Abortion, plus 12. Protecting democracy, Biden --

HENDERSON: Shocking.

BASH: Well, is it shocking? Because it's only plus 1. Is that what you mean?

HENDERSON: Yeah. I mean, it's shocking that he is only up by plus 1 --

BASH: Yeah.

HENDERSON: Against a guy who tried to overthrow democracy, very violently on January 6th. And this is something that Democrats have been hitting. Biden has given several speeches on this. They see this as a centerpiece of their efforts to get moderate voters, independent voters, suburban women voters, some of those Nikki Haley voters as well. And the idea that Biden is only up by 1, I think, is fairly shocking.

[12:10:00]

The other number is not too shocking. Right? You think about the economy. You talk to voters. They do sincerely believe that the economy was better under Donald Trump. And this is for decades. I think most voters have thought that Republicans more generally were better on the economy. And so with that that Democratic number, you know, who's better with supporting democracy is pretty shocking.

ALVAREZ: Well, it's alarming too, because it's a central tenet of the Biden campaign is protecting democracy. That is how he relaunched or he launched his reelection bid. And so that's what they're banking on in addition to abortion. So if economy and immigration continue to stack so high, then that also requires, you know, the campaign to try to frame those issues.

BASH: Let let's look at some of the battleground states that the Wall Street Journal pulled. North Carolina, Trump is up by 6. Arizona, Trump is up. Nevada, Trump is up by 4. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, obviously, you see it goes in descending order. Wisconsin, where, Trump was yesterday tied.

WEIGEL: Right. And if you keep looking at that poll, 51 percent of people across those states have been a positive view of how Trump governed as President.

BASH: Yeah. We have that. Let's put that up. Let's put that up.

WEIGEL: Yeah. That that is what the Biden campaign is fighting against. And they've got the rest of the year to try to change this, but there is a preponderance of views in the electorate that things were better when Trump was President.

And every day with -- what you see the Biden campaign doing, especially on social media, literally flashing back 4 years ago and saying, remember this COVID press conference? Remember this thing that didn't work out? Remember this Trump statement? They're trying to do that. I'm not sure it's reaching the sort of voters who skipped midterms, skipped specials to vote in every election. I'm not sure it's reaching them. That is their argument. Literally remember four years ago.

BASH: And it's not just on social media.

WEIGEL: Yeah.

BASH: We're hearing more from, senior members of the Biden administration, including the first lady. Listen to what she said this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL BIDEN, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, he's not losing in all the battleground states.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Although one.

J. BIDEN: He's coming up, and he's even or doing better. So you know what? Once people start to focus in and they see their two choices, it's obvious that Joe will win this election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: You know, you hear that a lot from campaign officials when it comes to these polling numbers. Wait until we get closer. What does it really mean now? Even the way that he brings in surrogates. Former President Barack Obama, really isn't expected to play in until after Labor Day. So their sights are certainly set on September, October when they expect voters are going to be paying more attention. But in the meantime, it's all about messaging and reminding, and seeing where that gets them.

BASH: And I just want to, before we move on to a different part of our conversation, look at crime. Because that really is the crux of where we started this segment, about what Donald Trump is doing and claiming that crime is bad and saying that it's all about migrants.

But even beyond that, look at what the FBI tells us. Hard facts, hard numbers. Murder, rape, burglary, violent crime, aggravated assault, they're all down.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Yeah.

BASH: That was that was -- the last fourth quarter of 2023, so not that long.

HENDERSON: Yeah. I think that's right. I think the problem that Democrats have is that there have been these high profile crimes. Right? Random killings of folks, and you have in Donald Trump somebody who wants to amplify them. When he went to Michigan, for instance, he was talking about a crime -- a murder of a woman there.

And so that's the problem. Numbers don't really combat people's fear and emotions, and we know that Donald Trump is so good at stoking this.

BASH: You totally set me up for something that I want to report now, which is at his rally last night in Michigan, Trump highlighted the case of Ruby Garcia, a Michigan woman who was allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant she was in a romantic relationship with. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They said she had just as most contagious laughter, and when she walked into a room, she lit up that room. And I've heard that from so many people. I spoke to some of her family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Garcia's sister said that never happened. She told a local TV station that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other relatives and slammed his effort to make her sister's case part of his campaign. No comment yet from the Trump campaign.

Now coming up next, brand new White House reaction to yesterday's Israeli strike that killed 7 aid workers. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

BASH: President Biden expressing outrage over an Israeli airstrike that the IDF says unintentionally killed 7 aid workers. But the administration is also making clear today that does not mean the President is easing up on support for Israel's goal, eliminating the Hamas terror group.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS (via telephone): While we make no bones about the fact that we have certain issues about some of the way things are being done, we also make no bones about the fact that Israel is going to continue to have American support, for the fight that they're in to eliminate the threat from Hamas.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: That after a remarkable moment inside the White House last night, a meeting meant as outreach to Muslim American leaders was interrupted when a Palestinian American doctor walked out of a meeting with the President of the United split -- of the United States rather -- he explained his decision to my colleague, Kaitlan Collins.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. THAER AHMAD, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, VOLUNTEERED IN GAZA: It was very brief comments by the President saying he wants to hear from us and he wants to listen to us. And so I spoke first, and I let him know that I am from a community that's reeling. We are grieving. We -- our heart is broken out of respect for my community, out of respect for all of the people who have suffered and who have been killed in the process.

[12:20:00]

I need to walk out of the meeting and I want to walk out with decision makers and let them know what it feels like for somebody to say something and then walk away from them and not hear them out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to talk more with the panel here about this. Dave Weigel, we have seen at virtually every event that president Biden has done and other members of the administration protesters come in recently. This is next level.

It's inside the White House, a meeting, with the President of invited guests, and this was obviously an intentional form of protest, but quite different from just somebody getting into a public event.

WEIGEL: Right. Yes. And Dr. Ahmad's -- the whole campaign, the whole ceasefire campaign has been very willing to work with the media. Dr. Ahmad was working with media, communicating really almost minutes after this walkout happened. There is basically two factions to this movement. I can say how big one is -- the other is.

One that is done with Joe Biden is not going to vote for him, is urging people to abandon the ticket completely. One that is trying to change policy by any means necessary. This kind of protest, I think there were at least 5 people who paid money to be at the fundraiser in New York last week, who interrupted, and they want to change policy , in their words, before it's too late.

This is 6 months, this coming weekend since the war began. They arguing that you cannot win -- Biden -- Joe Biden cannot win the election unless he changes policy. And they're being very forward in how they say this to the press.

BASH: Yeah, I mean, listen, this is part of the beauty of America, that people have an opportunity to either just outright protest or try to change policy. And again, it's pretty remarkable that one of the protest got this close of an audience with the President to do it in private that way. Jose Andres, who of course is the founder of World Central Kitchen, the organization that was in Gaza, trying to help feed them, wrote an op ed in "The New York Times" today reading in part, "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said of the Israeli killings of our team, 'It happens in war.' It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by the Israeli Defense Forces. It was also a direct result of a policy that squeezed humanitarian aid to desperate levels."

What are you hearing behind the scenes at the White House about how this incident, this horrific tragedy might have changed things? I will just say that I have heard that in discussions that they're having with Israel, that it's changed things there. That this was an accident. It was unintentional, and that they're thinking through different ways of prosecuting the war.

ALVAREZ: There has been simmering tensions. There have been simmering frustrations. This really raised the frustration held by president Biden and his top aides that this incident happened, and that was very clear in his statement yesterday. He used the term outrage. That is one of the strongest terms that the White House has used in talking about Israel's war against Hamas.

And they made clear and the National Security Council spokesperson, this morning, also made clear that they were frustrated by it. That they don't agree that it was the right thing to do. That too many innocent civilians are dying, and there's not enough humanitarian aid going in.

But as you mentioned there at the top, that does not change their posture that they still support Israel. There are incidents, however, that just go too far. And, of course, what's looming over all of this is that Rafah operation and whether Israel decides to move forward with that.

So far, they haven't really budged. An Israeli delegation is expected to still come to Washington in the coming week to further discuss this. But it just goes to show that these moments can really just fuel this concern within the White House and the administration.

BASH: I want you to listen to what senator Bernie Sanders said. He said it yesterday. Actually, he's at the White House right now on health care policy, but this just kind of gives a sense of the kind of pressure that President Biden is getting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Israel does not have the right to kill -- to create a situation where they're stopping humanitarian aid from getting in. The result of its children are starving to death right now. Do we want to be complicit in that? The answer, in my view, is most Americans -- and what the polling shows us -- most Americans do not want to be complicit.

If your question is, is it going to hurt the President unless he turns this around? Yeah. It will. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: Listen. I mean, he sounds like a lot of Democrats who are showing their displeasure in some of these primaries. We've seen they're basically voting against Joe Biden explicitly because of this policy around Gaza, around the war that Israel is prosecuting.

And I think the real question about this incident is, it clearly took sort of westerners to die for, it to be raised to this level. There's something like 30,000 Palestinians who've been killed in this effort. I think one big question is, does this change things? You say it changes things in terms of the IDF's prosecution of the war?

[12:25:00]

BASH: Maybe.

HENDERSON: And possibly.

BASH: Yeah.

HENDERSON: We'll see if this sort of changes the world state.

BASH: Yeah. Although, I will say -- I mean, obviously, even before this, there was -- the protests have gotten much more robust, and that's playing out on the electoral map at the ballot box.

Just quickly in Wisconsin last night, we did see on the Democratic side, the Democratic presidential primary. Obviously, Biden won overwhelmingly. But something called uninstructed, which is effectively a protest vote, got 8.3 percent.

I don't want to lose sight of the fact that there was also a protest vote on the Republican side. Donald Trump doesn't have an opponent anymore. He got 78.9 percent, Nikki Haley, got 12.7 percent, and Ron DeSantis got some too.

WEIGEL: Right. And this is that faction I was talking about that want to remain involved in the process, that are urging people stay involved in the Democratic primary, stay involved in the party. You can change the President.

The numbers were actually higher in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where the option of protesting Biden was on the ballot. It got double digits in both states -- very low double digits. But that understates how much opposition there is in the Democratic base.

The Gallup's polling in the last week showed we're down to about less than a quarter of Democrats who agree with the way Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza. I don't think there's any issue that Biden's running on right now or defending right now where he's this separated from his base -- not abortion, not the economy, not immigration, none of that.

This is the biggest problem for him within the party, not just with voters in Dearborn or Arab Americans walking out of the White House, with most Democrats. They were very unhappy with how Israel's prosecuted the war. It's changed completely from November, when a lot of Democrats were scared to talk about it.

BASH: Thank you, guys. What a great discussion. I learned a lot. Appreciate it.

Up next, the special counsel disses the judge handling the classified documents case and threatens to go over her head.

Plus, with friends like these, Marjorie Taylor Greene says the Republican Speaker is doing the dirty work of the Deep State.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)