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Landsman Becomes First Dem To Win Re-election In OH-1 In 40 Years; Group Of Neo-Nazis Marched Through Columbus, OH On Saturday; Trump Allies Hunt For Partisans As Purge Of Federal Workers Looms; WSJ; Trump Draft Order Would Create Military Review Board To Recommend Firings Of Top Generals And Admirals; Trump's Mass Deportation Plans Could Spike Food Prices. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 18, 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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[12:30:39]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: ?Democrats continue to play the blame game after their party lost the White House, the House, and the Senate, and, excuse me, failed to win back the House, I should say. Ohio Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman is one of the few Democrats who can say this, he did better this year than in 2022. And he is the first Democrat to win re-election in his Cincinnati area district in 40 years.

So what can he tell other Democrats? Based on his lessons. Well, he's right here. Congressman Landsman is joining me in the studio. Thank you so much for being here. So --

REP. GREG LANDSMAN (D), OHIO: Thank you for having me.

BASH: So what is the answer to that? And as I ask you, I just want to sort of drill down a little bit. You won in 2022 by a five-point margin of victory.

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: You're currently -- it's not done, you're currently leading by nine percentage points.

LANDSMAN: Yes. I think the answer is be normal, be pragmatic, be bipartisan. That, you know, one of the lessons to learn from this campaign and the results is that people are very frustrated. They're frustrated with the economy. They're frustrated with politics and the status quo of both.

And the fact that the system is rigged really for the super wealthy and the powerful and they want elected officials that are going to fix it. And, you know, if you show up and you're part of their lives and you're working on issues that they care about, they're going to send you back.

BASH: I mean, just to ask you a very obvious question, isn't it easier to do that when you actually do live in the district? You're representing, you know, 750,000 people. As opposed to being a Democratic candidate who had 107 days to campaign, or is it much more deep rooted than that with regard to problems that Democrats are having across the board?

LANDSMAN: I think that's a -- it's a really good point. I mean, one of the reasons why I think I and others did well is because not only do we have a district that we represent, but that we're -- we spend a lot of time back home. I did over 20 town halls. I do so many community conversations and forums and tours, so people know me.

And I do think that's obviously much harder to do when you're running for president and you only have 100 days. I think the challenge is that -- for Harris was that 65 percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.

BASH: Yes.

LANDSMAN: They're mad. They're mad about the economy. They're mad about politics. And even though Trump represents the status quo, in my opinion, the status quo where the billionaires and the super wealthy and the big corporations are taking more and more of our power and wealth, she was seen as the incumbent. And that was it.

I mean, I think that was the biggest, you know, takeaway, which was she got tagged with being responsible for everything, even though the parts of the system that are broken and are so frustrating are much more based on the policies he represents than anything else.

BASH: Your district obviously went blue --

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- with you winning there. The state, Sherrod Brown lost --

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- Democrat -- long-time serving Democrat, Sherrod Brown lost. Bernie Moreno won, obviously Donald Trump won. Ohio is a red state, presidentially, and has been for a few cycles. What can you work with Donald Trump on?

LANDSMAN: Well, any number of things that are going to, you know, strengthen our democracy. I'd love to work with the president on -- or president-elect on ending voter suppression, ending partisan gerrymandering, ending dark money. I don't think that's going to happen, but I would love to work with him --

BASH: OK, now, meanwhile, back on planet Earth, what do you think you can get done with him?

LANDSMAN: You know, it's not clear. I mean, you know, the question is, is, you know, is he going to leave the chaos and extremism behind? So far, based on these appointments, the answer is no. I'd love to be able to work with him on the border.

There's a bipartisan border fix that he should support. That should come well before any of the mass deportation work that they're trying to do. Secure the border first. But let me -- on the Ohio Sherrod thing --

BASH: Yes.

LANDSMAN: -- Sherrod represents the best of Democrats in terms of standing up for working people. He did incredibly well.

[12:35:05]

And -- but for Trump being on the ballot, he would have been returned to the United States Senate. If he runs in 2026, I think he gets re- elected.

BASH: You mentioned the nominees so far that --

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- president -- former president and President-elect Trump has put forward. I know you've said that you don't think that Americans really want extremism and chaos.

LANDSMAN: No.

BASH: I'm going to push back on that.

LANDSMAN: Sure.

BASH: They know exactly what Donald Trump is.

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: That he is an agent of chaos because it's part of his disruption. That is his whole kind of strategy and is one of his whole reasons for being -- in addition to the economic piece. And so why don't you think that is what voters want?

LANDSMAN: It's just not what I hear. I hear, I voted for Trump because I'm frustrated. I voted for Trump because I do want to see things change. I don't like. They'll say it, they say it in the focus groups or the exit interviews. I did, but I don't like him personally. I'm just hoping he will fix things.

BASH: What about Matt Gaetz? You served with him and talked --

LANDSMAN: Yes. That's it. No, I don't think Matt Gaetz should be --

BASH: Would they release the ethics report?

LANDSMAN: 100 percent. Why would anyone sit on the findings of an investigation, a bipartisan investigation? Democrats, Republicans worked really hard on this. This fact that the speaker wants to suppress this is absurd. I suspect that the American people will hate, hate that the speaker is saying no one should see this. Everyone should see it an find out what's in it.

BASH: Before I let you go, I want to talk about something that happened over the weekend. Not in your district --

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- in Columbus. A group of neo-Nazis paraded through --

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: -- that city wearing -- waving swastikas, covering their faces. This is not the first time.

LANDSMAN: No.

BASH: This sort of thing has happened in Ohio in particular. And of course it's continuing to spread. We don't know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are for the far right.

LANDSMAN: Yes.

BASH: You had protests from the far left at your house.

LANDSMAN: Correct.

BASH: As a Jewish member?

LANDSMAN: Yes. Yes. They slept outside my house for days. And, you know, my takeaway is this has got to stop and the surge of antisemitism is global. But it's certainly here in the United States and it does require leaders on both sides of the aisle to say, don't do that.

BASH: Is your party doing that enough?

LANDSMAN: I think some in my party are doing a ton and some are silent.

BASH: Please come back soon.

LANDSMAN: Anytime.

BASH: Thanks for being here. Congrats on your win.

LANDSMAN: Thank you.

BASH: And coming up, new CNN reporting on how Donald Trump's allies are preparing to purge the federal government of career employees they see as disloyal.

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[12:42:33]

BASH: A massive purge of federal workers is, it appears, on the horizon. Donald Trump's allies are combing through workers emails and text messages to identify partisan targets, people who might stand in the way of Donald Trump's agenda. What exactly are they looking for? Who is on the chopping block? Our Steve Contorno is in West Palm Beach with his terrific reporting. What are you learning, Steve?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Dana, we've learned that some groups have been anticipating this moment for quite some time, and they have been on a hunt to lay the groundwork for Donald Trump to engage in this mass purge by searching for partisans in the federal government.

Now, how are they doing that? One group, the Heritage Foundation, has sent tens of thousands of records requests to federal agencies asking for information that they believe will help them find liberals and people who might be disloyal for Donald Trump.

That includes asking for information about programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion that has been vilified by the right, but also asking for the text messages and emails sent by employees looking for terms such as Elon Musk or climate change, hoping to find partisan back and forth in the daily communications of federal workers.

Another group, the American Accountability Foundation, has been calling through campaign finance contributions, social media posts, as well as the online work bios of people working in the federal government, specifically in the Department of Homeland Security.

Looking for people who they think will not be able to execute Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations. And they have used that information to put together a list of 60, quote unquote, "targets" that they think Donald Trump should get rid of.

Now I asked them, what is the purpose of this work? And they said, quote, "If the president wants to be able to execute on the agenda that the American people told them they want, they can't have liberal activists in senior positions."

Now this has had a chilling effect on these agencies, we are told. And the question is, does Donald Trump intend to use this information? And their campaign, excuse me, the transition did not answer that. However, the people involved in these operations believe that these groups are -- the transition is aware of it.

One person telling me, quote, "we run in the same circles." Dana?

BASH: Really such important reporting, Steve. Thank you so much.

[12:45:03]

And back here at the table, I mean, Heritage Foundation related to Project 2025, which the Trump campaign repeated over and over had nothing to do with them. One of the big goals in Project 2025 was to do this, was to root out federal employees who they do not believe will carry out his agenda and going through the text messages and emails.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BASH: And this is intense stuff.

HERNDON: I mean, it's chilling stuff. I think when you think about the levels of that -- for folks are willing to go to try to find this and the kind of mandate that the Trump world feels they have on this front. I find it, frankly, frightening.

I mean, we've coupled that with some of the panels to look at judges -- or generals who they may have found as disloyal, the use of diversity and equity as inclusion, as a dog whistle for a lot of the efforts to make the work -- to make the federal force more inclusive.

Those are some of -- these are folks who have served in different type of partisan administrations, and there's no evidence that would not be willing to execute the things that Donald Trump has been trying to do. And so, frankly, it's just the targeting that I think is reflective of administration that is making partisanship their retribution, their biggest goal.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, just remind folks, I mean, there's political appointees who come in with every administration and there are career people who have been there through --

HERNDON: Yes.

RAJU: -- their whole careers.

HERNDON: Yes.

RAJU: And the career people are the ones who actually have the expertise. The political people often don't have the expertise.

HERNDON: Yes.

RAJU: They come in because they're loyal to the president and the like. But you need those people because they can implement very technical, complicated policies. So if they do carry out this out, that could have a real negative impact on actually implementing critical programs for the American people.

BASH: But as we have talked about many times, Donald Trump and people who support him, many of them say that's the deep state. And look back to, I think you said this before, the first administration --

HERNDON: Yes.

BASH: -- and say, well, they stopped us from doing things. I do want to get -- Astead mentioned this and I want to get to some of your reporting on the draft executive order that would create a board to purge generals. Wow.

VIVIAN SALAMA, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Not a surprise, but wow. Yes. I mean, Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wanted to remove what he calls the woke generals and others. And it speaks to this broader topic that we're talking about now, where they believe either that certain individuals or groups of individuals in government are either disloyal and need to be removed or they are not satisfying wholeheartedly the goals of the Trump 2.0 administration and they need to go.

And he has said repeatedly that he wants to remove woke generals. He wants to (INAUDIBLE).

BASH: What does that --

HERNDON: Yes.

SALAMA: Yes, they have been very vague about it. And this is what is so scary. My phone was ringing off the hook the day that this story broke, not only because it's so vague in the draft executive order, but also in just the terms that Donald Trump has used.

But also Pete Hegseth was named that same day as his nominee and he would be the one to, you know, presumably execute --

BASH: And people would literally wrote a book about it.

SALAMA: -- to execute on this issue, on this matter. And so, there's a lot of people nervous at the Pentagon because of the fact that you could have sweeping resignations, which could have generational impacts on the military, just in terms of removing some of that excitement that you have when people are there, when generals are there for extended periods of time.

HERNDON: If feels like the vagueness is intentional too.

RAJU: Yes.

HERNDON: They give that broad authority.

SALAMA: Completely, completely intentional.

BASH: Yes.

SALAMA: And they're giving board leeway to these boards that they want to create to essentially go out there, determine who needs to be removed and make recommendations for the Secretary of Defense.

BASH: This is just the beginning of these.

SALAMA: Absolutely.

BASH: You know, a lot more to come.

Thank you. Thank you for your reporting.

Up next, President-elect Trump is promising a massive deportation campaign is also promising to lower food prices. Can he do both?

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[12:53:10] BASH: Quote, "True." Donald Trump wrote that on a Truth Social post this morning at 4:00 a.m. in response to a post about him planning to use the military to carry out his promised mass deportation campaign.

Apart from the moral and legal questions, CNN has new reporting that shows the devastating effect this could have on the economy. The very economy he says he is going to rebuild.

CNN's Matt Egan, you see him there. Matt, what happened to food, to farming, agriculture, if there are mass deportations when a lot of these businesses use undocumented immigrants.

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Yes, Dana. Listen, food would get more expensive, possibly a lot more expensive, and that would directly undercut another Trump campaign proposal, promise rather, which is to get inflation under control.

Now, the big economic problem here is that we're talking about industries that are heavily reliant on foreign workers. Many of them are undocumented. And so when you have fewer workers, it means less food and yes, higher prices.

Let me just show you one example. If you look at farm crop workers, a plurality of people in that industry, 41 percent are unauthorized. That's according to the USDA. One farmer in Michigan told me that mass deportations would be, quote, "devastating" to the ag economy because there just would not be enough people to pick the crops.

But it's not just about farmers. If you look across the food supply chain, there are many different parts of this that rely on tens or even hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, everything from food processing to groceries and, of course, of restaurants. Altogether, an estimated 1.7 million people who work in this space are undocumented.

Now, we've reached out to the Trump transition. They have not gotten back to us, but in the past, they've argued that Trump's campaign proposals would not make inflation worse. But I've got to tell you, economists that I'm talking to, they're saying the exact opposite, Dana.

[12:55:14]

BASH: And how much progress has there been, generally speaking, on getting supermarket inflation under control?

EGAN: You know, Dana, a surprising amount of progress. You know, just about two years ago, we saw that supermarket inflation was skyrocketing. We're talking about 13 percent. That was just a nightmare for the American people, but we've seen the rate of inflation come down sharply.

But the level of prices, which I know is what our viewers pay most attention to, that is still very high. And I think the question here, Dana, is whether or not these mass deportations get implemented. Because if they do, at the scale that Trump has talked about, we could see prices go much higher. Dana?

BASH: Matt Egan, thank you so much for that reporting. Appreciate it.

EGAN: Thank you.

BASH: And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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