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Inside Politics

Poll Finds Majority Disapprove of Trump on Economy, Inflation; Fed Meets as Trump Tariffs Spark Recession Fears; Dem Leadership Faces Party Revolt Amid Spending Bill Backlash; Trump Calls for Negative Reporting About Him to Be Illegal; Some Conservatives Pushing to Overturn Key Supreme Court Precedent on Press Protections. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 19, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

MANU RAJU, CNN CO-HOST OF "INSIDE POLITICS" AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And it is similar, to inflation, 55 percent disapprove of his handling of inflation, compared to 42 percent. Look, this is another poll. CNN had its poll too. He is underwater on the economy. That was not the case in his first term.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah. And I mean, what we've been hearing from the White House is that this is a period of transition. This is a moment in time, not to use a Kamala Harris phrase, but this is a moment in time and --

(LAUGH)

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: They're unburdened. They're unburdened by what has been.

WRIGHT: Unburdened by what has been. Don't yell at me.

(LAUGH)

WRIGHT: But no, this is a moment in which, you know, Americans are going to have to suffer a little bit of pain so that they can totally rewrite the way that the manufacturing system in this country works and the way that Americans are benefiting from the economy. But the question that the White House has not been able to answer is how much pain they can take. Not the American people, but they can take, when people start really rebelling if this goes left, if this goes the way that they don't want them to.

And they consistently say, you know, the stock market is not predictive of the economy, which I think is a little bit different than what Donald Trump has said in the past. And also, we know for a fact that Donald Trump watches the stock market kind of like a hawk. So, you know, they continue to say those things. But I think that there is a real question as to whether or not Donald Trump is using this as a way to get a more favorable trade agreement, even though that's something that he did in 2019, or whether or not this is something that he is -- that is going to stick for him. And I just think that nobody has the answer. Again, leading to your point, that there is no real stability right now. There's no --

RAJU: And who --

WRIGHT: There's no real answer.

RAJU: And who gets hit hardest by this trade war? There was actually an interesting analysis from The New York Times over the weekend about the trade war retaliation will hit Trump voters the hardest. That was the headline of the piece. They break down in their analysis about 7.8 million jobs in total would be affected by these retaliatory tariffs that could be coming down just in a matter of a couple weeks. 4.5 million of those jobs are in counties that voted for Trump. 3.3 million are in counties that voted for Harris. So --

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST: Yeah. And listen, these are -- these are folks who are farmers and truck drivers, all kinds of folks who are going to be possibly impacted by the rising prices due to tariffs. And we saw some of this happen in the last trade war where farmers lost a lot of ground. Right? Soybean farmers, all kind of farmers, because China was redirecting where they were getting some of these agricultural products, yet, and still, they still voted, by and large, for Donald Trump.

I think there is a real test of Donald Trump's ability to persuade his voters of almost anything. Right? And we've seen him be able to do that. We've seen him be able to convince his voters that he actually won the 2020 election and there was some giant conspiracy theory that took the, you know, the White House away from him. So can he convince them that, hey, there might be a little pain right now, buddy, but down the line, there are going to be manufacturing plants and you're going to have wealth beyond your imagination. That's essentially what he's telling them over and over and over again. And if history is any judge, he might actually be able to convince them of that.

RAJU: Yeah. It's such a good point. He's convinced them of so much.

HENDERSON: Yeah, exactly.

RAJU: Can he convince them of this? But if they start losing their jobs or hits their pocketbooks, maybe something different. All right. Coming up for us, the Democrats are circling each other. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is still on damage controls. We're going to discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:37:40]

RAJU: You can call it a circular firing squad. Democrats in disarray. A party in revolt. No matter the label, we know that Democrats are angry at just about everyone. And Senator Bernie Sanders, who's an independent and caucuses with Democrats, says something has to change

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I-VT): In the Democratic Party, you've got a party that is heavily dominated by the billionaire class, run by consultants who are way out of touch with reality. It has -- the Democratic Party has virtually no grassroots support. So what we are trying to do is, in one way or another, maybe create a party within the party of bringing millions of young people, working-class people, people of color to demand that the Democratic Party start standing with the working class of this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: All right. My excellent panel is back. Nia, do Democrats know what they want here? I mean, they want to fight.

HENDERSON: Right.

RAJU: They want new voices, but what exactly are the -- how are they going to execute the fight? Because they're fighting in court.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Yeah.

RAJU: They're trying to fight in Congress and obviously, that's been a problem.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

RAJU: But they're the minority. What do they want?

HENDERSON: Yeah. They're still obviously sort of trying to figure out why they lost in 2024, casting about for some energy from the grassroots. But sometimes, the grassroots is too vocal for them and too far to the left. You've got Bernie Sanders, who's drawing thousands of people to these rallies in red states. He's going out west to Vegas and Arizona over the next a couple of days with AOC who, of course, was famously passed over for the top position on Oversight.

But yeah, I mean, this is a real low point for the party. If you think back to 2016, the engine of the resistance really was people, right? It was people who flooded the airports after the Muslim ban. You're starting to see more of that. We saw the town halls, for instance, but the leadership is out to lunch according to the grassroots and sometimes off on book tour. Right? I mean, Hakeem Jeffries did his book tour. He's got a children's book which my daughter has, which is quite excellent, and --

(LAUGH)

HENDERSON: And I think Chuck Schumer canceled his book tour because there is business to be done in Washington, even though I imagine some people want him permanently on book tour.

NICHOLS: Well, I think the public argument about Schumer canceling the security concerns.

HENDERSON: Yeah. NICHOLS: Right? So Congress is not in session. So the idea of like, so I mean, think they were concerned about, I mean --

HENDERSON: Yeah.

[12:40:00]

NICHOLS: Security concerns is one way to say it, the other way is like you're afraid of protests. And that's probably more accurate.

RAJU: Yeah.

NICHOLS: But I'll get you all that by a Schumer spokesperson later.

(LAUGH)

HENDERSON: Yeah.

NICHOLS: And that's fine. That's a daily occurrence.

(LAUGH)

NICHOLS: Look, I'll answer the question you asked. Democrats want to win. That's the basic thing. That's where they're at. And they're like, every other -- and I'll do one bad basketball --

RAJU: And they don't know how to get there.

HENDERSON: Right.

NICHOLS: Yeah. They're at the beginning of a 64-bracket team tournament, and they want to win in April, except it's not April, it's in November in a year and a half. So --

HENDERSON: But there is a reason --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: And they want to win the first round to continue the metaphor. And they --

NICHOLS: But look, if grassroots anger really mattered that much, then Mitch McConnell would never have stayed at the top of his party for so long. You can have a fair amount of grassroots anger bubbling up, surfacing up, as long as you get everyone on the right page after Labor Day in an even numbered year, you're in a good position.

RAJU: Yeah.

NICHOLS: So, yes, things look bad for the Democrats right now. It's also March and there's a long way to go and this conversation's going to continue, and they probably have to come up with better answers. But we are very early in this process.

RAJU: I just want to -- before you jump in, Jasmine, about the anger, there's clearly anger in some of these Democratic town halls. This is a district in Maryland that Kamala Harris won with 85 percent of the vote. Glenn Ivey, the Congressman, the Democrat from Maryland. This is what happened to his town hall yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cannot sufficiently emphasize this to you. The message that was sent by Democrats in Congress with the CR catastrophe was clear. It's not that you're in the minority, it's that you aren't even working together on a shared strategy. We want you to show some of the backbone and strategic brilliance that Mitch McConnell would have in the minority.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want you to show fight and you are not fighting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: Yeah. I mean, he was angry.

(LAUGH)

RAJU: He was angry. Yes.

WRIGHT: Put it lightly, but I think that he actually hit on a couple different points. First, there is no strategy, right? Whatever the strategy it is, they're not able to message it enough to their voters, to the Democratic base. But I think the reality is that Democrats are kind of, you know, stuck in between a rock and a hard place because they really are waiting to see what happens with Donald Trump. They're waiting for more pains that they can message against that more clearly.

But in that time of waiting, I think what is at risk to them is that they are unable to message that effectively to their base. So there is a period of waiting to see, OK, this is how we are going to shape up our messaging for the midterm. But in the absence of that, there is really no contact between them and the Democratic base. And that is kind of where things are getting kind of mismatched and off to the left.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

NICHOLS: Most important thing about that clip you just showed is that gentleman was in the rafters, which tells you it was a packed town hall.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

WRIGHT: Yeah.

NICHOLS: Now look, maybe he said important things and his message was also, you know, to your point on, there's no strategy. I would disagree ever so slightly. HENDERSON: Sure.

NICHOLS: There's clearly a House strategy.

HENDERSON: That's right.

NICHOLS: There's clearly a Senate strategy. The problem is they're not talking to each other.

RAJU: Yeah.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

NICHOLS: And so they don't have a coordinated strategy. And that's going to be the conversation that Manu and I are going to try to tease out next week and by tease out, fiercely compete, and he'll probably win.

(LAUGH)

NICHOLS: But that's -- but that's -- that's really the question going on right now, is how do Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer get on the same page and coordinate more (inaudible)?

HENDERSON: And --

RAJU: And Schumer said, you've got -- he said this morning on "Morning Joe." He said, you got to do it in a smart way and not let them drive you -- not let him, as in Trump, drive you into trap and let your anger and at him end up hurting you."

HENDERSON: Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. How do you fight Donald Trump, and win? How do you put a roadblock up to what he's doing? Is waiting really the right strategy? Right? And you -- you hit on this, I think, on one of your shows. You look at the Democratic brand, right? It has taken such a hit. If you look at the numbers, what is it, like 29 percent or something have a favorable view of the party, and that is damaging.

I don't know that waiting is necessarily the right strategy. And also, so what if they win back the House by a narrow margin in 2026? Who cares? So much is going to be done in the interim. The party will be sort of out to lunch. There's so many agencies dismantled and so much damage done to America's reputation and possibly the economy that "Oh, great, you won the House." I don't think Donald Trump cares at this point, yeah.

(LAUGH)

HENDERSON: If the Republicans lose the House.

WRIGHT: And I just think that one last thing about strategy. Sure. Maybe the party or maybe the two Houses -- or Senate and House have their own strategy. But the reality is that that strategy is bent on Republican dysfunction, which they can no longer rely on because Donald Trump has been able to basically coalesce the Republican Party and say, I know you've never voted for a Continuing Resolution before, but please do this for me. And on the back end, I will make sure --

RAJU: Yeah.

WRIGHT: -- that I make those cuts that you're looking for.

RAJU: Yeah.

WRIGHT: And so, Republican dysfunction, at least in this moment, doesn't exist.

RAJU: Yeah.

WRIGHT: And so if they do have a strategy that's reliant on that, clearly the voters are saying, you need to fix it.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

RAJU: Yeah, there is (inaudible) going to be debate about letting the Republicans fall on their, you know, mess up themselves, stand back and watch, and then Democrats harnessing that anger from the base.

[12:45:00]

Can they use that the way the Republicans did with the Tea Party wave in 2010? That's something we'll be watching in the months ahead.

All right. Up next, President Trump goes after the press in his speeches all the time, but what are he and his allies trying to do about it? My next guest digs into an effort to fundamentally change laws that protect free speech.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: President Trump says news media outlets that are too critical of him should be illegal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In my opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal. These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative, and it has to stop. It has to be illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:50:00]

RAJU: Our next guest examines how Trump allies are spending time and money trying to limit First Amendment rights that protect journalists. One goal, reversing the 1964 New York Times vs. Sullivan case, which made it harder for politicians and public figures to sue journalists for libel. New York Times reporter David Enrich is the author of the new book, "Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful." He joins me now to discuss.

David, thank you so much for joining me. Congratulations on this excellent new book. Tell us about what are these activists trying to do and if they're successful in what they're trying to accomplish, what are the implications of that?

DAVID ENRICH, BUSINESS INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, the goal of this campaign, which has been going on for years now, is to get the supreme court and lower courts to rule that it should be a lot easier for people with money and power to sue not only journalists, but anyone even in the public who stands up and wants to criticize or speak openly or interrogate people who hold a lot of power, public officials, public figures, people like that.

And the goal really is not only to make it easier to sue them and win those lawsuits, but to make it basically easier to have a campaign where it is more dangerous to criticize powerful public people and to write about them. And I think this is part of the mission that we're seeing at the -- in the Trump administration and among many of his allies, that is really -- it's an effort to clamp down on negative and unfavorable coverage at a time when that coverage is often very critical of the president and his allies.

RAJU: You talk a lot about Peter Thiel in the book. He is the billionaire who mentored J.D. Vance, he backed his Senate run, and billionaire Trump donor, Steve Wynn backed an effort earlier this year to squash those protections. How involved are some of Trump's big money allies in this effort?

ENRICH: Well, as you just mentioned, Thiel has been one of the guys who going back for a decade now, has been putting a lot of money behind efforts like this. But you also have Republican donors like Steve Wynn who have been advancing this cause and quite a few others as well. And the thing I think that's important to recognize is that this is a war on -- it's happening I think on multiple fronts. One is trying to make it -- trying to get the supreme court to kind of loosen the rules, so that it's easier to sue news outlets and members of the public.

The other is kind a much more grassroots and granular effort by powerful people at both the national and local level to weaponize existing laws and to use high-price lawyers and send threatening letters to really just make it harder for just even individual citizens who might want to circulate a petition or write something on Facebook or social media that's critical of the people in their town or their community, maybe a local real estate development company, for example.

And so we're seeing powerful interests at various different levels. You don't need to be a billionaire to send a threatening letter to someone in your community that writes something negative or says something negative in a public setting. And these threats I've seen over and over again have been very effective at scaring people away from tackling controversial topics or speaking up about what they perceive as wrongdoing, either locally or at state level or nationally.

RAJU: Have you seen any impacts as this push makes its way through the lower courts? And also, what has the supreme court said? What signals has the supreme court sent about whether it might go along with this effort?

ENRICH: Well, there are at least two supreme court justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, who have both said publicly that they are open to the idea of overturning or at least revisiting New York Times versus Sullivan, which is a 1964 case that basically made it harder for public figures to sue the media or others, unless they could prove that news outlets were lying or acting with a reckless disregard for the truth.

And so, we've got at least two justices on the court that are open to this. I don't know if there are enough votes to actually overturn it, but we've seen a chorus of support among other federal court judges and state court judges as well. And one of the implications of that is that where lawsuits that are basically meant to suppress speech used to be tossed at a court at a pretty early stage pretty quickly. I'm now seeing them dragging out and becoming much more protracted legal fights that can be not only really expensive and stressful for the people on the receiving end of these, but they can cause really elevated costs far into the future.

And there are some cases where, you know, independent journalists, local news outlets and just members of the public are just kind of stifling themselves and self-censoring because they're so concerned about the possibility of litigation. So in some ways, even if this does not make its way to the supreme court, the campaign is already proving effective at shutting up a lot of people who have things to say.

RAJU: And what about the liberal justices on the supreme court? What signals of the sent?

ENRICH: Well, the signals have been kind of muted and mixed, I would say.

[12:55:00]

And there are justices like Elena Kagan, who long before she became a judge, when she was a law professor, she wrote an article that was questioned aspects of New York Times versus Sullivan and kind of criticizing the way it's been applied in a modern context. So, it's unclear how she will vote on something like this if it were to reach the supreme court.

Again, I think the more likely scenario than the supreme court immediately trying to overturn precedents that really protect press freedoms outright is to kind of nibble around the edges a little bit and to make it harder for people to criticize public figures as opposed to government officials. And you know, one form that could take is making it, you know, if you are a local rich person or you're a local company, and you have a blogger or someone who writes a letter to the editor of the newspaper, it can be much harder for them to be able to speak freely.

RAJU: All right, David Enrich, thank you so much for your reporting and your book. We appreciate it.

And thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:00:00]