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American Morning
Is He a Leader, or is He a Liability?
Aired December 18, 2002 - 08:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Is he a leader or is he a liability? That's the question now Senate Republicans asking about Trent Lott and his future. Another videotape has surfaced in which Lott suggests as a segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond should have been in the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRENT LOTT (R-MI), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Now, this is a famous signature right here. He should have been president in 1947.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: That clip discovered from back in the year 2000.
Ed Henry, company-editor of Capitol Hill's "Roll Call" newspaper now live in D.C. to help give us a better gauge today on where this stands.
Ed, good morning to you.
ED HENRY, COEDITOR, "ROLL CALL": Good morning.
HEMMER: Nice to see you.
Trent Lott quoted yesterday, put it up for our viewers, and quoting now, "I'm the son of a shipyard worker from Pascagoula, Mississippi. I've had to fight all my life and I'm not stopping now."
Ed, who wins this fight?
HENRY: I think he has a glimmer of hope now because you can see that he is trying to fight it to the death and I think there's a little bit of a backlash developing among some Republican senators who feel like their turf is being encroached a little bit by the White House and Karl Rove, the chief adviser to the president.
They seem to really want Bill Frist from Tennessee to replace Lott. And my understanding is that Ted Stevens, the most senior Republican -- he's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee from Alaska -- he called Trent Lott yesterday and said he's fed up with the meddling over this. He thinks senators should be deciding this. This is their own internal business. He doesn't want White House interference. Stevens said he's going to fight to try to help Lott keep his job.
Lott also got support yesterday from Ben Ironhorse Campbell, a Native American from Colorado, who's the only minority in the Republican Caucus; Arlen Specter, one of the most prominent moderates from the Northeast also voicing his support; Rick Santorum, also from Pennsylvania, who's one of the young conservative Turks supporting Lott, as well.
But the problem is that so many other people have come out against Lott privately because he hurt himself with his BET interview. It really was something that had a lot of risk to it and by flip- flopping on so many positions and now saying he's in favor of affirmative action while voting against it so often over the years, now even some of his conservative friends who wanted, perhaps, to support him, now think that it's a joke and think that he will be an ineffective leader not just because of the controversial comments, but because now they don't know where he stands on all these issues and he looks like a flip flopper, a waffler and they say that's exactly why he would not be effective.
HEMMER: I think you framed the argument quite well.
Ted Stevens, a quick quote from him, because you talked about him, the senator from Alaska. "I'm going to try and make certain he stays as our leader. I'm going to try to show that Senator Lott is, in fact, a representative of the new South, one that hates segregation."
You bring up a lot of interesting points here, Ed.
Do you believe right now this causes such a split within the Republican Party in the Senate that it gets confused and lost and muddled as it tries to go forward in '03?
HENRY: Absolutely, because no matter who winds up being the majority leader next year, the bottom line is that the Republicans are losing here and they need to cut their losses as soon as possible. Whether or not Lott survives, if they really let this go on until January 6, which is when the vote is supposed to be, there's going to be more bloodletting between now and then.
And, again, no matter who ends up winning, the bottom -- you know, individually, the bottom line is that the Republican Party is beating itself up right now between Trent Lott and Don Nickels and Bill Frist, and the ones who are really gaining right now are the Democrats, who are trying to stay out of the way and are just trying to sort of restrain their laughter, if you will, because if you think back to the fact that just a month ago, the Democrats were, you know, licking their wounds after getting beat pretty badly in the midterm elections and were also bracing for the likelihood that Al Gore was going to run in 2004 -- Democrats figured he was going to be a loser in 2004 and they figured they were really going to have a tough time -- now Gore is out and all of a sudden Democrats are rallying around one another and the see their liberal base energized because of Trent Lott.
HEMMER: Well, interesting points.
Thanks, Ed. Ed Henry.
What a strange week it's been, huh?
HENRY: Thank you.
HEMMER: I mean you bring it full circle here with the Al Gore deal and the Trent Lott matter.
We'll see. Some suggest we may never even see to January 6 with Trent Lott. But again, as you point out, gaining support in certain quarters of the Senate.
Thanks, Ed.
We'll talk again.
HENRY: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 18, 2002 - 08:05 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Is he a leader or is he a liability? That's the question now Senate Republicans asking about Trent Lott and his future. Another videotape has surfaced in which Lott suggests as a segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond should have been in the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRENT LOTT (R-MI), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Now, this is a famous signature right here. He should have been president in 1947.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: That clip discovered from back in the year 2000.
Ed Henry, company-editor of Capitol Hill's "Roll Call" newspaper now live in D.C. to help give us a better gauge today on where this stands.
Ed, good morning to you.
ED HENRY, COEDITOR, "ROLL CALL": Good morning.
HEMMER: Nice to see you.
Trent Lott quoted yesterday, put it up for our viewers, and quoting now, "I'm the son of a shipyard worker from Pascagoula, Mississippi. I've had to fight all my life and I'm not stopping now."
Ed, who wins this fight?
HENRY: I think he has a glimmer of hope now because you can see that he is trying to fight it to the death and I think there's a little bit of a backlash developing among some Republican senators who feel like their turf is being encroached a little bit by the White House and Karl Rove, the chief adviser to the president.
They seem to really want Bill Frist from Tennessee to replace Lott. And my understanding is that Ted Stevens, the most senior Republican -- he's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee from Alaska -- he called Trent Lott yesterday and said he's fed up with the meddling over this. He thinks senators should be deciding this. This is their own internal business. He doesn't want White House interference. Stevens said he's going to fight to try to help Lott keep his job.
Lott also got support yesterday from Ben Ironhorse Campbell, a Native American from Colorado, who's the only minority in the Republican Caucus; Arlen Specter, one of the most prominent moderates from the Northeast also voicing his support; Rick Santorum, also from Pennsylvania, who's one of the young conservative Turks supporting Lott, as well.
But the problem is that so many other people have come out against Lott privately because he hurt himself with his BET interview. It really was something that had a lot of risk to it and by flip- flopping on so many positions and now saying he's in favor of affirmative action while voting against it so often over the years, now even some of his conservative friends who wanted, perhaps, to support him, now think that it's a joke and think that he will be an ineffective leader not just because of the controversial comments, but because now they don't know where he stands on all these issues and he looks like a flip flopper, a waffler and they say that's exactly why he would not be effective.
HEMMER: I think you framed the argument quite well.
Ted Stevens, a quick quote from him, because you talked about him, the senator from Alaska. "I'm going to try and make certain he stays as our leader. I'm going to try to show that Senator Lott is, in fact, a representative of the new South, one that hates segregation."
You bring up a lot of interesting points here, Ed.
Do you believe right now this causes such a split within the Republican Party in the Senate that it gets confused and lost and muddled as it tries to go forward in '03?
HENRY: Absolutely, because no matter who winds up being the majority leader next year, the bottom line is that the Republicans are losing here and they need to cut their losses as soon as possible. Whether or not Lott survives, if they really let this go on until January 6, which is when the vote is supposed to be, there's going to be more bloodletting between now and then.
And, again, no matter who ends up winning, the bottom -- you know, individually, the bottom line is that the Republican Party is beating itself up right now between Trent Lott and Don Nickels and Bill Frist, and the ones who are really gaining right now are the Democrats, who are trying to stay out of the way and are just trying to sort of restrain their laughter, if you will, because if you think back to the fact that just a month ago, the Democrats were, you know, licking their wounds after getting beat pretty badly in the midterm elections and were also bracing for the likelihood that Al Gore was going to run in 2004 -- Democrats figured he was going to be a loser in 2004 and they figured they were really going to have a tough time -- now Gore is out and all of a sudden Democrats are rallying around one another and the see their liberal base energized because of Trent Lott.
HEMMER: Well, interesting points.
Thanks, Ed. Ed Henry.
What a strange week it's been, huh?
HENRY: Thank you.
HEMMER: I mean you bring it full circle here with the Al Gore deal and the Trent Lott matter.
We'll see. Some suggest we may never even see to January 6 with Trent Lott. But again, as you point out, gaining support in certain quarters of the Senate.
Thanks, Ed.
We'll talk again.
HENRY: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
