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New Day

Trump & Ryan Meeting. Aired 8:30-9:00a ET

Aired May 12, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:22] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just moments ago, Donald Trump, arrived in Washington. We saw his plane at Reagan National Airport. At this very moment, he is in an SUV. He's on his way to the Republican National Committee headquarters.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Why aren't you following that?

BERMAN: We don't have the chopper today.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Where's the Trump cam?

BERMAN: It would be like a slow speed chase right now.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BERMAN: We have a temporary media blackout on the whereabouts of his SUV, but we know he's headed up to Capitol Hill with big meetings with Paul -

CUOMO: There we go.

CAMEROTA: Oh.

BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE) right there.

CAMEROTA: I was kidding.

BERMAN: Stuck in traffic. This is a traffic jam near Reagan Airport.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, the cameraman just fell over.

CUOMO: Whoa.

BERMAN: As you can see, heads spinning already in Washington from the arrival of Donald Trump.

Look, there are big meetings there. What does it all mean? Joining us now, "New York Times" political correspondent, Patrick Healy, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash, and CNN political commentator and Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord.

Gloria, I want to start with you. You know, Donald Trump has been to Washington even recently for meetings, but I have a feeling those were like lower case "m" meetings.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BERMAN: This is the upper case "m" meeting.

BORGER: Yes.

BERMAN: There's huge anticipation about what might come from it.

BORGER: Yes, I know and I - I think we all ought to kind of lower our expectations, you know, to a certain degree. I think this is a meeting - I know from the Trump people, look, they feel blind-sided by what Paul Ryan did to them. They believe they had no heads up about it. They watched it like we all did with - in Jake Tapper's interview, and they felt blind-sided. They believed the chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus, got blind-sided by it. So I think Trump will go in there and say, I understand the way you feel, I would love your support and I think Ryan's going to say to him, this is what I need. He's got a little bit of leverage right now. But what he also has, and he had a meeting with his caucus yesterday, he's got a divided group of Republicans. Some say you've got to be out there and be for party unity, some of them say -

CUOMO: Ryan has the leverage. Does Ryan have the leverage? What - what is the options?

PATRICK HEALY, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Trump is going to go in this morning and say -

CUOMO: What's the options, though, I'm not going to support him? I'm not with my party?

BORGER: Well -

HEALY: I talked to him last night. I mean he was pretty confident about going in and saying, I have 11 million votes.

BORGER: Right.

HEALY: That's more than any Republican nominee has ever had.

CUOMO: And I'm the only one left. I'm the -

HEALY: And I didn't win it because of you guys. You know, I didn't do it -

CUOMO: I'm the presumptive nominee. What are you going to do, be for Clinton?

HEALY: Right. I mean - right. At this point it's sort of - he - you know, he's not going to go in - he said he wasn't going to go in and try to like boss them into falling in line, but he was going to say, I have this - what he says he thinks he has this mandate from people to keep running the campaign the way that he is. And, guys, do you ever win a campaign when you sort of run one way in the general and, you know, yes, people pivot to the center. BORGER: Right. He's not going to change.

HEALY: But change 180?

BORGER: Well, but I think where you're saying he doesn't have any - you're saying Paul Ryan doesn't have any leverage. What - what I'm saying is Ryan can go to him and say, look, we - I have to take care of my flock. And here is what I need to make sure that my guys win and we don't, you know, reduce our majority in the House. And I need certain things on issues from you. And I'm wondering whether you can talk about the issues this way, change your tone a little bit. I want to be chairman of your convention, but here's where I'm coming from. And, you know, he is the highest ranking office holder in the Republican Party right now. So, I do think he has a little bit of leverage with him.

CAMEROTA: OK. So - so, Dana -

HEALY: And Trump was fine -

BORGER: I'm not saying Trump doesn't have any himself.

HEALY: And Trump responds to deal making. He responds to people like putting out -

CAMEROTA: So true. This is - yes, to negotiations.

HEALY: Right.

CAMEROTA: So, Dana, you're standing outside the meeting location. Is that -

BORGER: Hi, Dana.

CAMEROTA: What's going to happen where there will be a negotiation of what's expected on both sides and would they ever announce that afterwards?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Truthfully, I don't think so. I think they all understand that the stakes are incredibly high. And you're already hearing even with some interviews that you guys have done this morning publicly from Trump's allies on Capitol Hill that they are trying to lower those expectations and make it all about the first of several meetings, and that this is a get to know you.

[08:35:19] And I think, you know, that's really not spin. They don't know each other. I've talked to several members of the leadership, both in the House and the Senate, and they - they only know what they see on the stage and on television and in interviews. And so they really don't have that kind of insider, real, who is this guy feeling about Donald Trump. And because Trump is really not that specific on a lot of important issues, particularly to Paul Ryan, that is - that's part of the - of the - of the delay.

But I think Gloria is exactly right, as much as Paul Ryan wanted to get leverage by withholding his support, by the time he got here to Capitol Hill this week, back from recess, which is when this whole - all thing happened, he's hearing a lot more from members, as we are walking the halls of Congress, that, you know what, this guy is our nominee -

BORGER: Right.

BASH: He's on to something. Let's try to figure out how to get on this train and make it all work for all of us.

BERMAN: Let's also bring in Jeffrey Lord, Donald Trump supporter. So excited by today's meeting, he couldn't even leave his house, he was afraid of missing something.

Jeffrey, you know, it really seems like over the last few days, Jeffrey, that both the Ryan forces and the Trump forces have tried to reduce the temperature of these meetings, make them seem sort of run of the mill. And we've seen Donald Trump, honestly, do it in a way we haven't really seen that much before. He's like, you know what, of course I want Paul Ryan to be chairman of the convention.

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.

BERMAN: Of course I think Paul Ryan is a nice guy. That, despite the fact that a week ago he said he's not sure if he can get behind Paul Ryan's policies.

LORD: Yes, I mean, I think this is inevitable, if you will. I tried to say over the last x number of months that Donald Trump built this successful business in part because he knows how to get along with people, he knows how to negotiate, et cetera. Now he's sitting down with Paul Ryan today. I think the same skills will be evident. He is - he is going to be the leader of the Republican Party. He does, in fact, have a mandate. That mandate is given to him by the voters. So that's his task. I'm certain that he's up to it. I'm certain this meeting will have a positive outcome.

CUOMO: Well, what about, Gloria, what we saw yesterday? In the morning, we see Trump talking about how, look, we've got a problem, the Muslims, the problem that we have - you know, we have to have the temporary bans. That's how it is. At night, it's a suggestion. It's a suggestion. You know, this is just a suggestion.

CAMEROTA: And there will be lots of exemptions, by the way.

CUOMO: That is one of the hot points for Paul Ryan -

BORGER: Well -

CUOMO: That we were supposed to be more inclusive as a party -

BORGER: Very much so.

CUOMO: Not exclusive. You know, what happened with David Duke. Was the rejection by the campaign, the Trump campaign, the right kind? Do you think what we saw last night might be a little bit of a, hey, did you see what I did last night when he walks in the room?

BORGER: Well, there's a - you know, he's sort of, you know, the minimum wage was another issue that he's kind of decided maybe he would consider a raise in the minimum wage, maybe not. I think lots of Republicans - and this is what I think Ryan will be talking about is, we need to know where you are on these issues because there's a certain set of issues that we as Republicans believe are important to us.

I mean Paul Ryan is a policy wonk, right? These are issues that are important to him. And he kind of wants to know what they're running on. They don't want to be running against their own candidate.

CAMEROTA: Right.

BORGER: And I think that's a, you know, that's a problem.

BASH: And, you know -

BORGER: And Trump's whole thing is, I want to compromise. I want to start out without playing my hand too much.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: It's a good point. It's a good point.

Let's take a quick break. Obviously we're following the lead-up to the meeting.

BASH: He -

CUOMO: Dana, we'll get to you right after the break, all right? Stay with NEW DAY. We're waiting for the big meeting. A lot of other news as well.

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[08:42:36] CAMEROTA: OK, everyone. You are looking at live pictures outside of RNC headquarters. You see the media scrum, you see protesters yelling, awaiting, Donald Trump's arrival there for the meeting with Speaker Paul Ryan. Our Dana Bash is there somewhere in the crowd.

Tell us what you're seeing, Dana.

BASH: Hey there, Alisyn.

Well, it just quieted down, but, you know, as we have seen over the months and months and months where Donald Trump goes, so go the protesters. And the Republican National Committee is no different.

This is a group behind here, if Dave can pan over, you can - you're blocked a little bit by the cameras - of people I just heard as I was talking to one of the gentleman, saying that he is 18 years old and he wants to talk about immigration. So that's the kind of thing we're hearing about. We're seeing some protesters from other groups as well. Again, this is not unusual. We see this at Trump events. And same goes

for Hillary Clinton events. You see people who are protesting her and her policies. It just so happens that they know where all the media are this morning and they're right here. So they are maybe astutely taking advantage of that.

I don't expect, I should say, Trump to come by them in any way, that there will be any interaction between them.

CUOMO: Is your spidey sense starting to go off? Dana, we'll check back with you. Let us know if there's any action there.

Do you - do you get that spidey sense that there's an "SNL" skit in the making coming here about -

CAMEROTA: Just now?

CUOMO: The coverage of the meeting that, you know, by all plausibility should be a non-event. There should be no big announcement today from either of these gentlemen. It should be something that both sides are accurate about, which is, look, this is the beginning.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: They don't know each other. The dialogue -

BERMAN: I disagree fundamentally that it's not a big event. I mean when -

CUOMO: It's not an "SNL" skit?

BERMAN: When the speaker of the House -

BORGER: They're not (INAUDIBLE) -

BERMAN: When the speaker of the House says that I'm not yet ready to support the nominee of my party -

CUOMO: Right.

BERMAN: And I need to meet with him, that creates a big event. It is unprecedented, you know, in our nominating history.

CAMEROTA: I think -

CUOMO: I like the defense of it, because we'll both be in the skit.

HEALY: And the other thing - and the other thing is just - there is, regardless of unity and talk of unity, there's so much discord here on policy.

BORGER: Right.

HEALY: I mean Paul Ryan wants to take a serious look at entitlements. He's proposed cuts for years. He wants a Republican president who will back him up. Donald Trump has said he's not going to go there. Donald Trump wants deportations. He wants this wall in Mexico.

[08:45:01] CAMEROTA: But none of that's going to be hammered out today. I mean this - I mean -

BORGER: Well -

HEALY: Nothing's going to be hammered out but that's where unity has a certain phoniness, let's be honest. They're like coming together in name only.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but - but this is a bit of a photo op. I mean I think -

HEALY: They're kicking the can down the road.

CAMEROTA: Don't you think nothing (INAUDIBLE) today?

BORGER: I think they - well, no. Well, I think they agree that they need to continue to talk.

CUOMO: Nothing.

BORGER: These guys have had two phone conversations. Trump has called him twice. They've had some pleasant conversations. I think this is where Paul Ryan says, look, this is what is important to me and my caucus, and this is what I need to do to get people elected.

Now, Ryan discovered this week, as Dana was pointing out, his caucus is completely divided -

HEALY: Yes.

BORGER: Because they have very different kinds of districts. Some are saying to Ryan, get on board the Trump train. Others are saying, thank you for standing up.

CAMEROTA: Right.

BORGER: And - and -

CUOMO: But look at the sign. Look at the guy who's on the screen right now.

BORGER: Yes.

CUOMO: Just one guy, but is it a metaphor effect. The GOP, party of Trump.

Jeffrey Lord, I mean you've been saying this all along, Jeffrey, that Donald Trump's not just an outsider. He is reflective of a mood in the country, about Republican who have wanted the party to change, and that now Trump will be the carrier of that message, and this is bigger than what we're used to seeing in politics.

LORD: Chris - Chris - Chris, you know, I think some of this is a bit overblown in the sense - for instance, when they talk about entitlements, look, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, quite specifically agree that we should save Medicare and Social Security. The question really is process. And process is what goes on, on Capitol Hill all day and all night. The difference, you know, where you - where you get into problems is when they disagree on the goals. They don't disagree on the goal. The goal is to save Medicare and Social Security. Another area is national security and defense. Paul Ryan, in an article on foreign policy magazine not long ago, said he was not a neoconservative.

CUOMO: All right, so, Jeffrey -

LORD: Donald Trump is not neoconservative either.

CUOMO: Jeffrey, we won't have to debate the implications much longer, because as we seen on the screen right now, let's get to Dana Bash. Looks like this meeting is getting ready to begin.

BASH: That's right. I am around the corner from where Donald Trump is going to be coming in, because he has a motorcade. They're able to go right under the building to the parking lot. Not through the main door, where I am here.

But what I can tell you is that all of the anticipation and the energy that is - as you can hear, very hot outside, just to sort of echo what you're hearing, my impression in talking to sources preparing for this meeting is that they are going to do everything they can to keep the temperature out here, out here, and have a very different kind of vibe behind closed doors.

CAMEROTA: And there's Donald Trump now, Dana.

BASH: My impression is -

CAMEROTA: Sorry to interrupt. He' just - he sees the crowd. He's waiving. He's ignoring the protesters yelling. And he's - and he's just escaped in there through that sort of back entrance into the RNC, so he doesn't have to go past the protesters there in front.

BASH: Exactly.

BORGER: One thing about - about Paul Ryan and Donald Trump is that they have a mutual goal. And the goal is they want to mobilize Republicans to get out and vote. Because this race is not going to be so much about persuading people, it's going to be about mobilizing your own voters. And you can't really mobilize your voters if - and we saw this in the exit polls the other week - that, you know, your voters believe the party is divided. You have to get them really enthusiastic about heading out there. And it's in Ryan's self-interest to preserve his house and it is in Donald Trump's self-interest. So they do have a mutual self-interest.

BERMAN: Exactly. And I think everybody at this point thinks that sooner or later, probably not today, but at some point Paul Ryan will fall in line to some degree.

BORGER: Some degree. BERMAN: Whether or not it's holding a sign that says "I endorse," or he says, of course, I'm going to vote for him, he's the nominee. He will do so. But, Pat, doesn't this set up a situation then where Paul Ryan has to explain - he has to lay out how he got from point A to point B. Why I wasn't sure before. Why I am sure now. Exactly what Donald Trump told me that convinced me. Exactly why I'm not concerned any more about the Muslim ban. Exactly why the wall doesn't bother me.

HEALY: Right.

BERMAN: And why our Social Security views are so in line, even though they're not.

HEALY: Right. I think you're going to hear a lot of big picture talk, that we both want a majority party, that we both believe in fundamental Republican principles -

BERMAN: We both breathe air.

HEALY: That don't get into the weed -

CAMEROTA: No -

HEALY: Right. We both like water. No, I mean, look, if Paul Ryan -

BORGER: (INAUDIBLE) Republican.

HEALY: And this is the challenge for Trump. Paul Ryan wants a majority party. He wants a majority in the House. He wants a message and a candidate that can bring together a majority of Americans -

BORGER: Right.

HEALY: To win in a general election. The problem is, is that Trump has not been a majority candidate. He won against 16 other Republicans. He was able to put together numbers that have won him the nomination. He has not shown an ability yet to be able to sort of go out to the broader American public and say, I can put together now majorities that come from independents, that come from Democrats -

BORGER: Right.

HEALY: In sort of the key states. So talking about those micro issues and talking about moving over to Paul Ryan's side and questions being raised about Trump zone, authenticity, that's a real problem for him.

[08:50:10] BORGER: I know (ph).

CAMEROTA: But - but, Gloria, I mean, but is it a problem? What if just does what he did yesterday and says, Muslim ban, that was a suggestion. I mean, there will be lots of exception. Wall, you know, maybe if we need it.

BORGER: There -

CAMEROTA: I mean, can't he - that's - that's what he does. BORGER: Well -

CAMEROTA: He backs it off and people seem to forgive him, his supporters.

BORGER: But there are certain building blocks of his candidacy that - and, you know, and Trump has said this himself, he's not going to reverse himself on the building blocks because that worked for him. And, you know, if you - if you look at the exit polls, from Republican voters, 70 percent and up support the temporary ban on Muslims. Immigration, hot button issue, lots of Republicans learned this, you know, the hard way. In many cases, what Ryan is standing for, like trade deals, is not where the Republican Party is right now. And, you know, in talking to the Trump people, one of them said to me yesterday, is, look, it's not that they have to get behind Donald Trump. They have to get behind the voters in their own party, and they have to start listening to them and this is clearly what Trump is going to be saying, though, to Paul Ryan.

CUOMO: Well, look, you have the issues. And let's be honest, politicians move on issues all the time.

BORGER: Yes.

CUOMO: Donald Trump may have expanded the definition of flexibility -

BORGER: Oh, yes.

CUOMO: But he didn't -

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: He didn't create it.

BORGER: Yes.

CUOMO: Dana, something else that's very important, both to Donald Trump and the appraisal of the electorate of him, but also to Paul Ryan, is temperament.

BASH: Absolutely.

CUOMO: Are these very different men? You covered Ryan for a long time. Talk about that.

BASH: Boy, you could not, if you were to make sort of prototypes of opposites, I don't think even the best designer could find a way to make two different men than Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. It is so true. I mean, obviously, they are both people who, you know, kind of are comfortable with power, I should say, but, you know, Paul Ryan is - is bookish. He is very into policy. He is never happier than when he's sitting with all of his numbers going through his budget. And less comfortable, even though he was a vice presidential candidate and he is now the House speaker, but less comfortable, you know, out and kind of performing. Donald Trump, as we know, is very much the opposite. So that is going

to be a big question here, because temperament isn't just also about how they act in public. It is also about the way that they conduct themselves vis-a-vis representing the party and being a leader.

Remember, the first time Paul Ryan distanced himself from Donald Trump, it was because of what now Trump appears to be kind of a little bit more squishy on, which is the temporary - call to temporarily ban Muslims from the U.S. I've been in private meetings with Paul Ryan where he was, you know, abundantly clear, not just in his words but in his facial expressions, that he was incredibly uncomfortable with that. Not just on a policy reason - for policy reasons, but also because of the tone and tenor.

That is something that I don't think that the two of them are ever going to be able to bridge. They are who they are. And I think that they're just going to have to agree to disagree and kind of learn to live with each other, and there are very, very big differences on that. And today, just a few minutes, it's going to be the first step towards trying to do that.

HEALY: (INAUDIBLE) said is that you don't hear Trump himself bringing up the temporary ban on Muslims much. He gets asked about it by the media. He stands by it. But it's not as if, you know, in the - at least in the last several weeks, he's like, you know, rallying to this.

BORGER: Well -

HEALY: If there was another attack, you know, that that is a useful point for him, but -

BORGER: Well, you know, to Alisyn's point, you know, before, what worries Republicans, like Paul Ryan, is that he' erratic and that - that, you know, he may be for the temporary ban on Muslims, as you've pointed out, maybe he will change his position a touch on it, and there -

CAMEROTA: There it is.

BORGER: And there - and there's sort of - their - the point is, we need somebody who's a standard bearer, who has a standard to - then and that's what Paul Ryan believes. Sort of we need a set of principles. Ryan has an agenda that he has laid out for the House Republicans, and he gave them a place to go if they're not in unison with Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BORGER: But I think his point is, he wants to make sure that their candidate doesn't pull the rug out from under them in the middle of the campaign.

CAMEROTA: Of course.

BORGER: Right? CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, I mean we talk about how, you know, Paul Ryan will have to, I guess, persuade Donald Trump to come around, and won't Donald Trump come around to the policy positions that Paul Ryan says are important to the party?

LORD: Well, excuse me. I think he already has in many respects. For instance, their national security policies, it's very interesting to me that Paul Ryan said this is the party of Lincoln, Reagan and Jack Kemp. He didn't say it's the party of the Bushs, which I found very interesting. The Bushs and neo-conservativism, et cetera, which is what exactly Donald Trump is not. So there is a definitely an area of agreement there because Ronald Reagan's national security policy more or less tracks what Donald Trump's about when you commit American troops abroad, how you use them, you just don't run around the world invading countries, et cetera. They're pretty well in sync. So I think that there's a lot of agreement there that they will - they will find in terms of basic, standard Republican principles as represented by Reagan and Jack Kemp.

[08:55:39] BERMAN: Pat Healy, ten seconds or less, how much is Donald Trump loving this right now?

HEALY: Oh, he loves it. Are you kidding? All the attention is on him. And, you know, and he gets to talk about the voters. I mean he gets to sort of go up there and try to make peace, but, you know, he gets to say, look, I'm going to keep doing my own thing and, you know, these guys, I need them - they need - frankly, they need me more than he needs them at this point.

CUOMO: But there will be a new question that we'll start asking after this meeting that we haven't asked that often, which is, well, how does he say it? Let's see how he says it. Not a coincidence that Donald Trump hasn't tweeted in 15 hours.

We're going to take a quick break.

BORGER: I thought you were going to say 15 minutes.

CAMEROTA: Me too.

CUOMO: "Newsroom" with Carol Costello picks up our coverage right after this quick break.

CAMEROTA: Even that would be (INAUDIBLE).

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