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CNN Projects Trump Wins Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia; Trump Speaks As CNN Projects Key Super Tuesday Wins; Trump Addresses Supporters On Super Tuesday; CNN Covers Super Tuesday. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired March 05, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:05]
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: So, you watch that number, it's 16 percent if you round that up in Minnesota right now. I just want to check on the totals in Colorado. It's just 7 percent a smaller number. But still, still those are your voters, those are your voters who are saying on this night, even as you run away with things that they're mad at you and this was the high point we expect this to be the high point because of the Arab-American, Muslim American and the college age population in Michigan, 13 percent, more than 100,000 votes a week ago.
But, yes, just as Donald Trump is marching to renomination or to nomination, excuse me, he's not an incumbent, Joe Biden is marching to renomination, Jake, and Donald Trump has some serious things to deal with to try to heal if he wants to be a stronger candidate in November, so too does the president.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. As Donald Trump scores win after win the Super Tuesday, the biggest prize on the Super Tuesday is still ahead. It's now 10:00 P.M. Eastern. We are an hour away from the end of voting in delegate-rich California, where a whopping 169 delegates are at stake and the Republican primary, more than any other state. Donald Trump is angling for all of those delegates as he hopes to deliver a knockout blow to Nikki Haley and fully pivot to his long- anticipated second faceoff with President Joe Biden.
Both Biden and Trump are counting on California wins tonight to catapult them toward the expected rematch.
But we can now make an important projection. Follow along folks, because you're not expecting this one. CNN is projecting that entrepreneur Jason Palmer will win the Democratic caucuses in the American territory of American Samoa. Jason Palmer defeats President Joe Biden in the territory of American Samoa.
Now, Palmer is an entrepreneur. He's an investor. He's previously worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Let's take a look at what we see here. It is with 99 percent of the estimated vote in, 56 percent of the vote went to Jason Palmer. That's 51 votes. That's just 11 ahead, but enough to win against Joe Biden, the incumbent president, who has 44 percent of the vote. So, that's 91 people turned out to vote, and a majority of them went to Jason Palmer, who now wins American Samoa.
Dana, I know you've been preparing for this announcement for weeks, if not months. Tell me more.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: It was totally on my bingo card, I know.
Jeff Zeleny, you went to American Samoa. No?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE), so that is certainly one. But I was just quickly reading the Samoa news and was reminded I'd forgotten that Michael Bloomberg won in 2020.
BASH: Oh, yes, that was the only one he won.
ZELENY: And Joe Biden did not win. So, look this is something that I think if you show up you perhaps win or at least helps you in doing that.
But it is a reminder that you know the territories voted in primaries but not in general elections here. So, no word from the Biden campaign on the reaction of this.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Devastating 11 vote loss in American Samoa. I mean, it's incredible.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It does make him the first president to -- incumbent president to lose a contested primary though since Jimmy Carter.
BASH: Is that true?
COLLINS: I mean, I need to double check that because this --
BASH: I believe you. I didn't mean to challenge you. I totally think that's right.
PHILLIP: That's probably true.
BASH: Audie, are you doing a deep dive into Jason Palmer right now?
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Apparently, I need to get on it. So, I'm going to get on the wikis because we've got some research to do. Although I think it's worth noting that Biden like has been in the 80s 90s percent of throughout the night which Trump hasn't been. And for all of the hand-wringing about how like what does this mean, what does this mean, it's not like he's coming in at 60 percent everywhere. That's not what's happening even though he had people actively in the race, Dean Phillips your Cornell West, et cetera.
BASH: Much higher?
PHILLIP: Actually, I've been looking at Dean Phillips' social media accounts and he's poking a lot of fun of himself, congratulating Marianne Williamson and all the other candidates for getting more votes than he has.
CORNISH: Congrats to Palmer because dark horse.
PHILLIP: That's true. And Palmer actually has won a thing.
ZELENY: I mean, I think a serious point it reminds us, I mean, to Audie's point, that the Biden campaign is also breathing a sigh of relief because they have gone through now 50 days of voting without there being serious primary challenges.
Now, one could argue, you know, would he be stronger now at this point? Would he have unified the Democratic base if he had had a challenge? Probably not, actually. They can be very divisive here.
So, the primary electorate is so different than the general electorate. So, all these numbers are not that instructive.
BASH: Those are all such good points that certainly when you look at the general election, the president has some work to do. But what we are seeing tonight, as we've been talking about all night, on the Republican side, Donald Trump does have some warning signs, especially what John was showing us in the suburbs.
[22:05:04]
I know you've been talking to people about the Haley vote and what that will mean for Donald Trump.
COLLINS: Yes. And I think given that, what we'll see here in the next few minutes, we're expecting Trump to come out, I believe, in the next ten minutes or so. One thing to watch in the next hour as these numbers are coming in is how do Joe Biden and Donald Trump respond to this? What does the White House say in a statement? They put out a paper statement pretty much every election night, I believe, and then he's talked about it later. Trump obviously is coming in and planning on speaking at this party that he's having at Mar-a-Lago.
And one way -- one thing to watch is how does he handle Nikki Haley? Because, of course, in Iowa, we saw how he came out and he kind of dismissed her and Ron DeSantis. In New Hampshire, he was seething mad, didn't care at all about his own victory, was just mad that Nikki Haley was still in the race.
After South Carolina, he did not mention her by name. And we know, for her part, she's also doing something different tonight, which is that she's not expected to make any public appearances. We've heard from her after every other election night.
And the one thing that we have seen, be consistent, from Senator Lindsey Graham to other Trump allies online and in other T.V. appearances, is they're calling on Nikki Haley to drop out of the race and to unite behind Donald Trump is the term that they're using.
CORNISH: But they haven't had an answer for what do you do with all the people who voted for her? What do you do with all the people who are disinterested? COLLINS: That's why it matters how he handles her, yes.
CORNISH: As much as we've all talked about the idea of him running as an incumbent, he's really actually running as a one-term president.
BASH: And one thing that our colleagues just found is an interview that the former president did with Mark Levin today talking about Nikki Haley. And he said at the beginning she was very nice, very respectful and then she's gone crazy. I've never seen anything like it. She's become really angry. I think it's because she's just getting nowhere.
ZELENY: I mean look, the reality is, I mean as Audie was saying, he does need your supporters. I'm thinking back to a conversation I had with a man named Martin Green from Wilmington, North Carolina, on Friday night in Charlotte at a Nikki Haley rally. He's told me this, Trump can't win without her supporters. Calling her names isn't going to help him win. And he said he was going to make his mind up voting for Trump-Biden or a third party candidate based on how Trump treated Nikki Haley.
So, I think this is something that the former president has to tread carefully here. So, I'm fascinated too to see how he handles this.
PHILLIP: I also think that -- I'm just listening to that. He's basically mirroring what she's said about him. He's using almost exactly the same language, just taking her attacks on him and just throwing them right back at her, which is a typical Trump tactic. So, that's kind of how I read that.
The other thing about Nikki Haley's supporters, we need to know whether they were going to vote for Donald Trump anyway. I don't think that we know that yet.
BASH: Abby, I just have to get Jake. He's got a projection.
TAPPER: Thanks, Dana. And we have a major projection right now. CNN can project that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Republican primary winner, will be Donald Trump. 40 delegates at stake in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Donald Trump will be the winner of that Republican primary, CNN can project.
And let's bring you a key race alert right now and let's take a look at the big board in Vermont, which has been going back and forth all night, 17 delegates at stake. Nikki Haley is in the lead right now. 49.3 percent of the vote. That's 27,843 votes. That's 1,420 ahead, 1,420 votes more than Donald Trump, who has 46.8 percent of the vote. That's with an estimated 81 percent of the vote in.
That's been going back and forth all night, Haley taking the lead, then Donald Trump taking the lead, back and forth, back and forth. Right now, it is Nikki Haley.
Let's go to David Chalian right now to look at the all-important number of delegates. How are the delegates going, David? DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: That's right, Jake. And that's how you win the Republican nomination, you have to amass delegates, 865 delegates at state tonight on Super Tuesday. And look at that scoreboard, so far tonight, we have been able to allocate 430 of those 865 delegates tonight to Donald Trump, so half, basically.
Nikki Haley thus far has only been allocated three delegates. Obviously, she wins Vermont, she may get some more there, but we'll continue to track.
Look at what that means for Donald Trump's delegate haul to date in this race. 1,215 delegates are needed to win the nomination. Donald Trump stands at 706 delegates compared to Nikki Haley's 46 delegates, different universes of support in this contest on display.
What percentage of delegates Donald Trump has won so far? 92.4 percent of the delegates awarded thus far have gone to Donald Trump. Only 6 percent have gone to Nikki Haley, and therefore, Donald Trump, his need number to cross that 1,215 threshold keeps going down. 30.6 percent is what he needs of the remaining delegates available in the future contest to secure the nomination.
[22:10:02]
Nikki Haley needs 70.2 percent of the remaining delegates, and she's not winning anything like that, Jake.
TAPPER: Yes. Donald Trump could lose all the rest of the primaries and still get the nomination. He only needs 30 percent of the rest of the delegates.
Let's go to Kylie Atwood right now, who is covering the Haley campaign for us. She's in Charleston, South Carolina.
And, Kylie, not a good night for Nikki Haley, they knew they weren't going to win most of the delegates, they knew they weren't going to win most of the contests, but they were hoping for more.
KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Of course, they were. I mean, the Nikki Haley campaign was hoping to rake in the highest number of delegates that they could. They didn't publicly say what that figure would be, but it was really a delegate game for them. We'll have to see how that plays out by the end of the night here.
But those who are close with Nikki Haley and her campaign have already begun having discussions about what is next for her. Their campaign is getting a lot of feedback on the discussion as to whether or not she should endorse former President Trump if she ends her own presidential bid.
And there's one camp of folks who thinks that she should endorse him because it would be good for the party. It would show her as a team player. It would show some unity. But then there's another group who have voiced their opinion to the campaign as well who ardently believe that she should not endorse him because they don't think that it would be good for her. They think that it would give her flexibility to speak out against Trump down the road. They think it could potentially give her the option to build something on her own after this presidential campaign. Both of those sides have voiced those opinions to the campaign in recent days and weeks, I'm told by multiple sources.
And the context here is that Nikki Haley initially made that pledge that she would stand behind. She would endorse the eventual nominee of the Republican Party, that was late last summer, in order to get on the debate stage. But in recent days, she has essentially said that she no longer believes that she has to uphold that commitment.
And she's given two reasons for that. She said the RNC is not the same RNC as it was when she made the initial commitment. She's also pointed out that Donald Trump never made that commitment, so she doesn't necessarily have to uphold her end of the bargain here.
So, that's an area for us to continue watching as we watch to see what her campaign will do after the results are all in tonight. Jake?
TAPPER: All right, Kylie Atwood with the Haley campaign in Charleston, South Carolina. Erin Burnett?
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Jake. And so, you know --
DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, Kylie -- it depends on what Nikki Haley is going to do depends on what she sees her future as. Is she running to replace Liz Cheney as the head of the anti-Trump faction of the party or does she want to have a future in 2028? I think that's what she's going to have to make her mind up here and we'll find out probably tonight or tomorrow.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I watched her on Sunday and in the same interview, she said she couldn't be sure whether Trump would uphold the Constitution, but she withheld judgment as to whether she was going to endorse him or not.
And those two things to a lot of people are going to seem inconsistent. I mean, I give her a lot of credit for grit and determination and relentlessness. I don't give her a ton of credit for courage because she's sort of not wanted to touch that third rail and call Trump out for things that he clearly should be called out for.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, listen, she has gone farther than 99 percent of Republicans in calling Trump out. I'd say this, the best thing she could do is not support him and bank on what she's banking on, which is he's radioactive in a general election. And if, in fact, Trump loses, which is absolutely an open question, she could be there as somebody talking about rebuilding a winning coalition.
MAGA is not the majority of the Republican Party, and there needs to at some point be someone who acknowledges that and can speak to both sides of it. But if she gets in and endorses, listen, she may get the Romney treatment, or she may very well get brought back into the fold and boosted in Trump world. But I think it's a question of, are you putting your integrity first, or are you putting your ambition?
BURNETT: She is not scheduled to speak tonight.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, which is --
BURNETT: That could change, but as of now --
BEDINGFIELD: Sure, sure, which is interesting. I mean, I guess she'll probably take the night and think about it, sleep on it, wake up in the morning, look at the math, make a decision. I don't know.
URBAN: 400,000 points against her to 1, 3 delegates, a thousand to three.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. But, look, I mean, I think Axe's point is right. I mean, she -- you know, this Sunday, she was very -- she really equivocated. She kind of -- I mean, yes, she sort of found her backbone a little bit in the last few months here, but, really, throughout the entirety of the campaign, she's sort of equivocated. So, it leaves people with a sense of inauthenticity but also that's not an -- it's not an effective campaign message. I mean, you kind of have to hit people over the head with a sledgehammer, right? And that level of nuance the sort of, well, he's not great, but also he's fine, well, I guess he's okay, that that doesn't inspire confidence and it certainly doesn't inspire people to come out and vote for you.
[22:15:00]
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, I think that is all right. There's one thing she hasn't equivocated on though, which is her stand for the people of Ukraine who are dying right now because they're having to ration bullets. They're having a ration bullets right now against a dictator that wants to kill them all. She hasn't equivocated on that.
And she hasn't equivocated on NATO. She doesn't equivocate -- like we sometimes talk about --
BURNETT: Or Israel.
JONES: Or Israel.
So, I do think that trying to figure out what she's going to do next is hard, but what she's doing right now is standing up for, I think, for the best in the party, I think, is good.
BURNETT: I just want to interrupt because we do have a projection. Jake?
TAPPER: Sorry to interrupt, Erin, but here is the projection. CNN can now project that Joe Biden will be the winner of the Utah Democratic primary, 30 delegates at stake. Incumbent President Joe Biden will be the winner, CNN can project, of the Utah Democratic primary.
Back to you, Erin.
BURNETT: All right. And, you know, just as this comes in, and there's a dynamic night, we've got more polls closing. Go ahead, Scott.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: To Van's point about where she has not equivocated on the foreign policy issues, this is one of the bright dividing lines inside the party right now that's animating these intraparty debates. You see it in the Senate. You see it in the House Republican Conference.
This strain of Republicanism, isolationist, more withdrawn, it's always been there. And it's -- you know, we've thought about this inside the party for decades, but the isolationist strain is ascendant.
Now, I would submit there's also a strain of that in the progressive left as well that would rather us see us not engage around the world. But I do admire that about her message. But as we have found out in this primary, that is not the ascendant message.
And you wonder over time, depending on how long this lasts, where do those foreign policy-motivated voters go? And I think we're going to find out some of them are going to end up voting possibly Democrat.
GRIFFIN: And, by the way, we should note Ukraine is a dynamic situation. There is a reality, God forbid, that in the spring counteroffensive, the tide of the war in Ukraine could fundamentally change. And there are voters in this country who have traditionally been Republican who would have a very hard time casting their vote for somebody who has been blocking aid to Ukraine, meaning Donald Trump.
BURNETT: We're waiting him. He's going to be speaking at any moment here and everything --
AXELROD: Well, you know, this is -- I'm sorry. Go ahead.
BURNETT: No. I was just saying his tone antenna what he says. Some of these voters would say, how does he treat Nikki Haley tonight?
AXELROD: We've seen two approaches from Trump, one was in Iowa, where he was gracious, and one was in New Hampshire, where he was ridiculous. And what he did was antagonize her and antagonize the supporters.
And one of the burdens that he carries --
BURNETT: Right. And he has just started to speak now, so let's listen. Let's see what shows up.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- and otherwise, that there's never been one like this, there's never been anything so conclusive. This was an amazing night, an amazing day. It's been an incredible period of time in our country's history. It's been sad in so many ways, but I think it's going to be inspiring because we're going to do something that, frankly, nobody has been able to do for a long time.
We've watched our country take a great beating over the last three years, and nobody thought a thing like this would be possible. We wouldn't have Russia attacking Ukraine. We wouldn't have Israel being attacked. Iran, as you know, was broke when I was running things. They were broke. They didn't have money for Hamas. They didn't have money for Hezbollah.
We had no inflation. Inflation is destroying the middle class. It's destroying everything. Inflation, if you look back over the history, hundreds of years back, it's called inflation, it's called a country buster, and that's what it's doing to our country. What's happened with inflation has been unbelievable.
A lot of people say, a lot of experts have said, the stock market is the only thing that's doing well, and that's doing well because our poll numbers are so much higher than Joe Biden's.
He's the worst president in the history of our country. There's never been anything like what's happening to our country. Today, it was announced that 325,000 people were flown in from parts unknown. Migrants were flown in. Airplane, not going through borders, not going through that great Texas barrier that I was with the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, the other day, and we were looking at the job they're doing.
But in the meantime, they're pouring into California and they're pouring into Arizona because those governors aren't doing anything. They're doing nothing. But today, it was just announced before I came out. It was unbelievable. I said, that must be a mistake. They flew 325,000 migrants, flew them in over the borders, into our country.
[22:20:04]
So, that really tells you where they're coming from. They want open borders, and open borders are going to destroy our country. We need borders, and we need free and fair elections, and we don't have a country.
This is an incredible group of people, so many celebrities that I'm not going to introduce any, because I'm just going to get myself in trouble if I do that, because I'll leave out most of you. But we have -- this is a room chockfull of incredible, talented people, like some of the guys standing right in front of me, right? Big, big futures, big, fat, beautiful futures, oh, I'd love to be your age, I'd pay you a lot of money to be your age. But we have some tremendously talented people in this room, including tremendously talented political people that have helped me right from the beginning.
We had the safest border in the history of our country. We built 571 miles of wall. We had Mexico supply us with 28,000 soldiers, because we wanted them, that's why, and they said, we won't do that. I said, yes, you will, you will. And in the end, they did. It was an easy negotiation. But we had the safest border, the best numbers we've ever had, and now we have the worst numbers probably, probably in the history of the world.
It's sad to see what's happening to our cities. Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime. And that's Biden migrant crime. But it's a new category of crime, and it's violent, where they'll stand in the middle of the street and have fistfights with police officers. And if they did that in their countries from where they came, they'd be killed instantly, instantly. They wouldn't do that.
So, the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us. Three years ago, we were at a level, we were energy independent, we were going to be very shortly energy dominant, and today we're getting oil from Venezuela. Can you believe it? And we're doing numbers on that oil. You know what we're doing? We're refining the oil. We have our refinery for that oil. It's really -- I call it tar. It's not oil. It's terrible. We have real stuff. But we're refining it in Houston.
So, for all of the environmentalists, you ought to look at that because all of that tar is going right up into the atmosphere. You just ought to take a look. It's the only plant that can do it. We have the only plants that can take tar and make it into oil, and that's what it is. It's a shame.
But we were energy independent. We were going to be energy dominant. We were going to be supplying oil to Europe all over the world. And then a tragic thing happened during the election. It was a tragedy. Because you wouldn't have think of it, all of the problems that you have today, I don't think you would have had any of them. You'd only have success. And that's what's ultimately going to unify this country and unify this party.
We have a great Republican Party with tremendous talent. And we want to have unity. And we're going to have unity. And it's going to happen very quickly. And I have been saying lately, success will bring unity to our country. And it happened before. We had the best economy our country has ever had and people were calling me that I would have said, will never happen, it will never happen. They wanted to get together African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American, women, men, people with diplomas from the best schools in the world, and people that didn't graduate from high school. Every single group was doing better than ever before. And it was a beautiful thing. Our country was coming together. Our country was coming together.
And now we have a very divided country. We have a country that a political person uses weaponization against his political opponent, never happened here. It happens in other countries, but they're third world countries. And in some ways, we're a third world country. We're a third world country at our borders, and we're a third world country at our elections. And we have to stop that.
We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair, nor has it been free, but maybe someday they will be. They're being beaten up pretty badly. People aren't trusting them. They're not believing them. And, really, it's a very important factor. The press used to be the policeman. It used to police our country. Now, nobody has confidence in them. And we have to get that confidence back. It's so important for the success of our country, so important.
So, this has been a day that we've been waiting for. I want to thank my family for being here.
[22:25:01]
It's a great family. I have a great family. They've had it very easy since I decided to run for politics, they say, thanks a lot, dad, we appreciate it. But they're strong and they're very capable people and they love their country, they really do love their country and we appreciate it. And I want to thank everybody, my staff, Susie, Chris, incredible job, incredible job you've done.
I read an article yesterday where it said this is one of the finest run campaigns that anybody has ever seen, that's pretty good, right? That's pretty good. It's really a statement. And we have no choice because November 5th is right around the corner. November 5th is going to go down as the single most important day in the history of our country.
We're going to take it and we're going to make it like it should be, respected. Right now, we're not respected. Right now our country is known as a joke, it's a joke. Other leaders who I speak to, other leaders can't believe what happened to us, because three years ago, we were the most respected country anywhere in the world by far. We were doing things that nobody could believe. China was paying us billions and billions of dollars.
In 25 years, they paid us nothing, zero, not ten cents, I was getting billions of dollars and they were happy about it, as happy as you can be. Of course, maybe there's reasons for things having happened but they were not so happy with certain things, I guess, based on things that took place. But we were getting along with everybody, we were getting along and we were respected by everybody. We had no wars.
Remember when I had the debate with Hillary Clinton, she said, look, look at him, look at that personality, he's going to cause wars, wars. I said no, my personality is going to keep us out of wars and that's what happened.
For 20 years, they were fighting ISIS, I defeated ISIS in four weeks. I got rid of ISIS, 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate, and we had no wars and we stopped wars. We weren't getting along with a lot of countries. All of a sudden North Korea, which is a serious nuclear power, but North Korea came along. Kim Jong-un, we got along very well.
We got along very well with China until COVID, that was a little bit too much as far as I was concerned, that was too much, couldn't take that one. But we made a trade deal with China that I don't even talk about, $50 billion a year in product they bought from our farmers, our manufacturers, they used to buy 10, I got 50 and it was great. But COVID, I don't even talk about that because COVID was such a horrible thing.
It started in the Wuhan labs, just as I said, the Wuhan labs, and it came out I believe through incompetence. I believe it was incompetence. Some people think it wasn't but I believe it was, but regardless, of course, $60 trillion worth of damage and death all over the world, all over the world. And we did a fantastic job on that, we never got credit for that, unbelievable job on that. We came up with things that nobody thought was possible. Don't forget when it came in, nobody had an idea what it was. They didn't even use the word, pandemic. Nobody had an idea. But we did a fantastic job.
And we got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for our foreign policy, I think credit like nobody, very few people have gotten. And the press was very honest about it, they gave us very high marks on foreign policy, the Abraham Accords, so many different things we did. But we never got the kind of due that we should have for the COVID, or as I call it affectionately, the Chinese virus, the China virus, which is a much more accurate term.
And despite that, the stock market -- when we turned it over, the stock market was higher than it was prior to COVID coming in. It was an amazing thing. We did an amazing job. And we have so many people that worked on that, so many of the doctors, so many of the scientists that worked with us on that.
[22:30:05]
It was really, really something. But there has never been an administration that had more success in so many different elements. We got the largest tax cuts in history. We have the largest regulation cuts in history.
(APPLAUSE)
We rebuilt our military. And what happened? We rebuilt our entire military and beautiful. We had jets, jet fighters that were 53 years old. And we had all brand-new jet fighters.
And then after this, other group of people that didn't know what they were doing, they took over. And we had that horrible surrender in Afghanistan. I call it a surrender. We took the soldiers out first. You know, I dealt with the leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan. They were the ones that were causing the trouble.
The press was very angry because they said, why are you calling them? I said, because that's where the problem is. I say -- oftentimes, I say -- they asked Jesse James. Jesse, why do you rob banks? He said, because that's where the money is.
(LAUGHTER)
And I said, that's where the problem is with the Taliban. And I spoke to Abdul. He's still the leader. Believe it or not, he's really the leader of Afghanistan, but he's the leader of the Taliban, a rough group. I say, don't ever shoot our soldiers again. Don't ever do it.
Very interesting. What happened is that, you know, we were having -- during the Obama administration, previously, they were shooting a lot of our soldiers, and I let him know. I said, don't ever, ever let that happen. I said it very -- in a rather nasty fashion. We don't have to go into it tonight. For 18 months, we lost nobody in Afghanistan.
And then we had that horrible, horrible --
(APPLAUSE)
-- withdrawal where we lost 13 soldiers, 38 horribly wounded, left Americans behind. You know, we have Americans right now still behind. Column hostages, if you like. It was a terrible moment.
We left $85 billion worth of brand-new, beautiful equipment behind jets and tanks and everything. You couldn't think of goggles, night goggles. They didn't used to fight. They're good fighters. They didn't used to fight at night. But now they do because they have goggles. They have better goggles than we have. So, I just want to tell you that led to a lot of bad things.
And now, the worst things are happening. The things that are happening now are unthinkable, and they're unthinkable at the border. We have millions of people invading our country. This is an invasion. This is the worst invasion, probably. We've never had anything like it. No country has ever had anything like it. The number today could be 15 million people. And they're coming from rough places and dangerous places.
And we had that shut down. We had everything going so beautifully when Joe Biden goes to the beach, because somebody on his staff thinks he looks very good in a bathing suit.
(LAUGHTER)
Until he can't get his feet out of the sand or lift the chair, which weighs about nine ounces. Joe Biden, if he would have just left everything alone, he could have gone to the beach, he would have had a tremendous success at the border and elsewhere.
So, we're going to take back our country. We're going to make sure --
(APPLAUSE)
We are -- we are going to do it right. We're going to have the greatest economy ever in the history of our country. We're going to top what we did.
(APPLAUSE)
We're going to become an energy center of the world. We are ready to become energy dominant. And they stopped that. They stopped that. But we're going to become energy dominant. We're going to pay off debt. We're going to do things that nobody thought was possible.
You know, we hadn't done our second phase of the tax cuts. When we did the tax cuts, the Democrats fought us very hard. And now, they say, well, I guess that was pretty good because we took in much more revenues after we cut taxes. And then we did all of those regulation cuts and people were working and everybody was happy and we were all proud of our country.
But we're going to win this election because we have no choice. If we lose the election, we're not going to have a country.
(APPLAUSE)
And we're going to do something. Thank you very much.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): We love you.
TRUMP: We love you, too.
(LAUGHTER)
And we love our country. And we can't let this magnificent -- some people call it an experiment. I don't call it an experiment. I just say this is a magnificent place, a magnificent country. And it's so sad to see how far it has come and gone. When you look at -- when you look at the depths of where it has gone, we can't let that happen.
[22:35:03]
We're going to straighten it out. We're going to close our borders. We're going to drill baby drill. We're going to get the inflation down.
(APPLAUSE)
And we are going to make our country greater than ever before. And we're going to do it quickly. We're going to do it quickly. It's going to go fast. We have to get the criminals out. We have many, many criminals that have entered our country. We have people coming in from such --
(APPLAUSE)
-- such bad places, and we're going to have to get them out. We have murderers that are being deposited into our country. We have drug dealers at the biggest and highest levels that coming into our country. We have people coming into our country that just shouldn't be here.
But many, and I say many large percentages, they come in through the caravans, they come in many different ways. Now, we find out, again, they come in through airplanes. We'll send them in. This is crazy. But they come into our country. We're going to stop, and we're going to close our borders. We're going to have to deport a lot of people, a lot of bad people because our country can't live like this
(APPLAUSE)
Our cities -- our cities are choking to death, our states are dying, and frankly, our country is dying, and we're going to make America great again, greater than ever before.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much. It has been a big night. Thank you very much. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE) TAPPER: All right, former President Donald Trump declaring victory on Super Tuesday. It has been a Super Tuesday for Donald Trump. He had many remarks. It was mainly a pivot to the general election. Did not mention Nikki Haley.
There was a brief allusion at one point, Dana Bash, where I thought he was going to say something. He said something about how we have a lot of young talent and the party needs to unify. And I thought, oh, possibly, this is a pivot --
BASH: Nope.
TAPPER: -- to a reference to Nikki Haley, but no. Um, but he did not attack her, uh, which is, I'm sure, for his advisors and aides, uh, something that they're chalking up as a victory.
BASH: No question about it. Uh, you know, look, could there have been a moment where Trump said, you know, gave some kind of olive branch, rhetorical olive branch to Nikki Haley? Sure. But that clearly wasn't going to happen. Maybe it will eventually.
Uh, boy, where do we even start? Tom Foreman is doing a fact check. I think he's going to have a very, very long summary of things that he is going to say about what Donald Trump said that wasn't exactly right at all.
For example, I'll just give you one example, the whole notion that farmers did really well when he was having this trade war with China. Remember that America, Congress, the taxpayers had to give some money to farmers, particularly in Iowa, because they were really suffering under China.
But what he was trying to do was to walk down memory lane, Kaitlan, and talk about the issues that he believes are most important. I mean, we talked to Lindsey Graham earlier. He said he needs to focus on the policy. It wasn't all policy. But there were policies, whether it is foreign policy or immigration, that he thinks is going to play well.
COLLINS,: I think we just saw right there in that speech why Donald Trump stepped in and killed that bipartisan immigration bill --
BASH: Yeah.
COLLINS: -- that had been negotiated in the Senate. Most of that speech was about immigration. He knows it's one of the number one concerns that when you talk to voters, that they have, and he is focusing his general election pitch on that.
And he didn't mention Nikki Haley. He mentioned unity multiple times, which is what every single surrogate and Trump ally that has gone out tonight and urged her to drop out of the race has said for unity.
And he made clear that this was focused solely on President Biden. He told a lot of lies in that statement, things that were not true. He talked about inflation in this country. He talked about energy production. As of late December, the United States was purchasing more oil than any country in history. So, that's not something that the White House often wants to tout.
But I think it was just an important moment there where you just saw that this is what the next eight months of our lives are going to look like. That is going to be the general election pitch that he's making to voters, and it's focused mainly on immigration and crime and inflation, because he believes those are going to be the issues. That looks a lot more like he did after Iowa --
BASH: Yes.
COLLINS: -- than New Hampshire. But it also was less focused on any of the Republicans and it was focused on what's ahead, which is obviously President Biden as he's also responding tonight.
ZELENY: I think, I mean, one thing we didn't hear was how he's going to, as you said, the olive branch, but it's more than just being courteous. He needs those percentage of people to win.
I'm just looking at the Virginia numbers here. He's really struggling there. Perhaps, not surprisingly, in the suburbs of Washington. But I do think that that's one of the issues here. But clearly focusing on President Biden in the general election.
BASH: I do -- I mentioned Tom Foreman is doing fact checks for us. Let's get to Tom. Tom, take it away.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was a lot to take in at once. It was sort of the greatest hits of many of his falsehoods.
[22:40:00]
The weaponization of the DOJ, he brings it up all the time now, saying the only reason he has been charged with these crimes is because the Joe Biden administration is somehow reaching out to him utterly false. He has been indicted by grand juries of citizens. There have been officials in New York, officials in Georgia, and even those who have come from the Department of Justice are operating under a sort of a hermetic seal from the White House. So much so that Merrick Garland has said that if he were told to do something by Joe Biden, he would quit. So, any claim that this is a Joe Biden effort to prosecute him is simply not true.
Energy independence, Kaitlan talked about it a minute ago. This is something that Trump often likes to say. That somehow, things were much better under him with energy independence.
The truth is the U.S. has been moving steadily toward more energy production for quite some time now. The country has never stopped importing some foreign energy even under Donald Trump, and we do indeed produce more now than we have before. So, that's something the Biden administration could run on themselves and say they're doing a better job.
He raised this new claim, which we have not heard before, about 325,000 illegal immigrants being flown around the country, flown into the country by the Biden administration. That seems to trace to one article that came out very recently that we don't really have anything to back up at this point to say whether there's truth or falsehood to it. I would say from experience, it sounds specious.
So, we will look into that, and we'll find out whether or not there's any kind of truth to that. I would tend to say probably not because that's a very big number for people to be flying around with no sense of why they're out there. It may very well be a misunderstanding of something or misinterpretation.
And lastly, he said 18 months in Afghanistan with no deaths while he was president. This has been checked out many times before. There's just no evidence that ever happened. There were times when the deaths were quite low in Afghanistan, but that also included under Joe Biden before the withdrawal. So, there's no claim there.
A lot of things said in a short period of time there, a lot of them not true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: Tom, thank you so much for that fact check. Abby, one of the things that the former president did talk about, and Tom mentioned this, was a plane or planes of people coming into the U.S. That is, I believe, he's referring to a parole system that -- it's controversial.
PHILLIP: But it's not a secret.
BASH: But it's not a secret.
PHILLIP: The White House announced it. The Department of Homeland Security announced that they were doing it. It would allow 30,000 applicants a month from a handful of -- fewer than a handful of countries, to go through a background check, to have a sponsor, to be vetted before they are given limited permission to come into the country while their cases are adjudicated to work for a period of time. It's not a secret.
CORNISH: And it has happened under prior administrations.
PHILLIP: It happened under prior administrations. It is not a conspiracy. However, one notable thing, and Dana, a hat tip to you for this, Elon Musk has been tweeting about it today. And as Kaitlan reported earlier, Trump is trying to woo him in -- to help fund this campaign. So, there's a nexus for everything.
And look, Lindsey Graham, God bless him, he wants Trump to stay on message, wants him to stay on policy. That would be totally fine if Trump could do so truthfully. But he cannot, and did not do that tonight. And that just illustrates -- okay, it's Trump, we know he does that, but the Biden campaign is going to then have to take that.
And on all of these things, on immigration, on the economy, on oil and gas production, you have to correct the record first before you can even tout your own accomplishments. CORNISH: Can I come back to the thing you said about Elon Musk? One of the things I found interesting about that, I think it was you, is he tweeted specifically that the administration was importing voters --
UNKNOWN: Uh-hmm.
CORNISH: -- which is a real hard nod to replacement theory.
BASH: Yes.
CORNISH: -- which on the hard-Christian right, white nationalist right, is the idea that Democrats are bringing in voters of color from around the world to benefit themselves. That is -- it's a direct line to those things.
And I think over time, as Trump comes out and talks more, more of that stuff is going to surface, and it's going to be far uglier than it was back in 2016, where there was sort of vague innuendo around it, because now there are more platforms and people feel more empowered to speak.
BASH: Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk might have done it. But I think this is what you're just referring to, Abby. Donald Trump said it at an event over the weekend, said it on Saturday, said it so explicitly that I had the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the next morning, and I gave him a fact check. Are you bringing people in illegally in order to change the electorate of the United States? I mean, certainly it is about --
COLLINS: But here's the thing --
CORNISH: But it's that has you asking, right? So, now, we're -- it's like --
BASH: Well --
CORNISH: -- in a way -- no, I'm not --
BASH: Yeah.
CORNISH: -- saying you shouldn't, but what it does is it pulls ideas into the mainstream that are not --
BASH: But it's important to fact check --
CORNISH: -- and forces us to have conversations that make no sense.
[22:45:01]
COLLINS: There are real concerns from voters about immigration and about what's happening at the southern border, and how it has been affecting major cities in the U.S., from Denver to Chicago to New York City. That is a real thing. But he plays into it. It's just exactly what we saw with the voters who were speaking to John Berman earlier or what we saw in our exit polls, that they don't believe that Joe Biden legitimately won the election, even though he did. And the other thing that Donald Trump said there, which you cannot miss the irony, that he is coming out to tout a huge victory on Super Tuesday, and he says that the elections in the United States are like third world countries. But he's coming out and touting that he has just won part of the election process in the United States history. And that is what it's going to look like over the next several months.
And that's why it's notable. You know, in Biden's statement tonight that he put out about his own Super Tuesday performance, he noted directly that he's facing Donald Trump, he believes, come November and said he is determined to destroy our democracy. That is what the president's campaign is going to be honing in.
BASH: And Erin, as I talked to you, what Biden campaign officials say is that they are convinced that the more voters hear that kind of thing from Donald Trump, the more they are reminded of the Trump years that weren't necessarily what they are talking about mostly these days, which is that they had more money in their bank accounts and they felt more flushed going to the grocery store.
BURNETT: Right. Right. And it's interesting, though, David, that Trump is trying to -- in a more subdued tone, he did try to hit on some of those issues that he thinks --
URBAN: Yeah.
BURNETT: -- resonate.
URBAN: That was a -- that was a -- that was as good as you're going to get right there. That was a general election speech that would take away on that line, success will bring unity to our country. That's the overarching theme of that speech.
He's looking backwards to his administration, saying, we did so much better than the current administration. There was not any mean spirit. Didn't talk about Nikki Haley. Didn't throw -- didn't throw her a bone, but didn't say anything negative. And it was pretty substantive.
And I think that -- I was telling Van, I said, you guys should be a little bit nervous if that's a Donald Trump that shows up for the next 244 days because he'll do very, very well. He'll be the next president, hands down.
BURNETT: Van?
JONES: Um, get ready for the fight of your life. Get ready for the fight of your life. This is now a general election fight. That was a general election speech. And now, Biden is up next. And I think Biden will do very well.
But I think you got to understand, the courts are not going to stop Donald Trump. No Republican is got to stop Donald Trump. And now, Donald Trump is not going to stop Donald Trump, all his racism, sexism. This train is coming. And Joe Biden has to stand up on Thursday and answer back. That's what's got to happen. And he's going to do it. GRIFFIN: Well, listen, something that I think -- sorry -- that we run into in the media is the question of how to cover Donald Trump.
And rightfully, we often don't take some of his remarks, things where he's referred to people as vermin, poisoning the blood of this country, talking about mass deportations in this much more extremist, dangerous rhetoric that he's saying basically every day when he's on the campaign trail.
So, what a lot of voters see is what they saw tonight, which spoke to the concerns I hear every day from voters, pocketbook issues, border security, you know, the safety in their communities, and that is a strong Donald Trump. It puts a bigger spotlight.
Listen, state of the unions don't traditionally matter, but because of the concerns over Joe Biden's age, this could be the most consequential state of the union.
AXELROD: I think -- I think there are -- this is a critically important speech for two reasons.
One is it's an opportunity for Biden to lay out a narrative that people can grab on to, which we haven't really seen in this campaign yet, that weaves the things that he has done into a story about where he wants to take the country and who he's fighting for and how the things he's working on are meant to reinvigorate the middle class and so on. And then in each instance, he can -- he can cite a -- he can cite a contrast.
And the second piece -- you know -- so I think -- and I also think you're going to hear him be much more aggressive on the issue of the border. I think you're going to hear him talk a lot about corporate price gouging, Van talked about that a couple of weeks ago, and how that has affected middle class families on pricing and so on.
And I think he's going to talk about the things that he has done on a bipartisan basis, which I think a lot of the country is hungering for. But how he does it is as important as what he does because --
UNKNOWN: Right.
AXELROD: -- of all of these questions that have been raised about him. He can be -- he can be very, very impressive in that setting where he feels very much at home.
Last year, what people remember was his confrontation with members of Congress, which was good-natured but pointed, in which he sorts of got Republicans to agree that they didn't want to cut social security and Medicare. He said, great, we have agreement, and everybody cheered. That went viral, and he looked like a guy who was in the moment. He needs to be that Joe Biden on Thursday.
BEDINGFIELD: Yeah. And I think -- and I think you will see a lot of what you were just talking about. I imagine you're going to see him lay out that case. He's going to lay out the positive economic vision. He's going to talk about what he's doing for the middle class. [22:50:00]
He's going -- but he's also going to lay out an argument that he is then going to consistently make over the course of this election. Donald Trump is not going to make that argument that we just heard tonight over the course of this election. He -- we have seen time and again, he says things like immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. He calls them vermin. That scripted version of Donald Trump.
He has not shown an ability to come out and be that guy every single day, and he's not going to be that guy every single day for the next eight months.
BURNETT: All right. All stay with us. Jake?
TAPPER: Thanks, Erin. I'm standing here at the magic wall with John King. There is one race that we're still waiting to hear from, of the states where the polls have closed, and that is Vermont, which has gone back and forth between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump all night. What's going on there?
KING: A small prize on a big night. Nikki Haley is ahead by more than 3,000 votes now. Our decision desk is going over the pouring. You look at it, about 80% of the votes up.
One of the reasons she pulled up is when votes in Burlington came in. It's the largest city, largest population center. Obviously, she's winning there by 69% of the vote. Not a lot of votes, you see. Not a giant turnout in a republican primary in Vermont.
So now, what are you looking at? You just say, look, you know, my eyes tell me Nikki Haley is going to get one win tonight, but we have to walk through all these and check them out.
You're just looking at some of the smaller places. This would be a tie, right? You always love when you find those on the map. So, you're just looking through now some of these areas where we don't have votes yet, right? And just as an example, this is Middlebury.
TAPPER: College town.
KING: A lot of people know Middlebury. So, Nikki Haley, if you see, surrounding it, right? Surrounding it. It's also a place where, just a lot of these places, you're not getting a ton of votes, right? A 101 to 43, right? And so, you're just looking now -- so you're looking -- that's why I say, if you look at 3,000 votes in a Michigan, you know, that's not a ton of votes. In Pennsylvania, that's not a ton of votes.
In Vermont, when most of the map is filled in on a pretty low turnout Republican primary, she's getting very close to this, but you still see some. So, we're going to count some votes. So, what does it get you? you know, I don't want to overplay it. You know, in my view, that looks pretty good. We'll see if it holds up as we get through the rest of the thing.
We haven't called it yet. She may get a -- she may get a state as we march west. We still have, you know, Utah, California, Alaska as we go west. But it's still a pretty dominant Trump map to the point the panel was just making about how, you know, Trump didn't even mention her tonight, didn't say anything good, didn't say anything bad. That will annoy him if it stays that way.
TAPPER: Yeah. Let's take a look at the general election matchup. What do you get for me there?
KING: So, let's go here. So, you already see the candidates moving to that, right? The candidates are already moving to the general election. You just -- you just listen to President Trump there.
This is our projection of the map right now. Let me come back here to this and bring this up. This is here. This is the last election. Let me go all the way back. This is the last election in 2020. Joe Biden won, and for any Republicans who think he didn't, Joe Biden won --
(LAUGHTER)
-- 306 electoral votes to 232 electoral votes. Because of the census, some electoral votes have been reassigned. So, this is the 2020 states. Right now, it would be 303 to 235 because some electoral votes shift after every census.
So, here's the question. Where are we? Right? November is eight months away. However, if you just look at recent polling in battleground states, Donald Trump is leading outside the margin of error in the most recent poll in Michigan. Doesn't mean he would win, but he is just -- this is hypothetical.
Poll, late January in Georgia. Michigan and Georgia flip. Pick one more. Right? Pick one more. This is where again --
TAPPER: Nevada.
KING: There are eight months. That's the same one I was going to pick. Having been in Nevada recently, talking to people out there, a lot of people think at this moment, that's it. That's all that has to happen. Remember how close this was. You know, how close these battleground states are. Joe Biden won the same -- quote, unquote -- "landslide." Donald Trump called it a landslide in 2016. Joe Biden won the same landslide in 2020.
TAPPER: Harry Reid is not there anymore.
KING: But it only takes -- it only takes three. And they've also been very competitive. Polls here showing a dead heat. So, this is hypothetical. Dead heat. Dead heat. Right?
And so, you could, conceivably, with the enthusiasm you're seeing, that doesn't mean this is going to happen. Not saying this is going to happen. But if you're the incumbent Democratic president of the United States, this is where you were in 2020.
It is so easy. Meaning it takes so few states. Easy is the wrong word. But Michigan and Georgia, again, public polling in recent weeks, outside the margin of error. A lot of people think that. It just underscores the challenge for the president of the United States.
Now, now, to the point we're having earlier, Virginia is still blue, right? I still have Pennsylvania blue on this because of the suburban issue. So, we have public polling available to us that says, at the moment, Michigan is in trouble for the president, Georgia is in trouble for the president. A lot of evidence. Nevada is. Eight months is a long time to go.
But if you are Donald Trump, that's why you're talking about those issues. You're talking about inflation, you're talking about immigration, because you know they play in a lot of places in America, and they play in the states I just hypothetically flipped.
TAPPER: All right. Joining us now, the national co-chair for the Biden-Harris presidential campaign, former senior advisor to President Biden, former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu. Good to see you, sir. Thanks for joining.
[22:55:00]
So, former President Trump having a great night on Super Tuesday. I mean, your guy is, too, but he's not really running in a competitive race. You just heard him speak to his supporters. He's an incumbent president. There is a difference to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. You just heard Trump speak to his supporters. What's your takeaway from the results so far?
MITCH LANDRIEU, FORMER NEW ORLEANS MAYOR: Well, first of all, my takeaway from the -- from Donald Trump's speech was just utter amazement, that he thinks that nobody remembers that when he was in office, it wasn't all moonbeams and fairy tales, as though the world was perfect, and now it's terrible and he's going to be our savior.
I thought, first of all, he has very low energy tonight. And secondly, I think Tom Foreman can confirm this, but most, if not all, of what he said was factually incorrect and is provably incorrect. And to the point where you would think that if his lips are moving, he's lying or he's delusional, one of the two.
But just to give you an example, under Donald Trump's administration, he lost 2.5 million jobs. Under Joe Biden's administration, he has gained 15 million jobs, a swing of 17 million jobs. Unemployment rate is better today than it was under Donald Trump. And by the way, the stock market hit four record highs under Joe Biden.
So, for Donald Trump to try to paint the picture -- and let me just remind everybody --
TAPPER: It's a credit for them, by the way.
LANDRIEU: -- 17, 17, 17 -- he did --- 17 of his cabinet members resigned and have -- and have begged America not to put this guy within 100 yards of the presidency. So, that entire speech was built on a house of lies that President Biden will continue to talk about as this campaign goes forward. TAPPER: Okay. But given all that, your guy is still -- still losing right now. I mean, the polls have Trump up. Poll after poll after poll after poll has Trump up. And a lot of those same polls in 2020 never had Trump up, always had Biden up.
And now, a lot of those same polls are saying -- they're really saying the same thing over and over and over. And it doesn't matter how many Democrats out there don't want to hear the message and say, oh, it's just an outlier, that's just one poll.
Something is wrong with your campaign right now. It's not connecting with the voters you need to win.
LANDRIEU: Well, first of all, it's not true that every poll has shown that all the time. These things have moved up and down as polls do. This campaign, as we have said from the beginning, is going to be a very close campaign. It's going to be hand to hand combat. Every vote matters. Both campaigns are going to have to fight hard for this win.
I would note for you guys tonight, because you've been covering most of the Trump results, that Nikki Haley is really kind of doing better than people expected to. And as was said earlier by John, she's winning in places where presidential elections are decided.
And in that group of people, those folks are tired of Donald Trump taking the Republican Party as they once knew it. The party where the Cheneys and the Bushes and the Reagans and the Romneys and all of those folks used to live and eviscerated it.
And it's one of the reasons that we think that we have a really good chance. And that's where we're going to spend a lot of time, as well as securing our base. And we're going to get after it. And tonight, you know, the campaign started up to this point. People didn't really think it was going to be Biden versus Trump. But here we are, and we're ready to go.
KING: Mayor Landrieu, it's John King jumping in. Appreciate the compliment on the map.
LANDRIEU: Hey, John.
KING: I'm going to do a little bit more now. I'm not sure you're going to like it as much. But I want to come back to your Haley point in a minute, because I agree, huge target of opportunity for the Biden campaign in places that matter. However, where we are today, as Jake just noted, you say everything Donald Trump said, there was a lie. The American people remember his presidency. They remember he wanders about as far from the truth as you can get regularly.
And yet at this moment, not only is he marching to the republican nomination, but if you look at the general election polling, he is stronger now than he was weeks and months ago, including your friend, Debbie Dingell, would say, I'm going to just touch here, that if the election were held tomorrow, goodbye, Michigan.
I'll just start at that one. I'll just start at that one. We talked a little bit about this last week, about the uncommitted vote in Michigan, because the Arab-Americans out there are mad. A lot of the younger voters are mad.
When, when will we see the president of the United States not sending the national security team out, not sending the campaign team out, but going there, spending the time, and I would argue, not at a big rally, but in a small room, taking his hits and answering the questions?
LANDRIEU: Well, first of all, I'm not sure when he's going to do that. I'll leave it to him to make that decision.
KING: Do you think he should?
LANDRIEU: I won't get in front of him, but I want to make this really -- I don't know. But I want to make -- I'll make this clear. We really understand and the president thinks people ought to voice their opinion, and he's fine with that. And as we move this campaign forward, we're going to continue to try to secure our base, and we're going to try to expand as well. There are great opportunities here for the president.
But John, I don't mean to disagree with you, you and I have known each other a long time, but I'm not sure at all that the country really remembers Donald Trump's presidency, given the time that has gone by. We're going to remind them of it, as should everybody else, as we're fact-checking the things that he is saying.
[23:00:01]
This race is going to be a very close race. It's going to be very hard fought. As I want to remind everybody, again, the only guy standing in this country that has ever beat Donald Trump is Joe Biden.
