>> tomorrow, former vice president joe biden kicks off his presidential campaign with a rally in pittsburgh. live live on c-span3, on -- online at c-span.org. host: our guest on "c-span's newsmakers" is ralph reed. since the 1980's, he has been working to mobilize christian voters, first through the christian coalition and now through the faith and freedom coalition, which he founded in 2009 and now serves as chairman. the group posts 1.8 million members nationwide. you may not know this, but he has a phd in american history from emory university. mr. reid, thanks for coming back to c-span today.

mr. reed: thank you, susan. good to be back. host: let me introduce the two reporters asking questions. gabby orr writes for politico and l weaver writes for "the hill." reporter: joe biden has -- i wanted to get your thoughts on joe biden's candidacy. there are people in the white house who say he will not make it to the democratic primary. i wonder if you think he would be a formidable general election opponent against president trump. what are your thoughts on his candidacy right out of the gate? mr. reed: a couple of obvious observations. the first is that joe biden, while he has had a distinguished career of public service in the senate and as vice president, chairman of the foreign relations committee, chairman of the judiciary, he has been around a long time, has been in public life for almost half a century.

as a presidential candidate, he has not had a lot of luck. his 1988 campaign, he had to get out of the race after allegations of plagiarism and falsifying aspects of his resume and his curriculum vitae. and then in 2007 and 2008, he had not only a rocky launch ever -- a rocky launch, but really never emerged as a strong candidate. today is a very different situation. at least nominally, in terms of polling, he is the front runner. i think the challenge will be twofold. number one, the party he is running in now is totally different than the party he ran in in 2007 and 2008. it has ideologically shifted much further to the left. the large donor bundling that he would rely on has changed to more of an online and small donor universe.

and it will be very interesting to see how he is able to adapt to that. so i don't really have a view on how it will turn out. i think it is -- you know, frankly, after 2016, after what happened not only in the republican primaries, when donald trump, to the surprise of many, emerged not only as the nominee, but won the evangelical vote in the primaries -- there were not many who would have predicted that. and he went on to win the general. i was never in the production -- prediction business and even less so now. i think biden will be a formidable, strong candidate for the nomination at least. reporter: i am curious. you mentioned the president a little bit here. i want to get into his reelection a little bit.

he is obviously up for reelection next year. where do you see him standing right now as far as his reelection chances? there has been talk about the primary challenger. bill weld got into the race. people are not taking him seriously. there is larry hogan, a two-term maryland governor. he won very handily in a blue state last year. where do you come down on the primary challenger? and the president's reelection chances? mr. reed: my read of it is there is no market out there at all for a primary opponent to the president. it is a free country, and if somebody wants to run, they are certainly able to do so. and bill weld has already jumped in, and i know there are others that are looking at it. but i think -- i believe it was a recent survey that showed the president with a 93% job approval rate among republicans. that is one of the higher numbers. but even some of the other media polls have his job approval among republicans as 83% or 80%. -- somewhere between 83% and

88%. those are historically very high numbers. some of them are unprecedented numbers. i mean, i go back to the reagan campaigns of the 1980's. i worked for george w. bush's original campaign in 2000, and worked on his reelection in 2004. when i was working on the reelection in 2003-2004, he had a job approval among republicans in the low 80's. we were ecstatic. there was no market for a primary opponent to george bush. i think there is even less so for donald trump. i mean, he has delivered on tax cuts, on systematically dismantling the unattractive aspects of obamacare, on his judicial nominations, including for the supreme court, stellar nominations in neil gorsuch and brett kavanaugh.

he has dismantled isis in the middle east. the economy is strong. unemployment is at a near 50-year low. gdp last year grew at 2.9%, almost 3%. we never had that in a single year under barack obama. all of those are things, along with his pro-life stance, his pro-israel stance, his support for religious freedom -- these are things that at the grassroots of the republican party -- there may be some who, four years ago, would be skeptical as a -- skeptical given his background as a donor to democratic candidates in the past, whether or not he really meant it when he promised he would do those things, but he has delivered on those promises. there is a tremendous reservoir of appreciation and gratitude and respect and deep support for this president at the grassroots among conservatives, among voters of faith. and among rank-and-file

republicans. reporter: i would like to ask you about what you just said. the support for president trump among evangelical voters, heading into 2020, he obviously still has a great deal of strength and support and enthusiasm among the evangelical community, but there has been a lot of policies that have garnered criticism among those religious conservatives, one of them being the family separation policy. recently, as the president and his aides have pushed through these changes at the homeland security department, there has been renewed chatter about this idea of a binary choice option that would essentially bring back these family separations. of immigrants coming to the u.s. your organization was pretty vocal last summer criticizing some of the family separations as a result of the zero-tolerance policy.

i want your thoughts on this binary choice option and how it might harm the president's support among evangelicals. mr. reed: first i will talk about policy, and then i will turn to the political dimensions of it. we believe that the values and principles we stand for our -- at faith and freedom are biblical principles. we don't believe they are partisan. they apply to every area of life. a lot of people think our movement is only concerned about things like abortion and religious liberty. but we think the bible speaks to every aspect of life. and there are actually very clear principles laid out in scripture, in both the old testament, mosaic law, and in the new testament, about how immigrants, aliens -- in the bible, you would hear them referred to as sojourners or strangers -- in a foreign land should be treated. in a nutshell, they should be treated with respect and

dignity. they should uphold the rule of law. that's why we support border security and we support interior enforcement, and we support the rule of law, because we don't think the first step that someone takes on the journey to becoming an american should be by violating its laws. in the old testament, aliens were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect but they were also to respect the laws of israel, where they resided. we feel very strongly about that. in terms of the family, we don't want to see families separated, but we have called upon congress to act and to provide the additional immigration courts and judges, and provide the funding for the additional housing so that they don't have to be separated. sadly, because of partisan politics, the congress has not acted on those things on the level they should have.

the other point i want to make is, as tragic as the separation of the families that are currently arriving at the southern border is, as we have pointed out, the even larger tragedy is the millions right now, over one million, immediate family members, either a spouse or a minor child, that are waiting in lines sometimes 10 years long trying to enter this country legally to join their loved ones. we have called for changes in the legal immigration system to give them priority. there is no reason for a legal resident of the united states who is here legally with a green card, obeying our laws, to be waiting for an 11 or 12-year-old child to join them for 10 or 11 years. that is not only inefficient, it is immoral and wrong.

we have called on congress to act on a bipartisan basis. let me just quickly turned to -- turn to the politics and say that i think that the faith community understands that donald trump has been handed a humanitarian crisis. and i would argue it could be a security crisis. and he is doing everything he can to fix it. but in order to fix it, he has to have a willing partner at the other end of pennsylvania avenue. and congress, sadly, under both parties, has shown an inability to act. and so i don't think they unfairly blame him. if you look at the most recent fox news poll taken on the thursday or friday before easter, so it is very recent, president trump's job approval among self-identified evangelicals is 77%.

and i think that is a pretty good reflection on how they feel about the job he is doing. reporter: thank you, ralph. i want to ask a quick follow up to that. jared kushner is expected to present a new immigration plan to the president either next week or this way. -- this week or next week, and then that will be presented to congress. there are a bunch of tweaks expected in that presentation by jared kushner that will address some of the legal immigration problems you spoke of. do you have confidence that someone like jared kushner, who has never even really been involved in immigration policy, and really has only pushed criminal justice reform successfully on capitol hill -- that he may be able to bridge the gap between the white house and congress and actually get comprehensive immigration reform accomplished? mr. reed: i do and i certainly hope so. i have been privileged to work with jared and his team in the white house. his policy team, on criminal justice reform. i have also worked with them on immigration issues when he and vice president pence went up to the hill during the government shutdown to try to find a bipartisan solution.

and i think there is an opportunity here, unique to president trump, for a sort of nixon goes to china type moment. i don't want to speak for the white house. but i think there is an opportunity here that president trump, because he has been so firm on illegal immigration, and so tough on border security, that if he could put together a deal -- if you could put together a deal that included a resolution of the status of the dreamers, which we, by the way, have supported -- we have not necessarily advocated a path to citizenship, but we have called for them to be granted legal residence, because we think them being brought into the country was not their fault. you don't punish them for something their parents did. if you could have a solution to the dreamers combined with border security and funding for

the wall and some of the legal immigration fixes i alluded to family separation, h-1b and h2 bv says, and some of -- h to bell base visas, and some of the job skill base needs that we have, that is a deal 80% of the american people would be in favor of. and i would encourage the white house, jared and everybody, to do what they can to put something together like that. propose it. if congress were to pass it, we have a solution. if we don't, at least the president did everything he could. i have talked to the president about this issue. he does want to have a solution for the dreamers. he would be willing to make a deal that included border security for some of these other

things that he wants and others want. i think it is a possibility and we ought to either get it done or die trying. reporter: we have touched a little bit on the president's support with evangelical christians. i think in 2016 he won 80% of them. that was a high water mark for a republican, at least in 20 years, maybe longer. right now, does the president have any work he needs to do with the evangelical community at this point? mr. reed: i don't think so. i think he just needs to keep doing what he is doing and standing for the policies and values that his administration has -- and i mentioned some of those. you know the court appointments is a big one. everything he has done to defund planned parenthood under the title x program, that is an executive action. the restoration of the so-called mexico city policy that goes back to the reagan years that prevents u.s. tax dollars from being used to perform abortions overseas through united nations and other family-planning programs. the thing he has done to advance

religious freedom. he issued an executive order in his first year as president on the national day of prayer, directing every federal agency and every cabinet department to undertake a review of all of the policies and regulations and ensure that they do not violate religious freedom. the things he has done to stand for the state of israel, including but not limited to moving the embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. recognizing properly the israeli sovereignty over the golan heights. you know, this has been an administration that has been firmly and unapologetically pro-life, profamily, pro-israel, pro-religious freedom. and as long as the president continues to talk about those things, speak to those things -- i think particularly when you have the democrats going way out on a limb on the left on things like late-term abortion, even infants born alive legislation

they have opposed that said when a child is born alive during an abortion procedure, attempts ought to be made to save the life of the child -- they have voted against that. they have in favor of late-term abortion, or advocated it. that contrast is going to be very sharp and 2020. reporter: one other major part of the trump coalition in 2016 was non-college-educated whites. he really did well with them. you look at the state's up north and the election -- pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin. we mentioned political prognosticators and how you are

not one of them. but one of them talked about how narrow the president's lane to victory is. he said the only chance is through non-college-educated whites. do you agree with that? how narrow do you think his path is to reelection? mr. reed: it is interesting. there has been a pretty significant change and evolution in the republican party's composition from largely majority college-educated whites to now majority non-college whites. i think around the time that i was working on those bush campaigns, i think 55% to 60% of self identified republicans were college graduates, or college educated. now that number has shifted to 60% the other way. i think increased turnout among those voters, increased turnout among exurban and rural voters, closing the cap by which we are -- gap by which we are suffering bleeding in the suburbs,

especially among women, and then hitting at or above the historic average for a republican presidential candidate and especially an incumbent president among hispanics and african-americans is critical. i think donald trump won 31% of the hispanic vote. i think if he can stay at that number or even get up to 35%, it would help take his 100,000 vote margin in florida in 2016 up to 200,000, and begin to put that state out of reach. i think it is all those things. reporter: ralph, i want to go back to the 2020 democratic field for a second. outside of joe biden, i had a question for you about elizabeth warren.

she has made a lot of news recently because she is one of the only candidates who is putting very detailed policy descriptions out there as part of her campaign. she talked a lot about maternity mortality rates. she has talked a lot about policies that benefit women, children, mothers, families. you just said earlier that this administration has been very profamily. i am wondering, just as a christian conservative, if there are any policies that someone like elizabeth warren has put forward so far that you would actually embrace or support if they were coming from her or a republican candidate? host: i want to give everybody time. we have six minutes left in our conversation. mr. reed: i would say i would have to look more closely at what she is proposing. i will say that we have worked

with the trump administration. i had the privilege of working with ivanka trump, who spearheaded this effort on the expansion of the child tax credit -- the child tax credit which i worked for when i was in the christian coalition. we got it first at $500. george w. bush expanded it to a thousand dollars. donald trump's tax bill doubled it to $2000. 9 million people have been lifted out of poverty because of the child tax credit. we also increased its refund ability. that will help people provide for the children and their families. we believe the intact family is the most successful department of health, education, and welfare ever conceived. we have also been working with the trump white house and the -- and again with ivanka trump on paid family leave. we have worked with senator marco rubio. i think mitt romney is a cosponsor in the senate, along with senators joni ernst and others, that would allow people

to get an advance payment on their social security benefits in order to allow them to stay home for a period of 4, 6, or eight weeks, to be there with a child at the beginning of the development. again, i think these are biblical principles. they are time-honored principles that are not partisan. reporter: let's go back to the democratic field. one person i am curious about is mayor pete buttigieg. he has really seen his star rise as far as democratic primary voters in the last couple of months. i am curious, where do you come down on his candidacy as far as the impact he could have. if he were to get the nomination, he has pitched himself as a christian. he has come under fire from some conservatives. franklin graham came at him for the way he has framed himself. where do you come down on his candidacy? mr. reed: i am certainly intrigued by his candidacy. i don't see how you could not be.

when i was coming up politically, the idea of having run for state treasurer in years -- in your state and losing, and running for dnc chair and losing, and you are a mayor of a pretty small town of about 100,000 people and have never been elected statewide and you want to be president, that just did not happen i was coming up. -- when i was coming up but then , again, things like donald trump didn't happen. so maybe all of the laws of gravity have been repealed. he has certainly caught fire. i think what he is attempting to do is to rescue a lost lexicon of progressive and liberal faith that harkens back to the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960's. and i think that is a worthy and ambitious project. i think where he has made a mistake is in attacking the faith of others. specifically, the vice president. he has been critical of anybody who believes in biblical or traditional marriage. and he accused mike pence specifically, and i quote, of no longer believing in scripture when he decided to believe in

donald trump. that is an attack on somebody else's faith. i think that goes too far. so in terms of franklin graham, i have not been able to speak to franklin about his comments. i saw it. i think we have a long and storied and cherished tradition in american religious history of prophetic voices speaking truth to the larger culture. i think that is really what he was trying to do, is talk about what he believes the bible says on the subject of marriage. my organization is different. we are not a church. we are not a ministry. we are a public policy organization. so when it comes to these kind of issues, we are going to stick to the public policy. but i have a very optimistic and healthy regard for the american

people's ability to, in the course of this discourse, arrive at a good decision and be fair-minded to everybody sharing their views on their own faith. whether it is pete buttigieg or franklin graham. reporter: our time is really evaporating here. i want to get in another question. in the coming week, the attorney general will be on capitol hill. he will talk about the mueller report. what do you have to say to democratic committee chairmen who are vowing to investigate more? mr. reed: i would not presume to give them advice on how to do their jobs. but i can tell you as somebody who was there, i was part of the speaker advisory group when we -- group with newt gingrich when we went through the impeachment of bill clinton, if you want to fire up the other side, the best way to do it is try to impeach the president. i lived through it, i saw it, and i think when we started, bill clinton's job approval was in the mid-50's. i think on the day he was impeached, it was 73%. if i were them, i would proceed with caution.

you know, my own view is that this investigation -- you know, $30 million, 2500 subpoenas, 500 witnesses, the president waived executive privilege, the conclusion was that russia did try to influence the election but nobody in the white house or the trump campaign cooperated or conspired with either the russian government or any agent of that government in that intervention in our election and i think to argue that the president as an obstruction issue when there is no underlying crime and when nobody fired mueller, nobody removed jeff sessions, nobody removed rod rosenstein, i just think it's a specious charge and i don't think it goes anywhere legally or politically. >> ralph rejoining us -- ralph reed joining us.

the founder and chairman of the faith and freedom coalition. convention will be here in washington, d.c. at the end of june. thanks for being our guest. >> good to be with you. >> ralph reed talked about the victory in the 2020 election. he mentioned the importance of bringing in minority voters and suburban women which you've both talk to me about what's -- women. would you both talk to me about what is happening to those voters from what we learned about polling right now. >> i will start on suburban women. i was at the trump campaign headquarters a couple of weeks ago and one of the questions was what was the path forward for the president to build his coalition among women because as we've seen over his two years in office, his approval numbers among college-educated and noncollege educated women have dipped dramatically and they were never great to begin with. the answer is look at the economy, look at unemployment numbers. they are pretty confident the president as long as he

continues to talk up those things will be able to draw in some new female voters. but if you look at the way the president framed his approach to reelection in the past couple of months, he is focused on everything but the economy. he is tweeting up a storm about the molar report -- mueller report. every now and then he will talk the market or unemployment numbers, but not to the extent a lot of advisors wish he would and so i think if they want to get back on track with women and have any hope of bringing in more female is, mores -- that female voters, you will have to do a better job staying on message. >> you cited the narrow path to victory. the high approval rates but the demographics ralph reed was describing, that is very

different than the demographics of the united states. reporter: the president, when you look at his activity, it always seems like he's going after his base, he is a was petrified he will lose the base. but he is only targeting 40% of the electorate. he forgets about the 5% or 10% reelection, or 15%. noncollege educated whites are the reason he won the election. between that and others that came out, the forgotten man he always talks about. in the last election, he forgot about women in the suburbs and they paid dearly for that. gabby just said, before the midterm elections, everyone on capitol hill kept telling the president talk about the economy and instead he was out there every day talking about a caravan, talking about immigration, and every other issue under the sun. if he wants to win, i think the

economy will have to be the message. host: we didn't really talk about congress, but retaining the majority in the senate is an important goal for the republican party. christian conservative groups really manage to get out the vote efforts and they claim a lot of credit for maintaining the majority in the last election. how much of the democrats changing their playbook on the get out the vote effort to counteract the effectiveness that the conservative christian groups have had through the churches in the past election cycle? reporter: as you mentioned, they have been very effective at doing that last couple of years, but i think ralph made an interesting point when we talked about pete buttigieg. democrats have forgotten about talking about faith a little bit. something democrats have not done over the last 20 years. i'm interested to see what they end up doing in this cycle. mayor pete is one of the only

ones who does that a lot. biden to degree as well, but faith isn't an issue you hear about on the left. reporter: i think they have realized over the past two years where you have supreme court justices under president trump, he has essentially remade the judiciary with all the appellate and circuit court nominations that have gone through. they are starting to realize this is probably one of the biggest legacies that will carry on after he is out of office and it is a very effective tool to take to the democratic base and their activists and voters and say look, this is something we ignored leading up to president trump's victory but it's not something we can ignore, and to counteract that, we need more democrats in congress. i expect that's the message they will lean heavily on in 202018. -- in 2020 as they did in 2018. host: the importance of the

federal judiciary will be not just in the future but really during this next year with the health care case, making its way to the federal courts, may be onto the supreme court. and we also learned that the supreme court will be taking up a big transgender case. the efforts the republicans have put in to the federal judiciary are important to this base again. how mobilizing is that for the voters? reporter: we saw that in a lot 2016. of republicans back then came out because they did not want to lose antonin scalia as a seat after mitch mcconnell made it clear he would not be filling it. i think that's a big point this year, they don't have the same sort of carrot out there. it's definitely a big thing. mitch mcconnell has continued to make the point. he will be up for reelection and he will be making that point even more. i think it's a big issue for republican voters. it's still an issue people care about.

reporter: and is consistently one of the things that keeps trump's base attached to him. if you ask is voters if they like his tweets, like the chaos under his administration, they will concede know, a lot of it has been frustrating, but he is getting judges through, and that's what matters to them. i think that will be an effective tool not just for democrats is a scare tool but for republicans to say regardless of the last two years at least we've stacked the judiciary with judges who will be committed to conservative principles and ideas that you voters want. reporter: we saw this the other week when democrats talked about expanding the supreme court. there are other issues like that were democrats bring it up and that gets to republican voters to get them to the polls. thank you for returning to newsmakers and thank you for your questions. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its

caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] former indiana senator richard lugar has died. he served in the senate for 36 years. expert onsidered an foreign policy, having served twice as chairman of the foreign relations committee. wife andvived by his four sons. he was 87 years old. announcer: former senate majority leader harry reid and former house speaker john on how tofer advice proceed with investigations following the release of the mueller report. they also talked about education and the future of work. from the university of nevada las vegas, this is about 50 minutes. >> all right, someone everyone

in this room should know, the former u.s. senate majority leader, cochair of mgm resorts, public policy here at unlv, and someone i will get to talk to you later so i have more things to say about him and i will say them then. please welcome to the stage the honorable harry reid. [applause] mr. reid: there are certain things we say, words and