>> the u.s. house will gavel in today at :00 eastern following their two week spring recess. legislative work will start at 4:30 eastern when members will debate three bills, including one allowing states to use federal funds to build local public shooting ranges. on wednesday, the house will start work on a bill blocking the u.s. from withdrawing from the paris climate change agreement. we'll have live coverage here on c-span. also online at c-span.org or listen to the house with the free c-span radio app. >> wednesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, attorney general william barr will testify before the senate judiciary committee on the mueller report. on thursday, at 9:00 a.m. eastern, he'll testify before the house judiciary committee. live on c-span3, c-span.org, and listen the free c-span radio

app. >> host: our guest on "c-span's newsmakers" is ralph reed. 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." start with president dention politics. gabby. reporter: thank you for joining us. a big morning with joe biden entering the 2020 field of presidential candidates. i want to get your thoughts on his candycy. there are quite a few people in

the white house and trump campaign who say he's not going to make it through a 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 senate foreign relations committee, chairman of the judiciary, he's been around a long time, he's been a public life for almost a half century. as a presidential candidate, he has not had a lot of luck. his 1988 campaign, he had to get ut 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, but really never emerged as a strong candidate. today, it's a 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 2007-2008. it has ideologically shifted much further to the left. the large donor bundling that he -- a more establishment or traditional condition date that biden 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 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 re-election a little bit. he is obviously up for reelection next year. where do you see him standing right now as far as his re-election chances stand? 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 re-election 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 omebody 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 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 bush 43 re-elect in 2003 and 2004, we 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 about giving 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 olicy. recently as the president and his aides have pushed through these changes at the homeland security department, there's been renewed chatter about this idea of a binary choice option that would essentially bring back these family separations of mmigrants 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 -- whether or not you think pursuing that approach 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 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 to be treated with dignity and respect, but they were also to respect the laws of israel, here they resided. we feel very strongly like that. 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 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 ould 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 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 you -- that if you could put together a deal that could include a resolution of the status of the dreamers, which we, by the wait, have supported. we have not necessarily advocate add path to citizenship, but we have called for them to be granted them legal residents. 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 legal immigration fixes, and d h-1-b, and h-2-b visas and

some of the job skills base needs that is desperately needed right now, that's a deal that 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 and propose it. if congress were to pass it, we have a solution. if they 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 over 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, and 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. the other day, we -- a political prognosticator 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 n 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 hose voters, increased turnout among exurban and rural voters, closing the 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. think donald trump won 31% of the hispanic vote in 2016. 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 prescriptions and ideas as parts 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 onversation. 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 have 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 $1,000. 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 refundability. 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 again with ivanka trump on paid family leave. we have worked with senator marco rubio. i think mitt romney is a co-sponsor of this bill in the senate, along with senators joni ernst and others, that would allow people to get an advanced payment on their social security benefits in order to allow them to stay home for a period of four, six, or eight weeks to be there with that 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? also on graham's comments, what do you make of those? 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 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 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. 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. host: 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 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 his 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 or colluded or conspired with the russian government or any agent of the government in that intervention in our election. i think to argue that the president has an obstruction issue when there is no underlying crime and when nobody fired the special counsel or removed rod rosen stein, i think it's a specious charge. i don't think it goes anywhere legally or politically. host: ralph reed joining us from atlanta. your annual convention will be here in washington, d.c. at the end of january. -- june. thank you for being our guest this week.

e talked about the past of --victory in this 2020 he election. he did mention the importance of bringing in minority voters and suburban women. would you both talk to me about what's happening to those voters from what we learned about polling right now? reporter: i will start on suburban women. i was at the trump campaign headquarters a couple of weeks ago. one of the questions i asked him was what is the path forward for the president to build his coalition among women? s-l as we have seen over the course hiffs two years in office, his approval numbers among both college educated and noncollege educated women have dipped dramatically. they were never great to begin with. their answer is look at the economy. look at unemployment. they're pretty confident that the president, as long as he talks those things up, we'll be able to draw in some new female voters. but if you look at the way the president has framed his approach to reelection in the past couple of months.

he is focusing on everything but the economy. he is talking about immigration. he is tweeting up a storm about the special counsel report. every now and then he will talk about the market. these unemployment numbers, but not to the extent a lot of his advisors wish he would. if they want to get back on track with women and have any hope of bringing in more female candidates -- voters to support him, he will have to do a betterer job staying on message. host: you cited the narrow path to victory. if you listen to the demographics, high approval ratings, yet the demographics that ralph reed was describing, that very different of the evolving demographics of the united states. what does this mean for furet of the republican party? eporter: when you look at the president's activities, he's always going after his base. he is eyes petrified he will lose his base. he is only targeting about 40% of the electorate. i think you're seeing that a lot.

noncollege educated whites are the reason he won the election. between that and other voters who came out, forgotten man he always talked about. in the last election, he forgot about women in the suburbs. they paid dearly for that. before the midterms, everyone on capitol hill kept telling the president, talk about the economy. talk about the economy. instead, he is out there talking about the caravan. immigration, every other issue under the sun. if he wants to win, the economy has to be the message. but he is talking about everything else right now. host: we didn't really talk bout congress. retaining the majority in the senate is an important goal for the republican party. the christian conservative groups really managed to get out

the vote. and they claim a lot of credit for retaining the majority in the last election. how much are the democrats changing their playbook on the get out the vote effort to be able to counteract the effectiveness that the conservative christian groups have had to the churches? reporter: they have been very effective at doing that the last couple of years. ralph reed made it interesting point we talked about pete buttigieg. democrats have forgotten to talk about faith a little bit. it's something democrats really haven't done over the last 10 years, last 20 years. they don't talk about that a whole lot. i'm interested to see what they nd up doing in this cycle. biden does it to a certain degree. faith really isn't an issue on the left. reporter: i think they have really realized over the last couple of years when they have had to supreme court justices

and president trump, he has remade the judiciary with all of the appellate and circuit court nominations that have gone through under his administration, they are starting to realize this is actually probably one of the biggest legacies that will carry on. and it's an effective tool to take to the democratic base torques take to their activists and voters and say this is something we ignored probably leading up to president trump's victory. it's not something we can ignore . to underer act that we need to get more democrats in congress. i expect that that's a message they are going to lean heavily on in 2020. as they did in 2018. host: the importance of the federal judiciary is going to be not just in the future but really during this next year, with health care case, perhaps making its way through the lower federal courts and on to the supreme court. we just learned this week the supreme court will take up a big transgenderer 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 back in 2016. a lot of republicans whack back then came out because they did not want to lose antonin's seat. after mitch mcconnell made it clear he won't lose the seat. i don't think they have the same carrot out there. it's a big thing. mcconnell has continued to make that point. he's going to be up for re-election. he's going to be out there more making this point. i think the the judiciary is a big issue for republican voters. not going to be the carrot on a stick, but it's an issue. reporter: it's one of the things that keeps trump's base attached to him. if you go on the campaign trail and talk to voters dourks like his tweets? all the chaos that has gone on? under his administration, they'll concede that, no, a lot has been frustrating. he's getting these judges through. that's what matters to them.

so i do think that's going to be a effective tool. not just for democrats as a scare tactic in 2020, but for republicans to say, regardless of all that has transpired in the last two years, at least we have staffed the judiciary with judges who are going to be committed to these conservative principles and ideas 245 you voters want. reporter: we saw this in a week when democrats are talking about expanding the supreme court. other issues like that that gets to republican voters a and helps get them to the polls. host: thanks for returning to "newsmakers." [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> former vice president he joe biden kicks off his presidential campaign for the democratic presidental nomination this afternoon with a rally in pittsburgh. rick klein tweeting people are already lining up. we'll have live coverage of the rally here on c-span. we will have to leave for live house coverage at