♪ [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. 2019] >> coming up in a few minutes, u.s. trade representative robert lighthizer will testify with us and it finance committee about the u.s. mexico canada agreement. you will be a multi-watch live here on c-span. referring to his official campaign 2020 kickoff in orlando, florida, this evening. for more on that topic, we are joined by gary this morning. a reporter for political playbook joining us on the phone. orlando for the announcement? because without

florida it is really hard to win reelection. in a way, florida is now his de facto home state. he has been here a lot. he has been here at least 100 times since becoming president. he comes down to go to mar-a-lago in palm beach. that florida is very important to the reelection strategy and the reason he picked orlando is because if you want to win florida, you need to pick up the votes in the i-4 corridor. while he is going to be appearing in orlando which is itself in a democratically controlled county, all the suburban areas around orlando are republican and just up the road is a place called the villages, a mega-retirement community, heavily republican. host: what we know about that

election kickoff? who is going to be introducing the president? who else is going to be there? expect a lot of the florida political universe to be there although it has been unclear as to what their role is going to be. governor desantis is going to be there, senator rubio. they are all going to be on hand. another thing to note is that they are squeezing in some fundraisers around this trip. they will have one right before the rally. then he is going to go down to miami and have another big in whichr tomorrow they have already estimated they will raise $4 million. they are going to be raising money and rallying up the base. as you have noted, a lot of people will show up and there will be a counter rally. there will be the trump baby balloons. it is going to be quite the show. i'm sure the television cameras are going to love it. host: you mentioned the new

governor and senator scott as well. tell us what the 2018 election tells us about the trends in florida as we look ahead to how the state will go in 2020. guest: 2018 was an interesting twist for florida. a much higher turnout than anyone anticipated in terms of the way it goes for a midterm election. in the end, the publicans were able to get out the vote and they had an election day surge that overwhelmed the advantage the democrats had in places like early voting and things like that. that is what we have to look at. what happened to 2016 was a bit remarkable even for florida because president trump florida by nearly 113,000 votes. hillary clinton did better than obama did in 2008 and 2012 and that is to be expected because

the state continues to grow but she still did much better but still lost because the republican turnout in 2016 -- there were some counties in florida, very republican counties that had monster turnouts. the countyent -- where naples is in the former -- and governor scott is formally from, they had a 90% turnout. other places in central florida they also had large turnouts. 2018, andrewn gillum got a lot of people out and got people to vote in a midterm that did not vote before but it was not quite enough and that is what we are looking at in terms of 2020, will the republicans be able to once again get this massive turnout

of voters who may be in the past were not voting? host: are you going to be in orlando tonight? any chance to interview some of those folks who have been camping out for what will be about 40 hours by the time the rally kicks off? guest: i will not be on the ground in orlando. i will be watching everything. we have a lot of political colleagues who are following the president who are going to be there. is,ink the thing about it certainly the floridians i have seen and talked to in the last two years, they are still very loyal to the president and very much have not wavered in that support. i think what has been challenging to them as far as we seen is not changing in the panhandle which was always a republican area, even though there was this dustup over hurricane michael relief, at the

end of the day, it does not seem like it has affected the support people have for the president. fine gary find out -- very -- gary to runningk forward again. >> tonight, president donald trump holds a rally in orlando, florida, officially announcing his run for a second term. ,atch live on c-span2, online or listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> the new and noteworthy column. a milepost in the ever-changing reputation of the president. and from the new york journal of books, the president makes a fast engrossing read.

read about how noted presidential historians rank the best and worst chief executives, from george washington to barack obama. challenges they face, and the legacies they left behind. president is now available for a hardcover for an e-book today at c-span.org/the presidents or wherever books are sold. >> we live this morning as the senate finance committee will hear from u.s. trade representative robert lighthizer -- lighthizer. he is expected to talk about the trade policy in the united states mexico canada trade agreement. it should start here in just a moment.

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