Skip to main content

tv   Face the Nation  CBS  December 16, 2019 2:30am-3:01am PST

2:30 am
>> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation" and our conversation with u.s. trade representative robert lighthizer. let's start with the other agreement. the house is set, democratic-controlled house is set to vote on the usmca, the free trade deal with mexico and canada. this is a win for the president to get this through, but speaker pelosi and her caucus did have some last-minute maneuvers here. speaker pelosi is quoted as saying, "we ate their lunch" when it comes to the trump administration. how do you respond to that? you made some concessions to labor and it did irk some republicans. >> let me make a point about that. we had an election. the democrats won the house.
2:31 am
number one. number two, it was always my planning and i was criticized for this, as you know, it was always my plan that this should be a trump trade policy, and a trump trade policy is going to get a lot of democratic supported. remember, most of these working people voted for the president of the united states. these are not his enemies some what did we concede on? we conceded on biologics. yes. that was a move away from what i wanted for sure. but labor enforcement? there's nothing about being against labor enforcement that's republican. the president wants mexico tone force its labor laws. he doesn't want american manufactureers and workers to have to compete with workers who are operating in very difficult conditions. so there's -- >> brennan: you don't think there is a political cost? because republican senators were annoyed to be cut out. >> there are always process issues. this bill is better now with the exception of buy lodgics, which is a big exception, with the exception of bilogics. it's more enforcable and better for american workers and
2:32 am
american manufacturers than it was before for sure. >> brennan: mr. lighthizer, thank you very much for joining us. we'll be right back with a lot more "face the nation." stay with us. yeah, and he wanted someone to help out with chores. so, we got jean-pierre. but one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with renters insurance. ♪ yeah, geico did make it easy to switch and save. ♪ oh no. there's a wall there now. that's too bad. visit geico.com and see how easy saving on renters insurance can be.
2:33 am
i'climate is the number 1ove priority.sage. i would declare a state of emergency on day 1. congress has never passed an important climate bill, ever. this is a problem that continues to get worse. i've spent a decade fighting and beating oil companies... stopping pipelines... stopping fossil fuel plants, ensuring clean energy across the country. how are we going to pull this country together? we take on the biggest challenge in history, we save the world and do it together. but we're also a company that controls hiv, fights cancer, repairs shattered bones, relieves depression, restores heart rhythms, helps you back from strokes, and keeps you healthy your whole life.
2:34 am
from the day you're born we never stop taking care of you. >> brennan: cbs news has been polling americans on the impeachment inquiry ever since it was opened. today we have a new poll. it shows that even after the testimony and debate over the articles of impeachment in the house committee, still lists than half, 46% of americans, feel that the president deserves to be impeached over his actions to ukraine versus 39% who say he does not and 15% say it is too soon to say. joining us to talk about what's happening here and also to give us some insight into the race for the democratic presidential nomination are cbs news election and surveys director anthony salvanto and cbs news political
2:35 am
correspondent ed o'keefe. good to have you both here. >> good to see you. >> thanks. >> anthony new york clear winner to this argument? >> no dramatic movement on those numbers. this week we asked in particular, do you find these arguments convincing that it was abuse of power that the democrats are making. and that comes out slick. do you find the argument that the president obstructed congress split. it's a mixed bag. it's not that people feel what went on was proper, they don't, and they do find the democratic argument more convincing than the republican one. >> brennan: on that particular question, people are just sticking to party line votes. >> i think the way this shakes down is views on impeachment break down to whether or not you think the president is doing a good job if the first place. >> speaker pelosi was reluctant to start impeachment in the first place. there is a political cost. have we calculated what it will
2:36 am
be? >> it seems to be minimal. i have been struck by the fact that all of these vulnerable democratic freshman have held firm on this issue. this number here moves it. if you voted for a democrat last year, you're for impeachment. there is enough support for them so long as congress is doing other things, which is why they will passes the trade deal, make sure the government keeps the lights on, is working on issues like prescription drugs prices. the only fallout, and if this is the only fallout, it's telling, is that congressman jeff van drew from southern new jersey or we're told probably will switch from being a democrat to a republican in the coming days. it's republican district. he's taken some hits. the party showed him some internal polling that found because he voted against starting the impeachment inquiry, his support among democratic voters bottomed out. so he's going to roll the dice as he might in atlantic city in his district and switch to become a republican. if that's it, democrats probably in good shape. >> brennan: ultimately we know democrats with the majority are going to vote to impeach.
2:37 am
this isn't going to show any kind of map. there let's look at the democrats running for president in 2020. our new battleground tracker poll surveyed likely democratic voters in the march 3rd primary. there are 13 contests. close to one-third of the delegates will be decided on that day. it is key. the top tier, not a surprise. former vice president joe biden is on top with 28% of voter support. senators elizabeth warren right behind him at 25% with bernie sanders at 20%. we do have a new candidate in our second tier. actor south bend mayor peter buttigieg at 9% with michael blockburg at 4%, with andrew yang, amy klobuchar and cory booker tied for 3%. the rest of the field has 2% or less. so anthony, this was a gamble
2:38 am
for michael bloomberg. does this mean so far it's paying off? >> well, it's key, super tuesday, not just for the big delegate hall you mentioned, but that's where michael bloomberg is trying to enter this race, coming in after those early contests that say iowa and new hampshire. you mention he's in fifth place. one of the things that's interesting is you look at this and you see the democratic party a lot through the lens of his entry, which is to say, if you look at the liberal side of the democratic party, people who are more inclined to support elizabeth warren and bernie sanders, they look at his entering and say, well, it shows that wealthy people might have too much influence in politics. but he's pulling a little more from joe biden and pilot -- pete buttigieg, and moderates say he's independent from big donors, all this spending he's doing there. so you see that and you see him doing a little better with people who say the party is going in too liberal of a direction. the trouble for him, of course, is that that's not most democrats. most democrats think the party
2:39 am
is just about right in its campaign direction. >> brennan: this was a unique strategy for bloomberg. is it paying off? >> well, it is risky, but he can afford to do it. being a multibillionaire. and you know, if you're already at 4% and you still have a little more than two months to go and you're advertising and now traveling to these states and you're not devoting time and resources to those first four states for the focus on these 14, what's to say he doesn't hilt the delegate threshold of 15% in some of these states and pick off enough delegates to keep going and remain factor in the race. i was struck he held an event across the river in northern virginia on friday. handful of people, his events have been quite small so far. mostly because they're tied to the organizations he's worked with in the past, climate control, gun control, mayors. this one had about 100 people. i asked a few folks on their way out, why are you here? how did you find out? they heard from local democrats. they're intrigued. he seems more charismatic than we thought. clearly he would be an effective
2:40 am
manager, which after a few years of donald trump, these democrats said, wouldn't be a bad thing. we'll see. he's got time. somebody has to test the theory that first four states get too much influence. he can afford to try. >> brennan: anthony, last time we talked, you said voters were satisfied. democrats were satisfied with the field of candidates. now they have more options. >> i think this relates to that strategy in we went ahead and asked people, what are you in these super tuesday states, california, texas, et cetera, going to make of the results out of iowa, out of new hampshire, and half of them said that they used that to narrow their choices. they use that specifically to see who is a contender. well, that's a hurdle for anybody who tries to get in late. but at the same time, i think bloomberg is trying to bet on the idea that there might be reticence coming out of those early states, maybe build on the idea that the party was going in too liberal a direction. >> brennan: there's nervousness. >> that's another thing we found. how do you feel about watching this whole campaign unfold. more people said they felt
2:41 am
nervous than felt optimistic about it. specifically, electability. the idea that one of these candidates can go ahead and beat donald trump next fall, there is no single candidate that a majority of democrats says is probably going to beat donald trump. joe biden does relatively best on it, but it's still not most. >> brennan: ed, he varied the leaves. no democrat here is viewed as being able to beat donald trump. >> brennan: right. that's bloomberg's theory of the race, too, that because nobody else can do it, why shouldn't i try some he will try. >> brennan: thanks to both of you gentleman. we'll be right back with our political panel. >> brennan: our nation's capital. decisions are made here that affect all of us some join us every evening as we bring you cbs news original reporting from around the world while keeping our eye on what's going on right hey there, california residents on medicare.
2:42 am
it may come as a surprise... but medicare doesn't pay for everything. so help bridge the gap with a medigap insurance plan, like an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medigap plans help pay some of what medicare doesn't, reducing your out-of-pocket costs. there are also zero networks and zero referrals needed. call or click now to connect with unitedhealthcare insurance company. find out about the range of aarp
2:43 am
medicare supplement plans and rates available... the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. and here's something exciting that comes with being an insured member of an aarp medicare supplement plan. at your best by unitedhealthcare. an offering of wellness resources and more... to help you live better. so connect with unitedhealthcare today... about aarp medicare supplement plans. >> brennan: it's time now for some political analysis. dan balz is chief correspondent at the "washington post." kelsey snell a congressional reporter at npr. edward wong is a diplomatic correspondent for "the new york times" and david french is senior editor at "the dispatch." welcome to the program. incredible week for you, kelsey, you have some significant votes
2:44 am
keyed up, not just impeachment but the trade vote, and as ed laid out, keeping the lights on in government. >> yes. >> brennan: since we taped that interview with the trade representative, mexico has said they're flying here and they have objections to what was supposed to be a real win for the president is. that vote or are any of these votes in jeopardy? >> last time i talked to democrats, they say the vote is on and they expect things to go as planned. but again, these are late-breaking developments that may be changing their plans. they really do appeal to the need to get this done before they leave for christmas. they have large number of particularly battleground democrats who need this trade deal. so they can go home and say, i didn't just hoe up and impeach the president. i also got things you care about. >> and is this, david, this entire impeachment vote, you have written that republican strategy here is largely just to base it on hypothetical defenses of the president rather than the facts. >> right, right. republicans aren't taking him seriously or literally. they're taking him
2:45 am
hypothetically as a friend of mine, adam white, wrote. what's happen, is they're saying, well, there is a way in which it could possibly be okay to investigate ukraine. pay no attention to the transcript, but there is a way in which it could be possibly okay to investigate corruption in ukraine. there were individual ukrainians who did things in 2016, but this doesn't bear any resemblance to the kind of investigation or the subjects of the investigation that trump himself pressed the ukrainians on. i think one thing that rank-and-file republicans have not penetrated to them at all is this idea that when trump was talking about investigating 2016, he was talking about investigating a very wild conspiracy theory, one that would put an ally in an impossible position. how does an ally disprove a conspiracy theory that is dear to the president's heart when an ally needs hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid? >> brennan: you're talking there about drawing into question the intelligence
2:46 am
community's conclusion that russia interfered in 2016. >> and quite specifically finding a mythical crowdstrike server in the territory of ukraine. this is a crazy conspiracy theory, and it's something i think calls into question the president's fitness. it's gotten less attention than the biden angle, but i think it's very important to understand the president's state of mind as he conducts international diplomacy. >> brennan: but it has drawn publics into the conversation to have to sort of also defend that portion of it a little bit. you had senators like ted cruz and others have to say, well, there was meddling by someone who was ukrainian. therefore the president has mairtd to his conspiracy. is there any political price to any of what we have learned here, dan? >> there could be some political price on both sides i think. we know as kelsey said that there are vulnerable democrats in swing districts who could feel some pain from this. we're in the clear on, that but i think that there are also
2:47 am
republicans who could feel this once we get through it. i mean, i talked to a democratic strategies recently who made the argument that once you get into reelection campaigns that some of these senators who are up in 2020 will pay for what they have done in defending the president so vociferously without giving any suggestion that he did something wrong. >> brennan: so even if we are headed to a senate trial with essentially an acquittal, not a vote to remove the president, that this could backfire? >> potentially, yes. it goes to the question of how these senators explain their votes, particularly the republican senators to acquit. do they say he did something improper but it doesn't rise to the level of impeachment, or do they say he did something egregious but we're ex-number of months away from an election will and there. let the voters decide as opposed to saying what he did warrants removal from office. i think their words will be used
2:48 am
against them depending on how they handle it. >> brennan: kelsey, quickly, are there any other party changes we should be expecting? >> other than jeff van drew, we are not hearing about any other major defections. i would expect that there will be in the neighborhood of maybe three, four, five democrats who vote against impeachment. that wouldn't be a surprise if there are a few of them that do go that direction. i don't really expect any republicans to spinach, because one of the things that republicans tell me all the time is that the president is popular with most republican voters. and the ones where he isn't popular, they're not showing up to vote. it's not a matter of they're going to vote against these members for a democrat. they're just not going to show up. >> brennan: ed, i want to ask you about the president's centerpiece foreign policy issue, and that is trying to broker a breakthrough with north korea to end the threat of a nuclear program. so carry on another test friday. >> i think what the president is very nervous about is north korea possibly testing a nuclear warhead or an icbm that might
2:49 am
reach america. >> brennan: in the coming week. >> right. kim jong-un and their officials have said they will deliver a christmas gift to president trump if president trump doesn't come up with a proposal mainly to take off sanctions from north korea that would please pyongyang and i think that this will... you see the president getting nervous. he's been tweeting about. this he's saying, don't try to undermine my chances in the 2020 election by doing. this he knows if these tests take place they will undermine one of his main diplomatic selling points to his supporters, which is that he got north korea to quiet down on the testing. >> brennan: and this breakthrough on the trade deal, it's a smaller deal than what the president promised with china. does that intersect here in any way? does china become more helpful in trying to deliver north korea to the table, or is there no connection? >> i think from what i have been told, diplomats have kept it
2:50 am
very compartmentalized. the north korea track has been separate from the track. the trade deal, what is interesting about it is that it doesn't address any of the large structural changes that the president wanted to see or that he was trying to tell his vote there's he would get from china when he started this whole trade war. you see china has this command economy structure that has capitalist l.es that it will continue to use and that nothing in this phase one deal, which is considerably field by many experts, addresses in i of those aspects. >> brennan: as you reported today in the "new york times," there was significant espionage attempt on u.s. soil by china. >> brennan: right. this is an interesting case because for the first time in more than 30 years, it looks like the u.s. expelled two chinese diplomats who they believe were spies. and these spice or diplomats tried to drive on the a very sensitive military base in virginia, a base that special place forces on it. and then they were caught and
2:51 am
they were pushed out of the country. the main question about this is whether it will add to the ongoing u.s. china tensions and whether it will become a point of conflict within the diplomatic relations. >> brennan: there was a significant report in the "washington post" this week, dan. detailing real miscalculations, misleading in many ways, of the public by a series of u.s. administrations about the war in afghanistan. i asked senator lindsey graham about it, and i want to play a bite for you here. >> well, to be honest with you, i know general petreaus pretty well. i never thought i was sugar coated about afghanistan. has it been mismanaged, yes. has money been wasted, absolutely. is president trump right to demand that afghanistan do more and we pay less? absolutely. is he right to withdraw some of our forces, yes.
2:52 am
but we can't meef leave afghanistan until the time is right. international terrorism will come back. we're spending a lot of money in afghanistan. wewithout a lot to show for it. i think we need to change that policy. >> brennan: how is the story getting buried? how are there not congressional hearings being called in. >> i totally agree with that question. i think there is unfortunate there has not been more attention outside of what the "post" has done. my colleague spearheaded this. this is deliberate misleading of the american people. it's there in the documents in the afteraction reports that the government conducted itself. i think that it's in part because we're in the middle of this impeachment proceeding. it has absorbed all of the attention and taken all of the oxygen in the media, but i have to think that at some point it's going to come back and there will be some major questions that have to be answered both on
2:53 am
capitol hill and perhaps along the campaign trail. >> brennan: you agree with that, david? if it seems to be popular with democrats who also promise bring the troops back home. yet you saw this attack on a u.s. base in afghanistan this week. senator graham said to me that he thinks talks with the taliban shown called off until there is a ceasefire. yet the frump administration is saying, they will just pause them right now. >> i think what we have is a politicians on both partys have a real problem and the problem is the american people have competing desires. one is to end the war. the other one is to keep america safe. and the problem is when you look at the emerging threats from international terrorism and what suppresses those threats and that american military has been pretty successful at suppressing threats since 9/11 here at home, but that is amid involvement overseas. you can't have both. you can't say, we need to keep america safe the way we have since 9/11. and bring everybody home. those are irreconcilable objectives that the american people have put before
2:54 am
politicians and i fear to connect it with the afghanistan papers, what you end up having is a pentagon con courting and twisting the truth in the pursuit of things that it can't necessarily fully accomplish. and the entire strategic picture has become a political and strategic mess. >> brennan: i mean, just to remind people, we're expecting to bring troops down to 8,600. there are still 12,000 americans there. and no hearings as yet, kelsey. i want to ask you about another big election overseas or referendum overseas in the u.k. brexit, very confusing. what's the bottom line that americans need to know about brexit? >> i think a lot of americans will be looking at this and
2:55 am
wondering whether they can draw lessons for the 2020 election here in america. based on the larger issues in sovereignty. i think we should keep in mind that jeremy corbin is widely disliked by many british. >> brennan: the labor candidate? >> even people who would traditionally vote labor. right now non-of the democratic candidates inspired that amount of dislike here in america. >> brennan: dan, did you gee with that? >> i do agree with that. ily the is a question that the democrats are asking themselves, which is how far left can we go and not be at risk in a general election. and i think that those who are most vociferous are saying we have to be careful about that. we'll take what happened in britain and use it as an argument along the campaign trail. parallels are a little difficult because of the brexit overlay in this case. the wipeout with the labor tarty, it's the worst they've done since the 1930s.
2:56 am
obviously corbin was a factor in that. there is also a factor that the working class vote there abandoned them. the popular abandoned labor in droves or districts where they have had strength for nearly a century. >> brennan: thank you all very much for breaking down another significant week here in the nation's capital. we will be right back. when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of god, in due time he will exalt you. hi, i'm joel osteen. i'm excited about being with you every week. i hope you'll tune in. you'll be inspired, you'll be encouraged. i'm looking forward to seeing you right here. you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you.
2:57 am
>> brennan: that's it for us today. thank you all for watching. we'd like to thank jack morton worldwide. they designed and created ourr3 new set. until next week. for "face the nation," e-mail margaret brennan. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
2:58 am
2:59 am
3:00 am
impeachment showdown. democrats make a last-minute push for bipartisan support, even as republicans rally around the president. >> this president believes he is above the law and accountable to no one. >> they have zero evidence. also tonight, winter on its way. a whiteout hits the plains this last week of fall, snarling traffic and chilling football fans and players as it heads east. global climate talks end without a big breakthrough, but lots of heated rhetoric about a crisis. plus beatdown. a texas college student sues a fraternity after a vicious attack caught on camera. >> we're calling the cops! a service station in maryland changes lanes, charging into the future. and breaking ba

119 Views

1 Favorite

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on