let's get right to cnn's abby philip at u.n. headquarters. abby, for days the president had held his tongue. we saw that change the end of last week. with developments over the weekend now, the president here clearly doubling down on his supreme court nominee. >> absolutely, jim and poppy. the president is fully going at this issue in the way he would like to. over the weekend, he was briefed on some of these new allegations regarding brett kavanaugh, according to his aides, but they also say that the president is still standing by his nominee, that he has no plans to withdraw kavanaugh's allegation. and, as you pointed out, on friday the president sent out a series of tweets, suggesting that christine blasey-ford should have gone to the fbi 36 years ago. that prompted mitch mcconnell, the senate majority leader, to call the president and warn him, they are not helpful in this effort to confirm kavanaugh. clearly, the president is leaning in on his nominee. he has long been a skeptic of these me too allegations that have, frankly, embroiled hi

let's bring back abby philip and jeff cavanaugh, and we want to bring in phil mudd, the perfect man tohe question. >> he's a perfect man for everything. a perfect man for all seasons. >> yeah, a perfect man, although he has a cold. does the fbi have a new duty to re-open their background investigation? >> i don't believe they have a duty to do this. i wouldn't pay attention to what the president is saying. let me give you context in a simple allegation. be careful of politicians to say who should or should not investigate. the politician is saying this is what the department of justice should do. he said we should have have an investigation by robert mueller. we have politicians once again saying we want to use our department of justice, democrats have one view and republicans have another to re-open an investigation that we initiate. i know this is a sensitive case but i would be caution about allowing politicians to direct the department of justice and the fbi about what to investigate and what not. i don't want politicians telling the fbi what to do. >> can the fbi open a background

abby philip, thank you. >>> one of president trump's potential 2020 rivals, joe biden, is marching with thousands of union members and their families. he is the guest of honor at the pittsburgh labor day parade, a big event there in western pennsylvania. joining us live from pittsburgh, cnn political reporter rebecca burg. what's the mood like there? >> reporter: it's festive. a lot of poeople excited to see joe biden. he is a native of scranton, pennsylvania. he feels very much like a hometown hero here in pittsburgh. among the labor community, he marched in this parade three of the past four years. of course, he is back again today. as the president is tweeting about labor day today, striking a contrast with the president with his support for the union, support for union workers. we were able to ask vice-president biden about his policy. do you support renegotiating nafta? >> no. we can -- we can always renegotiate everything we have to make it better. but not the way he is going about this. >> reporter: where do you differ from the president on trade policy? >> you don't have enough

with me in studio to share their reporting and insights, politico's eliana johnson, cnn's abby philip. it began as no drama obama back in 2008, 2009. now he's stepping back into the stage. it's hard to understate the drama of this moment, whether we're talking about the chaos, the anger of the current president, the chaos inside the white house, and the stakes for the democratic party in an election that is just 60 days away. what should we be looking for most here? and i'll start with this. if you look at the primary so far, it is the obama coalition plus, as some have said -- that is coming out in these elections. we know republican grip on the house is going to come down to suburban women, a constituency obama has good support with. then the college audience, younger voters. will they play in a midterm? they usually don't. indications this time are the democrats can maybe get them out. >> midterm elections are typically base elections. i don't think this will be all that different. he remains one of democrats' best motivators for their base. i think the dynamics are a little bit in

let's go live to abby philip at the white house. what about these documents being withheld? what is the white house saying? >> in some ways this is the political fight that we have been expecting and anticipating when it comes to brett kavanaugh. the reason this is an issue is because he does have tomes of documents from his past serving in the bush white house but also as a judge on the bench. so democrats are saying, these 100,000 documents could contain i inklings how he could rule when he is on the bench. they consider citing constitutional privilege this holding back the documents. they worked with a bush lawyer to determine which documents they didn't think ought to be revealed as part of this process. democrats are crying foul. they believe that there could be information in there that could pertain to his hearing. we are hearing from the white house is that they have shown unprecedented transparency in this process. they are pointing to 440,000 documents that have been released when it cops mes to kavanaugh's background. they have done quite a bit and it shouldn't be

i want to go to abby philips at the white house here.his is quite a mark a truly remarkable change in tone by the president, directly attacking ford. kavanaugh's accuser. what happened? >> reporter: that's right. this is a big shift from where he was at the beginning of this week. when he was focusing his remarks on brett kavanaugh being a good person, someone he stand by, declining to directly attack his accuser. >> that has all changed. in the last 24 hours, president trump has launched a new line of attack questioning why christine blasey-ford didn't come back 36 years ago, according to this alleged incident and report it to the fbi? president trump's aides have been releefbd the past several days he hasn't gone too far. now he is doing what many had hoped he would restrain from doing. this is in part what we seen in the last several days is a shift in the dynamics here. at the beginning of the week, the white house was blindsided when her identity was revealed in the washington post. they chose to go towards a tactic that would focus

abby philip joins us this morning. there was a lot of talk yesterday about the white house strategy. what was it going to be? how aggressively would the white house go after miss ford's credibility here? this morning from kellyanne and others, we're seeing a marked change in strategy. >> absolutely, poppy and jim. we're hearing more from the white house about how they want to approach this. the message is pretty clear. we want to hear from this accuser. there is no desire in the white house right now to publicly slam this accuser, given the political climate, both the me too movement and the political realities on capitol hill where you have potentially two gop senate women who are pivotal votes in this process. at the same time, our sources are telling us that president trump is annoyed by the perception that his nominee is being drug through the mud by democrats for what he considers to be old allegations. this is nothing new for president trump. in the past we've seen him side with people around him who have been ac

here with me at the table to share their reporting and insights, cnn's abby philip, jeff mason with reuters, david drucker, with the washington examiner, and cnn's manu raju. what have you been hearing? >> talking to senate democrats, they plan to hone in on four key areas in the questioning this week beginning on win. the four areas include untruthfulness, referring to specifically the 2004 and 2006 confirmation hearings when brett kavanaugh came before the senate judiciary committee. they believe he was not truthful in his testimony in some key areas, his involvement on some wire-tapping issues as well as detainee policy as well as three federal judgeships. they say he was more involved than he let on during that testimony. also the affordable care act. there's that very controversial texas case going through the courts right now. he may have a chance to rule on that, and that could ultimately undercut the aca, pre-existing conditions in particular. the democrats are concerned he may strike that down. also on executive powers, as joan just mentioned, how he views investigations of a sitti

. >> and abby philip, one other thing that's interesting with the book, you heard president trump just say he thinks the reason that this book is out is to discredit or undermine the kavanaugh hearings. first of all, the book is not out yet. it's not out until next tuesday. cnn and the washington post got early copies through sleuthing and the like. this book was scheduled to come out long before we even knew anthony kennedy was retiring, much less that we knew brett kavanaugh hearings would be held this week. that's just nonsense. >> it makes no sense at all. it is emblematic of something else, that this white house is acting as if they just learned yesterday that this book was coming out. we all knew that it was happening and it was going to happen on september 11th, a week from yesterday. the white house yesterday waited hours and hours and hours before responding in any way, shape or form, to the allegations in the book. they didn't yesterday even have a copy of the book and then once they did finally get a handle on accusations, they put out blaventh statements that read almost li