Maryland's GOP Governor Mills Challenge To Trump; Trump Admin. Cancels $1 Billion In Funds For California Rail Project.
KING: President Trump stoking a fight today on Twitter with the California's Democratic Governor. The President says this is about wasteful spending on high-speed rail. The Governor says, it's about something else to the something in a minute. The Department of Transportation did announced yesterday, it is cancelling a nearly $1 billion grant in Federal funding for a high- speed rail system in California, that after good after Governor Gavin Newsom announced he's scaling back the project because of cost overruns. The President on Twitter this morning demanding California, "Send the Federal government back the billions of dollars wasted". Now, it's a surprise decision to cut off funding to this infrastructure project. The governor says look at the timing. One day, after California joined with 15 other states to sue the Trump administration over the President's national emergency declaration at the U.S-Mexico border. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Governor says, it's no coincidence and he's getting back in the President's face. Fight between the two of them. Says the Governor, "This is clear political retribution by President Trump and we won't sit idly by. This is California's money and we are going fight for it". To the substance in a minute and the politics here, if you're the Democratic governor, relatively new in office, picking the fight with the President is unpopular in your state, probably not bad politically, and if you're President Trump, you're not going to win California in 2020, picking a fight with the liberal Democratic governor of California, probably not so good for you either.</s>BALL: Yes, I mean, this isn't the first time that Trump has gone after California for exactly that reason. Now, if he's actually subjecting California to policies based on political retribution that's quite troubling but it certainly isn't the first time that any Republican politician has used California as a punching bag for, you know, the scary liberal governance that they stand against.</s>KING: There is couple of issues here though in the sense that Newsom did scale back the project. So, is that an opening for the Federal Government to say, all right, you're going to scale back your project? We're going to give you less money?</s>ARIT JOHN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, BLOOMBERG: Right, I mean, they've restricted -- this is supposed to be a high-speed rail that goes from San Francisco to L.A. Now it appears it's going from Bakersfield to Merced. So, Newsom tried to defend and in saying, oh this is Central California which needs the investment but this is going to be a problem in California. And then you factor in the Green New Deal and here in Washington, discussions of how do we reduce carbon emissions. How do we like change the way that we travel? And is it -- the Republican argument has been, you know, this is expensive. You can't get the government involved in this and now we see in California which is supposed to be the leader of progressive policies, yes, high-speed rail was too expensive. It didn't work out. We had to scale it back.</s>KNG: And so to your point, is it political retribution? The President probably not helping the cause of Department of Transportation lawyers who would like to argue, now we're doing this on the merits. You scale back the project. You get less Federal money or you cost overruns. We don't like that. We can get less Federal money. The President tweeting, as I predicted, 16 states led mostly by open border Democrats and the radical left have filed the lawsuit and of course the 9th Circuit of California. The state that wasted billions of dollars on their out of control fast train with no hope of completion, seems in charge. So the President there linking the issues that I'm guessing the Department of Transportation would prefer not be put together.</s>MATTINGLY: Yes, I believe there's a three-page memo from the Department of Transportation giving the rationale for why they were pulling $990 some odd million in grants. The President often says the quite thing out loud where you're supposed to let other people connect the dots for you when you're trying to do something, he goes ahead and tweets about it. I think the interesting thing. Two things, first up, the initial grant that the Department of Transportation pulling back is likely going to end up in a court fight. Keep a close eye on the California delegation which is very large and the United States Congress has a lot of Jews particularly in the House. There is a Speaker from California, couple committee chairs as well.</s>KING: And now the Republican leader in California.</s>MATTINGLY: I don't know if he's going to be enough on this one, but they will get involved and they can make life very painful for the Department of Transportation if they want to. The other thing is, there's already $2.5 million in grant money that's in use and there's been some murmurings that maybe that what the President is trying to say here is, they should go after trying deobligate that money. And how you would possibly do that, I'm not even sure what the mechanism would be. But if you want real fight, pulling $1 billion in grant money is a fight, trying to pull money that's already in use for the project would be in a massive fight of that -- my proportions which should be really interesting to see for a President perspective how everything turns out.</s>KING: It is a tactic the President has been accused of using before. We'll show you some of political story from July 2018. I'm not going to read the whole thing but this is when there was a big spending bill planned and the President apparently was mad at Chuck Schumer. Now, the, you know, the Democratic leader in the Senate and wanted to kill this so called gateway project -- money for new tunnel for New York and New Jersey. That President openly signed a deal. There was a back and forth about this. But, if again, if you're -- to Molly's point is the President do this, there are certainly some evidence in the past that this is the way he's done his business in the past. I get mad at you politically, I'm going to try to take your money.</s>OLORUNNIPA: Yes, the President has done the same thing with Puerto Rico. He said that, no, there's just Democrats down there and even the Federal Government shutdown. He said that, you know, all of the government workers are just Democrats. So, you know, we can keep the government shut down for weeks at a time. So, this is something that the President is very vulnerable to this charge that he is using Federal dollars, taxpayer dollars with a political casual to, you know, attack people that he thinks don't vote for him or people that aren't part of his base.</s>KING: And there is a flip side. California is about as blue as you get and so the governor has not been shy about saying I don't like you, Mr. President.</s>GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: You know, it's been a tough two years. To those agents of anger determined to divide us instead of unite us, it's time to pack it up and for you to pack it in. We will offer an alternative to the corruption and the incompetence in the White House. The answer to the White House, with all due respect, no more division, no more xenophobia, no more nativism.</s>KING: We were just talking about the Trump potential political calculation here. He's got one too.</s>BALL: Of course, I mean it's funny, I just kept hearing in my head thinking of when Obama was president and you heard a lot of the same things from the Governor of Texas, right? Saying this is going to be our political identity is we're the opposite of what you see in Washington and so, you know, with the parties flipped that's California's role now.</s>MATTINGLY: And it's also to some degree what Republican Attorneys General did during the Obama administration with their lawsuits, you've seen Xavier Becerra in California who's also involved with the border wall lawsuit. It was done from the travel ban, the border wall on and on. You've seen a similar almost take the playbook from the Republican Attorneys General that can help you politically but it also can help push back against the administration on policies to disagree with.</s>KING: I think the playbook is a good way to put it because it worked in some of those cases, so they should make a political point. Sometimes you went in court. Thanks for joining us today in INSIDE POLITICS. Have a great afternoon, don't go anywhere. A lot of breaking news still ahead, Brianna Keilar starts right now.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Brianna Keilar live from CNN's Washington headquarters and underway right now, we begin with breaking news. We have the clearest indication yet that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is nearly done with this almost --