Trump Sues Banks to Block House Subpoenas for Records
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Democratic voters say Biden is today their top choice.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Bernie Sanders, he is in second place right now, a full 24 points behind Joe Biden. He's at 15 percent. All this as the former vice president begins his first official campaign swing to Iowa. Want to bring in CNN political director David Chalian with these new poll numbers and a big bounce for the former vice president, David.</s>DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Big bounce indeed. We should note this is the first national poll taken entirely after Joe Biden entered the race. So clearly, seeing some effect of a positive rollout for him. The horserace numbers again, as you just noted, Biden way out in front with 39 percent, 15 percent for Bernie Sanders. The next four -- Warren, Buttigieg, O'Rourke and Harris -- all down in single digits. I want to compare this to how they performed last month in our poll. And take a look at that growth for Joe Biden since just last month. That's an 11-point gain. Again, a positive response to his rollout, clearly. The only other candidate to make that kind of a leap is Buttigieg, who went from 1 percent in our national poll last month to seven percent now. But you see Sanders, O'Rourke and Harris, all going down a bit. Obviously, all the Biden and a bit of Buttigieg's effect. Take a look at what's sort of underneath the numbers and fueling this? Joe Biden in our poll, John, is winning all across almost every demographic group. But when you break it down by race, I think this is really key. Among white Democrats, Biden is still leading, 29 percent to 15 percent, so a narrower lead than overall. But look at Biden among non-white voters, a key constituency among Democrats. Fifty percent are for Biden. Next is Sanders at 14 percent. This is a huge advantage, and it was -- it is what is powering his lead. I also want to just caution here for one moment: we're still early. Sixty-four percent of Democrats in our poll say they might change their mind. Only 36 percent say they are definitely supporting the candidate they're with right now. We also tested some candidate qualities. And look what comes out on top. The chance to beat Donald Trump, 46 percent of Democrats say that is extremely important. Electability is key. The right experience then comes in at 31 percent, saying extremely important, working across party lines. But electability, way out in front. And issues matter, too. Take a look at the issues that are dominating inside the Democratic nomination race. Climate change, 82 percent of Democrats say it is extremely important. Medicare for all, 75 percent. And it goes down then from there. Guns. But look at this. Free public college, impeaching the president, paying reparations, voting rights for felons, they're much lower. It is climate change and Medicare for all that are animating this race for the nomination -- John, Alisyn.</s>BERMAN: All right, David Chalian, a fascinating look on where things stand on April 30, 2019.</s>CHALIAN: That's right.</s>CAMEROTA: Early days.</s>BERMAN: I understand there's a long way to go, but still, it's very interesting with Biden just entering the race a few days ago. Joining us now, Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for "The New York Times" and a CNN political analyst. You know who's looking at the Biden candidacy closely?</s>MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think I know where you're going with this.</s>BERMAN: I think it's the president of the United States.</s>HABERMAN: I think you might be right.</s>BERMAN: I mean, he is all over Twitter. I'm not going to read these tweets out loud. But he seems to be fixated on Joe Biden as a candidate. What's going on here? And are the president's advisers happy about this? Because you can make a case, this is elevating Joe Biden.</s>HABERMAN: Some are happy and some are encouraging him, and I think others think this is not the way you handle a new entrant into a massively crowded Democratic primary field, when the party is figuring out who they want and how effort their nominee and how they want to challenge the president. Donald Trump believes that he can brand anyone. He's watching the coverage. He's getting frustrated. He thinks that what this race really needs right now is him shaping it. What he's doing is elevating Joe Biden and basically turning this into a one-on-one race between himself and Joe Biden 18 months ahead of time. This is the kind of thing you would see a presidential candidate for re-election do in the summer of the election year, typically. This is now taking place right now. It might not end up mattering, but this is not the way veteran political operatives would handle this.</s>CAMEROTA: What is President Trump frustrated about. Is he frustrated that Joe Biden seems to be sticking it directly to him, or is he frustrated about the coverage?</s>HABERMAN: It's a little of both. He thinks that Biden can play to the white, working class voters who elected him last time. And he know that that swath of voters would -- remember, we're talking about,, you know, a couple of tens of thousand votes across three states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That is what gave him the presidency. He is eyeing those constituencies very carefully. Joe Biden came out of this very clearly, out of the gate with his campaign, he is going to make an appeal for working-class voters. He had the firefighters' union. It's not the same as the AFL-CIO, but he is trying to send a message. And Trump is aware of that.</s>BERMAN: The appeal -- the direct appeal to union voters from Biden is interesting. And people forget: to his credit, President Trump, in the campaign last time -- Paul Manafort helped --</s>HABERMAN: That's right.</s>BERMAN: -- did make a direct appeal to union voters.</s>HABERMAN: They absolutely did. I mean, one of the, I think, the under -- underreported on episodes in that campaign in the fall, it didn't relate to Russia, didn't relate collusion, but it did relate to a lot of what Paul Manafort was involved in: playing on decades-old political contacts, where he was working to try to pave some ground for Donald Trump with people he knew within the AFL-CIO. You know, people within the Trump campaign always claimed it helped. I don't know if we're ever going to know whether it really did or didn't. But at minimum, it gave them some link toward union workers, who they badly needed.</s>CAMEROTA: Let's talk about this lawsuit from President Trump, from his adult children and his businesses against Deutsche Bank and another bank to try to block them from complying with a subpoena from Congress. So what's their basis? Why don't they want Deutsche Bank to be able to turn over any records at all?</s>HABERMAN: I think, realistically, they don't want Deutsche Bank to turn over any records, because it's going to reveal a plethora of information about Donald Trump's finances, which as we know, he has spent a lot of time trying to keep out of the public eye. He has not released his tax returns, the first president not to do so in many decades. The stated purpose in the lawsuit is this is an overreach, and these subpoenas have no legislative function. This has nothing to do with legislation, which is what Congress is supposed to do. And it's rejecting the idea that congressional oversight would apply here because a lot of this relates to time prior to the presidency. What's interesting is we are seeing this strategy emerge, and we have seen this at other points in the last several months, where Donald Trump is trying to be both president and private citizen. The suit goes on and on about his rights as a private citizen, and this is infringing upon it. Now, you can argue that it is infringing upon some of the rights of spouses or children who the documents would apply to. And Deutsche Bank, to be clear, had made clear to the Trump family they were going to start complying with the subpoena on May 6. That's very soon. So there is no injunction given. That will still happen. But it is going to be harder for the president to argue that he is a private citizen. And it's going to be hard, frankly, for Ivanka Trump, who works in the White House, to argue that she is a private citizen, or her spouse, Jared Kushner.</s>BERMAN: This also crosses the red line the president laid down for Robert Mueller. Mueller is not working anymore. The red line, as the president explained to you, questions you were asking, said he didn't want people going into his finances. This clearly does. Big day at the White House today. A really interesting day. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and the entire Democratic leadership going over to talk about infrastructure. You could have imagined a Trump presidency --</s>HABERMAN: Yes.</s>BERMAN: -- where these types of meetings happen a lot. And they focused on areas where they agreed on a lot. Infrastructure happens to be one of them. That's the policy side of it. The politics of it today are also fascinating. I don't know if we're going to get to see it live.</s>HABERMAN: No, not yet.</s>BERMAN: But last time, Chuck and Nancy, as the president likes to call them, were in the office, that was, you know, the famous moment -- well, let's play it. This is the moment where Chuck Schumer got the president to own the shutdown.</s>TRUMP: I also know that, you know, Nancy is in a situation where it's not easy for her to talk right now. And I understand that. And I fully understand that. We're going to have a good discussion. And we're going to see what happens.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Mr. President?</s>TRUMP: We have to have the border secured.</s>PELOSI: Mr. President, please don't characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.</s>SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Elections have consequences, Mr. President.</s>PELOSI: Let me just say --</s>TRUMP: That's right. And that's why the country is doing so well.</s>BERMAN: Again, we don't know if today will be televised. Maybe they don't want to --</s>CAMEROTA: We can only hope.</s>BERMAN: We can only hope. But what do you think comes out of today? What are you looking at?</s>HABERMAN: What we're looking for, obviously, among other things, is televised, which would be for us the best possible outcome. We're looking at how do -- how do Pelosi and Schumer approach this meeting? It's really interesting because this is about infrastructure, to your point. Because there was a time during the transition where Chuck Schumer, in particular, was afraid Donald Trump was going to come out of the gate doing an infrastructure deal that was going to be very hard for Democrats to say they would not go along with. It's two and a half years later, and many Infrastructure Weeks later, I'm not really sure you can recapture that mojo, but that's how they're going to do it, No. 1. No. 2, we're watching for how does the president handle them? Is he going to be conciliatory? Is he going to raise the House investigations? Is he going to start talking about impeachment, out of concern? I doubt he will do that when cameras are rolling, but there will likely be a portion of this meeting that isn't televised, even if some of it is. Those are the things we're looking for. I don't think that anybody really expects much substantive is going to get done. Democrats also need to look as if they are working -- looking to work across the aisle with him. They also are facing a number of elections in key states and in key districts next year. And they have to look, especially, at swing districts as if they can try to forge some compromise with the president. And it's not all just about investigating him.</s>CAMEROTA: I mean, the other problem is that whatever they agree to today sometimes just gets changed.</s>HABERMAN: Very true. Very, very true. It is not as if these things are, you know, ironclad when they're agreed to in the room.</s>BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, scoop machine, you do have another scoop in "The New York Times" overnight, which is that the White House is considering, or there is an internal debate about whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a movement inside Egypt and, frankly, throughout the Middle East in the Arab world, as a terrorist organization. What's going on here and where does it stand?</s>HABERMAN: This came up in a -- in a bilateral meeting that the president had with El-Sisi several weeks ago, privately, not when the cameras were rolling. El-Sisi raised this as something that he would like to see done. And the president offered, to your point, about when things are real when they're agreed upon in the room or not, the president offered words that sounded to some as if he was making a commitment. Other people said that it was a little softer. But I think it was in the ear of the beholder. And the president was leaning into this pretty strongly, that he felt this was something that should be done. Remember, there was an effort to do this very early in his presidency, and it was dropped amid a bunch of other executive order messes. But this is something that I think the president thinks makes him look strong. He thinks that this is something that will play well with his base. It is something that is causing an enormous amount of consternation for a lot of career foreign policy professionals, national security experts within the government who are trying to find a way to slow it down or narrow it in scope. Because they think there could be a lot of unintended consequences as a ripple out.</s>CAMEROTA: Maggie Haberman, thank you for sharing all of your reporting with us this morning.</s>HABERMAN: Thanks, guys.</s>CAMEROTA: All right. Former Vice President Joe Biden trying to get an extra boost from President Obama. He's just put out a new online video with a new message to voters.