Elizabeth Warren in West Virginia; Holder, GOP Dismiss Impeachment; Rand Paul: Perry "Dead Wrong"
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Here you go. Check out this viral picture. The most disastrous wedding picture is being called -- this the Tyler Foster. Yes, seen jumping at a wedding in Jamaica. And, yes, he kicked the bridesmaid in the head. Yes, he also ripped his pants.</s>PEREIRA: He posted the photo on Reddit, where more than 6 million people and counting have viewed his act of grace. The Canadian judge gives him a nine.</s>KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A nine?</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, you have to give him something for just being able to jump like that.</s>BOLDUAN: The Russian judge gives him one. Bad form.</s>CUOMO: Strength and flexibility, straight tens.</s>PEREIRA: He had the whole beach. Kicked her in the head.</s>BOLDUAN: I mean, it is pretty unbelievable.</s>CUOMO: I'm still going with the jump. She looks fine. Is she OK? What do we know?</s>BOLDUAN: You do wonder if it was pre or post ceremony.</s>PEREIRA: I don't know that.</s>BOLDUAN: You just don't know.</s>PEREIRA: You mean, pre or post cocktails, is that what you're asking?</s>BOLDUAN: Definitely. When you do a ceremony and you want a beach, you have to do a lot of the pictures beforehand because you're dealing with sunset issues. I'm just saying.</s>PEREIRA: Hopefully she didn't have a black eye for the pictures.</s>CUOMO: She looks like she was getting a hands up.</s>BOLDUAN: Well, she got an extra glass of champagne.</s>CUOMO: The ripping the pants, I blame fashion. Men's pants are getting tighter and tighter. A man needs room. A man needs space. Put a man in tight pants and suspenders, what do you think is going to happen? What is he, a circus clown? Let's get to "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY with John King, a man who knows how pants should fit.</s>JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": I was just thinking about the art of the segue way. Here is what you do, you pretend you heard none of that and say it's a very busy Monday and let's get inside politics. With me this morning to share their reporting and their insights, Margaret Talev of "Bloomberg News" and Todd Zwillich of WNYC's "The Take Away." Let's start with this question I have, why Elizabeth Warren? Why does she have such fancy standing in the Democratic Party when she's from Massachusetts? You can argue she's more liberal than Barack Obama who is unpopular out in the campaign trail out there. Yet she was in Kentucky the other day campaigning for Alison Grimes. Today, she will be in West Virginia. Michael Dukakis won actually West Virginia way back in the day, but John Kerry lost it, Al Gore lost it, Barack Obama lost it twice. Margaret, why does Elizabeth Warren have appeal to Democrats in red states?</s>MARGARET TALEV, "BLOOMBERG NEWS": You're saying why does she wear the pants.</s>KING: Ba-doop-boom.</s>TALEV: You know, this is in many ways a matter of fundraising and energizing the base. And I think as we get closer to November, she may not always be the person who you see turning out for the candidate. Right now she's a respected figure inside the Democratic Party. It is energizing to the base and it is sort of a test run for her, someone with fresh new ideas and you know, what can she do, how far can she go?</s>KING: Is it a test run for the Democratic Party post-Obama? Hillary Clinton is the heir apparent at the moment, but somebody will challenge her. Elizabeth Warren says it won't be here. Even Elizabeth Warren has said in the past said Hillary Clinton is a little too Wall Street, too establishment.</s>TODD ZWILLICH, "THE TAKEAWAY" WNYC: What Elizabeth Warren has is enormous populist appeal in the Democratic Party. She's stood up against the banks, a big proponent of refinancing student loans, in addition she is a woman candidate like Hillary. She can go into West Virginia against Mitch McConnell. She's got enormous credibility and in states that aren't doing so well economically, that populist anti-Wall Street appeal cuts against a lot of Democrats including Hillary and someone like Elizabeth Warren has tons of credibility on the issue, gin up the base, but also fundraising is the most important.</s>KING: It's fascinating to watch. As we said last week when she was in Kentucky, she seems to like this. That's the part I'm learning about Elizabeth Warren. Will she continue to say no to 2016? I assume so.</s>ZWILLICH: Crowds go nuts for her. It's hard to turn down, you know.</s>KING: West Virginia, tough state for the Democrats this year. We'll watch this one play out. Let's move on to the question of impeachment. Some Republicans called for the president's impeachment, most recently during the border crisis. Among them formal vice presidential candidate and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who says the president should be impeached because of his mishandling of the border crisis. Listen to Eric Holder, the highest ranking law enforcement official of the United States, he doesn't seem to think much of Sarah Palin's legal views.</s>ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: She wasn't a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She's an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.</s>KING: What makes this delicious from a political standpoint is the president's attorney general thinks the president should not be impeached, he's a Democrat and doesn't think much of Sarah Palin. What it forces when Sarah Palin comes out like this, now you have the conservative, Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee forced on national television to agree with Eric Holder.</s>REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R), VIRGINIA: We are not working on or drawing up articles of impeachment. The constitution is very clear as to what constitutes grounds for impeachment on the part of the president of the United States. He has not committed the kind of criminal acts that call for that.</s>KING: Most Republicans who still hold office, they understand Sarah Palin's role. She can be important to the base, but they don't like when she says impeach the president.</s>ZWILLICH: No, they don't. But the fundraisers on the Democratic side love it. John Boehner says this isn't about impeachment. He has a lawsuit brewing against Barack Obama, which in this context you can look at as a steam valve, hoping that will let off a lot of the steam for Republicans on the right. Sarah Palin has made it clear her steam has not let off. Other leaders on the right, Erick Erickson over at "Red State" has called it a sham, but Democrats love the impeachment talk. It fits right into their characterization of Republicans as captive of the extreme right of their party. That they have a stranglehold on John Boehner and Bob Goodlatte and Mitch McConnell. Impeachment is going nowhere. The House isn't going to do it. The Senate would never approve it. We know it's not going anywhere, but lots and lots of people want to believe this is the best you can do when you have Barack Obama --</s>KING: And so the Democrats raise money off of it and they think it helps them. They don't mind this debate either, the Democrats, because it continues to fissure the Republican Party. That part of the base might be small, Margaret, but it's loud.</s>TALEV: This is a freebie for the Democrats and also not what the sort of core of the Republican power structure in Congress wants because they don't want President Obama to be seen as someone who is being scapegoated or victimized. They want him to be the bad guy, the one who is messing up foreign policy and letting children across the border or whatever. This takes them off message for that narrative. It's not what they want.</s>KING: But you mention, foreign policy, one of the fascinating debates and divides in the Republican Party right now as we move through the 2014 midterms and toward the 2016 presidential campaign is the foreign policy debate within the party. A guy who gets hit a lot by the establishment is Rand Paul, the freshman senator from Kentucky, son of Ron Paul. Rand Paul says I'm not my dad. He gets a little mad when people criticize him including a very personal op-ed piece in "Politico" this morning. Rand Paul firing back at Rick Perry, the Texas governor. He starts with a reference to Perry's new glasses. He says they haven't altered his perception of the world or allowed him to see it anymore clearly. Then he goes on and says Rick Perry is mischaracterizing him when he says he doesn't care about Iraq. Rand Paul says I support continuing our assistance to the government of Iraq, which includes armaments and intelligence. I support using advanced technology to prevent ISIS from becoming a threat. I also want to stop sending U.S. aid and arms to Islamic rebels in Syria who are allied with ISIS something Perry doesn't even. I would argue that if anything, my ideas for this crisis are both stronger and not rooted simply in bluster. Rand Paul doesn't mind getting back here, but his argument is that his foreign policy is a lot more nuanced than his dads and Republicans are essentially trying to push him in that corner.</s>TALEV: He's saying don't call me an isolationist. Rick Perry is really doing Rand Paul a favor by very early in this stage forcing him to figure out how to frame or reframe the way he's perceived in the party. Of course, John McCain is going to criticize Rand Paul as isolationist. What Perry is doing is forcing Paul to rebrand himself.</s>KING: It's interesting as it plays out. Rand Paul is rebranding himself. This is the one question Rand Paul has had private meetings with Republican establishment members. This is what dominates those discussions. Where are you on foreign policy? But Rick Perry back in 2012 said it was a mistake to take troops out of Iraq. Listen to him now, he's changed, too, in part because I think he realizes Rand Paul may be more in tuned on the question of troops with the American people.</s>GOVERNOR RICK PERRY (R), TEXAS: The idea that I'm for opening up the gates and sending multiple numbers of American troops back into harm's way is a bit of a stretch.</s>KING: Bit of a shift there, too, from Governor Perry. He criticizes Rand Paul for not being muscular enough, my term, it seems he's backing away from the idea that you actually put more boots on the ground.</s>ZWILLICH: For Republicans, I think the shadow of the neocons looms over this entire debate. Rand Paul doesn't suffer from being underneath that shadow because he's got a totally different ideological attack when it comes to foreign policy. He's trying to assure Republicans and Republican-based voters that he's not isolationist Republican. But at the same time, with Dick Cheney and his daughter going out on television to criticize the president, sort of bringing back in the public consciousness, what it was like under neocon foreign policy, extraordinary unpopular, the Iraq war extraordinarily unpopular. Rick Perry, John McCain and other Republicans sort of live under that shadow in the public's mind. It's much easier for Rand Paul to articulate his policy. When Rick Perry talks about Iraq, he sort of has this shadow behind him. Rand Paul doesn't have.</s>KING: Fascinating debate. We'll watch it play out. This will take us right into the 2016 primaries as well. Todd and Margaret, thanks for coming in on a Monday. Back to you guys. The Cuomo in the middle there with the two interventionists surrounding him.</s>PEREIRA: Astute.</s>CUOMO: That is dead-on accurate is what that is.</s>BOLDUAN: I'd love to debate you. Agreed.</s>CUOMO: Truth hurts.</s>KING: TV interventionists. It's not a foreign policy statement.</s>CUOMO: True as the need for comfortable pants. I brought it right back. Thought we got away.</s>BOLDUAN: Tight pants, thanks, John.</s>KING: I'm going for a swim.</s>CUOMO: A good segue to nothing!</s>BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY, new developments in a fatal movie theatre shooting in Florida. The man accused of shooting and killing another man over text messaging is now free on bail. Find out how the victim's family is reacting to his release.