Trump Campaign Charts A Path to 2020; GOP Senators Urge Trump to Avoid Impeachment at State of the Union.
KING: Again the hour's big news. We are told we should be able to start of fill in this map a few hours from now when the Iowa Democratic Party finally releases what we're told will be partial results. This Iowa mess, one of several giant political stories today. The final vote in the Trump impeachment trial is tomorrow. The president's annual state of the union address is tonight. That's a huge event, anyway, but a larger than life moment for this president who is asking, of course, for four more years and who sees his political standing improving right now despite all the attention on impeachment. I want to switch maps and show you something and come up here to the race to 270. That's how we elect a president, right? 270 electoral votes. This map right now is where most strategists see the race. This based on an excellent analysis of new NBC/Wall Street Journal data by Public Opinion Strategies. That's the Republican firm that's part of the NBC/Wall Street Journal firm -- poll. What does it show you? Right now, the best guess is the president starts the campaign with 204 electoral votes, the Democrats with 200 votes. How do they get there? Let me break this down for you and bring this up. General election match up, this is analysis of the polling data. If you look at the national polling, Joe Biden beats the president on average by about six points, Bernie Sanders by four, Elizabeth Warren by three, Mayor Buttigieg by one. So you look at that if you're a Democrat you think we're beating the president nationally. Remember 2016, Hillary Clinton in the popular vote, that's how not how it works. In the states that are viewed as reliably Republican, Trump states we'll call them now, the president runs very strong, well ahead of the Democrats. In the states, let me move this over a little bit, that we view as reliably Democratic, the Democratic candidates run even stronger against the president. It is the swing states as always, and, look, Biden runs strong, Sanders runs OK, the other two Democrats on this chart in essentially a dead heat down with the president which makes you show this one is up for grabs. In this scenario, watch this, of these swing states, North Carolina leads red in presidential elections, but let's move that over there. Florida leans red in presidential elections, let's lean that over there. Arizona, Democrats say they're going to get just marked down as skeptical. It might happen but its history is to vote red in presidential elections. If the president just picked that up there, bang, he's at 259. That would get the president within striking distance, right? Even if he won -- if he could win Wisconsin again, that would get him within one. In the last election, the president won one of these electoral votes up in Maine. If he won just one of them, it would get him to the finish line. If he won the whole state, it would get him there. Even if Maine went blue, the president could get it anywhere else. Look at this map, that doesn't mean the president is going to win, it just means he's much stronger than a lot of Democrats think, and his numbers at the moment are getting better, something at his rallies he likes to celebrate.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He cannot get to 270, remember, 270 Electoral College. He cannot get to 270. Everyone said, they kept getting me -- maybe if I have a great night, 269, but 269 loses, right? But we got 306 to 223. 306-223.So then we're right. You cannot get to 270, you can get to 306.</s>KING: That's the president in Iowa, of all places, earlier in the week making light of this. But if you look at the numbers, the NBC/Wall Street Journal analysis there, the Gallup poll of the numbers, the president's numbers aren't great, but they are stronger than they have been in a very long time.</s>BADE: Yes. And I mean, we just saw a Gallup poll --I mean, he's almost at 50 percent in terms of approval rating. I mean, the president has certainly used impeachment to rally his base and sort of gin up people and get them excited to come out and vote for him. But, you know, he's also out there sort of claiming victory on the economy. People are feeling pretty good in their pocket books and clearly that's helping him in -- and that could help him in those swing states that are really critical for him to win the 270.</s>KING: And so then what does he do with this giant platform tonight? Any president, it's the envy of, you know, any politician, you get to speak to the country, you get to speak to the world. In this case heading into your election campaign, unemployment is low. He's in the middle of an impeachment trial, right. His press secretary went on Fox News this morning and say, I don't think so. I don't think you want to talk about -- trying to push the boss. I don't think he want to talk about it. I love this from Republican senators here. Roy Blunt of Missouri tells CNN, I'd avoid that subject. It's time to move on. Senator Kevin Cramer tells the Washington Post, I wouldn't include it, but Donald Trump has been a very successful being Donald Trump. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Republican senator again to the Washington Post, people want to have bipartisanship. Does anybody imagine that they know what President Trump is going to do? Not me.</s>KIM: And not anyone else either. That's always the question whether you're going to get Twitter Trump or teleprompter Trump. May Stephanie Grisham is right, we do get more of that teleprompter Trump tonight where he touts the economy, he touts the recent trade ones that he's at in particular. And create sort of lays out a platform and perhaps even nods at bipartisanship. There is one point in White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's closing argument yesterday where he said the president wants to get back to the business of people, get back to a bipartisan agenda. I talked to a lot of Democrats about this yesterday and they said, look, we can't even get stuff done in a normal election year. So in an election, after impeachment, there's not a lot of hope for cooperation on Capitol Hill. I mean, I think Democrats and Republicans expect the president to kind of tout the upcoming impeachment acquittal tonight. But, you know, maybe he sticks on -- stays on script and we'll see in a couple of hours.</s>KING: You just dashed everybody's hope with the return of infrastructure week. Everybody that was -- but look, we're having a little fun here, but this is an interesting moment for the president. He's angry and raw about impeachment. Whatever your views at home, he's angry and raw about it. Will he divert from his script when he looks out and sees Adam Schiff? When he looks over his shoulder and sees Nancy Pelosi? We shall see. Here's what a staff wants him to talk about. An expanding economy, low unemployment, just signed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, the China trade deal. That's what they want him to talk about. And Rachael touched on this, this is a president whose approval rating has hovered around 40 pretty much from day one. The new Gallup poll number is out, approved 49, disapproved 50. Again, that's not fantastic, but for this president, those are the best numbers of his presidency.</s>DAVIS: Right. And I mean, I do think he is going to talk about those things. He will have the teleprompter, and they have made it very clear that this speech is about resurgence, that he talks about, you know, his blue collar resurgence that he will argue that he is responsible for, and if it weren't for him, it wouldn't be happening. He will I think make some overtures about bipartisanship and how much he would like to work to get things done. What I don't think we will see which we saw the last time, 21 years ago, we had a president delivering a state of the union address during his impeachment trial, it's real outreach. A real sort of</s>KING: It's fascinating on top of everything else that's happening today and this week. When we come back, some new details on that phone call, Iowa after a debacle last night, the Democratic Party now telling the campaigns it will release a majority of the results in a few hours.