Sanders Will Meet With President Obama; Clinton Wins A Majority Of Pledged Delegates; Clinton Leads In California.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Jake, I understand the president of the United States has weighed in on what's going on right now?</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we're anticipating something along those lines, Wolf, and in fact, let's go to the White House right now where Michelle Kosinski is standing by. Michelle, what can you tell us?</s>MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Jake. We just got this statement in right now. As expected, it is not yet, at least, an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, and to read it, it explains why. This is guidance. This is the President reaching out to both sides, and maybe a little bit more than expected. Here's what it started out saying. Tonight, President Obama called both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders. The President congratulated both candidates for running inspiring campaigns that have energized Democrats, brought a new generation of Americans into the political process, and shined a spotlight on important policy ideas aimed at making sure our economy and politics work for everybody and not just those with wealth and power. SO the President is congratulating Secretary Clinton for securing the delegates necessary. He is calling it a historic campaign inspired by millions and inspiring millions, and he is also thanking Senator Sanders, according to this statement, for energizing millions of Americans with his commitment to issues like fighting economic inequality. So at the end, it says that Senator Sanders, at his request, is going to meet with the President at the White House on Thursday. It says that they will continue their conversation about the significant issues at stake in this election that matter most to America's working families. And he says, the President looks forward to continuing the conversation, how to build on the work he has done. Obviously, after that point, then comes the endorsement that everybody has been waiting for. I mean, it's kind -- the worst kept secret in Washington, not even a secret. It's just sort of something you can't report on up until now at the very end. So what the White House has been saying when they have been asked repeatedly by us, you know, why not now? What exactly are you waiting for? Why wouldn't you endorse Hillary Clinton even as early as yesterday? And they said, this is about respect. It's about respecting the process. But also when you look at President Obama about to now go out on the trail full bore for Hillary Clinton, he doesn't want to alienate those staunch Sanders supporters, far from it. He wants to bring them in, especially the younger people. And analysts looking at this feel like there's no one better perhaps than President Obama to appeal to those younger voters, and first of all, get them to vote at all, and now, get them to vote for Hillary Clinton. Jake --</s>TAPPER: Michelle Kosinski, thank you so much. And Dana, it is important to note and underline, President Obama, seeing himself as something of a peacemaker, somebody who can bring Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders together, that's one of the reasons why he has tried to stay out of the race as much as possible, not tipping the scales for either Clinton or Sanders. And he sees himself as somebody who Sanders supporters will listen to and Sanders supporters will -- they like him. They're young, they're independent, and they might appreciate him and they will listen to him when he says, OK, time to rally around Hillary Clinton. And as you and I have talked about a number of times, Dana, President Obama is so eager to get involved in this presidential race. He is so eager to go after Donald Trump and try to discredit Donald Trump.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: No question. I thought it was really interesting the way that the White House phrased the idea that President Obama and Bernie Sanders are going to meet on Thursday, saying specifically, at Senator Sanders' request. You were sort of making fun of me that I might know something that I'm not saying. I didn't. I just suspected that this kind of thing was going to start to roll out when we heard that Bernie Sanders was coming back to D.C., and to me, that statement from the White House signals that they are hoping that Sanders comes to the White House as sort of the beginning of the end of his campaign to try to start to unravel it. He is also going to the hill. Our Manu Raju is reporting that he is also going to meet with the Senate Democratic leader, Bernie Sanders. So all of those things combined, looks like he's getting towards the end of what Patty was talking about, the sort of stages of grief.</s>TAPPER: Maybe he will bring them to unity in New Hampshire, where Hillary and Obama got together eight years ago. Let's bring in CNN politics executive editor, Mark Preston, who can tell us more about Hillary Clinton and her quest for delegates. Mark --</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Yes, Jake, well I tell you what, talk about pressure building up on Bernie Sanders to get out of the race. Of course, we've seen this meeting will take place with President Barack Obama on Thursday. Last night, we projected that Hillary Clinton would become the presumptive Democratic nominee based upon the delegates that she won, the pledged delegates that she won, added together with the super delegates. But tonight we can make another projection. This projection is that she will have won a majority of the pledged delegates. We are making this calculation based upon the numbers we are seeing out of California in addition to the states that she has already won tonight, Jake, so quite a milestone for Hillary Clinton who just eight years ago had lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, and yet another sign, perhaps, that Bernie Sanders might have to abandon his bid for the Democratic nomination. Jake --</s>TAPPER: Mark Preston, thank you so much. This is a significant milestone, because the Sanders campaign, up until recently, was saying that whoever wins the majority of pledged delegates should be the nominee, that super delegates should not go against the will of the pledged delegates. These are the ones that are elected in caucuses and primaries. Recently, however, they have changed their tune. They have been talking more about super delegates, almost undoing the will of pledged delegates. Big, big achievement for Hillary Clinton.</s>BASH: Because super delegates don't matter right now. No matter where they go, if she wins the majority of the pledged delegates, those that are pledged based on the voting and the will of the people, as you say, as he says, then that is the ball game. By Bernie Sanders' standards, never mind the Democratic party.</s>TAPPER: His standards two months ago. Not his standards currently.</s>BASH: And maybe more importantly -- I'm sure you're getting this on your Twitter feed, I am and others are -- Bernie Sanders supporters, and that's really what matters most here at this point to Hillary Clinton and to her viability and her ability to bring together the party and get those people behind her, because they can look and say, OK, she's won fair and square.</s>TAPPER: Anderson, super delegates were introduced to the Democratic Party process in 1982. Since then, they have never voted against the will of what the majority of pledged delegates want, and Hillary Clinton just won the majority of pledged delegates.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, which as you said, a major milestone for the Clinton campaign. It is remarkable -- we were talking about this during the break -- when you think about the pace that we have already seen in not only the primary battles but now in this general, and there are still months and months to go. It's more than a month before the convention.</s>DAVID AXELROD, FORMER OBAMA SENIOR ADVISER: A month ago, all the dominos fell, and Donald Trump stood a colossus astride the Republican universe and we were all -- and Hillary Clinton was struggling with Bernie Sanders and that was the discussion we were having around this table. Tonight, it's a good night for Hillary Clinton. But it is a reminder that this is a dynamic process. There are going to be a lot of turns and twists in this road between now and November.</s>COOPER: You just think about the last week, week and a half, you had Hillary Clinton coming out with what was billed as a foreign policy speech, really was a political speech going after Donald Trump using his own words against him. And then Donald Trump with his comments, which have been part of the news cycle. Now we understand Donald Trump is going to be giving some sort of a talk about the Clintons as early as Monday.</s>AXELROD: Well, we are a voracious group. I speak of us around this table. We need to fill a lot of time. We cover this constantly, and every event is treated as the defining event of the campaign. There are very few defining events in a campaign, but there is an awful lot of hysteria along the way. And if you're running a campaign, it's important to remember that and keep grounded on those days when you're being written off, keep grounded, and on those days when you're being lofted in the air on a rickshaw, you also have to keep --</s>COOPER: I was hoping by the conventions that Wolf and I will be able to get chairs.</s>COOPER: I wonder why we're the only ones around here who don't get chairs. That's all right. Next contract negotiation.</s>BORGER: I can give you mine. Just a couple of weeks ago, Republicans were coalescing around Donald Trump, trying to get to yes. He was the party nominee, they were going to support him. The last few days, they have been backing away from him because of the comments about the judge. You know, this takes on a dynamic of its own. But then you have a narrative that starts, and right now, what is starting is that these candidates are trying to define each other. And so Hillary says, he is unstable, and he says she's crooked. And then you have these ebbs and flows here, and one is up and one is down. And right now, this is a great week for Hillary and a not so great week for Donald Trump. But that can change.</s>AXELROD: You're right. The narratives that we have seen established now in the last couple of weeks I think are narratives that are going to be -- the difference between Republicans and Democrats, though, and we have seen it in the last few minutes, evidence itself, is that Democrats have a president who is broadly popular within the party who can help bring the party together. There is no such force in the Republican Party.</s>COOPER: Bakari Sellers, we haven't heard from you tonight -- how do you see President Obama making this endorsement? Does he come out with a speech? Does he make an appearance with Hillary Clinton?</s>BAKARI SELLERS, CLINTON SUPPORTER: I think tonight, we saw a glimpse of what the Democratic Party is going to look like going forward. When you look at the Donald Trump speech, it was a good speech. We had a very low bar for Donald Trump, but it was a good speech. But then you saw all the pageantry. You saw all the emotion. You saw the music rocking, you saw the people swaying, people feeling as if they were invested in some historical moment, when Hillary Clinton gave her speech. I expect that same type of environment, whether or not it's later this week or next week, when the President stands on stage with Hillary Clinton. There is no more dynamic political figure -- and I'm not just speaking as a Democrat, but in the entire United States of America, than Barack Obama. When Barack Obama's able to stand on that speech, when he's able to orate, when he's able to talk about not what this country was or what it is but what it can be, it's going to be valuable. But you also see the strengths of the Democratic Party. It's a team that's coalescing. We're not there yet, but they are coalescing. When you add Elizabeth Warren to that, when you add Uncle Joe Biden to that, when you add all of these different figures and then you're running against a group that's kind of like the bad news bears right now, they just can't quite get right, it looks like it's going to be a fun and eventful summer.</s>KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I have to disagree with that, because here's the thing. Look, you are absolutely right that the President is a very powerful ally. He is immensely likeable. He has a lot of energy behind him as we saw in 2008. He has some energy behind him now. But there's also a lot that she'll have to answer for when she tethers herself to Barack Obama. For instance, the worst jobs report since 2010 last week. Food stamps are up. Healthcare costs are up. Double digit real unemployment for minorities and for young people. There are a lot of big -- wages stagnant. I could go on and on. The Middle East on fire. There are a lot of things she will have to answer for by virtue of tying herself to the President.</s>SELLERS: And I think one of the things that you see when you tie yourself to the President is, first and foremost, he's not going to be an albatross. This is going to be the first president to play a major role in the presidential election since George H.W. Bush, since Ronald Reagan did it for George H.W. Bush. But with that being said, Barack Obama -- I was 4.</s>MCENANY: But Hillary Clinton is the candidate at the end of the day. It's not president Obama. She is the candidate, and I have a hard time seeing millennials rallying around her. Millennials are the reason she lost Iowa essentially in 2008. She struggled repeatedly with millennials. I don't see them showing up in the same droves because she is the candidate and she does not have the same rallying force that Barack Obama had.</s>BILL PRESS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Whoa, whoa. I think there are two reasons why -- maybe three, actually, the millennials will come around. Number one is, Barack Obama himself. The millennials -- he's the first one that really attracted them, and that's why he won so big in 2008. The second is, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is going to keep this movement going tonight. You are going to hear that tonight. His determination to build this movement, to build this revolution. The first goal will be to rally behind Hillary Clinton and to stop Donald Trump. The millennials, Kayleigh, are just not going to support Donald Trump. And a third one is, Hillary Clinton herself. Once she's there and the nominee and what she's speaking for, the issues she's speaking for -- I've got to tell you, I am enjoying this moment so much because there's unity and love that's breaking out all over in the Democratic Party in contrast to the Republican Party. They can't even get their leaders to say they will endorse their nominee.</s>AXELROD: While these guys are hugging it out, let me say that -- on the Obama point, it is noteworthy that his approval numbers are fairly high right now and they've been so for months. We don't know where they will be in November, but right now, he is a pretty popular president, and that is an advantage to Hillary Clinton because he is going to try and play the same role that Bill Clinton played for Barack Obama in 2012, as the guy who is the kind of referee, the truth teller out there sorting out the arguments.</s>COOPER: There are so many unknowns on the Republican side. We don't know long-term how Donald Trump plays. The running mate, what the other Republican -- what more established Republican figures do. Anna, I know obviously you are not a Trump supporter --</s>ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You think?</s>COOPER: I've noticed. But I mean, it is a long time between now and election day and particularly on the Republican side where there isn't this unity that you see right now or getting toward there on the Democratic side.</s>NAVARRO: Here is the problem. This is cake is getting baked. We are past the point of giving Donald Trump a chance, a lot of us. I think for the last four weeks since he became the nominee, a lot of us thought, OK, at some point, this man is going to become presidential. At some point, he's going to start talking issues. At some point, he's going to become inclusive and build a bigger tent. At some point, we're going to feel welcomed somehow in some sort of Donald Trump campaign and administration. Instead, the opposite has happened. Hillary Clinton's not going to have to answer about job reports if he doesn't bring it up, if what he keeps doing is dividing America. And millennials, who hate labels -- there is no group in America that hates labels less -- more than millennials -- are not going to vote for somebody who labels people Muslims, Hispanics, Mexicans -- that's just not going to happen.</s>COOPER: Let's take a quick break. Coming up, will Hillary Clinton hold on to her lead in California? You see the numbers right there on the screen. Stand by for more votes and reactions from Bernie Sanders. We, of course, will carry his speech live.