- [Voiceover] This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.
- I'm John Harwood in for Gwen
and I'm joined around the table
by Margaret Talev of Bloomberg Politics,
Michael Scherer of Time Magazine,
Robert Costa of The Washington Post,
and Molly Ball of The Atlantic.
Now Molly you spent some time in Indiana
ahead of the primary this week.
Give us a little flavor
of the final days of Cruz and Kasich
before Donald Trump wrapped up the nomination
how voters responded.
- Well Kasich obviously wasn't there because he made
this pact with Cruz that they would divvy up the states,
and so Kasich pulled out of Indiana.
- [John] Did the pact work?
- I'll have to get back to you when I see
who wins the nomination.
Oh you know that's right,
it didn't.
You know, Ted Cruz in the final days employed a series
of sort of desperate gambits.
He named his hypothetical running mate,
he did this pact with Kasich which almost immediately
sort of unraveled because neither of them could seem
to agree on its terms and it didn't seem to have
much effect on voters.
My main impression from traveling with Cruz was that
all the voters who were going to his events
were Cruz voters from the start.
He utterly failed to rally the party around him.
All the people at his events are these strongly
ideologically conservative,
mostly Evangelical voters.
And Cruz was their first choice.
So you weren't getting former Jeb Bush supporters.
You weren't getting former John Kasich supporters.
You weren't getting the kinds of establishment Republicans
that Cruz needed to coalesce around.
- Does this mean Donald Trump was right when he criticized
as idiotic the theories that when everybody dropped out,
all the voters would go to the other guys?
- I think it depended what the alternative was,
and in Ted Cruz you had a very narrow factional candidate
who could only appeal to one tiny swatch of the party,
and we saw over and over again Cruz trying to expand
his appeal and failing in part because he's built his brand
and spent his career running against the Republican Party.
So, when regular sort of rank and file,
I call them elephant brooch Republicans
don't want to vote for that guy,
you can't be surprised that
It's sort of their revenge on him for how he became
a big name in the first place.
The Trump rallies are interesting, too,
because he does draw a very diverse crowd,
but a lot of the people you meet at Trump rallies
don't consider themselves Conservatives.
A lot of them will tell you they're moderates,
or they're even Independents,
and so that's what Trump's talking about when he's talking
when he's talking about expanding the Party.
- Alright let's talk money for a second.
Donald Trump was able to run his primary campaign largely
by loaning his own campaign his own money.
But come the General Election,
that dynamic's probably gonna have to change.
So Michael, where does he get his money
in the General Election and how is that fundraising
process gonna go?
- It's the quick start-up at this point, and he's trying
to catch up with Hillary Clinton who has been way ahead.
She's been planning the money game for two years now,
and has commitments of about 100 million dollars
and probably will double that in the next few months
for her Super PAC.
What Trump has said is,
"I'm now gonna start asking for money.
"I'm going to do fundraisers for the Republican Party."
Implicit in that and we don't quite know yet
is that he could still raise primary money and payback
some of that loan,
although I think that's probably a hard sell to some donors.
You know, pay me money at this point
so I can pay back my own loan.
I think he does have many wealthy friends.
There are many people who've said they would spend a lot
of money for him and he will have a Super PAC vehicle
with which to do that.
And I think he's going to have to build a traditional
bundling operation as well.
He's said he's not incredibly liquid.
There's a debate over how much money,
whether he's worth 10 billion or five billion.
He's a wealthy man but most of it's in buildings or brands.
Unless he's going to start selling brands and buildings,
and I don't think he wants to do that,
he's going to have a real struggle.
- Bob, there's been continued talk among Conservatives
about a third party
to get into the race
and stand up for conservatism,
the ideological principles that Donald Trump
is flouting in many cases.
You've got some news this afternoon
on a development in that front.
What is it?
- Well first of all,
the effort to recruit or draft some kind of major political
or military figure to run as a Conservative Independent
candidate is a disorganized effort and it doesn't have money
behind it or much thought.
It's really two camps.
Erick Erickson, the conservative activist is in one area
trying to get someone to run,
and then Bill Kristol,
the editor of The Weekly Standard,
he first tried to get Jim Mattis,
a former Marine Corps General,
to run.
Mattis declined to run and on Thursday,
he and Romney were at a dinner together in Washington
supporting a school in Jerusalem.
But before that dinner the Thursday afternoon,
Romney was staying at the JW Marriott near the White House,
and Kristol and Romney had a private meeting,
according to Kristol,
he went on the record with the Post and said
he had urged Romney to consider being
an Independent candidate and if Romney was going
to continue to resist that idea,
he would hope Romney would support an Independent candidate
politically and financially.
So those are the kind of talks that are happening but--
- [John] What did Mitt Romney tell him?
- According to Kristol,
Romney said he's still not going to run,
but he's open to the idea of supporting an Independent bid.
And Kristol said Romney didn't fully rule out
changing his mind.
But again this may be hopeful thinking for Bill Kristol.
- I think he is very hopeful on that front,
(light laughter)
having talked to him about that subject myself.
Margaret, I wanna shift gears and ask you about a piece
that came out in the New York Times Magazine,
that's coming out this weekend,
that's a profile of Ben Rhodes,
who's a deputy national security adviser,
national security spokesman,
speechwriter for the President,
that in the author's depiction,
had Rhodes acknowledging
that he had deceived reporters
about the nature of the Iran deal
and therefore was able to sell it to the American people.
What does that piece tell you,
and in fact,
did the Administration deceive the American people?
- That's a fascinating piece for anyone
who hasn't read it yet.
It's good to dig into it over the weekend.
But on the specific question,
this is creating quite a bit of controversy and,
particularly in conservative publications,
accusations that the Administration was lying
to sell people a batch of goods.
I don't think that that's what Ben Rhodes was trying to say,
and I don't think that that's
what the White House thinks that they did.
I think that they did what the National Security Council
has been doing for years and decades,
which is putting their best spin on facts to sell
the administration's strategy
and hoping that people bite on it
and don't do their own homework when it could counter
their findings and that they write what the Administration
wants them to write.
I mean and part of this profile goes on to say
Rhodes' characterization of a bunch of young reporters
who've covered political campaigns
and don't know anything about anything.
I mean look,
ask any Secretary of State or Defense Secretary
who controls their policy and they'll wish it was them.
It's all controlled out of the White House.
Year after year since Richard Nixon,
decade after decade,
administration after administration more so.
And that's certainly true
of the Obama Administration as well,
but when you get a briefing
from the National Security Adviser,
or the deputy national security,
they're telling you how they want you to see things.
It doesn't mean you have to report it that way
and it doesn't mean that you can't go do your own homework
and counter those views.
- Well here's the one thing we can agree on from that story,
Ben Rhodes said that everybody covering politics
is 27 years old.
- Oh right. (laughter)
- And we're all 27 years old so it works.
- Alright let's turn to
one final jump all here,
the veep stakes on both sides.
First of all,
let's talk about Donald Trump.
Who are potential running mates?
Everybody give me a quick answer.
Let's go around.
- [Robert] Based on my reporting,
I think Trump's going to go with an insider,
someone who either is elected now
or who has been in elected office.
I think Newt Gingrich is one of the names
at the top of that list.
He and Trump have become very close.
Chris Christie and Florida Governor Rick Scott
are two others.
- We're going to play a little piece of sound
before we go down the line.
- I would want somebody that would help me
from a legislative standpoint,
getting things passed
through Senate,
through Congress.
And to me that's why I think probably
in terms of Vice President I'm gonna go
the political route.
I don't need the business route.
I've got that covered.
- [Voiceover] Is it somebody who's been a governor
or a senator?
- Somebody that well,
somebody maybe that's been even a senator.
- Molly, who can help him pass his agenda?
(laughs)
- There's a lot of hypotheticals between here and there
but no I mean I think Bob is absolutely right,
and based on Trump's statements,
if he's smart,
if he's going to seek to normalize his candidacy
and make himself more acceptable to the establishment,
the best way to do that is for them to feel like
there's an adult in the room.
So I don't know if Newt Gingrich quite fits that bill,
but for him to pick an insider.
And part of the problem is gonna be
who does he get that has that kind of gravitas
who will agree to be on the ticket with him
and that could be an issue.
- Well I think that's a big question.
Who's an adult in the room who would say "yes"
to running with Donald Trump?
- One name we haven't put out yet is Jeff Sessions
from Alabama who's been a close adviser to him.
He's not an incredibly popular guy in the Senate,
so it's not like he suddenly will win over a lot of leeway,
but he knows how the building works
and could help him there.
What's interesting about Trump's VP pick is
it's very different from Hillary's.
Whoever Hillary picks,
the VP in her administration will be Bill Clinton.
You know the person in the room helping her
will not be the VP.
She's gonna pick somebody who's gonna have to be happy
in their corner of the buildling.
It's not gonna be a Joe Biden model.
Trump on the other hand,
I don't know if it'll always be that person in the room.
He'll probably have his sons and daughters
(chuckles)
in the room at the end of the day.
But he needs someone
in the mode of Dick Cheney,
someone who actually can get stuff done,
can be an operations guy,
because he doesn't know this town and I think
he'll look for experience.
- [John] Margaret you got a pick?
- Were you making the Ivanka Trump argument?
'Cause I like that one actually.
(light laughter)
So if...
saying "yes" were no object,
John Kasich,
Marco Rubio,
Mary Fallin has said she would like to do it
and if he ends up having a woman problem
in the General Election,
Mary Fallin is a female governor who is appealing
to a large swatch of the Republican Party
and probably some folks in the middle
and maybe could help him.
- Okay I'm gonna start with you
for the Democratic names, too.
Who's Hillary Clinton gonna pick?
- Ohio's gonna be really important,
I don't know if Sherrod Brown gets that done,
but he's certainly talked about it a lot.
I think the idea of Corey Booker is very interesting.
There's been a lot of problems with the notion
of Corey Booker from a Wall Street perspective,
and I'm not sure in polling what he brings
on the Electoral map,
but in terms of energy, vibrancy, and the ability
to go toe to toe with Donald Trump
rhetorically any day, possibly.
- [John] Michael?
- I'd say Tim Kaine,
the Senator from Virginia.
It's a swing state she would love to win,
and Tim Kaine is someone who has played a dozen roles
over the course of his career.
Head of the Party, Governor, now Senator,
very widely respected,
would be someone that she would trust to be able
to do the job if something happened to her,
and also would be somebody who fits what I just described.
He'd have to be a Vice President who'd be happy in a box.
He's not a Joe Biden and I think he'd be very happy
with whatever role she--
- Molly, I've heard some people make the argument that
Hillary Clinton should do like Bill Clinton did in 1992,
pick someone like her.
He picked Al Gore,
two moderate Southerners, so
Elizabeth Warren.
Does that make any sense?
Any possibility then?
- It makes a little bit of political sense in terms
of trying to bring in the progressives
and obviously underscoring the women argument.
I have trouble seeing it.
The names I hear most from Democrats are
Tim Kaine and Julian Castro,
who is lobbying for it pretty hard behind the scenes.
I think he really wants it
and the problem for him may be that
with Donald Trump as her opponent,
Hillary doesn't need a running mate
to help her bring in Hispanics.
So that may have hurt Castro's chances.
- Bob, I thought lobbying for the Vice Presidency
is the one way to make sure that you don't get it.
- I haven't heard actually Democrats mention Castro,
I think a lot of them have been more actually unhappy
with the way Castro is perceived as lobbying,
and I'm not saying he is.
The name I keep hearing is Tom Perez,
the Labor Secretary as someone who's seen
in a favorable light from the Clinton camp.
But I don't like to make predictions
but if I was gonna make one,
if Senator Sanders wins the California Primary,
there will maybe be pressure to put him on the ticket.
Everyone I talk to in the Democratic world
says, "not happening."
But if he wins California, well.
- I will say it right now.
Not happening.
(laughter)
Now we're gonna break there.
Thanks everybody.
Be sure to check out our Washington Weekly Quiz
and test your knowledge of the week's events
and a bit of history, too.
That's at pbs.org/washingtonweek
where you'll also find our 90 second look back
at Trump's march to the nomination
and the 16 rivals he left in his wake.
I'm John Harwood.
Be sure to join us again next week
on The Washington Week Webcast Extra.
Good night.