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Republicans Rally Around Embattled Sessions; Critical Senate Vote on Replacing Obamacare Soon; Interview with Sen. Rand Paul. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 25, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[13:30:00] CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER & CNN EDITORI-IN- CHIEF: Donald Trump views everyone - he splits everyone into two camps. Either you support him or hate him and are out to get him. It's not party driven necessarily. It's not even really ideologically driven. It's, do you say nice things about him? Whether a reporter, a cooperative, a member of Congress or member of his cabinet, if you say and do what he wants, you are good. If you do not, you are bad. Because people say, how could he possibly do this to his own attorney general? Because he doesn't see the world that way. He sees the world as friends and foes and splits them up seemingly every day into different piles.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: He makes a good point, David Chalian. He always makes a good point. But especially today, making a fair point. Not only going after Sessions but the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. And he tweets this at 6:21 a.m. -- this is the president -- "Problem is that the acting head of the FBI and the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H." -- from Hillary Clinton -- "for wife."

He's going after -- his wife was running for office in the state of Virginia. She got some contributions. But he's raising questions about the integrity of the acting director of the FBI.

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEEF, USA TODAY: And congressional Republicans have stuck pretty well with Donald Trump on, on variety of issues. Pretty supportive. Kept quiet on cases they weren't so supportive. Something that's seen as an attack on constitutional protections on the, on our system of checks and balances I think would prompt any number of senior Republicans to try to rethink what their attitude is towards this president. What we saw today was Senate Republicans willing to defend Jeff Sessions. It would be one step further for them to criticize Donald Trump for what he's doing.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Let me add one thing to what everybody has said here, that I believe we're at a tipping point now. And if the president fires Jeff Sessions or Jeff Sessions is forced to resign, then it will lead to a chain of events. We'll have to see what happens. Will he fire Rod Rosenstein? Will Rod Rosenstein quit. What happens with Mueller. And where is this tipping point now where this question of, who reins, Donald Trump or the rule of law, as David puts it? And I think we're going to watch that play out. And I agree with you, Susan, that members of Congress -- and Lindsey Graham hinted at that really strongly today -- believe in the rule of law, because it outlasts any particular president or administration.

And -- so he could set in motion a chain of events that we just don't know where it's going to lead, but I think we are at the precipice of something. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but something.

BLITZER: Everybody stand by.

Because there are developments unfolding, breaking news unfolding. Also right now, Senate Republicans, they are meeting behind closed doors. Looking at pictures from the Senate. They're discussing how to move forward with repealing and replacing Obamacare. A critical vote expected later today. So critical, an ailing Senator John McCain is now making his way back to Washington to cast his vote and make a statement.

Our panel, we're going to discuss that and a lot more. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:37:38] BLITZER: Welcome back. Live pictures coming in from Capitol Hill. The Republican Party policy luncheon is happening over there right now. No doubt, a lot of wheeling and dealing happening right now as a vote on health care is scheduled for later today, a procedural vote, to get the process started.

Let bring back our panel.

Gloria, this is, some uncertainty whether they can get the 50. They need 50 votes. There are 52 Republicans. 48 Democrats and independents oppose. They lose three, it's over.

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: Mike Pence, the vice president, who is president of the Senate, can break a tie.

BORGER: Don't forget. What they are voting on is a motion to proceed with debate of the bill. They are not voting on the bill. There are lots of members upset with the process, because they're voting on a motion to proceed on a bill that they don't know what it is yet. Ok? So that's a bit of a problem for them. However, they -- I think it's an easier vote for them today to vote on proceeding, even if they end up voting against the bill. A lot of them believe they will have shots at their own om amendments, and they can say, oh, I tried to fix the bill this way and that way and it didn't work out for me.

I think McConnell has an easier shot at getting to 50 on this than he would on the health care legislation itself.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICS DIRECTOR: For those Senators that say seven or so, real holdouts, Republicans whether from Medicaid expansion states or wanted the full Cruz regulations reforms, what have you, this was a moment of leverage for them to try to exert on leadership. You want my vote for the motion to proceed the debate, the procedural vote, what will I get in the bill for this?

But to Gloria's point, it's not clear anybody will get anything, because what they're really doing is not Mitch McConnell's original plan. He wanted the entire Senate replace proposals instantly ready to substitute for the House bill that passed. That's not happening now. Now they're just trying to get -- McConnell is trying to get onto the bill so they can start debating with all the amendments but without an agreement upon replacement.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: We'll see at this luncheon if they do find some agreement, what to do after they start the process going.

The president, he tweeted this. He said this, Chris, "Any Senator who votes against starting debate is telling America that you are fine with the Obamacare nightmare."

[13:40:08] CILLIZZA: Yeah. I mean, he's never been one for understatement. So I don't think we should be terribly surprised about that.

I'm 100 percent with Gloria, in that this is the one vote currently on health -- anything tied to health care they have a legitimate chance of getting 50. I think you do anything else, straight repeal -- I was going to repeal and replace, but there's no plan that doesn't get 50.

The one danger I think, politically speaking -- and they don't have a lot of vulnerability in 2018, really. Dean Heller is the only Republican up in a state Hillary Clinton won. But the danger, politically, is regular folks do not understand what the difference between a motion to proceed and a final vote. So you saw Chuck Schumer on the floor soon after mitch McConnell went on the floor. Basically, Chuck Schumer said, make no mistake, if you vote for this, you are voting for this bad plan that comes next. Because, I mean, he's reminding the Dean Hellers of the world, we will run ads against you saying you voted for health care. Again, they don't have a huge amount of vulnerability. Only 10 seats up, nine in states that Donald Trump won. The closest state other than Nevada is Arizona where Trump won by nine, where Jeff Flake is. So it may have less resonance than they would in a different election cycle. But I still think Democrats will try to use it.

PAGE: I'm not sure if he voted for the motion to proceed, is a kind of clear banner to carry into a --

(CROSSTALK)

CILLIZZA: I say he voted for it. But you're right. You're right.

PAGE: I think we shouldn't underestimate the impact McCain's vote will have on this. Seven Senators whose vote you couldn't count on. Senator McCain coming back after a very dire diagnose, quite beloved by people on both sides of the aisle, coming back to cast a ballot, we believe, in favor of the motion to proceed, that gets other Senators over the line, too, to debate.

BLITZER: He said, the other day, Senator McCain, he thinks they should have the full process, open hearings and go forward with a big debate, not necessarily just try to ram it -- didn't he make a statement along those lines?

CILLIZZA: He did. He did. I'm with Susan. I can't imagine he comes back from Arizona to vote against the motion to proceed. I think that his justification will be, OK, we're not having open hearings, but this would be -- if they get the motion to proceed, this would be by far the most open process. Certainly, more than what McConnell wanted initially, which, to David's point, take the bill and here it is, and either vote for it or against it. They'll be an amendment process if this motion to proceed, a series of votes. It is not exactly what John McCain said, but he could -- it is also not, you get one vote and that's it, no one else has say.

BORGER: Can I say also, the president may be threatening people in tweets and back me up here, but they're not afraid of him, honestly, anymore. In certain states, yes, he's really popular, et cetera, et cetera, but he's at 36 percent right now. They're worried about a lot of other things, too, including what Dana was talking about on Jeff Sessions. A lot of Republicans are upset about that. And so I think the environment isn't "win one for the Gipper" right now. It's just the opposite of that.

BLITZER: There's a lot more developing right now.

Let's take a quick break. Resume our coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:47:50] BLITZER: A very high-stakes drama playing out over health care on Capitol Hill. The Senate scheduled to vote soon on a procedural motion to open debate on a health care bill. And the margins, we're told, are razor thin.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky joins us now. He says he'll vote "yes" on this procedural motion.

Senator, why did you decide to go ahead and vote in favor of opening debate?

SEN. RAND PAUL, (R), KENTUCKY: You know, I've been advocating for months to have a clean repeal. Meaning that we don't have an insurance bailout. Just repeal the bad parts of Obamacare and try to get back to where we have an insurance market that provides less expensive insurance for people. I've been assured that the first amendment to the bill will be a clean repeal of Obamacare. That's what I advocate for. So I'm going to vote to go to the bill, because that will be the first amendment which will be a clean repeal.

BLITZER: You know it's going to fail?

PAUL: Well, I don't know anything. I think people have to vote and then we'll decide. I know that 51 of the 52 Republican Senators have advocated and voted for this in the past. We'll see what happens.

BLITZER: And do you believe the motion to start the debate -- you have the 50 votes you need to at least begin the process?

PAUL: I think so. And if the clean repeal doesn't pass, and if the Senate leadership plan doesn't pass, then I think we begin the process of voting on variations of smaller ideas and see how many ideas we can come to agreement on. This is something I've been talking about for nearly a year is, let's start small and see how many pieces of repeal we can all agree on. We may find we can actually agree on quite a bit.

BLITZER: Listen to what the president said very precisely yesterday. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Any Senator who votes against starting debate is telling America that you are fine with the Obamacare nightmare, which is what it is.

And for Senate Republicans, this is their chance to keep their promise. Over and over again, they said, repeal and replace, repeal and replace. But they can now keep their promise to the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:50:04] BLITZER: So, are you OK, is it helpful to have the president put this kind of pressure on his fellow Republicans?

PAUL: You know, I've had a lot of conversations with the president throughout this whole process. And I think if we're talking about the ultimate goal being repealing Obamacare, which I think the president favors, I think it is helpful. And I think his interactions with various Senators, his bringing us to the White House has been constructive.

BLITZER: In an earlier interview with FOX, you did complain that the Senate leadership have, quote, "loaded this bill with pork." Aren't they just doing whatever they need to do to win over those undecided Senators and pump a lot of money into their respective states?

PAUL: Well, I think what's going to happen is I think that bill that's laden with pork is going to fail. I think the clean repeal has a chance but it may also fail. But then I think the process actually gets to what I've been advocating for a long time at that point. We begin constructing the bill from a very small nucleus of ideas that we all agree on. I think we have nearly unanimous agreement on getting rid of the individual mandate, getting rid of the employer mandate, repealing some of the taxes. I think there's even some agreement on Medicare expansion gradually going to a point where the states pay the traditional share of that. So I think we may find we have more agreement if we start small and get larger. What we were trying to do before was to fix everything under the universe that has to do with health care, and there were too many moving pieces that we couldn't agree to. I think starting small and trying to craft a bill that gets bigger and bigger by consensus might actually be a good idea.

BLITZER: But you know when you say a clean repeal bill, it's not a clean repeal bill, because it's only a partial repeal. A lot of the Affordable Care Act, a lot of Obamacare remains. You can't repeal it simply with that one vote, right?

PAUL: Right. And this is why, you know, when people say, oh, I'm being absolutist, no, I've all along said that I'll vote for partial repeal. I want to vote for as much repeal and as much freedom as we can get. To me, when you repeal stuff, you give people the freedom to buy what kind of insurance they want at the price they want to buy it. So I'm for the more repeal the better and we'll see what we can get consensus on. But I think if we start. Small, individual mandate, employer mandate, some of the taxes, let's see what we can agree on and build from there.

I've talked to some of the Senators who are a "no" on the more complete repeal, the more complete repeal, and I think there are ways to meld part of the complete repeal with the Senate leadership fund to actually get to something that is a pretty good repeal.

BLITZER: Let's shift gears for a moment. I want to ask you about the president's growing attack, the criticism he's leveling against the attorney general of the United States, Jeff Sessions. He's gone to Twitter once again, accusing him of being weak as far as Hillary Clinton was concerned. He's referred to him as beleaguered. He was the earliest, most ardent Senate supporter of the president. What do you make of the president's treatment of Jeff Sessions, your former Senate colleague?

PAUL: You know, I guess my disagreements with the attorney general have been more substantive, not necessarily on the Russia investigation. My disagreements have been over the federal government coming in and usurping state law with regard to civil asset forfeiture, taking money from people who are not convicted of anything. Attorney General Jeff Sessions wanting to do that, to me, is a real problem. I very strongly disagree with it. Also his idea that he's going come in and supersede state law to overturn local state marijuana policy. I object to that. And also the idea that we would take mandatory minimums and try to throw the book at everybody, no matter what their crime is and have them in jail for a mandatory sentence. So there's a lot of I disagree with.

So the president and I may have different reasons for thinking the attorney general's not doing a good job. We're basically on the same side in the sense that the attorney general needs to, I think, change his course with regard to criminal justice as far as I'm concerned.

BLITZER: So as far as you're concerned, you'd be happy if he resigns or is fired?

PAUL: I would like to see the attorney general actually quit going after poor people and their money, who have not been convicted of anything. I think the presumption of innocent until proven guilty in our court system is incredibly important. And when you want to try to take people's property without even a charge or a conviction, overturn state law that requires a conviction, that, to me, is so wrong-headed that I will try to do anything I can to get him to change his mind or stop doing what he's doing.

BLITZER: One critic of President Trump, a Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, says the president's tweets about Jeff Sessions are beneath the dignity, beneath the office of the president. Do you agree that the president shouldn't be, you know, slamming his attorney general in public the way he is in that interview with the "New York Times" and as far as the tweets are concerned?

[13:55:02] PAUL: You know, I think the president has his own unique way of going about things that not everybody else would choose those methods. But I do think that the president is, in some ways, justified in being upset that the attorney general has left him open to this whole idea of some kind of special prosecutor looking into every asset of his entire life -- aspect of his entire life. And I think that he sees this being a, you know, many-year process that's never going to go away. These special prosecutors go on and on and on. So I think he blames, you know, Attorney General Sessions for getting out of the way and simply washing his hands of this whole Russia deal. But I think the Russia deal really is still related to partisan politics. And it's related to people still looking and having sour grapes over having lost the election.

BLITZER: Senator Paul, thanks so much for joining us.

PAUL: Thank you.

BLITZER: That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

For our international viewers, "AMANPOUR" is coming up next.

For our viewers in North America, "NEWSROOM" with Brooke Baldwin starts right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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