[Harlow:] The candidates for the Democratic nomination are spread out across the country as the campaign heats up. So which ones are making Cillizza's grade? Let's get "The Midweek Grades" with our very own Chris Cillizza, CNN politics reporter and editor-at-large. I'm just checking to make sure you're smart enough, Chris, to assess these candidates. It's clearly Congress isn't smart enough to look at the president's tax returns according to the White House.
[Camerota:] What are your credentials?
[Chris Cillizza, Cnn Politics Reporter:] Oh, I'm good enough. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, gosh darn it, people like me.
[Camerota:] That's true.
[Harlow:] Gosh darn it, they do. Can you believe it? People like me. All right, Cillizza, who gets the A this week?
[Cillizza:] OK. Here we go. So I kind of tilted toward the positive this week. A lot of good news on the Democratic side. So let's start with Bernie Sanders. Without question, the big winner of the first quarter fundraising. We've got all the numbers now. And Sanders, $18 million raised, $50 million on hand, 84 percent of the contributions come from people $200 or less, which means he's got a massive fundraising base. And I think if you look at "The New York Times" yesterday, Democrats who don't want Bernie to be the nominee are starting to get worried because he definitely is in a place, especially with Biden not in the race yet, to be that nominee
[Camerota:] OK. You also give another A. Who gets that?
[Cillizza:] Yes. Mayor Pete, he's got a bunch of A's since we started doing this a month or so ago because he's doing everything right at this point. Again, he's the busiest candidate in the race. He had 1,600 people at an event in Des Moines last night despite the fact that he really has almost no staff in the state. So this is an organic gathering. He's also third in recent Iowa and New Hampshire polls behind Biden and Sanders, which is amazing given that he's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who no one had heard of three months ago.
[Harlow:] He also is self-deprecating. Yesterday in the show calling himself from adorable to plausible.
[Cillizza:] Yes, he has a
[Harlow:] I mean the guy's got
[Camerota:] He's got a line.
[Harlow:] The guy's got a sense of humor.
[Cillizza:] Talk we Alisyn and I have talked about this before, Poppy, but he talks like a normal person, which do not
[Harlow:] But he's not normal. Harvard, Oxford, Rhodes Scholar. But he comes across like it, yes.
[Camerota:] He's tricking you, in other words.
[Cillizza:] Similar resume to mine, yes. But, yes, I get your point. All right, Kamala Senator Kamala Harris. OK, move yes, moving on. California Senator Kamala Harris. Look, has done nothing wrong. He's in a very good place. I give her a B only because polling now suggests she's kind of in the bottom end of that top tier. Buttigieg's rise has taken some support from her. I think if you asked her and her people candidly, they're very happy with where they are. They're sort of drafting in the front pack. They're not the frontrunner. They're fine with that. But given that she's dropped a little we dropped her just a little bit in terms of grades.
[Harlow:] All right.
[Camerota:] OK, we also had Cory Booker on the program this week, but you only give him a C. What's the problem?
[Cillizza:] Yes. Honestly, this was a little bit kind. I gave him a C because, look, the big news of this week is the fundraising numbers. We now know what everybody had. His numbers were very solid. Middle to higher end of the pack. Here's the problem. Cory Booker, this week, he didn't his campaign attacked John Delaney, the former Maryland congressman, for self- funding. That is punching down of the first sort. John Delaney is an asterisk in most polling. Why you would attack him, it worries me about where Booker's people think he is in the race. So a C, I think, is the right place.
[Harlow:] You've got to look up. I hear you.
[Cillizza:] Yes, always punch up.
[Harlow:] Always punch up. Julian Castro gets a D?
[Cillizza:] Yes, man.
[Harlow:] What's going on?
[Cillizza:] I still haven't given I still haven't given an Fs because Alisyn knows my past checkered academic career, I'm wary of giving Fs. But, look, he was no comment. Hello, high school teachers. He raised he raised about a million dollars total in the first quarter, $600,000 on hand. That's less than Andrew Yang. No one at the start of this race thought Julian Castro was less credible than Andrew Yang. You've got to get people to invest in your campaign. With that kind of money, that little money, you can't build any organizations. It doesn't matter how strong the message is.
[Harlow:] I was surprised seeing those numbers for Julian Castro too. Hey, what number do Andrew Yang's holograms what grade to Andrew Yang's holograms get?
[Cillizza:] I look, even before I worked at CNN, I loved the CNN holograms. I'm pro hologram. Everyone who knows me knows that. So I'm into that. I'm currently working on cloning myself, actually.
[Harlow:] Help
[Camerota:] We need two of you.
[Harlow:] Help us.
[Camerota:] We need two of you.
[Cillizza:] Two of me is probably at least one too many. It might be two too many depending on who you ask.
[Camerota:] I think that if we polled the audience
[Harlow:] no.
[Camerota:] OK, while we have you, Chris, very quickly
[Cillizza:] Yes.
[Camerota:] Bernie Sanders seems to have done himself well by going on Fox and doing that town hall.
[Cillizza:] Yes, absolutely.
[Camerota:] Though President Trump seemed quite confused by Bernie Sanders going on. In fact, he said, so weird to watch crazy Bernie on Fox News. Not surprisingly, Brett Baier and the audience was so smiley and very and nice. Very strange. And now we have Donna Brazile. Of course the president is confused. He thinks this is his pet network.
[Cillizza:] Correct.
[Camerota:] What is another candidate doing on there?
[Cillizza:] There's so much in the one tweet, Alisyn, the "we," right?
[Harlow:] Yes.
[Cillizza:] The sense that the president of the United States is with the network. The confusion of it, as you note. And also the fact that he's such he is at root a conspiracy theorist. The audience in quotes. The idea that the audience was loaded. He later tweeted that there were lots of Trump supporters outside trying to get in. Not accurate. As Fox News said, they sort of brought in local people. There were Trump supporters in there. He is remember, his candidacy began on the idea that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. It's a largely a very circulated and very widely debunked conspiracy theory. This is who he is. The wire-tapping at the White House. The three to five million illegal votes, right, cast. This is what he does. It's who he is. He is a conspiracy theorist at heart and that's why he sees the world his way and doesn't understand when people see it differently
[Harlow:] Good on Brett Baier for responding. I think he
[Cillizza:] Totally agree.
[Harlow:] Said come on our network, right?
[Cillizza:] Yes. And Brett Baier has been asking for years. Donald Trump doesn't like him because Brett Baier isn't pro-Trump enough. So ask yourself if that's how you want your neutral journalists measured.
[Harlow:] Right. All right.
[Camerota:] All right, thank you very much.
[Harlow:] What grade does Cillizza get?
[Camerota:] Oh, Chris Cillizza, A plus.
[Harlow:] Obviously.
[Cillizza:] Hey.
[Camerota:] A plus. It's his first.
[Cillizza:] I'm putting that on my resume.
[Harlow:] OK, we've got to go. See you later.
[Cillizza:] Bye.
[Camerota:] All right, coming up in our next hour of NEW DAY, we will speak with two presidential candidates. We have Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan and Bill Weld, the first Republican to announce a run against President Trump.
[Harlow:] The attorney general makes the decision that could change the immigration process for millions of people. We'll tell you what it is, next.