[Brianna Keilar, Cnn Anchor:] That's the whole point. And then the health. Let's be honest, both of these guys are older. Both of these candidates are up in years. And Trump himself has some vulnerabilities when it comes to health, elevated cholesterol levels, issues looking at his heart health, where it could be a lot better. What do you think when you hear him making this argument?
[David Chalian, Cnn Politics Reporter:] Well, the first thing the first thing I hear is, despite what he's saying about his concern about Joe Biden's challenge to his re-election effort, you don't do this about someone that you don't think has a legitimate shot at being a true competitor. I mean, this is it's it's a giveaway. It's a total tell, right? He can say until he's blue in the face that he thinks he could beat Joe Biden easily, but all evidence to the contrary from the president himself, you do this against somebody that you're trying to frame because you see them as a real formidable foe.
[Keilar:] Yes. Thou doth protest too much.
[Chalian:] Exactly.
[Keilar:] That he's saying he isn't worried about him.
[Eliana Johnson, Cnn Political Analyst:] Right. There's clearly project going on from the president talking about things he's worried about himself. We know he's told campaign aides that he's tired. He doesn't want to be dragged across the country to do lots and lots of rallies which is something he said four years ago.
[Johnson:] Right. The president has said this. So when he says Biden is weak, he doesn't have the mental capacity to do this, trump himself is flagging after three years almost as president. But also, when he says Biden is the weakest of these 23, 24 candidates, that is not true. You don't hear the president talking about Marianne Williamson and John Delaney the way he's talking about Joe Biden because he's concerned about Joe Biden. He considers him a real competitor. You don't hear him talking about the other strong contenders, like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg the way he's taking about Biden. Biden is clearly I think the person the president is most concerned about right now because of his strength in the Rust Belt and in some of the Midwest states that President Trump won unexpectedly in 2016, but won for Democrats in the midterm elections.
[Keilar:] We saw, in 2016, this approach by President Trump, which I think you could you could describe as below the belt, labeling candidates, raising questions kind of out of thin air about things when there's no evidence to support what he's saying. But when he says it over and over, it's something that starts to take hold. And you see it in dark spots of the Internet and it bleeds into sort of mainstream areas. With what we're seeing him talk about, David and with Joe Biden having to figure out a strategy to combat this, how how does Biden do that?
[Chalian:] See, I think you raise I think you raise such a fundamental question that all of these Democrats are grappling with right now, which is how do you best effectively counter Donald Trump? What we see from the remarks that Joe Biden's campaign released today he's planning on calling back and saying that he's an existential threat to the country, that he employs childish tactics, that the cashier at Target knows more about the economics in the country than does Joe Biden [sic]. That's an approach that Hillary Clinton tried as well. Maybe Joe Biden will have more success with it. I don't know. But it's one approach. I'm curious to see how other Democrats sort of take their moment against Trump and size them up because it's not entirely clear that Joe Biden's approach will be the best approach. What we saw in 2018 from Democrats that won back the House was to not to enter the Trump vortex too much, to try to avoid talking about Trump, because he's everywhere in a constant presence in voters' minds and, instead hone in on some issues that were really important to voters, health care, and what have you. And is Joe Biden falling into a trap by going so hard after Trump? I don't know the answer to that.
[Keilar:] That's a really good point. Maybe he'll start to change his strategy quickly. That will be the question. If it isn't working, does he change it quickly?
[Johnson:] He's ready to get into the mud and wrestle with the president. It's so interesting because I think you see Nancy Pelosi is taking a different strategy, where's she acts like the president isn't worth her time and attention. He's beneath contempt. She doesn't want to waste her time on impeaching the guy. That's a pretty effective strategy. You saw when Manu Raju was pressing her to talk about Trump, she said, I'm done talking about this. I don't want to talk about him. That's not the approach that Joe Biden is taking. And I think it will be interesting to see if his approach works on the presidential campaign trail. But you saw what happened to Republicans who tried to do that in 2016, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, some of the early candidates who called him a cancer on the Republican Party. Rick Perry and Rand Paul both did that. It's hard to
[Chalian:] in his cabinet. But, yes.
[Johnson:] Well, it's hard to be dirtier than Trump in this kind of back and forth. And so it tends to be a losing game for those who play it. But it will be interesting to see if Biden can beat Trump at that game.
[Keilar:] Can you out-Trump Trump?
[Johnson:] Right.
[Keilar:] It's a very good question. And Trump did go after the House speaker. He went after Nancy Pelosi. Let's listen to that.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] Pelosi attacked me. She was here and she made a horrible statement that I'm sure she wishes she didn't make. She made a horrible statement while I was with the queen of England, while I was with while I was with the president of France. And you're not supposed to do that, OK. But the ones that committed the crimes are the Democrats and others.
[Keilar:] All right, Manu. Manu Raju, just to lay out the double standard for an important fact-check. We saw the president before the graves in Normandy attacking the House speaker during an interview. So certainly, this is some advice that he's giving the House speaker that he's not taken himself. But what did you think about what he said?
[Manu Raju, Cnn Senior Congressional Correspondent:] Yes, that's right. He launched that broadside on national television sitting at the American cemetery in Normandy during a very solemn occasion, the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Nancy Pelosi, when she was overseas, she side-stepped questions about the president. The comments about her saying that she would rather see the president in prison rather than being impeached, those were made in a private meeting on Capitol Hill with leadership staff and first reported by "Politico." That's how it got out there. But today, when I had a chance to directly ask her about that, the first time that we've had to directly ask her about those reported comments, she made very clear she did not want to say that publicly. She sidestepped the comment.
[Raju:] You actually say that the president, you would rare see them in prison.
[Rep. Nancy Pelosi , Speaker Of The House:] When we have conversations in our caucus, they stay in our caucus. Do people think there's impeachable offenses that the president committed? Yes. How serious are they, are they criminal? Many people think they are.
[Raju:] Do you think they are.
[Pelosi:] That's not the purpose I'm here to talk about
[Raju:] And we will get into that, I'm not saying that.
[Pelosi:] I'm not going to that place of what happens within our caucus.
[Raju:] So she didn't want to talk about whether the president committed crimes, whether or not she believes that the president is in jail. And she pushed back at the notion of opening up an impeachment inquiry saying that, instead, there's a current round of investigations and fight things in court. That's the best way to go forward. She did say every time the president attacks her she said, quote, "my stock goes up every time he attacks me." And called him the diverter in chief trying to distract from the issues. And as you heard from the president, that set him off again and attacked Pelosi for those comments, saying she's, quote, "a mess." So he is still ready to go after Pelosi even as she tries to sidestep a lot of criticism, keep it behind closed doors and tamp down talk of impeachment.
[Keilar:] Trying to some project unity. Manu Raju, on Capitol Hill, thank you so much. It's really interesting to listen to that interview of Manu's, having watched the president on the South Lawn. He's criticizing Nancy Pelosi about her behind-closed-doors comments to the committee chairmen who are in charge of these investigations of President Trump on the Hill where she would rather see the president in prison than impeached. She's dealing with these competing pressures, for sure, within her caucus. What did you make of it, Eliana, that she did not want to talk about it, and President Trump said, I think she regrets it, is essentially what he said, that I bet she wishes she hadn't said that.
[Johnson:] It seems to me that Pelosi, she's walking a difficult line trying to fend off the left wing of her connection but also let them know that she sympathizes with their feelings. And I don't think it's an accident that that comment that Pelosi made to her chairman leaked publicly. But she also wanted to be able to say she didn't make this comment publicly, she made it behind closed doors and didn't want to expound on it to the news media and otherwise. And that's what you saw her hiding behind, because the president was oversees when she made the comment. The president, then overseas, criticized her publicly and she was able to say what he did was really inappropriate. She sort of got caught off guard and I think she was able to protect herself by saying, what I say to my members is private and that's that.
[Keilar:] Let's take a quick break. So much going on today as we saw President Trump speaking for many minutes, about 20 minutes, on the South Lawn. We'll be back in just a moment.