Trump Is Concentrating on Attacking the Press and Immigrants to Close Out the Midterm Campaign
CABRERA: As thousands of Honduran immigrants' journey closer to the United States, President Trump is reigniting his demands for a stronger border. He sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Mexico City. He meets with President Pena Nieto next hour. Meantime at a rally in Montana last night the president made it clear that immigration will be one of his biggest attack lines in his final push for the midterms.</s>DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: As you know, I'm willing to send the military to defend our southern border if necessary. All caused because of the illegal immigration onslaught brought by the Democrats because they refuse to acknowledge or to change the laws. They like it. They also figure everybody coming in is going to vote Democrat.</s>CABRERA: Meantime as the White House faces pressure to find out what happened to Khashoggi, the President praised a congressman who assaulted a reporter during his campaign for a House seat in Montana. Listen to this.</s>TRUMP: But Greg is smart. And by the way never wrestle him. You understand that? Never. Any guy who can do a body slam is my guy.</s>CABRERA: Joining us, Julie, a White House correspondent for the New York Times. Montana yesterday, Arizona tonight, Nevada tomorrow. President Trump is on the move. Can his closing argument help Republicans save the house?</s>JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think he's certainly going to do as much as he can to try to make that happen. What we're seeing now is the same Donald Trump that you saw | the campaign trail in 2016, the same Donald Trump who we've seen at rallies throughout this year, but he's really stepping up the pace of them now. And clearly enjoying being able to be himself, being able to talk tough about things like body slamming a reporter, things like cracking down on illegal immigration at the border. I think to some degree Republicans need for him to be doing this. They need for him to be activating the conservative base, they need to be activating the, you know, sort of Trump coalition that came out to elect him if they have any hope of holding on to the senate and the house. What's not as clear is whether the backlash from some of this kind of rhetoric in some of these places might swamp whatever advantage the Republicans are getting from it. We know that this kind of message doesn't really resonate with a lot of the voters that Republicans who are trying to hold on to competitive districts need to turn out, you know, women, college-educated white voters, younger voters, certainly voters of color are not going to respond well to this and might be even more motivated to turn out for Democrats if the President is making this case. But I think Republicans really have no choice looking at the map other than trying to use the President and the President is enthusiastically pushing that line.</s>CABRERA: As we point out, these rallies have been more than just a ticking through of his successes. We've seen the President return to the issues that drove candidate Trump in 2016, immigration, and attacking the media.</s>DAVIS: Absolutely. These are lines that worked for him then and that his base really loves. It's interesting when you look at these rallies how little, for instance, he talks about the tax cuts. That's sort of the signature legislative achievement he's been able to put in place through his two years in office. We hear very little about that. We hear a lot about how good the economy is. I think with an eye toward really trying to reawaken that spirit of fighting back and trying to retake the country that's a little harder to do now that the Republicans are in control of the White House, the house and the senate. So I think he's trying to push those wedge issues in a way that he thinks can be helpful to turning out Republicans.</s>CABRERA: The President likes to attack, that's part of his M.O., part of his brand, but were you surprised he was actually praising physical assault?</s>DAVIS: Yes, well, you know, he does like to talk tough and all of his rallies all feature a pretty sizable section of booing and jeering at the press. You know, his crowds often will chant, you know, derisive chants at the press. We haven't seen since the campaign him seeming to egg on violence. When he was running for President, he talked about getting rid of the guys who were protesting in the back of one of his speeches. That came pretty close to seeming to exhort people on to take violent action. He clearly was praising this member of Congress who did that to a journalist. At the very least it's unfortunate timing given all the attention that's now being paid rightly to the murder -- the apparent murder of Jamal Khashoggi.</s>CABRERA: I want to turn to the Democratic message right now. In recent days a lot of Democrats have been tempering their calls for the President to be impeached. But last night Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said this --</s>BETO O'ROURKE (D), CANDIDATE FOR TEXAS SENATOR: I would liken impeachment to an indictment. There is enough there to proceed with a trial for a full vetting of the facts and to make the best informed decision in the interest of this country and our future. As you know, under the constitution as a member of the senate, it's a far different bar.</s>CABRERA: Julie, were you surprised to hear him say that? And does that actually maybe work to the President's advantage in some way?</s>DAVIS: Well, he certainly is somewhat unique in that you don't hear Democratic candidates really campaigning on this and in fact they go generally to great lengths to avoid talking about it. They don't want to be pigeon holed as the party that just wants to take down the President at all costs.</s>CABRERA: Especially in a place like Texas, right?</s>DAVIS: Exactly. But you have to look at what O'Rourke needs to do to win. If you look at the polls, it's an uphill slog for him. But what he does need to do is signal to this groundswell of grass roots supporters that he's going to be at least willing to go there and consider that because there is such antipathy among a lot of his voters and the Democratic base for the President. I haven't talked to anyone in his campaign but my guess is that he's made the calculation here that to rule something like that out when he has a chance to really intensify Democratic turnout and what he will need to be even close to defeating his Republican rival Ted Cruz, he's going to have to signal he's at least open to those things. We've seen him be successful really appealing to the progressive base. They don't want to hear that's off the table. He's approached this in a different way than most Democrats have I think for that reason.</s>CABRERA: Julie, thank you. Good to see you. We have new details on how Turkish officials tried to stop a suspected Saudi hit squad they believed killed Jamal Khashoggi, even dressing up as airline workers to inspect the plane they were traveling in. We'll ask a personal friend of Khashoggi why Jamal feared for his life.