Trump: Gillibrand "would do anything" for contributions
GORANI: In the U.S., some lawmakers are crying foul after President Trump's vicious tweet attack against the female senator who called on him to resign over a sexual assault allegation. Trump tweeted this morning, "Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office begging for campaign contributions not so long ago and would do anything for them is now in the right fighting against Trump. Very disloyal to Bill and Crooked used." Fellow Democrats are defending Gillibrand including Senator Elizabeth Warren who accused the president of trying to bully slut-shame. Senator Gillibrand herself called the president's tweet a sexist smear.</s>SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: It was a sexist smear attempting to silence my voice. And I will not be silenced on this issue neither will the women who stood up to the president yesterday and neither will the millions of women who have been marching since the women's march to stand up against policies they do not agree with.</s>GORANI: Let's go to CNN's Dan Merica live in Washington. So, this is once again - he created the - president has over Twitter created a feud with an elected representative. I mean, where is this going to go?</s>DAN MERICA, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, the White House hasn't commented on this, especially on what he meant, by saying she would do anything for those donations. Clearly, it's a sexually suggestive tweet. Democrats have blasted it. Many Democrats on Capitol Hill are rallying around SEN. Gillibrand. Privately, though, number of Gillibrand aides and top Democrats say that they're actually excited about this fight, that Gillibrand is willing to have this fight, and has been out and front on sexual assault issues for really not only just for months, but for years. She's been a top Democrat on that issue. Sarah Sanders is briefing the press at the White House right now. You've got to expect she's asked about this and that would really be the first time the White House has tried to clear up -</s>GORANI: Let me - let's just go to Sarah Sanders now and listen to what she has to say about it.</s>SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: - political contributions to the senator that the president referenced. Steve?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does the president want Roy Moore to be seated in the Senate if he wins tonight? And does he plan to call him tonight?</s>SANDERS: In terms of calls, I'm not aware that anything is scheduled, win or lose. In terms of being seated, I can't speak on a hypothetical, certainly not one that could potentially influence an election one way or the other due to the Hatch Act. John?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sarah, does the president agree with his outside legal counsel that a special prosecutor should be appointed to look into the goings-on at the Department of Justice during the election campaign in 2016 since the revelation about Bruce Ohr, the former associate deputy attorney general?</s>SANDERS: I think it's something that certainly causes a lot of concern not just for the president and the administration, but I think probably for all Americans, and something that if we are going to continue to investigate things, let's look at something where there's some real evidence and some real proof of wrongdoing. And this looks pretty bad, and I think it's something we should certainly look at. Dave?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, would he support the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into this?</s>SANDERS: I haven't asked him that directly, but I know that he has great concern about some of the conduct that's taken place and something that we certainly would like to see looked at. Dave?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, Sarah. Congressional leaders are saying that they have no plans to reimpose sanctions on Iran by the deadline tomorrow that the president initiated back in October when he decertified Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal.</s>GORANI: So, we're going to break away from this now. Dan Merica, you're still with me in the Washington bureau. So, Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, in reference to - we missed that particular bit. So, I'll update our viewers. In reference to his tweet about Kirsten Gillibrand, said the president has used that phrase many times before that she's begged for donations, but I don't know about the would do anything for it. I personally hadn't seen that before.</s>MERICA: I think what Sarah Sanders was trying to say is that he was commenting on corruption in the political system by, as she said, both men and women. What really strikes me about that statement is that the president actually donated money to SEN. Gillibrand's numerous campaigns when he was a businessman in New York, about $8,000, based on FEC reports, he donated to SEN. Gillibrand. His daughter Ivanka Trump also donated $2,000. So, he was as much of a player in that system by donating to her. It really reignites the conversation about the fact that President Trump was a prolific Democratic donor before he ran for president as a Republican, Hala.</s>GEARAN: All right. And thanks very much for that update, Dan Merica in our Washington bureau. We'll keep our eye on that. There was a question about Roy Moore in that press briefing and let's turn back to that bitter and divisive Alabama Senate race where voting is well underway. Joining me now is CNN political commentator and assistant editor at "The Washington Post" David Swerdlick. So, we were discussing earlier in the program that Roy Moore's voters in a deeply conservative state like Alabama are most likely to propel him to a win this evening and you would have Roy Moore as a sitting US Senator. Do we expect the establishment Republicans in Washington to then try to get rid of him at that point?</s>DAVID SWERDLICK, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND ASSISTANT EDITOR, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes. Good afternoon, Hala. I think that you can expect senators in Washington to maybe instigate an ethics investigation against SEN. Roy Moore or into Roy Moore's conduct, but I don't think we have any indication yet that senators are automatically going to jump to having him removed from the Senate. The rules are that they do have to cede him if he is the duly elected winner of the Alabama race and then they would subsequently have the opportunity to expel him from the Senate. But I think we are way ahead of ourselves in thinking that he is just going to be injected based on allegations that are made so far, given the inconsistencies in the statements that Senate Republican leadership have made up to this point.</s>GORANI: Because, I mean, going into the midterms, having someone like Roy Moore in the Senate, someone who has made outrageous types of remarks that we know he's made a few years ago, saying every amendment after the 10th in the US Constitution is useless, and one of those amendments by the way was to give women the right to vote and abolish slavery. Those were at least two of them. And his wife, as late as yesterday, saying one of our attorneys is a Jew. I mean, this type of language, this type of politician sitting in the US Senate, if you're purely cynical about it and you're a Republican, you think to yourself, this is going to hurt us.</s>SWERDLICK: Well, that's not the that they've made though. I think the observations you're making are very similar to what a lot of people in Washington, what a lot of people throughout the United States have made. But in a fire engine red state like Alabama where the Republican Party has a built-in advantage going into the race, and then some of these specific allegations accrue, the Democrat is still sort of playing catch-up and we're seeing that reflected in the polling. You have three polls come out yesterday. One said that the two candidates, Jones and Moore, were running neck and neck. One had Jones up by 10 percent, one had Moore up by 9 percent. So, the idea that we can really tell what's going to happen tonight, I think it's kind of tough to make a prediction. That said, as you just described, we are in slightly uncharted territory here with a candidate who already had controversial positions on same-sex marriage, on religion generally, has been expelled from the Alabama Supreme Court twice, and then our "Washington Post" reporting showed that he had serial allegations of trying to date or in, at least, one case molest teenage girls against him. This is really a test for Republican voters in that state where many have said, up to and including President Trump, even in spite of all this weight on one side of the ledger, they say we can't afford to have a Democrat in Congress. Republicans clearly want that seat. They don't want to reduce their margin in the U.S. Senate.</s>GORANI: And then, there was that bizarre testimonial from one of his supporters who served with him in Vietnam, who in order to illustrate the fact that Roy Moore is not interested in young women told the story of the two men visiting a brothel.</s>SWERDLICK: Yes. I mean, I don't see how - I don't see how his campaign thought that would help them in any way, but, I mean, you have people who are not political professionals going out there at the 11th hour thinking that they're explaining one thing and it turns out, in fact, they're just raising further questions about Judge Roy Moore's character and raising further questions about his background and how they are even approaching this issue. It's one thing to say these are the allegations and we simply deny them flat out. It's another to offer a series of justifications. He apparently in this anecdote was at a brothel when he was serving in Vietnam, but didn't go in at an earlier stage. The justification for allegedly dating teenagers was I would never do it without asking their parents first. None of these things is a flat denial. And that I think is the problem they face.</s>GORANI: David Swerdlick of "The Washington Post", thanks very much. Coming up next, legendary musician Roger Waters is dedicating a song to President Trump. The Pink Floyd front man tells me what it is and shares his thoughts on American politics.