Trump Focuses on Campaign Issues; Authorities Prepare for Immigration Raids; Warren Unveils Immigration Plan.
KING: Today the president merging his re-election campaign and his White House in very big ways. This morning the president teased a Rose Garden press conference this afternoon. And he says they'll -- on the census and the citizenship question, his administration wants to put on the 2020 census. That will come minutes after a White House social media summit with a roster of attendees that doesn't include social media companies. Instead, it features presidential boosters, includes conspiracy theorists, who shape the online universe, to confine to the president's MAGA narrative. He spent much of his morning on Twitter. Nineteen tweets so far. Attacks on Robert Mueller and Democrats running for president. A familiar mix of bragging, themes, painting as fake any fact he doesn't like. He's going to come into the press conference this afternoon. He's going to say, we're putting census -- the citizenship question on the census. That's going to go back into the courts. But it's an immigration focus there. We're told that these ICE -- promised ICE raids to throw out people who have gone to court, been told they have to leave the country and that are staying here in violation of deportation orders, this is Rose Garden strategy meets Trump. Use the White House, use your events, use your platform, advance your campaign themes.</s>COLLINS: Yes, I think it's like an 80 percent chance of rain, so I'm not sure they'll be in the Rose Garden. But they may be inside. But you're going to have to picture what the president is going to have just done, sat through, met with and talked with before he comes out to do this -- make this announcement about the census, this executive action that we're expecting him to take, not necessarily an executive order, it's likely to be more of an executive memorandum which doesn't carry the same weight. But the president is going to have just met with people who on social media say that they've been essentially censored because of their politics, that they're right-wing supporters of the president. And that's something that the president himself has said that he feels. But he's going to come out and he's going to make this action on the census, something that he's been frustrated by for the past two weeks because they haven't been able to make any action on that. It's been a completely chaotic strategy on behalf of the administration. They use words inside the West Wing that you can't really say on TV to describe how this has been going on, either trying to change the legal team, being denied that change because of their reasoning, being denied able to add this. And then, on the other hand, the president is balancing these raids that are going to be carried out, that they've essentially -- are facing some issues with, not only because there are divisions within DHS, but also because the president has been telegraphing them, which could create logistical problems for the people who even do want to carry them out.</s>KING: Right. And so as this plays out -- you mentioned this so-called social media summit. The president has issues with Twitter. He has issues with Google. He has issues with some of these companies, including FaceBook. Invite them in. If you have differences, invite them in. That's not the case. Instead, our Oliver Darcy doing some great reporting on this. Among those invited to this are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who's promoted the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter, Carpe Donktum, an anonymous troll who won a contest put on by the fringe media organization InfoWars for an anti-media meme, and Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Senator Kamala Harris by saying she's not an American black following the first presidential debate. It's a much longer list. We're not going to give them time. What is the purpose here? Because these are people who, on the Internet, who say the president is right and that up is down and that east is north, even when the facts are not such?</s>KAPUR: I think there's a lot of political power in the conservative movement and playing out the feelings of persecution and playing out the feelings of bias. And I think social media is just the latest flash point for that debate. And I think President Trump has been very happy to engage in that. There are other prominent Republicans, like Senator Ted Cruz, who frequently engages in that debate as well. I think it's a political rallying cry more than anything else.</s>KING: Political rallying cry more than anything else.</s>HULSE: And we know -- we know about this because they're on social media. So we're not -- the censorship isn't all that extensive because they're extremely active.</s>KAPUR: Right.</s>HULSE: And there are complaints today from some of the people who are censored, some of the even more extreme elements that they're not invited. So, you know, he's -- it's confused a thing. I totally agree with you. This is just one more area, like the census, that he sees this as a -- as a way to rally people. I'm really curious to see how far they want to go today in defying the courts. But the president has -- he wants this fight, even if he doesn't get his way, because it keeps everyone ginned up.</s>KING: And his attorney general is going to be there with him for this. So we know internally, normally -- normally an attorney general will say, Mr. President, we tried. We went to the Supreme Court. We lost. So now they're going to do something --</s>HULSE: Well, they did try that route for a while.</s>KING: Yes. Right. So they're going to go the -- now they're going to go the executive route to try to press this question, which there are other ways to ask this question. In fact, the government does ask this question in other settings, but they want it as a signature issue on the census. They say they need that information. Others say they're trying to depress the Latino count.</s>BADE: Yes, and Barr's apparent presence, I mean this is just another example of, you know, the attorney general, who has become Trump's, you know, best friend. Somebody he didn't know and didn't have any relationship with who has turned out much better in terms of helping him politically than he could have expected. Not only the census, but this week Barr was talking about how, you know, if Robert Mueller didn't want to show up to Congress because it was going to be a spectacle, he would support him in doing that. But you're going to see, you know -- it will be interesting to see if Barr talks and, you know, what he says and how he can justify this in terms of, you know, going around what the Supreme Court had said.</s>HULSE: He's already said that he considered the decision to be wrongly decided. So what form is this going to take?</s>KAPUR: The Supreme Court has left some -- a door open to an extent, right? They didn't say this entire thing is invalid, this is unconstitutional to ask this question, or anything like that. They said in the pretext, the reason that the administration gave was contrived and invalid. Now, it sounded to me like Chief Justice Roberts was sending the administration on a fool's errand, knowing that there's a deadline here and knowing that they can't really get around it. Kind of like he did to Congress on the Voting Rights Act when he lopped off that piece knowing that they wouldn't repair it. But now it seems like the administration is going to try. I don't know how they get around this legal box.</s>COLLINS: Well, you also have to keep in mind, it's not just the Supreme Court. They're also facing issues in New York courts, Maryland courts. And some people inside the West Wing think they've actually already achieved what they needed to because the president -- they've talked about adding this question so much that people who are undocumented are going to be more hesitant about answering the census. So they may have already gotten in a sense what they wanted to get before -- by adding this question.</s>KING: Right. And so a bit earlier today, Speaker Pelosi, in the middle of all of this, the president's going to come out and say he's going to use executive action to put this census -- citizenship question on the census. Democrats oppose that. They're going to fight him in court. They've had disagreements with the president. They don't like these ICE raids that are coming out on Sunday. And yet Nancy Pelosi today said she had met with Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to talk about immigration issues and she thinks it's possible, possible, for some bipartisan progress.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): And there may be some possibilities of some things that we can do. It may not be the total comprehensive, but it would address some of the points. We have to -- we have to do that.</s>KING: What does she mean? At a time when they disagree with just about everything, are there some small things that they might be able to agree on, Democrats and Republicans sending to the president something on immigration that he will sign?</s>BADE: I think that the Democratic leadership thinks there are some things in their bill that they passed, the emergency bill a few weeks ago, that they could potentially get the Senate to agree to, including say requiring the administration to tell Congress right away when a child dies in custody, requiring children to only be held for 90 days in these detention facilities that have been proven to be overcrowded and potentially dangerous. And so she was able to talk to Mike Pence, who agreed to some of these things. And so I think that they think maybe there's a couple of things they can do around the edges to get some Democratic wins in the future.</s>KAPUR: That and Lindsey Graham is an eternal optimist I think on the issue of immigration. You know, he has a long history of a moderate record. But I'd be very skeptical of any kind of a big deal on immigration.</s>BADE: Yes, definitely not (Ph).</s>KING: Have a big deal, especially given what the president -- well, we'll see. We'll see. That's off -- he's Mr. Unpredictable, I guess. As we go to break, Cory Booker is running for president. Guess what, that doesn't mean you get excused from normal civic duties, like jury duty.</s>SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): We're in jury duty tie (ph) and today's your birthday.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.</s>BOOKER: And a whole bunch of people here on jury duty want to say what?</s>CROWD: Happy birthday!</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.</s>BOOKER: This is the best jury room in all of America.</s>CROWD: Yes!</s>BOOKER: Yes!