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Inside Politics

Potential 2028 Candidate Jockey For Position; Democrats Call Their Party Brand "Toxic", "Problematic"; Trump Won't Rule Out Military Force To "Get Greenland"; Trump: There are "Methods" Where I Could Serve A Third Term. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 31, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- voters are just so tired of losing that --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

BASH: -- they'll just pick somebody who they think could win. Now, that's, I think, a stretch. That's not always and that's not usually how the Democratic primary process works. But another dynamic here is governors talking about how they are working in their states to try to bring back the voters that Democrats have lost.

Josh Shapiro was also on Bill Maher. This was not this weekend, but the weekend before, talking about how to reach voters who don't consider themselves part of the, my words, not his, Democratic elite.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D), PENNSYLVANIA: First thing I did when I was governor, literally after taking the oath of office, I signed my first executive order doing away with the college degree requirement --

BILL MAHER, TV HOST: Yes.

SHAPIRO: -- with 92 percent (INAUDIBLE).

MAHER: I love that. I have --

SHAPIRO: I followed that up by increasing our VOTEC budget in high schools by 50 percent. And get this, 81 new apprenticeship programs, everything from dairy herd management to welding. And we've got 12,400 new Pennsylvanians going through apprenticeships.

We don't care if you're male, female, black, white, doesn't matter. We want you to have opportunity in Pennsylvania. We want to lift everybody up.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: You know, I mean, we're clearly seeing a shadowboxing fight over, you know, what's the future of the Democratic Party, you know. And I think a lot of it is a question of, are we going to see kind of a more centrist, pragmatic governor managerial class essentially come out and say, listen, if you -- they're banking on an anti-incumbency view of Washington again.

It seems to me, that they already have a theory of the case that essentially we have to disassociate ourselves from, you know, the Biden-Harris administration of the previous four years.

We have to emerge as the pragmatic, you know, more centrist opposition. That's what you're hearing in a lot of those clips you're playing. But I would just point out that the other part of the debate that we're seeing right now in its early days is going back on Democrats to this question of, are we really just in politics as usual, the oscillation from Democrats to Republicans in our very polarized 50-50 country?

Or does Donald Trump and what he and his allies like Elon Musk are doing really, represent a kind of an existential threat to the country, which is what, by the way, Democrats have campaigned upon. And if that's the case, I don't hear a lot of that from, you know, what these governors are seeing right now.

They don't seem to be acting like the country that there's an existential threat. They seem to be positioning themselves for a kind of a politics as usual.

BASH: Well, they're positioning themselves as if there is a major realignment in this country, which is what we have seen. We certainly saw that among a lot of these groups that have been traditionally voting for Democrats moving towards Republicans recently.

Before we get to 2028, there is another election in 2026. And one of the most watched elections will be in Georgia. Senator Jon Ossoff is going to run for re-election. He won in what was then a red state, now purple or purplish red. And he's taking a very different tactic.

You spoke with him recently. I want to play a little bit of that and talk on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN JON OSSOFF (D), GEORGIA: Well, look, what I'm doing is I am speaking out against the abuse of power. I am highlighting how nothing this administration is pursuing, addresses the daily concerns of my constituents. My constituents are concerned about health care.

They're concerned about child care. They're concerned about the cost of housing. What does invading Greenland and going after your political opponents have to do with anything that matters to ordinary people?

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: He's all about the Democratic base --

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BASH: -- which is, you know, I don't know if it's risky or if it's something that is actually, I would guess it's based on some data that they've been looking at. But in a purple state, you risk making Republican voters and Independent voters angry.

RAJU: Absolutely. And look, he's the one Democratic incumbent running in the Senate for re-election in a state that Donald Trump won. I asked him, is that a risk of turning off swing voters? He said, it's Donald Trump who's going to turn off swing voters.

So his calculation clearly is drive up the base and assume that Donald Trump's policies will put off those swing voters. This will be an election. There'll be a referendum on Donald Trump. Not so much the senator who's running for re-election and that people will want to check on power.

So that's going to be one of the key dynamics to watch. But what was really just fascinating in this interview, typically you see senators in purplish states, they'll tout how they work with the president from the other side. They cut deals.

Remember Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, he had been as with Donald Trump. I think they were walking together in one of the ads, if I recall correctly. That is not the case with Jon Ossoff. He is saying we're going to go after Donald Trump. We're going to make our case aggressively against him.

And that he says, he said, he's not seen any energy like this from the opposition side, really at any recent election cycle. But we'll see if he's right. There's a year and a half and that's -- but that's a strategy right now.

[12:35:10]

BASH: And in the case of Bob Casey, it didn't work.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: He's not in the Senate anymore.

All right, everybody stand by, coming up, if the Democratic Party brand is broken, as we've been discussing, what's the fix? Who can do it? Democratic Senator Chris Coons will be here next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:40:00]

BASH: Democrats are in soul searching mode. Big time.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: These guys are crushing us. The Democratic brand is toxic right now.

SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D), COLORADO: The Democratic Party brand is really problematic. And I think that it is a brand that it is, with all respect to my colleague from California, is associated with New York and with California, is associated with the educated elites in this country and not anymore with working people in this country.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: So calling it broken. OK, that's easy. Trying to fix it. That's the hard part.

Joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. All right, so, Senator, have at it. How do you fix it? I'll start with an easy question.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D), DELAWARE: Well, thanks for the chance to be on. You're going to see a race tomorrow in Wisconsin, where it's in pretty clear contrast how we are approaching the race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court state seat.

Elon Musk, Donald Trump's billionaire buddy, is out there handing out million dollar checks and writing $1 million checks to support the conservative in that race. Democrats, who I am optimistic will win, are fueling their campaign with grassroots volunteers, with small contributions and with positive policy.

We just won a state Senate seat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that hadn't been represented by a Democrat in 30 years and is in a Trump plus 15 district. We've got a lot of folks who are angry at what Elon Musk is doing and at how Trump is taking a hatchet to things that we value, like Medicaid that supports disabled children, like Social Security that helps all of us have a shot at retiring with dignity, and the Veterans Administration.

Our core challenge is to focus the fight and to make it clear that we're looking forward --

BASH: OK.

COONS: -- and we are standing up to and fighting Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

BASH: OK, so focus the fight, that's precisely what I want to ask you about. Because if you kind of take a step back, there are so many, let's call them OMG moments that you could be focused on. People being sent to an El Salvador --

COONS: Yes.

BASH: -- prison without due process --

COONS: Yes.

BASH: -- students with visas being detained, the president trying to punish attorneys, ban some from federal buildings, saying he's not joking about a third term. And then there's what people say that they voted on, which is the economy.

Inflation is still high. Wall Street doesn't know what to do about these tariffs. Where should your focus be? COONS: So I think the reason we lost principally had to do with millions of folks choosing not to vote. We lost to the couch more than we lost to Donald Trump. And if we focus on the issues that those folks care about, and that we haven't talked enough about, or fought --

BASH: Like what?

COONS: -- for them hard enough on, I think we win. And one of those core issues is making America affordable again. Donald Trump promised on day one he'd bring costs down. But the huge tariffs that he's going to impose this week will actually raise the cost of housing, raise the cost of groceries, raise the cost of cars.

That's something your average American wants to see us fighting for. And we have to have a positive alternative vision of how we would grow jobs, restore manufacturing, and bring prices down.

BASH: So stay focused on the economy and less about some of the ways that he is sort of grabbing hold of power and doing things that certainly you and others have questioned whether he has the ability to do or should be doing legally.

COONS: I mean, to your point, it's a different outrage every day. Is he going to invade Greenland and destroy NATO? Is he going to go take back the Panama Canal? Is he going to run for a third term? Is he going to find some way to send masked agents around the country to college campuses and round people?

All of these are alarming and legitimately concerning. But if we allow him to, like a matador with a bull, distract us this way and that way every single day, no one will know what we stand for and what we're fighting for.

So this week and this month, Republicans in Congress are trying to pass a bill that would cut Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. And the tariffs that Trump is imposing are going to raise costs for working people, not lower them. Focus on those two points and we've got a path forward in the future.

BASH: So as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I was going to ask next about Greenland. So I'm interested to see how you react to this, because this is something that the president is talking about over and over again.

[12:45:12]

He said over the weekend, "We'll get Greenland. Yes, 100 percent. I'll never take military force off the table. But I think there's a good possibility we could do it without military force".

Are you saying you don't think he means it? Are you saying that --

COONS: It's just insane. It's just insane. That's the problem is that, you know, look, my Republican colleagues say, oh no, you know, he's just negotiating. He just throws stuff out there, but he's the president and he's threatening a NATO ally with military action.

It's insane. It's unmoored. And we could spend all of our time huffing and puffing about how ridiculous it is. But, look, your average Trump voter laughs at us and says he's owning the libs. And your average middle American says, why are you wasting your time worrying about Greenland? I can't even find it on a map.

The challenge is that the Danes, our close NATO allies and partners, are angry, upset, and offended. So are the Canadians, the largest export and business partner for my home state and most home states. So it does have real consequences.

He is threatening the NATO alliance. He's threatening our closest allies. It does have real world consequences. But we have to focus on the two issues that I said were the main issues for the Democratic Party and working Americans.

BASH: Senator Chris Coons, thank you so much for being here. Really interesting conversation. I'll see you soon.

COONS: Thank you.

BASH: And coming up, the Constitution be damned. President Trump does say he is, quote, "not joking" about a potential third term in office. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:22]

BASH: President Trump says he's not joking when asked by NBC News if he is seriously looking at ideas to allow him to serve a third term in office, which is blatantly unconstitutional. The president replied, quote, "There are methods which you could do it".

My panel is back now. Susan, I want to start with you, because you have covered a lot of governments around the world where there were democracies and things started to change with little chips at areas of the country's constitution or even the norms.

I also want to say that we're not saying that Donald Trump is like definitely going to do this. But we also, given his history of saying things that he actually does, have to explore this and take it seriously, if not literally, as Corey Lewandowski once famously said.

GLASSER: Well, look, Donald Trump has a long and regrettable history of socializing the unthinkable and injecting that into our politics in ways that those who have underestimated him have, you know, caused themselves to later regret very seriously.

Anyone who, you know, covered January 6 and his attacks on the 2020 elections legitimacy, as all of us here at this table did, you know, don't underestimate Donald Trump's willingness not only to socialize the unthinkable in American politics, but actually to act on it.

And I think it's very notable, by the way, that this commentary in this interview over the weekend saying he wasn't joking about a third term, this is not even nowhere close to the first time that he and his allies have started talking about this. It was, in fact, going all the way back to May of 2024, during the 2024 campaign.

He was already talking about the potential for himself, despite the Constitution, to somehow remain in office beyond just one more four- year term. You know, what's really, I think, remarkable here is the willingness to flout the law, to test the basic norms of settled governance and look at the consequences.

The people that Trump admires in the world, Vladimir Putin, Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, those are people who have found ways to remain in office --

BASH: Stay there.

GLASSER: -- despite winning elections under terms that would have had them leave. Look at what's happening in Turkey, which is not only no longer a democracy in a meaningful sense anymore, but you have 2 million people in the streets because the leader of Turkey has arrested his main opponent.

BASH: Let's actually look at the 22nd Amendment. It says, "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice". There are discussions, I've seen articles after articles, actually, about this in the conservative media talking about, well, one option is to make him the vice president, have the vice president, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this, but have the vice president be sworn in, resign --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

BASH: -- and then he becomes president. Well, turns out the 12th Amendment --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 12th Amendment, yes, right.

BASH: -- "No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice president of the United States".

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, and going back to what you just mentioned, I can't believe we're actually talking about this and talking through the way that this conceivably could happen and why those ways are not constitutional either. But you're right that with Donald Trump, he throws so many things out in the air.

You know, some stick, some don't, but when he says he's not joking, when he says he is considering this, and when it's something this grave to the constitution, to what kind of -- to the policies that we have, that is where --

BASH: Yes.

KIM: -- you have to take him seriously here.

RAJU: Yes.

[12:55:12]

BASH: And then there's the other option that we were talking about among our Inside Politics staff, he just does it.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: He just tries to do it and tries to get on the ballot in Republican primary context.

RAJU: I was literally just about to say that because this is what he's doing in running the government right now. He's doing it, it may violate the law, but he's testing the courts and see what happens. So we'll see what happens.

BASH: We'll see what happens.

GLASSER: The Putin-Medvedev swap, remember that?

BASH: Yes.

GLASSER: You know, this is who does he admire in the world? And what are the different ways in which they have gone about lengthening their own tenure in office.

BASH: On that note, thank you so much for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central will start after the break.