The Lead with Jake Tapper Aired April 17, 2024 - 17:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:00:23] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News. JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We start this hour with breaking news and what we just heard from House Speaker Mike Johnson live right here on The Lead just minutes ago. He is facing a potential revolt from his far right flank over his plan to bring three different foreign aid bills to the floor this weekend. It's a move his fiercest critics say could ultimately cost him the speakership. But Speaker Johnson tells me he's not worried about what could happen. He's going to do what he thinks is right, even if the bill gets Democratic votes. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: This is very simple, I'm operating with the smallest margin in U.S. history. I have a one vote margin, Jake. So, in order to get something into this underlying package, we have to have the votes on the floor to pass a rule. I don't have all my Republicans who agree on that rule. And that means the only way to get a rule on the floor is that it requires a couple of Democrats. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: That's Speaker Johnson explaining why there isn't a tougher border measure in this legislation as many House Republicans want there to be. Coming up in just moments, one of those Republicans, Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, is going to talk to us. He said today he's past the point of giving grace to the speaker. What's his response to what we just heard? I'll ask him, but we're going to start with CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju. Manu, Speaker Johnson admitting, saying the quiet part out loud he needs Democrats. You know, he's -- I only have a one vote majority, and I'm only doing this because I won't get support from Republicans on that. What's going to happen? Do you think he's going to get the votes for this package? And will Democrats ultimately save his speakership if it comes down to it? MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It seems that's the direction this is headed, Jake. He made a calculated decision to move on the policy and the process exactly what the Democrats had wanted. They wanted to tie Israel aid with Ukraine aid and ultimately in the process, somewhat convoluted process, they plan to eventually get to the point where this will be all one big package, probably totaling about $95 billion. Now, the speaker indicated to you there might be some changes here and there around the edges and some of the policy provisions. But for the most part, this is very similar to the bill that passed the United States Senate about two months ago. And that is one big reason why Democrats are signaling that they may very well come to Speaker Johnson's defense. Now, I spent the day speaking to Republicans and Democrats up and down the line, it is very clear that Democrats are -- the Republicans are badly divided on this subject about this bill and about whether Johnson deserves to remain as speaker. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: Is your support for your motion to vacate growing? REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): It is growing. I think some people are becoming more angry than I am. So this -- we'll see what happens today. I don't know how long people are going tolerate this because he's doing nothing but serving the Democrats. REP. ERIC BURLISON (R-MO): I haven't made up my mind yet that -- I'm not happy about this rule, and he's pushing us to the brink here. RAJU: What do you think of the efforts to try to oust him from the job? REP. PAT FALLON (R-TX): I think it's horrendous. I think it's a disservice to the conservative movement, I think it's a disservice to the country. (END VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: So the way this is going to break down, Jake, is that on Saturday we expect that this bill, there'll be four different packages, three of which have been released so far. A fourth one is expected to come out sometime today. That will be -- those bills will be approved on Saturday. Likely a bipartisan majority in the House will approve that. There will be -- there needs to be a procedural vote first to take up that bill. Typically, those procedural votes are done along party lines. But that's not going to happen this time, Democrats are going to save this rule from going down to allow the underlying bill from going forward. And what has angered more folks on the right is the decision by the speaker of the House to move border security measures, a separate bill on border security along a separate track. It will not be included as part of this big foreign aid package, even as Johnson had indicated for months that border security must be tied with Ukraine aid, which is one big reason why many of those Republicans are now gunning for him and saying that he should be out from the speakership because of that decision, Jake. TAPPER: Yes, they hate the notion of him getting Democratic votes. Although in order to vacate Speaker Johnson, they will need and rely upon Democratic votes. I don't know if you heard our interview with Adam Schiff, Democratic congressman, but I asked him if Democrats were going to save the speaker if need be, and he said, basically, I'm paraphrasing, but along the lines of if this bill, the legislation he's presenting is, as he has said it is basically just the Senate foreign aid bill broken up, then he started talking about, Schiff, talking about, you know, possibilities about enough Democrats counterbalancing whatever the Republicans are that go of the -- that vote against Speaker Johnson or Democrats not voting at all or disappearing. I mean, there were a whole bunch of hypotheticals he was talking about that I hadn't even asked about. [17:05:20] RAJU: Yes. And look, that is a reality of the situation now. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, has not made a final decision about how he wants his membership to come down. His decision will be key. But in talking to rank and file Democrats, including congressman like you just spoke to, Adam Schiff, they're indicating that they are very willing to save Speaker Johnson because of this decision to move ahead on Ukraine aid. And that had to be part of Johnson's calculation here. He knew Republicans were never going to fall in line on that issue, but Democrats would. And this is different than the fall when Kevin McCarthy was ousted by Democrats and eight Republicans. This time, Congressman Tom Swazi of New York told me that he would vote to keep Mike Johnson in the job. Adam Smith of Washington State indicated that he might as well. As well as Jared Moskowitz of Florida, just among the few who are indicating that they are not support this effort to oust Mike Johnson. And Hakeem Jeffries says it's time to save Mike Johnson, that will happen. The big question, though, Jake, can Johnson survive sustain a speakership propped up by Democrats? That's going to be a question for Johnson and the Republican conference. TAPPER: All right, Manu Raju, thanks so much. Let's bring in CNN's Political Director David Chalian. David, help us put today in perspective, House Speaker Mike Johnson just telling me how the speakership job is effectively impossible right now. The smallest majority ever, one vote. He can -- by the way, some of the reason that the majority is so small is because some House Republicans left and did so in a way -- DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. TAPPER: -- left early and did so in a way so as to keep a majority small because they're so fed up with people that they think are ruining the place. You have the Senate also, meanwhile, at the same exact time wrapping up this impeachment trial against Mayorkas, Department of Homeland Security secretary, everyone knew it was going to go nowhere. Let's just start with this moment in history, which I think it's fair to say there is some Republicans in disarray. CHALIAN: I mean, when you think about the first impeachment of a cabinet secretary in 150 years that Republicans -- several Republicans themselves said did not meet the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors, I mean, the entire trial was done within three and a half hours. And so clearly, Democrats weren't taking it seriously, but even some Republicans said it didn't meet the threshold. You have Republicans perhaps poised to oust their second speaker in six months time -- TAPPER: He is the most conservative speaker in the modern history of this Congress. CHALIAN: As they are holding the majority of the House of Representatives, the one slice of government they're in charge of and they may just go through this self-immolation exercise again of getting rid of its own speaker. All while the republican nominee for president and the former president is sitting as a criminal defendant on trial in New York awaiting jury selection to be completed in this first criminal case of his. It's just -- it is a moment where you step back and you say, you know, fiction writers would write each one of these things and you wouldn't believe it's all happening in the same day. TAPPER: It'd be too broad. CHALIAN: Yes. TAPPER: It'd be too on the nose. Netflix would say, nah, that would never happen. David Chalian, thanks so much. It's a busy afternoon here at The Lead because it's a busy afternoon on Capitol Hill. Republican Congressman Chip Roy is just getting to our camera, putting the microphone on his tie. We'll talk to him about all this next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:12:38] TAPPER: Busy day here at The Lead. We're back with more on our politics lead. Joining us now to discuss everything going on on Capitol Hill right now is Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. I want to play a clip of what Speaker Johnson just told me about his view of the importance of passing the foreign aid bills that are going to come before the House, I believe, on Saturday. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOHNSON: And we are going to stand by Israel, our close ally and dear friend, and we're going to stand for freedom and make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn't march through Europe. These are important responsibilities. A strong America is good for the entire world. Since World War II, really, really the responsibility for the free world has been shifted onto our shoulders. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: But you disagree with him. Why is that case not good enough for you? REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): Well, Jake, yes, thanks for having me on. And, look, I don't really disagree with any statement that Mike just made in the broad sense of the words. In fact, I wrote an op-ed yesterday about our need to stand right alongside Israel, I believe that and strongly. I tried last night all the way till midnight, I was in the speaker's office trying to get us to put a Israel first bill on the floor. Just focus on Israel. Get a rule move that, let's focus on that and then have a debate about Ukraine and what we're doing with respect to it and its funding. My concern about this package is it's $95 billion of foreign aid when, A, we're 34 and a half trillion dollars in debt, but B, we're also dealing with wide open borders. And central to our entire debate over the last year, as you know, has been the importance of making sure we secure the borders of the United States. We have 24,000, over 24,000 Chinese nationals, 85 percent of whom are single adults who have come into this country since October 1. That's more than all of last fiscal year. Well, more than the 381, that's it, 381 that we had in 2021, the last year of President Trump's tenure in terms of the fiscal year. So, the reality is we need to do that and do our job. I would love to do what we can to support Israel. Again, I support it. But in this $95 billion package, there's 9 billion in humanitarian aid, which if you go look at who it goes to are the same kinds of organizations, not UNRWA, because we took that out, you know, a couple of weeks ago, but that goes to fund Hamas. So we're funding Israel, which I support, but we're also funding Israel's enemies and funding Hamas. This is the kind of duplicitous crap the American people are tired of. So, I'd like to go back to the drawing board, pass Israel standalone and not have this package that has that funding in it that I think is nefarious and focus on the border first. [17:15:01] TAPPER: So, in terms of the border issue, I asked him a lot of House Republicans want to have strengthening the border, tougher restrictions on the border and immigration, et cetera, as part of this. Why isn't it part of it? And he said, it's very simple, I have the slenderest majority in the history of the Congress. I can only lose one vote. And therefore, because there are so many Republicans who will vote against the rule to introduce this legislation that he would need democratic votes to introduce the rule to allow the votes on this legislation. And Democrats won't have -- they won't vote for anything that includes the immigration stuff. And that's why he just, you know, this is the reality of it. And I just wonder if by opposing everything, your group of people who are upset with what the speaker is doing, if you haven't taken yourself out of relevance in terms of what's in the bill, if you were committed to, I will vote for the rule as long as you put in immigration restrictions, then you might have more of an influence on what he's bringing to the floor for a vote on Saturday. ROY: Yes, Jake. So I told the speaker last night, number one, that we had full unanimity among the Freedom Caucus in particular and that we could advance Israel to the floor and support the rule and have a vote on that. And then I said that I believe that we could get agreement on the rule, certainly would have my support on moving a rule forward. If you had Ukraine with border security attached and border security, I offered numerous options, right? Not just H.R. 2, take it or leave it, but some variations of H.R. 2, maybe you could take out E-Verify and be able to move it along with it because there's some ag community that have some concerns about it. I mean, I support E-Verify, but there are things we could do to try to move it around. There's voter identification that we've got legislation that we're working on, that I've been working on with the speaker on. There's other issues that we could deal with to stop the abuse of parole. These are all things that we threw out there as options. We don't know what the rule vote would look like because we've never tried, that's the truth. We've never tried to send over an actual border security package with Ukraine so that we can make clear to our Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle in the Senate and in the White House that we're serious about that and that the American people want to see that first because we're dealing with that crisis from Laken Riley, to the bodies -- TAPPER: Yes. ROY: -- washing up in the Rio Grande, to the ranch devastation, to the cost, a thousand migrants in New York that are out there saying, hey, you're kicking us out of hotels, you know, to go put us in these centers and they're protesting. I mean, this is like -- it's really devastating for the American people what we're seeing happen. And I can't overstate the importance of the Chinese nationals that we're talking about -- TAPPER: Yes. ROY: -- the large number of single adult populations. TAPPER: So, just -- I assume you're going to vote against the rule on Saturday if Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massie push forward a motion to vacate. Are you going to support vacating Speaker Johnson? ROY: You know, as you know, I opposed that last September. I do not want to go into that zip code, if you will. I would rather us do our job, try to move this stuff forward and work together. But I will say I'm very disappointed in the speaker. This is a bridge too far in terms of where we're headed right now, in terms of putting Ukraine first rather than America's borders first. I sympathetic and open to having a conversation about Israel and Ukraine, but only after you've done your job to secure the border of the United States. And so, that's my starting place. And you and I sat down in January 15 months ago, this rule that they want to put forward, that's not an open debate. I mean, I want to put that to bed. This is not an open process. This is precooked to give you the exact result that came out of the Senate. The numbers that are put forward are all the defense industries numbers. It's all the lobbyist numbers. It's all the Pentagon's numbers. They're all doing it to give you exactly the same as the Senate bill. It's all precooked. It's not going to be an open process for amendments. And border is specifically left out. And I said, hey, would you just put Ukraine on the floor standalone? The answer is no. Why? Because they want to be able to manage the votes with Israel. I said we put Israel on the floor standalone. No, because Democrats want support to Israel. Look, the bottom line here is we ought to try to move this stuff to regular order. This is not regular order. Or if we're going to do a package, it ought to be an America first package that includes the border, because that, by the way, is what the speaker said almost every day and every week from November until last month. Literally, go look at all the speeches, all the quotes he said, no Ukraine without border. TAPPER: Yes. Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, thanks so much. Good to see you, sir. ROY: Thanks, Jake. TAPPER: Also on the Hill today, the president of Columbia University in New York facing questions and criticism, as some students say she's not protecting them from antisemitism. We're going to get into this undercurrent rocking so many college campuses in America right now. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:23:46] TAPPER: Also on our politics lead today, campus antisemitism in the United States is once again the center of a contentious house hearing. This time, the head of Columbia University. As some students say, the school has not done nearly enough to protect them from antisemitism. One board member said she's not satisfied with where Columbia is in terms of his campus climate. Back in December, as you may recall, a similar hearing went disastrously wrong for two university leaders, eventually ending with the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigning. They failed to answer the basic question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews amounts to harassment and antisemitism. Columbia University president today, Dr. Minouche Shafik, and other school leaders had a chance to answer that very same question. Here's what they said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. SUZANNE BONAMICI (D-OR): Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia's code of conduct? Mr. Greenwald? DAVID GREENWALD, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEE, CO-CHAIR: Yes, it does. BONAMICI: Ms. Shipman. CLAIRE SHIPMAN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BOARD OF TRUSTEE, CO-CHAIR: Yes, it does. BONAMICI: Dr. Shafik. NEMAT SHAFIK, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT: Yes, it does. BONAMICI: And Professor Schizer. DAVID SCHIZER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY FACULTY MEMBER: Yes, it does. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: Oh, I guess they learned their lesson. Our panel is here. Margaret, do you think that those answers would have been so clear, quick, and definitive had they not been preceded by what happened -- [17:25:00] MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. TAPPER: -- in December. TALEV: I love when you started laughing before the questions out of your mouth. And the answer is -- TAPPER: I think I know the answer. TALEV: No. TAPPER: Yes. TALEV: But if you read her prepared testimony before she was there in front of the cameras and stuff, there was a passage that really stood out to me, and it said something like, please remember, university presidents are not politicians. Which I know was sort of wishful thinking like that, you know, other people get to decide if you're a politician or not. But I think the reason that was sort of baked into the statement was that has been the real problem. You've become a university president by virtue of a number of things, may be your academic experience, your -- you know, the work you've done for the university, but it's not usually because you have a decades long record of political training. And at least they have had sort of a crash course in crisis after what happened before, but even so, she ran into some headwinds today. TAPPER: Yes. And Meghan. Columbia says it's firing one professor hired after he posted support for the Hamas attack on October 7. Columbia then condemned the tenured professor, Joseph Massad, who described Hamas October 7 attack as a, quote, "stunning victory" in an online article. But he still has a job. I mean, tenure still exists. I want you to listen to this exchange with Republican Congressman Elise Stefanik of New York. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. ELISE STEFANIK (R-NY): Massad is still, in fact, listed on the Columbia website as chair of the academic review committee. Are you aware of that? SHAFIK: I would need to check that. I don't want to misstate. STEFANIK: But it's the website right here. SHAFIK: I don't want to misstate because I don't -- STEFANIK: So he hasn't been removed as chair? SHAFIK: I would like to confirm that to you. STEFANIK: Do you have my commitment he'll be removed as chair today? SHAFIK: I have my commitment that I will come back to you. STEFANIK: You can't say at this -- that this hearing that he should be removed as chair even though he violates university rules? SHIPMAN: Personally, I would not want him as chair. And we are looking at the issue of faculty about what we expect from our faculty. Thank you. STEFANIK: Mr. Greenwald, do you think he should be removed as chair? GREENWALD: His comments are abhorrent, and I believe that one of the steps that we could take in terms of discipline is to remove them from that leadership position. STEFANIK: Thank you for that direct answer. (END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: So some of the subtext of this is interesting because it's not as easy as a president saying this person is abhorrent and he should be removed as chair because colleges have all sorts of screwy rules and the faculty to deal with. But Greenwald didn't say he's gone. Greenwald said his comments are abhorrent, I believe that one of the steps we could take in terms of discipline is to remove him from the leadership position. But his answer was much more politic than hers. MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRES. BIDEN: Yes. I mean, just like, as Margaret was saying, university presidents have a lot of different stakeholders here that they have to answer to, and they also don't take a lot of crisis comms classes or do this. It's probably the first time they've had any sort of Q and A in a tough setting before. So I do think -- I mean, obviously, she could have answered much more definitively here, and they -- as her co panelists did. TAPPER: Yes. And the thing about Joseph Massad, anybody paying attention to this campus controversy story would know that he wrote that story calling the Hamas attack, you know, praising it as a victory -- DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's a mark. TAPPER: -- months ago. Months ago. And one would think that the university would say, OK, well, this guy maybe shouldn't be chairing our committee. But, you know. URBAN: Yes, universities are a tough place, Jake, right? And it -- they don't play by the -- unfortunately, they don't play by the same rules as the normal world does for some reason in terms of, you know, 10 years guaranteed forever and ever and ever, that's what it means no matter what you do, no matter -- TAPPER: Like the Supreme Court. URBAN: Like the Supreme Court. Exactly. Well, not even the Supreme Court. I think if you know the Supreme Court, you get kind of booted if you did something that badly. But the bigger question is, the BDS movement on campus, right, has been existing. TAPPER: The Boycott, Divestment -- URBAN: Divestment, Sanction -- TAPPER: -- of Israel. Yes. URBAN: But it's been going on for a long time. One of my good friends ran this organization called Campus Maccabees, right, which kind to try to battle back and push back on this for years that's been going on. And he would kind of, you know, sound the alarm bell for years and years, and everybody kind of poo pooed (ph) the way it wasn't real. And now we see it in full, you know, bursting glory, if you want to say -- TAPPER: Yes. URBAN: -- in that term. But it's -- and campuses all across America, it's a problem. And we need to figure out why these young people feel it's OK to have these antisemitic views. TAPPER: So, Margaret, I want to play the sound and get your reaction. Another moment from the hearing, Columbia University's president struggled to answer about specific student chants that we've all become quite familiar with since October 7. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. LISA MCCLAIN (R-MI): Mobs shouting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" or "Long live the infantada (ph)," are those antisemitic comments? SHAFIK: When I hear those terms, I find them very upsetting. And I have heard -- MCCLAIN: That's a great answer to a question I didn't ask. Is that fall under definition of antisemitic behavior? Yes or no? Why is it so tough? SHAFIK: Because it's a difficult issue. MCCLAIN: Maybe I should ask your task force. Does that qualify as antisemitic behavior? Those statements? Yes or no? SHIPMAN: Yes. MCCLAIN: OK. Do you agree with your task force? SHAFIK: Yes. We agree. The question is what to do about it. MCCLAIN: Yes. So the -- so, yes, you do - (END VIDEO CLIP) [17:30:04] TAPPER: OK. It's the intifada, not the infantada. But in any case, what do you make of the exchange? TALEV: Close enough. TAPPER: What do you make of the exchange? TALEV: It's interesting, before this testimony today, a group of about two dozen Jewish faculty at the university preemptively published something sort of questioning whether this is really the right theater for these conversations, sort of suggesting that Congress, these congressional hearings, have been highly politicized. And in the words that I saw around the commentary around this, that it was sort of a trap, that there was a trap for a college president. So I think she walked into the trap on that question, you know. And this is, again, this is the balancing act. It is not that she isn't sure whether anti-Semitism is OK. That's obviously not what she's struggling with. It is balancing that act between allowing people to express their views but ensuring that people are physically safe on campus. There are red lines. The genocide is never acceptable when you talk about it, when you're there under the klieg lights trying to, you know, walk the correct line, it is a highly politicized environment. And that's what you saw her trying to navigate right there. TAPPER: Yeah, difficult stuff. David Urban, Meghan Hays, Margaret Talev, thank you so much. Appreciate…