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White House on Wiretap Claims; Trump's Statements Trusted; Doubts Cast Over CBO Reliability; Health Care Plan Takes Time. Steve King's Racist Remarks. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 13, 2017 - 14:00   ET

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


[14:00:00] SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: But I think there's going to be a ton of factors that people rely on.

Yes of course.

[14:00:00]

QUESTION: I may be confused about the wire tapping, your answers in terms of the president's response. The president was the one who tweeted this, right, and said that he had learned something. So can you just establish for me because I'm confused. The president did discuss what it is that he had in mind when he tweeted with the Department of Justice before the department...

SPICER: I'm not gonna -- no, I'm not gonna get into what the president knew or didn't know prior to it. I think we've already commented on this multiple times.

QUESTION: But how would the Department of Justice have any idea...

SPICER: I don't know. This was a request made of the House Intelligence Committee, not to us. So I -- I don't want to get into starting to parse what we knew and what we didn't. That request did not come to us. It went to the Department of Justice.

Yeah?

QUESTION: Thanks, Sean. Congressman Steve King (inaudible) saying that we can't restart civilization with somebody else's babies. Does the White House have any reaction to that?

SPICER: I will definitely touch base with the president on that and get back to you on that.

Hallie?

QUESTION: Sean, two for you. I just want to go back -- you just said a minute ago that, you know, what the president meant when he tweeted about the wiretapping was, and you sort of explained it. But you've also stood at that podium and said the tweet speaks for itself. When do you decide when a president's tweets, his words are open to interpretation and when those words stand on their own?

SPICER: I'm sorry. Can you further explain what you're -- I mean, his tweets do speak for themselves. So...

QUESTION: But you just sort of interpreted it for Peter saying well, he didn't mean that President Obama...

(CROSSTALK)

SPICER: No, no. That's not what I said. No, no. Actually...

QUESTION: You said when he meant wiretapping...

SPICER: Right.

QUESTION: ... that he meant surveillance (inaudible). That's not what he (ph) said.

SPICER: No, no. He literally had it in quotes.

QUESTION: So you're interpreting the tweet for us it sounds like.

SPICER: No. In some cases, I'll ask him what did the quotes mean and he'll say...

QUESTION: Did you ask him about this tweet (ph)?

SPICER: I did.

QUESTION: What did he say?

SPICER: He said they were in quotes. It was referring to surveillance overall. It's something that had been referred to in -- in other reports.

QUESTION: So he cited other reports in his conversation with you?

SPICER: He did, yes.

QUESTION: So is that what he was basing that tweet on?

(CROSSTALK)

SPICER: As I just mentioned, it was a good try, but I've already been clear on that.

Yeah?

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: I want to go back to this health care idea (ph). Just yes or no, are CBO numbers legitimate or not?

SPICER: That's not my determination to make. I'm telling -- as I mentioned...

(CROSSTALK)

SPICER: No, no, it depends -- Hallie, it depends. There are a lot of things at -- hold on. Hallie, you guys have like an NBC thing. Let me...

(LAUGHTER)

Let me answer the question. I think when you look at the -- whatever that number is, whether it's budget projections or whatever, I think there's a track record that goes along a lot of times with whether or not the projections in certain areas, whether it's unemployment, budgetary numbers, whatever, are what the track record is.

All I'm suggesting to you is very clearly that the numbers that they did the last time they did health care were off by more than 50 percent when it came to the number of people insured. That's not my interpretation, that's a fact and I think it's important for people to understand the differences.

Eamon.

QUESTION: Sean, on (inaudible) two possibilities here. One is that the president made a commitment to keep him on back in November and the other one is that he didn't. Preet Bharara came down to the lobby of Trump Tower and said that the president had made that commitment. Did the president in fact make that commitment to Preet Bharara?

SPICER: I don't think it really matters. At the end of the day, the attorney general followed the practice that existed for the last several administrations and asked every attorney general from the last administration to submit their resignation. So I mean, it is...

QUESTION: (inaudible) investigations and it also matters in the sense that the president made a commitment. If he made a commitment, why did he change his mind? Why did he go back on it? SPICER: Again, as I mentioned earlier, he called him to thank him for his service last week. He followed in the best practice of the last several administrations and asked everybody to step down. And I think that's -- that's the appropriate thing.

Yeah?

QUESTION: Sean, but what (inaudible) November and now?

SPICER: Jeff, there's -- I've called on someone. Thank you.

QUESTION: Sean, thank you. Ronica Cleary from Fox Five. Thank you.

I have two questions. The first, I think especially in light of what has happened in the room here today, the president tweeted this morning that much of the media is being rude and that we should be nice.

SPICER: That's nice.

QUESTION: So my question is, is it our job to be nice? And do you think we're nice?

SPICER: As I've...

(LAUGHTER)

Thank you, Veronica (sic). I will just leave it at this. I think that I've been asked for my personal opinion several times. That's not my job. I don't get up here to speak for myself. I speak for the president. I think that he has been very clear that he doesn't believe some of the behavior and the reporting has been appropriate. And to Hallie's point, I will let the tweet speak for itself.

Veronica (sic), number two.

QUESTION: Second question, so you -- but this is about you. The interaction you had at the Apple store this weekend. What would be I guess your message to individuals who want to maybe -- I see that woman was, you could argue, very aggressive. If somebody doesn't want to be aggressive and has a question for you, what would be your kind of message to a regular citizen that has an issue?

SPICER: Ask it. I interact with individuals all day long. Ninety- nine percent of them are pleasant, even with people who may not agree with our philosophy or programs or whatever. But it's a free country and the beauty of it is that people can act how they want no matter how that's interpreted, and as long as they step on -- stay on the right side of the First Amendment, we're good.

Francesca (ph)?

QUESTION: Thank you, Sean. You said that when the president said wire tapping, that he -- he meant a full host of surveillance types. So then we can be crystal clear what surveillance types was he referring to then, what would you consider part of that range?

SPICER: Well, I mean I think there is -- there's a whole host of tactics that can be used to monitor somebody, either through wiretap or other -- other ways in which you can surveil somebody...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) monitoring his calls...

(CROSSTALK)

SPICER: Well, then I...

QUESTION: ...what else would you include in that...

SPICER: I think there's -- there's a whole host of things that -- that fall into that category. So I'm not sure how you took it, but I think there is a -- a wide range of ways in which somebody can be monitored or -- or followed up on and I think that if you contacted, you know, one of the law enforcement agencies, they will provide you with a whole host of ways.

[14:06:00] Thank you all. Be safe tomorrow with the snow. Thank you very much. Take care. Stay safe.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And off he goes. I don't know if we'll see him tomorrow. Who knows with the snow. But let's get to the substance here. Thank you for being with me on this Monday. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

There's a lot to get to. We've been watching the White House press briefing. We're going to talk wiretapping. We're going to talk about some of the Kellyanne Conway comments recently. We'll talk health care. Some of the news that he made. The confirmed visit with President Xi from China down at Mar-a-Lago.

So let's - let's get through it. With me now, shall we begin with Jeff Zeleny or we've got MJ Lee with me, CNN national politics reporter, Dylan Ratigan, a business analyst who's currently chairman of Helical Holdings, and CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger.

So great - so great to see all of you. And we're just going to walk through all of this because there was a lot.

Let's begin with multiple questions asked about, you know, the allegations from just about ten days ago from President Trump saying it was the Obama administration that wiretapped him. Today's deadline day for the DOJ to provide evidence. Here was Sean Spicer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: When should Americans trust the president? Should they trust the president? Is it phony or real when he says that President Obama was wiretapping him?

SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, again, let's get back. I think there's two things that are important about what he said. I think recognizing that it's the Obama - he doesn't really think that President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally. I think -

QUESTION: What does he think?

SPICER: But I think there's a - there's no question that the Obama administration, that there were actions about surveillance and other activities that occurred in the 2016 election. That is a widely reported activity that occurred back then. The president used the word "wiretap" in quotes to mean broadly surveillance and other activities during that. And that is, again, something - it is interesting how many news outlets reported that this activity was taking place during the 2016 election cycle and now we're wondering where the proof is. It is many of the same outlets in this room that talked about the activities that were going on back then.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We do have Jeff Zeleny.

So, Jeff, let me just begin with you, you're our senior White House correspondent. You were in the room for the question and then the answer. And just a little bit of context, the question on the phony or hoax or fiction, right, that was because of last Friday and the great jobs news and the economy.

JEFF ZELENY, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. BALDWIN: And based upon what President Trump has said in the past calling those numbers phony, and now he's saying, no, actually these are very real and I'm going to take credit.

Now to the question, can we or can we not trust the president. What did you make of Sean's response?

ZELENY: Well, Brooke, I think we are hearing the beginning of a walk back from this administration on that explosive tweet from the Saturday before last. We heard Sean Spicer say new things today, particularly that the president did not personally mean that President Obama wiretapped. That's the first time that Sean Spicer has said that.

He also was talking about surveillance in general, broadly. He said that the president had it in quotation marks, "wiretapping." So this, to me, Brooke, sounded like the beginning of some more explaining. And again, they said they were not going to talk about this at all until the investigation was complete. Well, in fact, Sean Spicer has been talking about this a lot.

But to me, Brooke, it sounded like it's the beginning of a rationalization or a walk back. I don't know if you could hear me. I tried to ask that question at the end of the briefing, are they walking this back and, again, for the second time in as many weeks, or third time I should say, Sean Spicer did not take CNN's questions during this briefing, which, of course, is his right to do. He can call on whoever he would like. But that, I think, today, is the question, Brooke, are they walking this back a little bit.

Now, we do expect to potentially hear something from the Department of Justice later today, if they provided that House and Senate Intelligence Committees with any information. So that is why this is a deadline today. Again, the press conference here talking mainly about this, when the White House has health care issues of its own and is looking for that CBO score later this afternoon, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Right. Right. We'll get into that.

ZELENY: Right.

BALDWIN: But I'm so glad, Jeff Zeleny, you are excellent. Thank you so much.

Let me just turn to my three next to me.

[14:10:00] And, Gloria, I see you nodding yes on Jeff's point on it being a walk back from the administration on the wiretap. You say yes.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean we're parsing more than words now, we're parsing quotation marks, when he said -

BALDWIN: "Wiretapping."

BORGER: "Wiretapping," in quotes, what did he mean by that? And I do think that you're - you have an administration looking for an explanation for the president and what the president said and what the president tweeted.

BALDWIN: Sean Spicer said he was clear.

BORGER: I think they're trying to muddy the waters. At the same time, they're saying, the president was completely clear. Because he wasn't. And, you know, does wiretapping pertain to surveillance more broadly? Well, we don't know the answer to that. Did Obama order Donald Trump personally wiretapped? Well, now they're raising questions about whether that was what the president meant, even though he said that if Obama did it he was sick, right? I mean it seemed to be very personally directed at Obama.

DYLAN RATIGAN, BUSINESS ANALYST: But don't you think that whether it's the wiretapping, whether it's the credibility of the government agencies, whether it's - I mean the list goes on and on - that to analyze any of this outside of the context of the fact that this is an administration that was brought into power based on their inexperience and incompetence. They were chosen for the fact that they are inexperienced and incompetent as a rejection of the establishment. So any of the - of -

BALDWIN: Forty-six percent of America chose them for their anti- swampyness (ph).

RATIGAN: Yes.

BALDWIN: I mean they wanted them to be -

BORGER: I wouldn't say incompetence. I wouldn't say incompetence.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.

RATIGAN: I mean -

BORGER: I would say not - outside of Washington.

RATIGAN: What - OK, my opinion is incompetence.

BALDWIN: This is through your lenses.

BORGER: OK.

RATIGAN: But at the very least I would say broadly America those these people because they were not the establishment, because they were not the Bush family, the Clinton family, the DNC establishment.

BORGER: Right.

RATIGAN: And so everything that they do has to be seen, I think, through that lens. And where we get into trouble is when you try to analyze them using any level of intelligent analysis - any intelligence, it's utterly confusing because they're not behaving in a way these normal.

BALDWIN: Let me - let me ask - OK, on fact -

RATIGAN: On purpose.

BALDWIN: On fact, though, today is deadline day. I'm looking at you, MJ. Today is deadline day for the DOJ to provide this evidence to these intel committees. What if there is no evidence, then what?

MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Right. I mean at this point even Republicans will acknowledge as much, that it appears that President Trump said something without actually having the facts to back up that claim, and that's why we're seeing someone like Sean Spicer in this troubled position.

BALDWIN: Yes.

LEE: And I think you think about how Trump allies during the campaign and now that he is in the White House have tried to defend him when he has taken this route, and often it is to say, well, you know that this is how he speaks stylistically. But I think in a situation like this, you can't say that this is a stylistic think when there's a difference between saying something that is backed up factually or not backed up factually.

BORGER: You know, we go back to the "don't take him literally."

LEE: Right.

BORGER: But he's the president of the United States.

LEE: Right.

BORGER: You have to - you have to take him literally.

BALDWIN: Right, words matter.

BORGER: And then - words matter. And what was interesting to me was, the question was asked to Sean was, did you - did the president direct the Department of Justice to answer the inquiry by Congress? And Sean's answer was no. So if you want to get to the bottom of the truth, you know, you really want to get the truth out there, you might have thought that the president would have said, you know, let's get this -

RATIGAN: But, again, it goes to, we all sit here, and not just we on this set, but we in America, and look at the information as if it has merit and as if it has fact because he is the - I'm not saying it's incorrect to do so.

BORGER: Right. Right.

RATIGAN: He is the president of the United States. But the people who actually are on the switch with the power and the person who is on the switch with the power is not nearly as serious about information as you or most other people in this country are.

LEE: And I think we really need to get - RATIGAN: It's just a - that is a fact.

BALDWIN: But, hang on, because beyond - let me - hold that though because beyond the president you have aides, you have the Kellyanne Conways of the world who have come out, they've just like lobbed grenades into these controversial waters of this allegation of wiretapping. Case in point, let me just set this up for you. She had done this interview with this newspaper, "The Bergen Record," and then she spoke to us here at CNN this morning on "New Day." Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me ask you about the - one of the things that seems to be dogging him, at least this past week, is the wiretaps - the allegation that the - that Trump Tower was wiretapped. What can - what can you say about that? Do you know whether Trump Tower was wiretapped?

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: What I can say is, there are many ways to surveil each other now, unfortunately.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that was -

CONWAY: There was a - there was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, through their - certainly though their television sets, any number of different ways, and microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera. So we know that that is just a fact of modern life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.

CONWAY: It was about surveillance generally. And the fact that - so this article -

CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": He didn't ask about it generally, though, that's just true in the transcript. You may have answered it generally, but you were asked specifically.

[14:15:00] Chris, I'm not inspector gadget. I don't believe people are using their microwave to spy on the Trump campaign. However, I have - I'm not in the job of having evidence. That's what investigations are for.

CUOMO: You answered it to a specific question about this, and it seemed to be an effective way of putting more doubt on a situation. That's what it came across as. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it.

CONWAY: Maybe to you and maybe to other people who don't necessarily want Donald Trump to be the president. But to other people, they see it as what it was, talking about news articles and talking about surveillance generally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: She was flat out, you know, asked about this particular wiretapping. She wasn't talking about surveillance in general, a, that's fact. B, "I'm not inspector gadget"? What?

LEE: And as a spokesperson for the president, it actually is your job to provide the kind of evidence, if the press, the public feel like the president has spoken and has not provided the kind of facts to back up his claim.

And I was going to say before, I think it is time that we move past sort of dissecting, well, the president said this on Twitter or these comments were made in quotation marks. Twitter is actually the purest form in which the president delivers his message to the public and to everyone else that is listening. So I think the 140 characters actually go a long way.

BALDWIN: That's a good point.

BORGER: You know, and Sean Spicer also said that it was widely reported that there was this kind of surveillance going on during the campaign. I may be wrong, I'm going to go and research this afterwards -

BALDWIN: (INAUDIBLE).

BORGER: But I don't remember that being widely reported. Did we report on surveillance during the campaign of the Trump campaign? Either in microwaves or not in microwaves? I don't recall that. So I'm going to have to go back and check that one out.

BALDWIN: I don't know. Check the videotape.

Let's move on to - we're waiting for numbers for this health care bill to figure out how many pennies, nickel, and dollars this thing is going to cost really everyone. And so he was asked about this health care bill and it being scored. And here's what Sean Spicer said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: When he says something is - when he says something, can we trust that it's real?

SPICER: Yes.

QUESTION: Or should we assume that it's phony? Well, no, no, be -

SPICER: Suggests that it's real.

QUESTION: How can we believe that it' real when you just told us that it was phony then but now it's real?

SPICER: Wait - I did not tell you that, Peter, and you're trying -

QUESTION: You told us on Friday that the president said - the president, you didn't -

SPICER: I -

QUESTION: The president said the numbers were phony then but they're very real now. So how can we (INAUDIBLE) -

SPICER: Well, I also mean - I think that there's a big -

QUESTION: That he won't later say actually it was the opposite.

SPICER: Hold on. Hold on. I think the difference is the president was talking then and now about job creation. The number of jobs. The issue that he brought up in the quote that you're talking about was the percentage of people who are unemployed. And there is no question that no matter how you look at this, whether he's talking about 4.7 or 4.8 or whatever the number is, that number is - fluctuates by how people calculate who's in the workforce.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE)

SPICER: Peter, let me answer the question.

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE).

SPICER: You're not. Let me answer it. The bottom line is, the percentage of people who are unemployed varies widely by who you're asking and the way you do the analysis of who's actually in the workforce. The number of people who are working and receiving a paycheck is a number that we can look at.

Secondly, when you're asking about the validity of the CBO report. Again, I will refer you to the CBO itself. The number that they issued that would be insured in 2016 was 26 million people. The actually number is 10. - excuse me, 24 million. The actual number is 10.4. That's not a question of our credibility, it's a question of theirs.

QUESTION: Can you say - can you say affirmatively that whenever the president says something, we can trust it to be real?

SPICER: If he's not joking, of course.

Every time that he speaks authoritatively, that he speaks, he's speaking as president of the United States. That gets -

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) more than 3 million Americans voted illegally, was that -

SPICER: Yes, and he still believes that.

QUESTION: When he's speaking, was he joking?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Dylan, you're a numbers guy. I just want to ask you about this. Do you - first, do you think - and we've heard this before, you know, ahead, strategy, CBO, discredited, it's like a referee in the middle of the game, they're biased, they like the hometown team. Is that what they're doing here?

RATIGAN: I think it's less that. Listen, when anybody is sent into a room to do a business model, an economic model, a budgeting model of any kind that predicts the future, you could be a pension fund manager, you could be a corporate - you can be a CEO -

BALDWIN: Yes.

RATIGAN: You can be a government - a CBO officer, you are functionally limited to a certain amount of information, and a certain number of assumptions. And those assumptions are always vulnerable to second- guessing after the fact. And so of course whether it's a CBO number or any other number, it's always going to be a little bit useful by giving you a model of what could happen. But it's not that useful because no one has all of the information, and everyone is depending on a certain number of assumptions, which makes it easy for a politician who wants to use a CBO number to advance their agenda, to use it in that way -

BALDWIN: Right.

RATIGAN: And makes it easy for a politician who wants to discredit the CBO numbers because it works against their agenda to discredit it, and in reality you're - it's all sort of lost in the murkiness of the assumptions of an economic model.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.

BORGER: But there's a difference if you say 5 million people are going to be without health care insurance versus 20 million people.

BALDWIN: Because that's what this is about -

RATIGAN: Of course. Of course.

BORGER: Right?

BALDWIN: How many people will be losing coverage.

[14:20:00] RATIGAN: And, again, the big number - the order of magnitude is much more valuable than any precise (INAUDIBLE).

BORGER: Exactly. Right.

BALDWIN: Right.

BORGER: Right.

RATIGAN: To reiterate your point.

LEE: This is - this is really not about whether the CBO is credible, whether they will be saying something that is factually accurate, or, you know, sway it in one direction or not. It is really about the fact that Republicans know, whatever number comes out either later today or maybe later this week, they know that the numbers are not going to be good and they're preemptively spinning this to say, it doesn't matter if the numbers say that millions of people will lose coverage because that will be the result of people no longer being mandated to buy insurance, and that is a good thing.

BALDWIN: I mean you've been in the weeds on this health care coverage and this bill -

RATIGAN: Lucky you.

BALDWIN: And, I mean - I know, bless you for doing that, by the way.

BORGER: She explains it to the rest of us.

BALDWIN: I know. But, I mean, this really is about how - like Donald Trump had this campaign promise, you will all, you know, keep your coverage, right? And this is about promises kept and this is about how many people will lose out because the individual mandate will be gone.

LEE: That's right. I think the two quotations to watch out for going forward is Trump saying everybody will have insurance, second, it's Tom Price, the head of HHS, saying over the weekend, nobody will be financially worse off as a result of this GOP Obamacare plan.

BALDWIN: Those will be the two that will be reverberating.

RATIGAN: Can I say one quick thing on health care?

BALDWIN: Yes, you can.

RATIGAN: Just very quickly. I have a little bit of sympathy both for the Republicans and the Democrats, going back to the beginning of the Obama health care reform because we're dealing with trying to reform an employer-based private health insurance system that dates back to Dwight Eisenhower. And instead of stepping into the 21st century when there are so many more interesting ways to resolve for health insurance, which has nothing to do with health insurance, and everything to do with patients and doctors and individuals, and if anything I'm a little bit disappointed both in the Democrats and the Republicans now and for the past four or five years for their refusal to step beyond the private health insurance employer-based system to move to a more interesting debate. That's my complaint for the day.

BALDWIN: OK. Filed. Filed and noted.

RATIGAN: Can I do that? Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thought from you on all of this?

BORGER: Yes, look, I - I - my answer to you would be -

RATIGAN: Yes.

BORGER: I agree with you. But have you heard of Medicare?

RATIGAN: No, of course, it already exists. I -

BORGER: Right. OK. So - right and so you can't - when you - Medicare is such a building block in this country -

RATIGAN: Well, it's so easy.

BORGER: And if you were to do what you're saying, which is to kind of zero-base it and just sort of start from scratch, you'd have to look at everything, including Medicare. And you can't - you just can't do that because people have paid into their - into Social Security, into Medicare, and so we're kind of stuck in that rut and they're -

RATIGAN: We are, but the end game is, we spend more and we (INAUDIBLE) you and I will (INAUDIBLE) -

BORGER: Yes. Ys.

RATIGAN: But we're spending more than any country in the world to get what we're getting and on and on and on. And there's a certain point where we have to redefine what it means to have health care. And health care comes from doctors and nurses, it doesn't come from insurance companies.

BALDWIN: On the issue at hand, we should be seeing the CBO number. I think they were assuming -

RATIGAN: Look for the order of magnitude.

BORGER: Yes.

BALDWIN: Right. OK. Done. Either this afternoon or early evening.

Thank you all.

Coming up next, Congressman Steve King says, quote, "we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." So now he's under fire. He's doubling down. Hear his explanation. And Speaker Paul Ryan just responded.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:20] BALDWIN: So when the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke tweets, quote, "God bless Steve King," it's a safe bet the Republican congressman from Iowa has some cleaning up to do. Steve King under fire for tweeting this in support of far right Dutch candidate Gert Wilders (ph). Quote, "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies."

That was a tweet that infuriated all kinds of people, including Republicans. Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo tweeting this, quote, "Steve King, what exactly do you mean? Do I qualify as, quote, somebody else's baby," with the hashtag #concernedgopcolleague.

Here, Congressman King came to CNN and spoke out this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": These people are either all equal or they are not in your view. A Muslim-American, an Italian- American, German-American, like you and your blood, your roots, they are either all equal or they are not in your mind. What is the answer?

REP. STEVE KING (R), IOWA: I'd say they're all created in the image of God and they're equal in his eyes. And if they're citizens of the United States, they're equal in the eyes of the law. Individuals will contribute differently, not equally, to this civilization and society. And certain groups of people will do more from a productive side than other groups of people will. That's just a statistical fact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: With me now, Ana Navarro, CNN political commentator, and Andre Bauer, CNN political commentator and the former lieutenant governor of South Carolina.

Nice to have both of you all on.

Ana Navarro, you're up first. When you first saw that tweet, what did you think?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Steve King being the pathetic little racist that he always is. Look, this man has been in Congress now for seven terms, 14 years, and this is his only call to fame, to be a racist, to be constantly making these kind of denigrating remarks, be it against Mexicans, against immigrants. He's compared Mexicans to dogs. He has said that Hispanic immigrant youth come in with calves the size of cantaloupes because they're smuggling drugs.

This is what the guy does. This is the only thing he knows how to do. He can't pass legislation. He can't write legislation. The only thing he can do is make controversial, incendiary, offensive remarks. And that is what makes him relevant and what puts him on TV, because he has no other accomplishments. He is frankly an embarrassment to the Republican Party. And I congratulate Speaker Ryan, I congratulate all the Republican leaders that have come out today and denounced this racist, racist, disgusting thing that this man has said yet again.

[14:30:08] BALDWIN: Wow. Wow. And, by the way, you're right, Speaker Ryan has just denounced - let me just quote this saying, quote, "he believes America's long history of inclusive --