on the attack. >> joe biden is not the defender of american democracy. joe biden is the destroyer of american democracy. >> as trump facing legal trouble, presidential candidates desend on iowa. >> if you will join with me in this fight, i promise you that our best days are yet to come. >> but is it too little, too late? >> plus under pressure, fighting picks up in gaza. u.s. ramps up warnings on israel. >> too many innocent palestinians have been killed. democrats call for a shift. but can president biden contain the political fallout. and growing tensions, the speaker of the house struggles to keep republican hardliners happy. >> what grade would you give him as speaker right now? >> a d-minus. i've lost a lot of faith. new reporting on george santos and marjorie taylor green. could the speaker over come the chaos. inside politics starts now. welcome to "inside politics sunday." i'm manu raju. the biden administration issuing fresh warnings in gaza. israel continues to pound the gaza strip with heavy air strikes including south where many civilians have fled. it is the third day of fighting since the truce collapsed. hamas has launched scores of rockets into israel and as many in the president's own party criticize his handling of the war, the vice president and the secretary of defense ratcheting up the pressure on israel. >> too many innocent palestinians have been killed. frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from gaza are devastating. >> so i personally pushed israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties. and to shun irresponsible rhetoric and to prevent violence by settlers in the west bank and to dramatically expand access to humanitarian aid. >> it has been nearly two months since hamas october 7th attack that killed 1200 people in israel and the conflict has posed not just a diplomatic challenge for biden, so let's break this down with our panel. seung min kim, and cnn's david chalian and nancy cook and cnn's melanie zanona. good morning, thank you for joining us. and in this consequential and busy and newsy morning. seung min, you were at the white house every day and reporting about this debate in the democratic party to deal with the aid that congress is trying to approve for israel. there is some debate about whether conditions should be placed on this aid to israel. as you could see from the headliner on the screens, just divisions within the democratic party. you reported that the white house essentially told senators they were not in favor of conditions for israel. but we're also seeing this uptick in warnings to israel as we enter this new phase in the war. who do you make of the way their navigating this. >> if you talk to senate democrats, the more devastation out of gaza, the more concern that you're hearing and the more and more criticism hearing from them and more considerations about them potentially adding conditions on to israel aid that the biden administration, that congress largely at large wants to send to israel expeditiously. and it is interesting to see how the biden administration has been navigating this issue. they -- president biden, when he was traveling in nantucket, when asked about this, said it was a worthwhile thought to talk about putting the strings attached on israel aid but then pointed out that i don't think i would have gotten as far as -- as we have done considering the hostage deal that they helped kind of facilitate if those kinds of conditions were out there, if he had been out there loudly kind of banging the drum for this. and i reported that national security adviser jake sullivan told democrats in a private meeting this week that the white house is not asking for conditions. and no matter what president biden said, this is not something that we're requesting of you. so it is a really, for months, a tricky line for the white house to handle. >> and you could hear just from talking to members in the capitol about just where the party is at this critical juncture for the war. and the progressives, they've been out front for some time. calling for a cease-fire. they're trying to get the president behind them. several of them made clear they are disappointed with the president's handling of this so far. >> i'm disappointed that we've not had a cease-fire. we need something that is permanent in order to save lives. >> when the people that elected our president to the seat elected him, believing that he was the most humane. we did that because we wanted to make sure that if something like this was to occur, wherever in the world, that that most humane voice would he about the one speaking the loudest. >> it is not united on the left. there are many democrats who are supportive of the way that the president is handling it, including john fetterman who is no moderate by any means. >> i can't believe we're talking about a cease-fire long-term until hamas is destroyed. i'm actually proud of the president and the job he's done throughout this. and i can't even imagine, you know, the chaos and what it would have been if it was a president trump in this situation. >> melanie, you're on the hill talking to democrats about this issue. what are you hearing about how they view the president's handling? >> it is a mixed bag. you have progressives on left that are calling out the press expressing disappointment. but there are plenty of democrats that are staunchly in his corner. and some of them are worried about how this could impact the president's standing with the younger voters and muslim voters but the hope is that some of the anger will cool off and when stakes of the election come into view and when it is a choice between biden and donald trump, who institutes a muslim ban, one of the first things he did as president, they believe that voters will eventually come around. but he cannot afford any cracks in his coalition right now. and there are certain signs that it is fraying. >> i was just going to say, if you talk to folks in the white house, imagine the counter factual for a moment. imagine if joe biden had come out in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack and was expressing real concern and sympathy of what israel's actions may take and immediately starting to warn them. imagine the step -- step away from the diplomacy and the foreign policy, but the politics of that, the president would have come in for withering criticisms, not just from republicans, it would have been a different scenario. so they are pretty committed to it as a strategy. joe biden believes he's doing the right thing by continuing to hug israel close because that is how he has most influence and that is something that he's thought for a long time in his career, in a way to deal with israel. but also on the political of it, to your point, the strategy in the wouse and the biden campaign is one they believe that firmly that having some diminishment of support among progressives or young voters of their coalition, that they believe they're going to have an easier time bringing those pieces back into the fold once the full contrast campaign with trump is engaged. >> and there is always a question about voter apathy. the president will have to deal with this and a range of issues, whether it is about his age and liberals didn't get everything that they wanted. jared moskowitz said they don't have love everything joe biden does. but if they stay home and they want to vote for a third party candidate, then donald trump will be president. is that a message enough for the democratic -- for the white house? should they embrace that message and tell that to the younger voters who are were them last night but may not be with them this time. >> this is the white house whole strategy for biden's re-election campaign and we saw that this week with them trying to draw a contrast with republicans on health care. they have tried to do that with abortion. they've tried to do that with foreign policy. what would happen if trump was in the white house for instance and this israel-hamas war would be happening. i think the question is how far does that go, particularly when trump is definitely the front-runner, but the republican primaries are not totally settled yet. and so i think that because that is still up in the air, there is time for there to be cracks in the democratic coalition. >> biden has said some major domestic legislative achievements achievements in the first two years with the reduction act and they claim they don't get enough credit for that. but foreign policy is in many ways dominated his time in office. so what, for you, as you hear the white house, how do they try to balance that as they message this to voters? >> i think going along with what david said, in terms of how president biden approaches foreign policy, he feels that he is the one who had has the experience over decades and he and his team sort of like tune out the noise when they hear all of the kind of pushback from progressives and the left. but they know that they have to message things in a different way. you saw the kind of shift over since the october 7th attack from his staunch vocal support of israel to highlighting more of the humanitarian concerns making it clear that he was pushing bibi behind the scenes to make sure they are minimizing civilian casualties. but his broad approach remains and that is not going to change. he thinks this quiet diplomacy, not responding to the every day noise coming from capitol hill, or his critics, is not the way to go when it comes to dell nat national security concerns like this. >> and as this drags on, how do they change their approach, seeing a shift in the rhetoric and will this get worse? we'll see. coming up, trump tries to flip the script and calls president biden a threat to democracy. how trump is working to lockdown the nomination as his rivals struggle to catch up. former president trump may about the one who has indicted nor efforts to over turn the 2020 election, but according to him, it is actually president biden who poses the greatest threat to democracy. >> but joe biden is not the defender of american democracy. joe biden is the destroyer of american democracy. and it's him and his people. they're the wreckers of the american dream, the american dream is dead with them in office. >> if joe biden wants to make this race a question of which candidate will defend our democracy and protect our freedoms and i say to crooked joe and he's crooked, the most corrupt president we've ever had, we will win that fight and we're going to win it very big. >> now trump's attempt to flip the script was part of a broader attack on biden and in attempt to paint the election as a two-man race. and it come as mid a tough week for trump legally speaking. he could be sued in damages related to january 6 and he does not have presidential immunity and in new york a court reinstated a gag order in the civil fraud case an order that cost him $15,000 in fines. but when it comes to politics, he could dominate the primary race. and although his team is not taking the early votes for granted, their ramping up spending to six figures weekly onnards in iowa and new hampshire an they are largely focused on biden. listen. >> america learned how having a weak leader to tragically lead to maamerican deaths. which is why america needs strength more now than ever. >> so, david, just about trump's line of attack on biden, this is what trump does. when he has -- >> he has something that a vulnerable. if your vulnerability is that you're deemed crooked and untrustworthy, you make hillary clinton crooked. it is part of hi branded exercise. if you believe that you are vulnerable on cha charge of election interference, you describe everything that the justice department is doing against you as election interference. this is classic trump. and so now, on threat to democracy, which donald trump has proven himself clearly to be a threat to american democracy, you see him trying to flip the script here again. and obviously it doesn't apply to joe biden. there is no factual pattern to sug that joe biden is a threat to american democracy, but the question is, does this have the potential to be successful branding for trump and i say that because i watched this week tucker carlson sit down with roseanne barr, talking about his support for trump. and in that conversation, you hear one of the reasons that tucker carlson is to committed to donald trump that he said is because when the feds went into mar-a-lago that for him was an unthinkable thing and seemed totally like a -- a political treat from joe biden using the justice department and the law enforcement to go after his political opponent. again, there is no evidence of that. but it is not just donald trump doing a branding exercise. there are tens of millions of supporters who are committed to this belief that joe biden is -- is somehow tinkering with this and just look at our most recent polling. election integrity and voting rights is the second most issue to the economy, equally important to republicans and democrats. so from where you sit, it is not one party or the other, they both see problems with this and donald trump is playing into that. >> and he hopes that voters in the middle will say they're both a threat to democracy and kind of muddy the waters. but he tries to muddy the waters on the issue of obamacare. he put out a post on truth social saying he wants to get rid of obamacare and replace it with much better health care. that is the republican message several years ago. that is backed off of this amid the rise in popularity. yesterday he tried to clean up what he said from earlier and then suggested perhaps it was him to saved obamacare. >> we're also going to fight to give much better health care than what you have right now. this is a newer subject, but obamacare is a disaster. and i said we're going to do something about it. i saved obamacare when we got john mccain's negative vote. he voted against it after campaigning for many years. he said, thumbs down. >> he saved obamacare repealing part of it and why did john mccain vote against it because they didn't have a replacement. but trump clearly sees that what he said, he shouldn't have said. >> trump's message on obamacare took his advisers by surprise when he made that. that was something that is largely seen as settled in the republican party. because they tried for years to repeal and they weren't able to and now everyone wants to leave it alone. >> and it locked them in the majority in 2018. >> 100%. and just the way that he tried to rewrite the narrative on obamacare, he has been trying to do the same thing with abortion on the campaign trail. he has said, republicans need to not be so extreme on abortion. this is an issue you have to be very careful with. but he is the one that appointed three supreme court justices that overturned a woman's right to an abortion. and he acts like there is some great distance from that and he has nothing to do with it. there are a bunch of republican governors that have passed more restrictive state bans since then but he's the one that led the charge and it is interesting to see him try to walk the fine lines on policies that he was intimately involved in when he was president. >> this comes as the rise of obamacare has grown in popularity from 2010 until 2023. 59% of all adults have a favorable opinion of the affordable care act in may of this year. 26% of republicans have a favorable opinion and 89% of democrats and then the question that nbc news posed about which party does a better job on health care, democrats compared to republicans 22%. and the biden campaign hasn't done a lot of this in the campaign season so far, sees this and sees the trump comment and turn it into a campaign ad. >> the last administration's policies were so troubling that the biden administration lowered the cost of prescription drugs and passed laws to make health care more affordable. the idea that we could go back to the policies that helped the rich get richer and left so many people behind, i don't want to go back. >> this is what a lot of democrats wanted to hear from -- just to show the contrast more. and in this ad, national ad running in seven key media markets part of the uptick in strategy by the biden campaign. >> for the longest time, you didn't hear the word trump come out of even the campaign's mouth and now they see more and more as a potential two-person race and you hear the chorus of democrats who want president biden to go after much harder on the former president. you're seeing the contrasts through ads and seeing what the president said himself. i think you're going to see an uptick in that going forward. >> and this all comes as a race for second place continues to take place. we saw the koch network put money behind nikki haley, haley is running a campaign ad, her first in iowa and new hampshire and can that make a differencech and there is the question about ron desantis? what his strategy is in all of this. we've seen campaign officials with the superpac step aside and he's visited all 99 counties. he insists, that he seems to be put ug all ever his eggs in the iowa basket and he will not drop out even if he loses in iowa. >> so just to be clear, you are committed to staying in the race through the caucus? is iowa do or die for you, governor? >> we're going to win iowa. i think it is going to help propel us to the nomination. but think we'll have a lot of work that we'll have to do beyond that. >> but if he doesn't win iowa, can he stay in the race. >> there is a reason why they've put all of their eggs in the iowa basket. and he's done everything that a candidate would need to do to win iowa. he visited all 99 counties in a state where retail politics is very important. he has the endorsement of the governor and a faith leader in the state which is popular and yet he appears to be in the same position he was before he started that 99 county tour. in fact, in some ways he's worse off because now he has nikki haley nipping at his heels. time is running out and who is the second place contender but a lot of skepticism about whether anyone could beat trump at this point. >> and if you want to say -- >> donors will stop giving him opinion in he doesn't win iowa. he may want to stay in the race but he will not have the money to do it. >> sometimes the decision is made for you. coming up, new reporting on george santos who got the snl treatment last night along with our friend wolf blitzer. >> we have breaking news at the capitol. where disgraced an now expelled congressman george santos is giving his final press conference. >> okay, enough. enough, enough. everyone, stop assaulting me. i'm being assaulted. first time i connected with kim, she told me that her husband had passed. and that he took care of all of the internet connected devices in the home. i told her, “i'm here to take care of you.” connecting with kim... made me reconnect with my mom. it's very important to keep loved ones close. we know that creating memories with loved ones brings so much joy to your life. a family trip to the team usa training facility. i don't know how to thank you. i'm here to thank you. tempers flared among house republicans this week as members of congress took a vote to expel one of their own. now i have brand-new flinformatn from the man at center of it all. who reached out to me at 2:47 a.m. text message just hours after his ouster. but first, let's talk about speaker mike johnson and his new struggles to lead a conference that often times that does not want to be led. our new reporting from melanie zanona dives into the relationship with some of his key dissidents including marjorie taylor green who has been blasting her fell yes republicans in personal terms when they break from her. >>