David Urban on Trump 2020

DAVID URBAN: I think that’s really important to know that what Paul Manafort was convicted of or, excuse me, what he pled guilty to were things that happened long, long before he was involved with this campaign, tax evasion, tax fraud, things that would be prosecuted — should have been prosecuted years before. So that is something to begin with. Now, what is being alleged — nobody knows what those — what the lies are. Special prosecutor here, in this case, has said that there are lies. They’re going to be presented to a judge for the judge to determine what happened, if they’re lies or not lies. And the judge will have to determine whether he’s in violation of their plea agreement, that the meetings — the alleged meetings with Assange, you know, “The Guardian”, the source from WikiLeaks and Assange says they’ll bet a million dollars and I can’t remember what else, the meetings never happened is totally false. They throw a lot of shade on that allegation that the Guardian is anywhere close to being cracked to that allegation.

AMANPOUR: If it was true, if it does turn out to be true, it does bring it very close to Trump’s doorstep and the campaign’s doorstep.

URBAN: Well, again, you know the allegations in “The Guardian” reporting are meetings in 2013, 2014. I believe a meeting they said in March right before Manafort began on the campaign. So none of them still allege that he — look, and again, at this point, they’re mere allegations and they’re being refuted. So we’ll have to wait and see I think.

AMANPOUR: OK. One more minute I have. And to go back to the maths and the politics for the 2020 counterparts. You just talked about some of the states and some of the, you know, sort of the — what’s been going on and the — what we should learn from the midterms. But, you know, President Trump won those key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, by very very slim margins, you know. And if this midterm election is any indication, he might not be able to count on them. And particularly, I mean here is an incredible fact. He won Michigan by about 11,000 votes. That’s fewer people will lose their jobs to G.M.’s restructuring, 14,000 people might lose their jobs. That’s a lot of needles to be threaded there.

URBAN: Listen, I do not dispute that fact one bit, Christiane. I think the economy, again, will be the number one issue going to this election in 2020. And I think this president is well positioned to address those facts. I think the president needs to talk more about his accomplishments with the economy. I think the president should be touting it. There is — despite these plant closures which are horrific and need to be — you know, we need to try to find new jobs for these people, retrain them, offer them — you know, try to get them caught up with the workforce that’s actually out there looking for jobs right now, we need to try to retrain those folks to do that.

The government is actually — this president, this administration have jobs — have job training programs and address that. But you’re absolutely correct. Those states are very important. It could be very tough. The only thing I would submit is this president right now is, you know, it’s the president versus a question mark.

AMANPOUR: All right.

URBAN: As soon as you put out your [13:40:00] candidate, you know, whoever that candidate is, they’re going to have their own baggage and own set of issues. They have to deal with socialized medicine, lots of other things that are very popular in those areas and we’ll see.