President Donald Trump blurted out that his military operations around the world were cutting into domestic spending, and panelists on "CNN This Morning" agreed those candid remarks would likely be used against Republicans this fall.
The 79-year-old president told attendees at an Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday that the federal government couldn't afford to pay for daycare, Medicaid or Medicare because "we're fighting wars," calling those congressionally mandated entitlement programs "little scams," and host Erica Hill wondered how that would play with voters.
"No money for issues that Americans are really concernedabout right now, the cost oftheir health care, health care,how do they pay for daycare,and yet we're going to needmore money for wars," Hill said. "Is thatgoing to come back to haunt thepresident?"
CNN's Aaron Blake agreed the remarks probably weren't helpful to GOP candidates.
"I was going to say it's goingto be in some campaign ads thisfall, undoubtedly," Blake said. "I don't thinkthat was necessarily meant forpublication right there. Thatwas kind of more candid commentsthat got leaked in a video thatwas in a closed-door session. But I think what's reallyinteresting, you mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene. She'sobviously been a very prominentcritic of the war, increasinglycritical of Trump in a lot ofdifferent arenas, but I thinkshe signifies something in the Republican base, and if you looka little bit more closely at thenumbers, there is this narrative that MAGA isbehind this war, and if you lookat the polls, that's what itstrictly says. You know, people [who] describe themselves as MAGA, they support the war. The restof Trump's base is not unitedbehind this war."
"Our CNN poll isa case in point of that," he added. "Weasked an interesting question,which was do you think this warhas been worth it so far? Notjust do you approve of it ordisapprove, but is it worth it, [and]70 percent of Americans said it's notworth it, 35 percent of Republicanssaid the war so far is not worthit. That points to realreservations that we've seen inother polls, but are starting topoke their head out a little bitmore in some of these surveys."