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Deadline Day for North Carolina Law; Trump Scrutinized on Tax Plan; North Korea Leader's Title. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired May 09, 2016 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[09:30:23] PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Pamela Brown, in for Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me on this Monday. We do appreciate it.
Well, it is deadline day in North Carolina. State leaders have until 5:00 p.m. to respond to the Justice Department's challenge to North Carolina's so-called bathroom law. The DOJ says it violates the Civil Rights Act. Well, the law requires transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender listed on their birth certificate. The governor is showing no signs of backing down.
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GOV. PAT MCCROY (R), NORTH CAROLINA: They gave the ninth largest state in the United States, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, three working days to respond to a pretty complex letter, and to a pretty big threat. Well, we don't think three working days is enough to respond to such a threat.
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BROWN: A new CNN/ORC poll shows the majority of Americans disagree with laws like North Carolina's. Fifty-seven percent say they oppose the legislation, 38 percent support it.
Let's bring in CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, who joins us live for this.
So, Martin, do we have a better idea of what the governor's response will be today with this deadline looming?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, those I've talked to said that there are essentially three possibilities the governor may respond with. One is to say no. The other is to say hell, no. The other is to perhaps even file some kind of countersuit against the Department of Justice, in which he would demand some sort of declarative judgment to be made.
It's clear that the governor is saying two things here. One, that they haven't had enough time to respond to the letter that's come from the Department of Justice. But, two, to also say that this is a dramatic overreach by the federal government. The governor's also saying that, look, if you think this is just about North Carolina and its transgender bill when it comes to access to bathrooms, then you're totally wrong. The governor's trying to imply, this is going to become a nationwide fight.
Meanwhile, one of the sponsors of the bill says that, look, this is not the way it was intended to go when the Civil Rights Act was passed. Take a listen.
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DAN BISHOP (R), NORTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: In 1964, when the Title VII was passed, in 1972 when Title IX was passed, no legislator voting for that in the United States Congress understood that prohibiting discrimination based on sex meant that you were going to force people of opposite sex into the shower together.
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SAVIDGE: Now, the governor has said that he will respond in some way today. We don't know whether that's going to be in the kind of written fashion or whether they will make some sort of public statement. That remains to be seen. But a lot of people are going to be watching how this plays out. And, of course, there's billions of dollars that's at stake here, not just for North Carolina education, but it could go well beyond that. So this is a battle that is only just beginning, Pam.
BROWN: And in that note, you know, if they come back and say, no, we're not changing a thing with this law, what next?
SAVIDGE: Well, that really opens up a whole Pandora's box. And no one is clearly sure. It is possible that the federal government would then turn to a federal judge and say, look, they need some kind of order to enforce North Carolina back down on its bill, or it could begin the process of starting to take away those billions of dollars of federal monies. But some have suggested that is a process that would take years.
Pamela.
BROWN: Martin Savidge, thank you so much for the latest reporting there.
So, question for you, does Donald Trump want to give wealthy Americans a tax cut or not? Observers say he is reversing a policy that would give rich Americans a break, but Trump hitting back hard saying his plan was just a starting point and that the final policy will only come after negotiations with Congress. Take a listen.
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CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": It seemed as though you were saying this weekend two things that were different from what you've said in the past, one on taxes for the wealthy, where you said you were open to taxing them more. As you know, that's against the conservative -
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (via telephone): I didn't say that, Chris.
CUOMO: Well, that's how it's being reported. Tell us.
TRUMP: NBC misrepresented and Chuck Todd - if they put out that clip, I said that I may have to increase it on the wealthy. I'm not going to allow it to be increased on the middle class. Now, if I increase it on the wealthy, that means they're still going to be paying less than they pay now. I'm not talking about increasing from this point. I'm talking about increasing from my tax proposal.
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BROWN: And as a reminder, here is what Trump told NBC yesterday.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which is it? Are you willing to raise taxes on the 0.1 percent or not?
TRUMP: It's - it's - it's everything. No, no, no, let me explain. The thing I'm going to do is make sure the middle class gets good taxes - tax breaks because they have been absolutely shunned. The other thing, I'm going to fight very hard for business. For the wealthy, I think, frankly, it's going to go up. And you know what, it really should go up.
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BROWN: All right, joining me now, CNN global economic analyst and "Time" assistant managing editor Rana Foroohar.
[09:35:05] Rana, good morning to you.
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMICS ANALYST: Good morning.
BROWN: So, first off, just looking at those two clips back-to-back, what's your take? Has Trump contradicted himself on raising taxes for the rich or not?
FOROOHAR: Well, he's contradicted himself quite a lot. I mean one of the famous things that he put forward early in his campaign was getting rid of the carried interest provision which allows hedge funders and people that basically make money from money to pay a much lower tax rate than many of us. That still may be in play.
He's actually talked about lowering tax rates on many different groups of Americans, upper class, middle class, working class and the corporate rate. But the problem is, you can't lower taxes without also cutting spending. So both the Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center, two big think tanks that study tax policy of all the candidates, have said that under Trump's plan, we would actually lose about $10 billion of - or, excuse me, $10 trillion of tax revenue without actually cutting federal spending. So you would end up with a greater deficit than we have now. And that's really the rub here. It's a very Reagan-esque plan where people are talking about lowering taxes, but not actually cutting federal spending to go along with it, which leaves you in the same problem that you have now.
BROWN: So you're saying basically the only way that this could work is if he comes up with a proposal on where he's going to cut spending?
FOROOHAR: Absolutely. I mean that's what happened during the Reagan era. You had a lot of tax cuts. And that's always been a big Republican economic point. You cut taxes. It's good for the economy. Well, for starters, if you cut taxes, you also have to cut spending. And point number two, cutting taxes in the last 10 or 15 years actually hasn't caused the economy to grow. If you look back at the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and even some of the Obama tax cuts, you didn't get a big kick-up in growth from those - from those moves. So this idea of trickle-down economics, which a lot of Republicans still - still go by, there's not a lot of proof that it works. Really it's - the math is simple. If you cut taxes, you have to cut spending, too.
BROWN: So Trump is basically saying that taxes for the wealthy would go up from his current plan, not from where taxes are right now, as part of his negotiation process with Congress, but middle class tax cuts would not go up. So what do you think about that, though, the middle class not going up, but for the wealthy going up from where it is now in his plan?
FOROOHAR: Well, so, I think that you hit on the key point, which is that this is all about a negotiation with Congress, OK, which, you know, this is the thing that Donald Trump is unproven on. You know, he has no experience going in and negotiating on tax policy, which is incredibly contentious, particularly when you get into loopholes around middle class tax deductions, like the mortgage interest rate that allows us all to buy more home perhaps than we should because the debt is tax deductible. These things are very politically contentious. He has to close those loopholes and do a lot of negotiating to do that and the jury is very much out on whether he can.
BROWN: All right, Rana Foroohar, thanks so much for breaking it down for us. We do appreciate it.
FOROOHAR: Thank you.
BROWN: And still to come, CNN has been granted rare access to a landmark political meeting in North Korea. A live report from there up next in the NEWSROOM.
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[09:42:13] BROWN: A new day, a new title for North Korea's supreme leader as he tightens his grip on political power. Kim Jong-un is elected chairman of the Workers Party. Of course, no surprise there. But what is surprising, a few dozen international reporters being allowed inside the political meeting to watch the closing ceremony. CNN's Will Ripley was there. But a fellow journalist from the BBC suddenly absent. Will joins us now from Pyongyang.
What an eventful day, Will.
WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Pamela. It began with a surprise press conference on the third floor of the Angato (ph) Hotel in Pyongyang. That is that same floor where that University of Virginia student, Otto Warmbier, confessed to trying to tear down a political banner. So we went there for a press conference. We thought it was going to be with a North Korean official about the Worker's Party congress (ph), which is ongoing. But, instead, an official came in and announced that BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes had been detained at the airport as he was trying to leave the country because of a series of reports that he did here in North Korea that North - that the North Korean authorities thought were disrespectful to the man they call their supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. And after he was detained, he and his crew, for eight hours, BBC says he was made to sign a confession before getting on an evening flight. And we now know he has landed back in Beijing and so far is not commenting.
It just underscores, though, the risks that journalists can face in this country, especially when you consider the fact that anything regarding the leadership of Kim Jong-un is considered one of the most delicate subjects that you can possible approach and you have to be very careful how you deal with things here. I personally have been reprimanded severely several times for reports that I've done when it comes to the North Korean leader.
Also, so after that press conference happened, then a small group of us were put on a bus, and we thought we were taken to perhaps some sort of a press conference with another North Korean official and instead we went through a 90-minute security screening. It was - they took apart our cameras. We had to leave our phones behind on the bus. And then they drove us with a police - with a police escort to the venue where the Workers Party congress is being held. And just a few minutes after we walked in with 5,000 party members looking at us, the band music started playing, the leader, Kim Jong-un and his entourage came walking onto the stage, the highest level party officials.
The crowd probably cheered for about three minutes. And then we started rolling with our cameras as they read off the names of all of the newly elected officials and, of course, that new title of chairman for Kim Jong-un, a title that unsurprisingly was a unanimous decision by the Workers Party. Of course, that would be their only option is to vote to support their leader. Those who might have opposed his appointment, well, they have probably been purged over the last few years, as we've reported about a lot of high-party level officials who are no longer in Pyongyang, including the execution of the leader's uncle.
Pam.
[09:45:01] BROWN: Will Ripley, thank you for giving that rare look inside Pyongyang. We do appreciate it.
And still ahead on this Monday, drug kingpin El Chapo is moved to a new prison. So what is behind that decision? Up next.
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BROWN: Well, convicted drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is now just a few miles from the U.S. border. He was transferred over the weekend to a new prison in Juarez, Mexico. U.S. officials say they were preparing for the move and this should make the extradition to the U.S. easier. Well, the drug lord has twice escaped from prison. The most recent time in an underground tunnel. Joining me now, Boris Sanchez.
[09:50:02] So this seems like a risky move, Boris, for someone who's known as an escape artist.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, security always has to be a concern when you're dealing with a criminal like El Chapo, who, as you mentioned, has already escaped from prison twice before. The prison that he's being transferred from is the Altiplano prison, which he actually escaped from last July. And for weeks now his lawyers have been complaining about the treatment that he's been receiving there. They say that the conditions there are unbearable and that it's actually making him ill. At one point they said that El Chapo actually wanted to be extradited to the United States. He wanted to come here. Later on, though, they admitted to CNN that the whole thing was just a ploy to get him transferred out of Altiplano.
But now that they know where he's being held, you have to wonder if that was such a good idea. The prison where he's being held at now has been rated by the National Human Rights Commission as the worst prison in Mexico. It's in the middle of a desert. There's nothing around for mile. So for security officials you have to think that's probably a plus because if he plots a third escape, there won't be very many places for him to hide.
The big question here is what happens next and whether or not he's going to be extradited to the United States. If he is, he's due in court in Brooklyn, New York, where he was indicted in 2009 on a slew of charges, everything from murder, kidnapping and torture to, of course, importing more than a quarter million pounds of cocaine into the United States. And it's not just New York. He's also facing charges in a number of other states, Arizona, California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and New Hampshire. This is aside from all the charges he's facing in Mexico. So there's a long legal road ahead for Joaquin Guzman, Pamela.
BROWN: So it appears he's getting ready to be extradited to the U.S. But what does the Mexican government saying, why it moved him?
SANCHEZ: They haven't given any specific reason. His lawyers have said that they don't know exactly why he was transferred. But the timing is interesting. The move comes about a month after they complained about the conditions at the Altiplano prison, which, as I mentioned before, is where he escaped from before. You have to think that some of the people that were working there may not have taken too kindly to his escape.
BROWN: All right, Boris Sanchez, thanks so much for bringing us the latest there.
Well, a massive wildfire larger than New York City is forcing tens of thousands from their homes. The latest on that Canadian fire, up next.
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[09:56:37] BROWN: And let's get a check on our top stories on this Monday.
Conditions seem to be getting better for firefighters, but massive wildfires continue to rage in Canada. Nearly 90,000 people in Alberta have been forced to flee their homes. And the burn area is still larger than New York City. That smoke was billowing as far away as Florida. A government official says two teenagers died during evacuations.
Well, at least 22 people are dead and 17 missing following a landslide in southeast China. Heavy rain triggered a torrent of mud and rocks that buried a construction site Sunday morning. China's president has urged maximum efforts for those rescued and those unaccounted for.
That is one of several tornadoes reported in Ray (ph), Colorado. Look at this. So far there are no reports of deaths, but five people received minor injuries. Emergency personnel and residents are still assessing the damage. At least three homes and one building were damaged.
Well, the pilot of a single-engine plane is recovering in a Los Angeles area hospital after landing on the roof of an office building. The 61-year-old man was heading to an airfield nearby when his plane suddenly lost power. Witnesses say the plane dropped straight down on top of a building and bounced, resulting in a near perfect emergency landing. How incredible is that? Federal authorities are now investigating.
Well, it's commencement season. Business and political leaders are speaking to thousands of new graduates across the country. While many of those leaders are sharing encouraging and inspiring words, some are also taking the opportunity to make subtle and sometimes not so subtle jabs at political rivals. Secretary of State John Kerry, Mitt Romney, and President Obama all addressing university grads this past weekend.
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Given the current state of our political rhetoric and debate, let me say something that may be controversial, and that is this - America is a better place today than it was when I graduated from college. Let me repeat, America is by almost every measure better than it was when I graduated from college. It also happens to be better off than when I took office, but that's a longer story.
MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We live in tumultuous times. Demagogues on the right and the left draw upon our darker angels, scapegoating immigrants and Muslims or bankers and business people.
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Now, graduating class, I got to tell you, you really do look spectacular. I want to you - I mean just look around you. Classmates of every race, religion, gender, shape, size, 85 countries represented, and dozens of languages spoken. You are the most diverse class in Northeastern's history. In other words, you are Donald Trump's worst nightmare.
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BROWN: Well, the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM begins right now.
Good morning to you. I'm Pamela Brown, in for Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me. We do appreciate it.
[09:59:59] And we now have a clearer picture than ever of just how ugly a Trump versus Clinton showdown could get. This morning on CNN, Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of serving as an enabler to her husband and his marital infidelities. Here's what Trump said a little while ago on CNN.
