Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Trump Scrutinizes Immigration Law for Dreamers; Trump Taps Retired General to Lead DHS; Trump Seeks Obama's Advice on Cabinet; Obama Hopes to Shape Trump's Policy Views; Obama Makes Candid Reflections on Race; British Foreign Secretary Slams Saudi Arabia. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired December 08, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Described an Obama program that allows young people brought here illegally by their parents to go to college and to get a job if they register with the government. You might know these people as dreamers. Kids who desperately want American citizenship one day.

In an interview with "Time" magazine, Mr. Trump now says his administration will, quote, "work something out" for dreamers. Helping Trump with his immigration plans, maybe retired General John Kelly. He's the man Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly, who served 40 years in the Marines, is known for his strict views on the nation's southern border.

Joining me now to talk about this is Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security.

Good morning.

JANET NAPOLITANO, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being with me this morning.

Do you believe Mr. Trump will work something out for dreamers?

NAPOLITANO: You know, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, DACA, was a policy that was instituted when I was secretary. It's a very particular policy. It's designed specifically for young people who were brought here as children, raised here as children, done everything we've asked of them. We have several thousand of them at the University of California where I now serve as president. They are undocumented, true, but they're the kind of talent and brains that we want to have remain in our country. So something definitely needs to be worked out.

COSTELLO: There are some Republicans, though, who say that Mr. Trump really has to restore law and order in this country, and these kids, along with their parents, broke the law. So why shouldn't they be sent back?

NAPOLITANO: Well, he's also talked about prioritizing the deportation of violent felons and gang members. Essentially the same priorities that we had under the Obama administration. The dreamers, under any rational analysis of priorities, would be at the very bottom of any kind of deportation program. So, you know, with his announced policy where he wants to go, which with what good law enforcement would be, the dreamers should be allowed to remain in this country. DACA was a very specifically designed program for them and it's worked very well.

COSTELLO: So, so, if Mr. Trump does not work something out, as he has intimated, you say you'll protect and defend students who are in the country illegally and tell campus police in California to do the same. What exactly does that mean?

NAPOLITANO: Well, what it means for us is that we will not convert campus police into adjunct immigration officers. We won't voluntarily turn over student records, where we'll protect their privacy. And we will work to provide them legal representation should they find themselves in an actual deportation proceeding. We know that if you have a lawyer, you do much better in deportation proceedings than if you don't.

COSTELLO: So, so, won't you be breaking the law if you don't cooperate with federal authorities?

NAPOLITANO: No. No. There's no law that says you must cooperate with federal authorities. And indeed it is done consensually between law enforcement departments. But many, many, many law enforcement departments around the country are now saying, look, we are not here to be ICE agents. We are here to focus, in our case, safety on our campuses, and to be adjunct immigration officers would be contrary to that primary mission.

COSTELLO: Well, what about -- I just -- I just want to go back to that. So if I don't cooperate with federal authorities, that's OK?

NAPOLITANO: There's no law that requires a police department to do so. That was your question. And, again, DACA kids, let's talk about who this subject is about. These are young people brought here as children. They've been raised here. They've done well enough in school to get admitted to the University of California. That's not the easiest thing in the world to do. They have had a criminal history check. They've had a background check to be in DACA. These are not the crime and security risk that one should focus on in any kind of immigration regime.

COSTELLO: But as a -- but as a former federal authority, because you were the secretary of Homeland Security --

NAPOLITANO: I was.

COSTELLO: If you were in the Trump administration, and the Trump administration is trying to, you know, get to these undocumented people, wouldn't it frustrate you to have university officials not cooperate with federal authorities when they're just trying to do their jobs?

NAPOLITANO: No, I disagree. What my point is that if you take the announced priority -- you can't deport everybody that's in the country in an undocumented status. That is a -- that's a fact. So you have to prioritize. And the priorities ought to be those who have committed serious felonies, those who are gang members, those who are security risks. I will tell you, by the time -- by the time you do those priorities, you're just about done.

COSTELLO: But isn't that for the Trump administration to (INAUDIBLE) those priorities?

NAPOLITANO: Excuse me?

COSTELLO: But isn't it up to the Trump administration now to set priorities?

NAPOLITANO: And it would be the wrong priority to focus on dreamers. And -- and not the right priority in terms of something that's a law enforcement regime that makes sense in the immigration context.

[09:35:10] COSTELLO: I want to switch topics for just a second. Democrats, they're worried that Mr. Trump has picked so many generals. You know he's picked a general to serve as secretary of defense, national security adviser, Department of Homeland Security, and maybe even secretary of state. Does that concern you?

NAPOLITANO: Not necessarily. And I think the putative nominee for the Department of Homeland Security, General Kelly, I think you need somebody that can do multiple things at the same time because the Department of Homeland Security has such broad-ranging powers and authorities. You've got to be able to do counterterrorism. You've got to be able to run the TSA. You've got to be able to do immigration. You've got to be able to do cybersecurity. All these things happen all at the same time. So what you want is a leader who can organize, prioritize, and multitask.

COSTELLO: Some, though, say a militarized view of America got us into, you know, the Iraq War. It created problems at Abu Ghraib. It created the mess that is now Guantanamo Bay. So do they have a point?

NAPOLITANO: You know, they may in the abstract. I think the key question is, how do these generals operate when, for example, General Kelly will be in a civilian context. This is not the Pentagon.

COSTELLO: Speaking of General Kelly then, he's tough on border security. This is what he said last year about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JOHN KELLY, U.S. MARINES (RET.): If a terrorist or almost anyone wants to get into our country, they just pay the fare. No one checks their passports. No one -- you know, they don't go through metal detectors. No one cares why they're coming. They just ride this network.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, you were the governor of Arizona. You were Homeland Security secretary. Is General Kelly right? NAPOLITANO: You know, I know that border very, very well and I think

one of the first things General Kelly will need to do is actually get down to the southwest border and see all the layers of protection that have been installed over the last eight years. It's -- it's -- it's fencing and walling in some places. It's aerial coverage. It's increased border patrol presence. It's checkpoints along different routes that come in to the United States. So the southwest border, in fact, has had negative immigration over the last few years, meaning more have left than have come.

The bigger issue, I suspect, and that General Kelly will have to deal with, are the visa overstays. Those who actually have a visa, they come into the country, and they overstay their visa.

COSTELLO: Do you think that Donald Trump will build his wall?

NAPOLITANO: Oh, you know, I hope that was campaign rhetoric. As someone who was a border state governor, and who has -- knows that border. I've ridden it. I've ridden it on horseback. I've driven it in a vehicle. I've flown it. Building a wall for those thousands of miles is not an effective use of our resources.

COSTELLO: Would it -- would it keep the unwanted people out like the people that General Kelly was talking about, these --

NAPOLITANO: No, no, no, not -- not at all. First of all, it doesn't deal with the visa overstay problem that I referenced. And, second, my experience with fences and walls is, you know, you build a, as I used to say as governor, build a ten foot wall and I'll show you a twelve foot ladder. I mean people go over. People come under. You have to have multiple layers at that border to increase your likelihood of finding somebody.

COSTELLO: Former Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I do appreciate it.

NAPOLITANO: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, President Obama hoping to protect his legacy by influencing Donald Trump. Will it work?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:42:57] COSTELLO: He only has 42 days left in office and President Obama knows his legacy is at stake. Sources close to Obama's transition say his plan right now is to try to persuade Donald Trump to keep some of his policies in place. And they say Obama is hopeful he can make his case because he feels Trump doesn't have a passionate view about some issues. And, yes, the two men are talking. In fact, Mr. Trump says he likes Mr. Obama and has even sought his advice on cabinet picks.

With me now is CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Douglas Brinkley, CNN presidential historian.

Welcome to both of you. MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thank you.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Good to be here.

COSTELLO: So, Marc, does it surprise you that Donald Trump is supposedly asking Mr. Obama about even cabinet picks?

HILL: Not at all. Donald Trump admittedly doesn't know very much about these issues. Donald Trump ran on a platform that played to the cheap seats. He wanted white working class people to believe that he was going to champion their cause the entire time. He wanted the xenophobes and the racists to believe that he was going to run policy based on those ideological extremes. And the truth is, Donald Trump isn't going to do that, not because he's a wonderful person, but because it just isn't practical.

So now that he's actually won this election magically, he has to figure out how to govern. And in doing so, he's going to pull from all sorts of people because, Carol, Donald Trump doesn't have a world view. He didn't want to change the world, he just wanted to run the world. And now that he's in a position to do so, he's going to -- he's now going to seek solid advice, or some advice.

COSTELLO: So, Douglas, is there ever any evidence that Donald Trump is following President Obama's advice?

BRINKLEY: We haven't seen any yet. But I think Barack Obama's done a wonderful job of kind of healing the country. There are a lot of people traumatized by the election. The fact of the matter is, the majority of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. The fact that Obama quickly was able to say, I will not only meet with Donald Trump, I'll try to be instructive. Once again, the president is just a class act.

And hopefully some of the wisdom of -- that President Obama's earned over the last eight years will seep into Donald Trump. We don't know where that is at this juncture, but I'm sure he's talking to him about, you know, how to not use inflammatory language aimed at Muslims around the world. That's not a smart thing to do.

[09:45:07] I was hoping he made inroads on climate change, but the picking of Pruitt as EPA tells me that Obama or Leonardo DiCaprio or Al Gore really haven't gotten to Donald Trump. So I'm not sure what -- if the president's been able to influence Trump's thinking, but it's -- I'm sure glad that they're communicating.

COSTELLO: It is strange, I've been thinking about that all morning, Marc, that, you know, you talk to Al Gore, you invite Leonardo DiCaprio, and then you pick a guy for EPA secretary who doesn't like the EPA and is suing the EPA and wants to do away with the EPA.

HILL: Who doesn't believe the EPA should exist.

COSTELLO: So is Donald Trump just throwing a bone to anti-Trump voters, and then doing what he wants?

HILL: I think he's probably getting some whispers in his ear to look like you're being more universal in your thought process, look like you're work hard to appease people on the left and the right. I think it's actually far less interesting than that. I think Donald Trump is just all over the map. I don't think he knows what he's doing. I don't think he has a world view. I don't think he has a strong take on these issues and so he's pulling together as many people as possible to stitch together some sort of a policy team. It's very, very dangerous and it something we need to pay careful attention to.

COSTELLO: OK. I'd like to talk a little bit about President Obama's legacy because he's been talking a lot -- a lot about his legacy lately, Douglas. Will this really shape the president's legacy? I mean him talking about it to all these different sources.

BRINKLEY: Well, I don't know. It doesn't hurt. I mean he's trying to -- trying to remind people of what it was like eight years ago. I mean the classic question, were we worse off eight years ago, and the answer is yes. We had a great recession. It was awful. The economy was tanking. Unemployment was sky high and the Obama administration eight years has driven unemployment down to below 5 percent, which is in itself quite remarkable. General Motors was saved, on and on.

And, you know, we have short memory spans in this country, so the president talking to Fareed Zakaria about some of these issues kind of helps get the foundations set for his post-presidency. He's going to have to now build his library on the south side of Chicago. He's going to be writing a memoir reflecting on all of this. And he wants to remind people that a lot has been done these last eight years. Gay rights, two women to the Supreme Court, the killing of Osama bin Laden. One could start laundry listing many. And we don't want to let the election of Donald Trump seem to erase all of that success. So I think it's useful.

COSTELLO: So --

HILL: Well, I --

COSTELLO: Marc?

HILL: I think that, again, presidents can't, you know, create their own legacies, right? At least not through -- by talking to journalists. At some point it comes down to the policies. And I think the question of, are you better than you were eight years ago is the right one. And I think for some people you are. And I think for -- to that extent, President Obama's legacy will be a positive one.

But, again, we can't just think locally. We also have to think globally. If you're in Palestine right now, if you're in Syria right now, if you're in Yemen right now, if you're in -- in -- nationally, if you're at an HBCU (ph) right now, if you're a student who didn't get loans forgiveness but Wall Street did, you're probably not better than you were eight years ago. And so, again, President Obama's legacy is a complicated one. It's certainly an impressive one with -- on many areas, domestic policies like universal health care. I mean it's one of the most significant domestic policies since 1965. But it's a robust legacy. It's a complicated one. And really history will tell us who (INAUDIBLE). COSTELLO: I just want to touch on race for just a second because I do find it interesting because everybody's fighting about who's the most -- more divisive person, Donald Trump or President Obama. And, Douglas, so, you know, obviously, President Obama was the first African-American president. How will history record that?

BRINKLEY: Well --

COSTELLO: Did he divide the nation further by wanting to be everyone's president?

BRINKLEY: I don't think so, but there's no question that -- you know, look, he's leaving office with about a 95 percent approval rating with African-Americans. He's in heroic territory of people like John Lewis and Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass in that realm. But I've talked to President Obama as one of the historians that regularly met with him. He wanted to be a Mount Rushmore president. He wanted to have a very significant presidency for all Americans.

And I see oddly similarities between Barack Obama and Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower came into office and said -- we had the Korean War and he started extracting us from it. You see Barack Obama trying to get troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and not completely out but reduced greatly. And you see a kind of no-drama Obama and it was quite that way with Eisenhower, too. Kind of integrity of eight years. And yet, Eisenhower couldn't get his VP Nixon elected, John Kennedy won. Barack Obama couldn't get his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, elected. You've got Donald Trump.

But it's a fascinating eight years of Obama and he calls it a chapter in American history. And I think -- I think he'll get fairly high marks for being able to run the White House as well as he did.

[09:50:03] COSTELLO: Marc, your thoughts?

HILL: Again, I think President Obama, first of all you say he's 95 percent successful among African-Americans -- popularity rating among African-Americans. That is impressive, but that is his base, you know. The question is, how does the broader American public see him? And I think in some ways he has normalized the idea of a black president. He has normalized the idea of a black family in the White House. And that does have extraordinary psychological value. I never want to understate that.

So, to some extent, he has made enormous inroads. But, again, for me, it's not just about representation, it's about policy. So, on the one hand, he's been extraordinary. In other ways, again, history will be really the thing that tells us who and what Barack Obama is and was to everyday people, but especially the vulnerable.

COSTELLO: All right, I have to leave it there. Marc Lamont Hill, Douglas Brinkley, thanks to both of you.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:55:14] COSTELLO: Britain's top foreign diplomat is going to be in Saudi Arabia this weekend and let's just say it will be awkward. Boris Johnson is accusing the long-standing U.S. and British ally of engaging in proxy wars in the Middle East. Now his boss, the British prime minister, Theresa May, is responding and she's not happy. More now from Erin McLaughlin. She's in London.

Hi, Erin.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

Well, the British foreign secretary and one of the main architects of the Brexit campaign is known for being gaffe-prone. This time directly criticizing a British ally. The remarks were made at a conference in Rome last week. He called Saudi Arabia -- accused Saudi Arabia, rather, of engaging in proxy wars and of puppeteering. Take a listen to some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: That's what you've got, international, you've got the -- the Saudis, the Iran, everybody moving in and -- and puppeteering and playing proxy wars. And it's a -- it's a tragedy to watch it. We need to have a -- we need to have some way of encouraging visionary leadership in that area. People who can tell a story that brings people together from different factions and different religious groups into one nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLAUGHLIN: Now, Saudi Arabia and Iran are frequently accused of engaging in proxy wars in places such as Syria and Yemen, but it's very rare to hear a British diplomat publicly criticize an ally in this way. And this all really comes at a particularly sensitive time for the United Kingdom considering British Prime Minister Theresa May was just in the region looking to strengthen business ties. Downing Street already trying to distance itself from Johnson's remarks, saying that they have nothing to do with United Kingdom's official position on this and that he will be in Saudi Arabia at the weekend to convey the UK's position.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Erin McLaughlin reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me.

President-elect Donald Trump resuming his thank you tour tonight, but focused on assembling his administration this morning. Any time now, the trademark gold elevators of Trump Tower, with the latest candidate upstairs to the transition