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Taxi Hits Pedestrians Amid World Cup Festivities; Trump Claims He Can't Stop Family Separations at Border, Blames Democrats; Jeh Johnson Talks Zero-Tolerance Policy, Family Separations at the Border; Republican Response to Trump's Praise of Kim Jong-un; Pressure Mounts on Michael Cohen to Flip as Giuliani Says Trump May or May Not Plan Pardons; Paul Manafort In Jail over Charges of Witness Tampering; Trump Says Witch Hunt Jailed Manafort, I.G. Report Destroys Comey; How Trump Supporters View Tariffs on China. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired June 16, 2018 - 15:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:00:40] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you for being with me this weekend. I'm Ana Cabrera, in New York.

We begin with breaking news out of Moscow where the World Cup is underway, and a taxi has rammed into a crowd of pedestrians.

And I want to warn you, the video you are about to see is violent.

You can see the taxi hopping the curb, driving on the sidewalk, hitting many pedestrians. That driver then exits this vehicle and tries to run away as bystanders try to stop him. Police are investigating right now. There he goes.

CNN senior international correspondent, Matthew Chance, is live right at that scene.

Matthew, you are actually standing where the taxi had stopped not too long ago. What have you learned?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely the exact spot, Ana. If you just take a look over here, you can see there are still scuff marks on the wall where the taxi, as it careened onto the pavement and plowed through that busy bunch of pedestrians, including a lot of football fans from Mexico. Left its marks on this wall before coming to a halt just a few yards ahead of me.

A number of people were injured in that. We know at least two people who were Mexican fans have been confirmed by the Mexican embassy here in Moscow has having been injured. But others, according to eyewitnesses we've spoken to, were also injured. State media saying at least seven people were casualties. Five of them taken to hospitals. Amazing looking at those pictures that nobody was killed, but it seems to be the case, thankfully, that there were no kind of fatalities as a result of that. In term of the motivation for it, was it an accident, was it on

purpose, that is not clear. Certainly, the Moscow authorities who, remember are working under the spotlight of global attention at the moment because they are hosting this huge World Cup 2018 football tournament, soccer tournament, they are saying that they are treating this as a -- they have opened a criminal investigation. They are saying they are treating it as a serious traffic violation at this stage.

You can see though that it has caused an enormous amount of concern in the city where there's a big security operation underway, of course, to provide as much protection as possible during this high-profile soccer tournament to the hundreds of thousands of fans. I think there are a million visitors that have come to Moscow alone to witness the sporting tournament. And basically, are being protected now by the Russian authorities -- Ana?

CABRERA: This video is so dramatic.

Thank you. We know you'll stay on top of it. Matthew Chance, we appreciate that reporting.

President Trump today mysteriously standing firm on his position that his hands are tied and that the human travesty playing out on the southern border is beyond his control. Both of those points completely wrong. I'm talking about the 2,000-plus children forced away from their parents caught crossing the border illegally.

President Trump is wrongly claiming that Democrats created a law making that practice necessary, that he hates seeing it and, for the moment, he says there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. That is just not true. Yes, he said it Friday and he repeated it today. But this time with a political spin, tweeting just a couple hours ago, "Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the border by working with Republicans on new legislation for a change. This is why we need more Republicans elected in November. Democrats are good at only three things, high taxes, high crime and obstruction. Sad!"

A former U.S. attorney general says the president can end that practice that he claims to hate seeing with a pen stroke.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALBERTO GONZALEZ, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Obviously, the president can probably take some executive action to deal with this in terms of directing the Department of Homeland Security about how to process these folks in, and try to minimize the separation, try to minimize the disruption. But long term, we're talking about legislation and, again, as I said, I'm very -- not optimistic, but hopeful that Congress will be able to pass something that the president is willing to sign and will address this issue once and for all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: CNN's Ed Lavandera is on the U.S./Mexican border right now in south Texas.

Ed, describe for us what is happening there.

[15:05:03] ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As we have been reporting throughout the week, dramatic changes here, Ana, and so many people trying to make sense of how these changes will last long term.

We have seen the dramatic changes in the numbers of undocumented immigrant children that have been put into these detention centers climb dramatically in the first few weeks of the new zero-tolerance policy. Nearly 2,000 added to this detention center system between April 19 and May 31. That is a dramatic change. And that doesn't even take into account the numbers over the course of the last two weeks here in June. So obviously, you can expect the numbers to continue to rise.

But the Trump administration remains unapologetic about how it is rolling out this zero-tolerance policy. And they have said repeatedly that they hope that this serves as a deterrent as word of this spreads through Central American countries and in Mexico where most of these immigrants are coming from.

CABRERA: Ed, what is the age range of kids being separated by parents, do you know?

LAVENDERA: What is difficult to figure out is if there's any kind of minimum age of undocumented children that are separated from their parents. Journalists were allowed to tour two different detention centers, one in California, one here in south Texas, in Brownsville, but these were centers that were mainly focused on housing young boys between the ages of 10 and 17. So there's more than 100 of these shelters in 17 different states across the country. But those were the ones that we were able to see firsthand this week.

CABRERA: Do you know what parents are being told is going to happen to their children?

LAVENDERA: Again, you know, it is one of those murky areas. What we have been told by federal officials is that once these parents are taken into custody, they are given a phone number and a contact sheet that they can go then and try to figure out where exactly their child ended up. And they are also told that -- there are phones at these immigration facilities and these detention facilities where they are promised to be able to make regular contact with their children. We've also spoken with officials at the detention centers where the children are held and we were told there as well that there are phones. Now, in practice how often these parents are able to communicate with their children and if they have any difficulty in trying to track them down and how long that takes, we don't have any real clear answers on that. Just told that these possibilities and these avenues of communication exist.

CABRERA: Finally, Ed, do you know does it seem like border crossings are he slowing down?

LAVANDERA: I think it is too early to tell. It does take time to get those numbers. They had been surging and I think up through May. But if there's any kind of direct correlation between the administration's hope of using this zero-tolerance policy as a determent, it is not really clear. At least we don't have the numbers to back that up yet. I can tell you just anecdotally from reporting here in south Texas over the course of the last week, in talking with more than a dozen different undocumented immigrants, it doesn't seem -- some of them didn't know he that this policy was in place and others seem undeterred by it. They describe to you that their life back home was such a hell and so miserable that they were willing to take the gamble and the risk of what might happen here and play out in the U.S. immigration system.

CABRERA: All right. Ed Lavandera, great reporting there in south Texas for us. Thank you.

Joining us now is the former Homeland Security secretary under President Obama, Jeh Johnson.

Secretary Johnson, thank you for taking the time.

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Thanks for having me on.

CABRERA: Good to have you with us.

You are in a unique position because you know the law. You've been responsible for protecting America's borders. But you see some of these images of children being separated from their parents, they are now being housed in former Walmart stores in Texas wearing bar codes on their wrists, some of them having to sleep in small bedrooms with no doors. And we're learning of this new facility that is essentially tents where some children are staying. Is this how it is supposed to work?

JOHNSON: Well, first, Ana, let's be clear, there's no law that requires the Trump administration to separate children from their parents. If there were such a law, I would know about it. I would have known about it when I was in office, and I would have heard about it if I tried to enforce it.

I have the greatest respect for the Border Patrol agents, Customs officers and immigration enforcement officers who used to work for me, but I object highly to this current practice of separating children from their moms and dads at the border. And it is something that I feel obliged to speak out about.

When I was in office, we removed, repatriated or deported a million people to enforce our immigration laws and secure or borders. We considered all sorts of things to lower the levels of illegal migration on our southern border. One thing we would not do is separate children from their parents at the border, something that I could not bring myself to do. I could not ask our immigration enforcement personnel, our Border Patrol personnel to do, nor could I float it as a determent.

And this is very obviously a conscious and deliberate policy choice by this administration to try to deter people from entering our country. And it may have a short-term effect. We'll see when the June numbers come out. But the lesson learned from experience in office is policy changes like this may have a short-term impact on illegal migration, but it always reverts to the normal trend so long as the underlying conditions in Central America, in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, persist, the poverty and violence that has been noted so often there.

[15:10:58] CABRERA: Which is what is driving, according to Ed -- some of the interviews that Ed has done with the people crossing the border --

JOHNSON: Well --

CABRERA: -- they are telling him that it wouldn't be a determent to know that even by coming and making this journey that their children would be separated.

JOHNSON: Ana, I spent hours with hundreds of kids in holding stations in south Texas, in Arizona, New Mexico. And I'd always ask them the exact same question, why did you come here. Did you not hear our message about the journeys of the danger? I'd ask parents the same thing. And they basically tell me the same thing, which is, yes, but it is more dangerous at home. And they make the conscious choice to send their child to the United States, basically, to save their lives. And so as long as the underlying conditions exist in these three countries -- and they are really bad, they are as bad as war-torn areas on earth -- we will be banging our head against the wall in dealing with this problem.

We started down the road of investing in Central America in 2016, $750 million. But those amounts in subsequent years have been going down. It needs to go in the opposite direction.

CABRERA: I remember when you were at the helm in 2014 and we saw that surge of undocumented minors that were crossing the border. Again, this was 2014. And there were images then that had people questioning the current administration's practices and immigration policies at that time, images like this, immigrant children being held in cages at processing centers. And I remember there were military facilities. I visited one of them along the border that had been set up temporarily to house some of the children coming across.

How do you think this situation we're seeing right now compares to that?

JOHNSON: Ana, I freely admit that some of the things we had to do in 2014 were unpopular in certain quarters and controversial. We expanded family detention. We actually did the opposite of what is going on now by keeping families together. A lot of people objected to holding families in detention facilities. We had, in 2014, only 95 beds out of 34,000 equipped for family detention. We expanded family detention. That was controversial. Very clearly. We got the Mexican government to help us on their southern border. And we sent out the messaging about the dangers of the journey. And so the peak was April/May 2014. By July 2014, the numbers had gone down. And in 2015, we saw this second-lowest number in illegal migration and apprehension since 1972. The numbers started to creep up again in 2016. And then they took a sharp down turn in 2017 when President Trump got into office, no doubt, in reaction to his rhetoric and some of the initial controversial immigration policies. But the numbers have started to creep up again.

CABRERA: I'm glad you bring that up because I was looking at them as well. Right now, we're seeing about the same number as 2016 at that southwest border, some 40,000 or so undocumented immigrants --

JOHNSON: Yes, 50,000 a month, yes.

CABRERA: -- in the month of May. That was the month of May in 2018, the latest numbers we have.

Now, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the former Maricopa County sheriff, who, of course, is a very hardliner anti-immigrant -- that is his stance. He has said that it is not what the policy is that is to blame for this happening. It is the parents who are at fault. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE ARPAIO, FORMER MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF: Why don't we blame the families, the adults for taking the chance, violating the law, coming across our border with these young kids? They are the ones that should be held responsible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: What do you make of that argument?

JOHNSON: Ana, you cannot deter a parent -- it is a basic human instinct -- from scooping up their child to try to rescue them from a burning building, and that is basically what we have in Central America with the poverty and violence. And as long as the underlying conditions in those countries persist, we'll be dealing with this problem. We need to invest in addressing it, helping these countries address the poverty and the violence there in order to deal with illegal migration. We need to be supporting the Mexican government in their own efforts to secure their southern border. We need to be talking to neighbors in Central America about establishing their own refugee and asylum programs because, if you don't, people are going to follow their basic human instincts, their basic parental instincts to save themselves and save their children from a really, really bad situation.

[15:15:32] CABRERA: So it is the survival instinct is what you are referring to it sounds like.

What do you think is going to happen next for these families that have been separated? You know what the system entails.

JOHNSON: It is interesting, the practice that DHS, the attorney general, are employing right now is basically unsustainable. You cannot flood the federal criminal justice system with thousands of migrants per month into the system, extract guilty pleas from them, sentence them, somehow have some kind of supervisory -- the system cannot sustain that longer term. So this is obviously a deliberate effort short term to try to send a shock to the system and drive the numbers down. It may or may not work. But history teaches that, longer term, the trends will revert to where they were before, 40,000, 50,000 a month as long as we fail to address the underlying push factors in Central America.

And aside from that, this is just not who we are as Americans. This is just simply wrong. The images that I saw firsthand, in McAllen where you're reporting and elsewhere, where women embracing their children is one still frozen in my mind even today, four years later. And I could not separate a child from a mother in that way.

CABRERA: What do you think is going through the mind of current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen right now? And what advice might you have for her?

JOHNSON: I wouldn't know. I wouldn't speak for her. My advice to my former colleagues at DHS, again, who I respect enormously, is that short-term you can do certain things to send a shock to the system, to cause a downturn. But longer term, as long as the underlying conditions in the originating countries exist, we'll be dealing with this problem over and over again. And my more senior colleagues in DHS know that because they lived through with me.

CABRERA: So do you think legislation ultimately has to be the answer?

JOHNSON: I believe that aid to Central America, more immigration judges to expedite the process, as well as support to neighbors in Central America to encourage them to take more of these migrants, and encouraging the Mexican government to do more, are the answers. You can put a lot more border security on our southern border, you can hire more Border Patrol agents, you can build more wall, you can even go so far as what the administration is doing right now, but as long as we fail to address the underlying conditions, we'll be banging our head against the wall and dealing with this problem over and over.

CABRERA: Secretary Jeh Johnson, thank you for your insight and for offering a perspective.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

CABRERA: We appreciate it.

Coming up, the president used to call him Little Rocket Man and now, a year later, Trump calls him a strong leader. So how are Republican lawmakers responding to the president's change of heart with a murderous dictator? We'll ask a Republican, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:22:55] CABRERA: President Trump heaping praise on North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-Un, and voicing admiration for Kim's brutal authoritarian rule.

Here he is during a freewheeling interview with FOX News yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He is the head of a country. And I mean, he is the strong head. Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people do the same.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What did you mean just now when you said you wished Americans would sit up at attention when you --

TRUMP: I'm kidding. You don't understand sarcasm.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: The president says he was joking. But here is what Trump had to say earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You call people sometimes killer. He is a killer. He is clearly executing people.

TRUMP: He is a very smart guy. He's a great negotiator. But I think we understand each other.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But he's still done some really bad things.

TRUMP: Yes, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things. I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Let's talk it over with Republican Congressman Francis Rooney, of Florida, the vice chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Thank you, Congressman, for joining us this weekend.

CABRERA: President Trump says, quote, "I want my people to sit up at attention like North Koreans." Later, he insisted he was kidding. Is that something that he should be joking about considering most North Koreans are starving, they live under one of the most-feared and fanatical dictators?

REP. FRANCIS ROONEY, (R), FLORIDA: I think, with this president, you have to take everything with a grain of salt. He has his own unique communication style. And if you look at the results of things that are happening, wade past some of the jokes and comments now and then, it is pretty good. Here we have North Korea and China in a place they have never been before. We have the start of a long-term negotiation to denuclearize them.

CABRERA: You are OK with how he is commenting, the rhetoric he is using about North Korea's dictator? ROONEY: No. I wouldn't use that rhetoric. He has his own unique

style. I think the president is in a negotiation, and we've seen many examples of bobbing and weaving comments and disruptive comments, which have accomplished -- have been part of, when you look back on it, a holistic strategy of accomplishing something he wanted to achieve.

[15:25:15] CABRERA: So what has he accomplished? Let's talk about that. Will you rate the Trump/Kim summit on a scale of one to 10, one being absolutely nothing accomplished, 10 being North Korea problem solved?

ROONEY: I wouldn't -- I would say what former director of national intelligence, Clapper, said earlier in the week, we are in a lot better place than we were before the summit. We have some words that sound good, sounds like it could lead to something, and we have to see how it develops. Reagan and Gorbachev met several times before the Iceland summit where they kind of just did some of the get-to-know-you stuff and I think that's what this first round was.

CABRERA: But still, the main goal, denuclearization, wasn't even defined. Do we know what Kim is willing to give up or a time table for it to happen or a plan for verifying any of it? Is there danger in the White House declaring victory prematurely?

ROONEY: Well, I don't think that the -- the victory is that the summit took place at all. And I think that is what Director Clapper was talking about. It will take a lot more meetings to put the kind of flesh around the bones that you are talking about. And it needs to happen pretty soon, they need to start continuing the pace of meeting.

CABRERA: Let me pivot to the immigration situation, because, Congressman, I know you were U.S. ambassador to the Holy See for three years, from 2005 to 2008. This week, we heard about babies and small children being ripped from their mothers' arms at the U.S. border, part of the president's immigration crackdown. A number of religious leaders call it immoral and disgraceful. How do you see it?

ROONEY: It's heart-wrenching. It really is terrible. And the fact that, going back to 2007 when President Bush tried to get comprehensive immigration reform, if that had been put in place, we wouldn't have this problem now. We would have more workers that have come from Latin America and we would be solving our labor shortage and we would be relieving people from the hardships of those bad countries in the western part of Central America. We have got to reform immigration --

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: But I don't understand how you see it. How would that change what these people are trying to escape from, if what the president in 2007 had tried to do in terms of our national immigration policy?

ROONEY: If we would enact -- first of all, we have to secure the border. One of the things in both of the Goodlatte and moderate proposals that will be talked about next week does help secure the border. Once you do that, you have to have a way to have people come into this country and work on a legal status where their rights can't be abused under a work permit. And that's what I call immigration reform. It also happens to fit our national interests because we desperately need workers.

CABRERA: I hear what you are saying about what you want from the immigration system, what you want to see happen in legislation. But, Congressman Rooney, that doesn't get to the heart of what is happening right now, which is families are being separated at the border, children are being taken away from their parents because this administration is making the choice to enforce a zero-tolerance policy.

ROONEY: Yes, I would rather see the families stay unified. I think that Secretary Johnson was speaking earlier that the way the Obama administration tried to deal with it was detain them, because they broke the law and came in illegally, but at least keep the families together while they did it.

CABRERA: You think that is what should be happening right now? Why doesn't the president listen to you?

ROONEY: Well, I'm just a first-term congressman. But I do think that passing the immigration reform, securing the wall, will reduce a lot of people's anxiety and pave the way for more comprehensive work- permit based immigration that will let some of these people come into the country and work legally.

CABRERA: But the president keeps blaming the Democrats, saying these families are being ripped apart because the Democrats aren't doing anything, but he is the one who is enacting the policy that is leading to these families being separated. Congressman, are you calling on the president to reverse the zero-tolerance policy?

ROONEY: Part of the problem is, from what I understand, it's the Supreme Court that's --

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: That is a yes-or-no question.

ROONEY: I would rather keep the families unified, detain them and adjudicate them.

CABRERA: Should the president do just that? He has the power to do that right now.

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: He could do it with the stroke of a pen.

ROONEY: I think it would be a good idea.

CABRERA: All right. Congressman Francis Rooney, thank you very much for your time. ROONEY: Thank you.

CABRERA: Coming up, President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, behind bars today as Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, reportedly tells friends he is willing to cooperate with federal investigators. Will either of them flip?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:34:19] ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Pressure is mounting on Michael Cohen, the president's self-declared fixer. A source familiar with the matter tells CNN Cohen is telling family and friends he is willing to cooperate with the feds. And this. Investigators have pieced together 16-pages worth of shredded documents collected in the raid of Cohen's home, office and hotel room.

Meanwhile, the president's outside lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says President Trump is not planning to pardon anyone in the Russia probe, but he is not ruling it out either. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: What the history has been is these things get cleaned up. Ford did it, Reagan did it, Carter did it, Clinton did it, and Bush did it, in political investigations.

[15:35:01] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": So you are saying after the probe is over, it may be cleaned up with any pardons?

GIULIANI: If people were unfairly prosecuted.

Let me make it clear right now to anybody listening

CUOMO: Please. Please.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: That's why I wanted you on.

GIULIANI: He's not -- he's not going to pardon anybody in this investigation, but he is not, obviously, going to give up his right to pardon if a miscarriage of justice is presented to him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: CNN's Brynn Gingras has more on the growing legal battle facing former Trump fixer, Michael Cohen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Michael Cohen, the president's former personal attorney and fixer, hinting to friends and family he may cooperate with federal investigators in an effort to alleviate pressure, according to a CNN source. In part, because he is said to be feeling isolated by his longtime friend, Donald Trump.

A source close to Cohen says the possibility of criminal charges are taking a major toll on his family and they are his top priority.

This could mean trouble for the president.

Trump called Cohen a good friend and expressed little concern about him flipping.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Cohen might flip.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, I did nothing wrong. You have to understand, this stuff would have come out a long time ago. I did nothing wrong.

GINGRAS: And in April, not long after the FBI seized more than 3.5 million records from Cohen's home, office and hotel room, Trump tweeted this, "Most people will flip if the government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry. I don't see Michael doing that, despite the horrible witch hunt and a dishonest media."

But those close to the President Trump spoke differently earlier this week when news broke about Cohen's plans to switch attorneys handling his case. A possible signal of a new legal strategy.

"This is very disturbing," said one Trump ally to CNN.

"He is facing the end of a barrel," said another about Cohen.

Cohen's current attorneys reached a crucial deadline in their fight to get a first look at the files taken in the April raid to determine if they fall under attorney/client privilege.

The feds are investigating Cohen's business practices and personal financial dealings, including the payment he made to porn star, Stormy Daniels, on Trump's behalf just weeks before the election. Daniels accuses the president of an affair in 2006, which Trump denies.

MICHAEL AVENATTI, ATTORNEY FOR STORMY DANIELS: We want to succeed --

GINGRAS: And an attempt by Cohen to silence Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, from talking to the press has been rejected for now. The order claimed Avenatti could jeopardize Cohen's chances at a fair trial, citing his more than 120 media appearances. Avenatti called the motion an attack on the First Amendment.

AVENATTI: They want to intimidate people, shut them up. It doesn't matter if you are a judge, the press or an attorney, they don't like people that speak the truth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: That was CNN's Brynn Gingras.

So as the president's personal attorney now mulling cooperating with investigators, his former campaign chairman is behind bars. What Trump is now saying about Paul Manafort, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:43:29] CABRERA: President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is spending his first full day behind bars in the VIP section of a Virginia jail.

Meantime, his former boss, President Trump, tweeting once again that the Russia collusion investigation that put him there is a witch hunt. And ripping into the DOJ report on the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, saying it, quote, "Totally destroys former FBI Director James Comey."

CNN politics reporter, Jeremy Herb, is joining us live from Washington.

Jeremy, first, explain why a judge decided to jail Manafort as he awaits his trial.

JEREMY HERB, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Manafort was a danger to the community when she decided to revoke his bail on accusations of witness tampering. Prosecutors said Manafort made two contacts with potential witnesses, including one using a cellphone in Italy and another using the drafts folder of a shared e-mail account. Manafort's lawyers tried to say that he should be given a list of the potential witnesses and they promised that he wouldn't do it again. The judge wasn't buying it. She said it wasn't an easy decision, but basically summed it up that this isn't middle school and I can't take his cellphones away. So now Manafort gets to prepare for his trial upcoming in the fall from a jail 90 miles south of D.C.

CABRERA: And in the meantime, here is what President Trump is saying about Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I feel badly because I think a lot of it is very unfair. I look at some of it, where they go back 12 years. Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. But I tell you, I feel -- I feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago? Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time. He worked for Ronald Reagan, he worked for Bob Dole, he worked for John McCain, or his firm did. He worked for many other Republicans. He worked for me for, what, 49 days or something? A very short period of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:45:19] CABRERA: Jeremy, what we just heard, that is not true.

HERB: Not quite. Trump's a little off on the timing. Manafort actually worked for him for 144 days, not 49 days, which is longer than both Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. He also said he had nothing to do with his campaign, which he actually was in charge of the campaign for several months. We've seen this before from the president and the White House in terms

of people who are targeted by Mueller. Remember, George Papadopoulos was the coffee boy after he pleaded guilty last year.

It is, of course, part of a broader strategy that we're seeing from Trump and his legal team to try to win the public-opinion battle as opposed to the legal one. And I think it is something that we'll see continuing with tweets and otherwise.

CABRERA: Jeremy Herb, thank you very much.

HERB: Thank you.

CABRERA: Coming up, after months of threats, the White House finally announced more than $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods. The White House says it isn't a trade war, although China is calling it that. But how do Trump supporters view it? We'll hear from some of them, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:50:44] CABRERA: China's vowing to retaliate over President Trump's tariffs. The president announcing Friday the U.S. will impose a 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. The move, designed to punish China for stealing American technology and trade secrets.

So how is the president's tariff decision playing with his base supporters? One Pennsylvania manufacturer says President Trump is now in danger of losing his support.

"CNN Money's" Vanessa Yurkevich reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: How much of your business have you lost to China?

GARRY HARTMAN, PRESIDENT, CHEETAH CHASSIS CORPORATION: On large scale orders, we've lost 100 percent of our business.

YURKEVICH: One-hundred percent?

HARTMAN: One-hundred percent.

YURKEVICH: All of it?

HARTMAN: Yes.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): Garry Hartman has spent most of his life working at Cheetah Chassis, and says he's watched the company go from one of the world's biggest manufacturers of chassis for shipping containers to barely breaking even.

HARTMAN: There are not a lot of heavy steel manufacturers left in this country. We've been able to survive. It's difficult but we're still here.

YURKEVICH: So Hartman took tens of thousands of dollars from his own company for one trip to Washington, D.C.

HARTMAN: We talked to the people that actually work in our factory and we said, you know, should we go after this or should we just let it go and not get on a tariff listing.

YURKEVICH: That trip to Washington had the full support of his employees. The tens of thousands of dollars was for a lawyer who helped him testify in front of the U.S. trade office about President Trump's proposed 25 percent tariff on nearly 1,300 goods from China.

While most companies were trying to get their products off the tariff list, Hartman was trying to get chassises on it.

HARTMAN: A list of products to be subject to additional duties.

YURKEVICH: It's a last-ditch effort for the company. In the last two decades, Cheetah has laid off 65 percent of its employees. The company also only buys U.S. steel. And prices are up about 40 percent this year in anticipation of the tariffs put on Chinese steel and aluminum. But the biggest threat has been a Chinese chassis maker, CIMC, which has engulfed more than 80 percent of the North American chassis market.

HARTMAN: We're not in the same playing field because we're a U.S. company, privately held. And the United States just doesn't subsidize manufacturers like China does.

YURKEVICH (on camera) You know there's always going to be competition domestic or abroad?

HARTMAN: Right. We can compete on a level playing field. We've done it with manufacturer in Mexico. But it's not a level playing field, so you really can't compete.

FRANK SONZALA, PRESIDENT & CEO, CIMC INTERMODAL EQUIPMENT: I'm sorry they feel that way.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): Frank Sonzala is the president of the Chinese competitor, CIMC. He argues that even with a 25 percent tariff, Cheetah couldn't make enough product to support U.S. demand.

SONZALA: If we are hurt by the so-called tariffs, we'll find a way to continue to manufacture chassises and we'll still get the market share because we are the innovators in this industry.

YURKEVICH (on camera): Is getting on this tariff make or break for this company?

HARTMAN: It's going to be a lot harder to stay in business if we don't.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): Hartman hasn't forgotten that he and many of his employees here in Pennsylvania helped elect President Trump for the promise he made to them, to keep the doors open at businesses like Cheetah.

HARTMAN: He sold us on, I'm going to help you with that trade issue, and people remember it. People in this factory remember it. You know, if we can't do something, whether it's this tariff or if it's something else to help us have a fair playing field, a level field with China, I'm not sure people are going to buy into it for four years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[15:54:17] CABRERA: Coming up, with the World Cup under way in Russia, a taxi rams through a crowd in central Moscow. We're live at the scene next in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are nearly 430,000 children in America's foster care system. This week's "CNN Hero" was one of them and remembers carrying his few belongings around in a trash bag. Nearly 30 years later, when he and his husband adopted four foster children, he couldn't believe it when each of their kids arrived with a trash bag in tow. And that shock sparked a mission to provide kids in foster care with a tangible sign of love, something that tells them they are seen and they matter. Meet Rob Scheer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROB SCHEER, CNN HERO: Many children in foster care, they're put in a situation where they do feel invisible. They do feel that they do not count, that they have no voice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Going to be cozy.

SCHEER: It's up to us to make sure that we're there to help.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's so cute! It's a little angel teddy bear.

SCHEER: And we need to make them feel wanted by all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[16:00:06] CABRERA: To see exactly how Rob is doing, go to CNNheroes.com, and while you're there, nominate someone you think should be a "CNN Hero."