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Trump To Impose New Sanctions On Iran Today; Iran Claims Recent U.S. Cyber Attacks Have Failed; Supreme Court Rules In Case Of Potentially Offensive Trademark; Sanders To Unveil Plan To Cancel $1.6 Trillion In Student Loan Debt; Fmr. Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D) Texas Proposes War Tax As Part Of Veterans' Plan; Trump Delays ICE Raids, Give Congress Two Weeks To Solve Crisis. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 24, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A very good Monday morning to you. It's going to be a busy one. I'm Jim Sciutto.

We are bracing for a breaking news from the Supreme Court any moment. We could learn some key decisions. We'll bring it it to you the moment when we have that news.

Also today, the White House is expected to announce what President Trump is calling major additional sanctions on Iran. But, really, what is left to sanction there? Iran says they won't be pressured anyway to the negotiating table. This just hours after they said they would not be afraid to shoot down another U.S. drone.

Meanwhile, this morning, the President is calling on other countries to protect their own oil tankers traveling through the region.

Standing by, we have CNN White House Correspondent Abby Phillip, CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr and CNN Senior International Correspondent Frederik Pleitgen live on the ground in Tehran. Let's begin first with Abby live at the White House.

What do we know, Abby, about these sanctions? Because the timing, of course, is suspect here because the President feeling pressured for having backed off military action, and after all, the U.S. sanctions, virtually all of Iran's businesses here, what else can they add on at this point?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right, Jim. The sanctions level at the moment is extremely high to the point where U.S. officials last week had been saying, you know, the sanctions on Iran are crippling. They are already working. But at the same time, on Friday morning, when President Trump announced that he had pulled back on this planned attack, he said last night, referring to Thursday night, he had put on new sanctions on Iran. That turned out to not be the case. Now, we're hearing today that these sanctions are coming. But we don't know about them. We don't know, really, anything and the administration isn't adding any more detail. But what we can say is that President Trump is at the same time going back to the tough talk, warning Iran, but also saying I want Iran to come to the negotiation table. Listen to what he told NBC yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I'm not looking for war. And if there is, it will be obliteration like you have never seen before. But I'm not looking to do that, but you can't have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk good, otherwise you're going to have a bad economy for the next three years.

CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: No pre-conditions?

TRUMP: Not as far as I'm concerned, no pre-conditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: At this point, the administration's strategy appears to be crank up the pressure on Iran, more sanctions. If they can any way to continue to turn the screws on that regime in order to bring them to the negotiating table. The problem is that it's not clear that that strategy is working. Iran has been very dismissive of that strategy. And so we will see what the administration has to offer today.

But so far, the Iranian regime has made it clear they don't want to talk to President Trump at the moment and the sanctions are not helping with that effort as well.

SCIUTTO: Abby Phillip, good to have you at the White House.

Iran says it has prevented recent cyber attacks by the U.S. CNN's Barbara Starr has been covering this. She is live at the Pentagon. Do we know any details of what kind of cyber attacks Iran is talking about here?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Jim, cyber attacks are some of the most classified confidential operations that the U.S. military conducts. So they are saying nothing officially. But a U.S. official told our own Kylie Atwood that, indeed, the U.S. had conducted a cyber attack against an Iranian group affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corp and had gone into their computer software they were using to track tankers in the Persian Gulf.

And now, presumably if that attack is successful, after attacking four tankers -- six tankers, actually, if you will, the Iranians would no longer be able to to do that if their software for tracking those ships now is faulty due to a cyber attack.

The Pentagon just not saying anything about this at all. We do know in the past, the U.S. has done some cyber operations. It's one way of getting the job done without having to engage in kinetic military options. SCIUTTO: So we've got another acting Defense Secretary in the midst of these tensions, as well as two ongoing wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tell us about acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper on his first day on the job.

STARR: He walked up the steps at 7:00 this morning into the Pentagon. He has been the Army Secretary for the last couple of years. Now, he is the acting Defense Secretary. The President says he plans to nominate him. And the word around the Pentagon is once he is nominated, federal regulation will require him to step down during the nomination process and we could have another acting Secretary, something like four Defense Chiefs in seven to eight months.

But Esper really immediately stepping onto the world stage. He leaves tomorrow for a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels. He will have to deal with Iran, North Korea, all of the issues that this department confronts and he will have to find a way to make a place for himself with the administration heavy weights, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the National Security Advisor, John Bolton. Jim?

SCIUTTO: And the defense policy by Tweet. He'll have to get used to that as well.

[10:05:01]

Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thanks very much.

For more reaction from Iran this morning, we have our Fred Pleitgen on the ground there with the latest.

So the administration strategy pretty clear here, maximum economic pressure and the President saying, this may, we hope, get them to the negotiating table. You're on the ground there. You speak to Iranian officials. You go to Iran a lot. Is there evidence that that strategy works, gets Iran to talks with the U.S.?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. No, absolutely not, Jim. And one of the things that the Iranians keep saying is that they say that this maximum pressure policy is doing exactly the opposite. And that seems to be the big disconnect right now between Tehran and the Trump administration, where President Trump, as you say, says he's going to sanction and sanction and sanction so the Iranians come to the table. And the Iranians are saying exactly these sanctions are preventing them from going back to the negotiating table.

And it's quite interesting with President Trump saying that he wants to negotiate without pre-conditions, the Iranians are saying there are already pre-conditions because of the fact you have these sanctions on the Iranian government.

And the Iranian government today, a senior adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, Jim, he came out and he said that, to them, war and economic sanctions are two sides of the same coin, as he put it. One of the things that the Iranians are saying about the sanctions, they called it economic warfare. And I just want to read a little bit of snippet for you from one senior Iranian lawmaker. He said, Mr. Trump, until the sanctions are suspended from Tehran, only the military forces will talk to you. And indeed, the military forces of Iran were talking today. They did have some pretty strong language. A senior Iranian commander came out and said that the shooting down of a drone is something that could be repeated.

And, Jim, I have one more update for you as well. The Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, he came out just a few moments ago and even said that the fact that the drone was shot down by a home grown Iranian rocket -- missile defense system or air defense system was a great source of pride to the Iranian nation, as he put it, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And that missile program, of course, is a major target of the Trump administration. Fred Pleitgen, great to have you on the ground there. We'll certainly be coming back to you.

Let's discuss now a bigger picture with retired Colonel Cedric Leighton of the Air Force. He is also a CNN Military Analyst. Colonel, good to have on this morning.

A big picture question here, because the Trump administration is trying with Iran what it's tried with North Korea, in effect, China, even an ally, Mexico, right? It's maximum economic pressure to try to get concessions. And I just wonder when you look is Iran situation, and granted Iran is under enormous economic pressure now, the President said, oil revenue, its primary source of revenue down by two-thirds. Do you see this strategy is working with this regime?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I don't think so, Jim. And the real problem that we've got with Iran is it's completely different from North Korea or Mexico or China. This is a country that has lived with economic sanctions for quite some time. You know, you go back to the period before the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal.

And you look and see what Iran was dealing with then. They are used to hardship. They are used high inflation rates. They are used to having a military that, you know, in essence, uses subterfuge to get the weapons that it feels it needs. So they have they have got ways to cope with this stuff.

I don't see this as being a policy that is going to work either in the short-term or the long-term unless there is some other mechanism that the United States is going to use to get the Iranians to the table. But what they really need is a way for the Iranians to save face and come to the table in a way that allows them to do that.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Oddly, it suits the hard-liners' narrative in Iran, right, because it fits this kind of sense of victimization, the U.S. against us, you know, us against the world, et cetera.

I wonder if I'm sent in Tehran and I'm looking that there's a U.S. election in a year-and-a-half, and I negotiated a big nuclear deal with the previous administration, blown up by this administration, looking out a year-and-a-half and say, why do I want to make a deal with this president when he might not be there in a year-and-a-half and someone else could come in? Does that make sense? I mean, do they look at the political calendar as well?

LEIGHTON: Oh, absolutely. They absolutely look at the political calendar, Jim, and they have a very long-term view. They are not only really historians by almost by nature, but what they also are is people who can sense opportunities but they're willing to wait for those opportunities. They're going to wait this administration out as best as they can. And they can do it either way.

If President Trump gets re-elected, they can move and they'll feel he'll be more flexible in that case. If he does not get re-elected, then they feel they have a clean slate, a blank slate with which to deal with his successor. And that's something that they are going to do because you know that any successor is going to be more amenable to a deal with Iran and they're hoping for that.

SCIUTTO: I wonder -- you spent a lot of time looking at this region. I wonder where U.S. credibility is following the President backing off retaliation, military strikes and retaliation for the shoot-down of the drone.

[10:10:05]

The President and his advisers are claiming toughness but also restraint here. I just wonder how that's read in the region. The Iranians shot down a $110 million massive U.S. drone and effectively weren't punished for it.

LEIGHTON: That's right on the surface at least. What I think some people are going to see in the region, and, again, it depends which side of the Gulf you are looking at literally in this case, but some sides are going to say, well, look, but they did a cyber attack against Iran, against certain elements of the Revolutionary Guards. So they'll see that as, okay, maybe what this is is just a precursor to more U.S. Moves in this direction.

And, of course, the threat of sanctions, which is hanging over all of this is something that is part of the discussion. Although, as Abby Phillip pointed out, those sanctions are -- you now, what more can you do that's really going to affect this area?

So in terms of credibility, most people in the region are going to say, well, this is more of the same. This isn't something that is really new. If you're sitting Iran, you're going to say bring it on because, in essence, you're going to be an Iranian nationalist first before you or anything else politically.

And whether you're a hardliner or a moderate, you don't want your country to be cowered into something that will diminish Iranian national sovereignty. So we're going to look at something that really maintains the status quo here, I think, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and wait it out, in effect. Colonel Cedric Leighton, good to have you on this morning.

LEIGHTON: You bet, Jim. It's always a pleasure.

SCIUTTO: Still to come, eliminate all student loan debt. That is Bernie Sanders' new plan and promise. But how will he pay for it? We're talking more than a trillion dollars here.

Plus, make a threat then pull back on that threat, the President's playbook in full view. Is it a winning strategy?

And democrats ratcheting up calls to subpoena Special Counsel Robert Mueller. We are following all the details.

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[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: We have breaking news just now from the Supreme Court. Our Jessica Schneider is at the Court. She joins us now with details. What decision has come down?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Jim, the Supreme Court striking down a provision of federal law and essentially handing a win to a clothing brand founder who actually wanted to trademark his clothing brand called FUCT.

Now, if you pronounce that in court, the Office of Patent Registration actually said, how they put it, was the phonetic equivalent of the past tense of a vulgar word, fuct. So, initially, the U.S. Patent Office blocked this clothing brand founder from trademarking his clothing brand, FUCT.

Well, today, the Supreme Court saying that the provision of the law that allowed the Patent Office to block his trademark is actually a violation of the First Amendment. This was a provision of the Lanham Act, which prohibited federal trademarks based on scandalous subject matter. The Supreme Court today saying that that is a violation of the First Amendment. And now, this clears the way for this clothing brand founder to get his trademark approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

This is reminiscent of just two years ago when the Supreme Court did something similar. There was also a provision of the Lanham Act which prohibited what they called disparaging trademarks. And you will remember two years ago, it was actually an Asian rock band who wanted to trademark the name of their group, which was called The Slants.

Well, the Trademark Office considered that to be inappropriate, disparaging language and they blocked that. But the Supreme Court, in that instance as well, said that the First Amendment really bars this sort of prohibited trademark.

So now, for the second time, the Supreme Court saying that the First Amendment bars this provision of the Lanham Act. And it really does clear the way for this clothing brand founder to now trademark his clothing brand called FUCT, which, again, the Trademark Office said was essentially a vulgar word. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Yes, and that's why we're not going to say it on air. We will spell it out but we won't say it.

SCHNEIDER: We'll spell it.

SCIUTTO: Still an important development. Jessica Schneider, thanks very much. We'll continue to watch for more decisions coming from the court.

This morning, Senator Bernie Sanders taking on student debt like no other 2020 candidate. His plan, completely eliminate the student loan debt of every American, we're talking more than a trillion dollars here. Ryan Nobles in Washington with more.

Ryan, you know, the U.S. debt is already at record levels. How does Sanders say he's going to pay for this?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, the big thing he's going to do is he's going to put a tax on Wall Street, a series of taxes basically on every day stock trades that he believes will raise somewhere in the range of $2.4 million to pay for the student loan debt of every single American. And also that's going to help pay for his plan to offer free college to public universities and colleges and community colleges across the country.

Let me show you the breakdown of the plan. This would essentially cancel $1.6 trillion in student debt. That would impact 45 million people. And here is the key. There will be no eligibility limit.

[10:20:00]

Basically, if you have student debt, if this goes enacted into law, that student debt would be gone immediately, no provisions or no exceptions made.

Now, of course, this isn't the first 2020 candidate, Bernie Sanders is not the first 2020 candidate to come out with a student debt plan. Elizabeth Warren has as well. But there are some pretty distinct differences between her plan and the Sanders plan.

The Sanders plan, of course, as we said, covers everyone, 45 million people, no eligibility limits. Warren's plan provides immediate relief to about 95 percent of borrowers, about 43 million people. The big difference with Warren, there will be a cap in the amount you'd be able to get back. And also, Jim, there would also be an income provision put in there.

So this is Sanders taking a step further than Elizabeth Warren, of course, as she is starting to rise in the polls ahead of the debates coming later this week. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Some give away, one-upmanship there as the debates come later this week. Ryan Nobles, good to have you on the story.

Meanwhile, another Sanders rival, Beto O'Rourke is pumping out his policy push ahead of the democrats' first big debate this week. O'Rourke now unveiling his plan to help cover veteran's healthcare. Leyla Santiago has the details here. Of course, healthcare, major issue in this election. And when you combine that with veteran's issues, that's quite a political point for him or, clearly, a focus he wants to score some points on.

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. And so this is an eight- page proposal. It's got a variety of topics. Let's actually get right into it. The first thing it talks about is ending the wars in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. He's got this idea of a war tax, more on that in a second. He talks about the Veterans Affairs, more spending for Alzheimer's research. He wants this to allow service to be a pathway to citizenship and then focus quite a bit there at the very end of the policy on women veterans as well as LBGTQ plus veterans. So that's a short outline.

But, really, let's get into this war tax issue, because this is not really something new for him. He has proposed something similar in the past.

So here is how it works. It really depends on how much you're bringing in each year. It can range anywhere from $25 to $1,000. Again, you can look there on the chart rather and see where you would fall. But the idea is he wants this to create some sort of a trust fund that would be established any time the U.S. goes into war and then this tax would fund that trust fund to help veterans later in their health services.

So, pretty broad. Obviously, his campaign is using this as a bit of a way to also highlight his focus on veterans. And when you go to the town halls, you will often hear him talk about one of his greatest accomplishment being when he served on the House Armed Veterans Affair Committee as a Congressman and actually introduced legislation to expand access to healthcare, mental healthcare for veterans, and that actually became law.

So we'll hear him talk about this in a roundtable in Tampa tonight. And, of course, he's in Florida just ahead of the debates, where they are all trying to stand out.

SCIUTTO: It's also interesting to see there. Military service is a path to citizenship, of course, something -- there had been in the past. The Trump administration reversed many of those programs. Leyla Santiago, good to have on O'Rourke. Thanks very much.

President Trump hits the brakes for now on deportations. He's giving Congress two weeks or he warns the raids will be back on. But is it an empty threat?

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[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: The President says the ball is now in democrats' court. President Trump says he's giving Congress two weeks to work out a solution to the crisis at the border or his plan to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants will be back on. ICE raids were set to begin yesterday in ten major U.S. cities. Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill.

So, Manu, Nancy Pelosi apparently reached out to Trump on Friday asking him to delay the raids. So the President, in effect, has done that. What does she believe she can get done in those two weeks? Can she work on republicans on this? Are republicans interested in working with her? What's going to happen?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, expect the House this week to vote on a $4.5 billion to deal with the humanitarian crisis at the border. That would also include new safeguards in dealing with the migrants, something that's different than a separate version that's being pushed through on a bipartisan basis in the Senate, and also another $4.5 billion bill. So the House and the Senate will have to reconcile those differences in order for that to become law.

And it's significant, the timing here, because there's only one week left before Congress adjourns for a 4th of July recess. But by the end of the month, a key office within the House of Human Services Department that deals with unaccompanied minors, that is scheduled to run out of money. And we've heard, seen reports about the conditions, the squalid conditions at some of these facilities along the border. So there's a lot of pressure on Capitol Hill to come to a solution, dealing with the funding crisis (ph), funding situation at the border.

Now, the other question is what will they do about the asylum law. The President has demanded changes in the asylum law. It was such a curb (ph), the amount of migrants coming into this country. But the House and Senate are nowhere near consensus on that key topic. The democrats and the republicans on the Senate side have not reached any sort of accord with the democrats and the Senate; and much less a the democratic-controlled house. So expect that issue not to get resolved.

[10:30:02]

So what will the President do if Congress adjourns for the week (ph) not fought dealing with asylum law issue but passing a funding packet instead.