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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Felicity Huffman Sentenced to 14 Days in Prison and 250 Hours of Community Service, Will Pay $30,000 Fine; Trump Rants About Energy Efficient Light Bulb, Says He Looks Too Orange; Sick Kids Fighting for Their Lives Now Also Fighting to Stay in U.S.; Seriously Ill Children Fear Deportation Under Trump Administration's New Policy; Fears Parts Of The Largest National Forest Could Be Torn Down. Aired 4:30-5p ET
Aired September 13, 2019 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:30:01]
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, really sending a message there. And Felicity Huffman is going to have to report on October 25th to start this sentencing. Of course, the Bureau of Prisons will decide where she will serve that time -- Jake.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. Brynn Gingras, thanks so much.
I want to bring in former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig.
Elie, what did you make of the sentence?
ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, Jake, overall, this is a win for the prosecutors. Yes, 14 days is an extraordinarily short sentence in our federal system, but, ultimately, this was a message sentence. And I think the message to Felicity Huffman that prosecutors and the judge were trying to send is, yes, this is a real crime. You cheated the system. And all of the wealth and privilege and access in the world couldn't give you a complete free walk out of jail.
TAPPER: Although, I have to say, I've seen progressive commentators online talking about how there's a African-American woman in Texas right now in jail for five years because she wasn't supposed to be able to vote and she voted illegally in 2016, five years for that, and Felicity Huffman who did a huge fraud --
HONIG: Yes.
TAPPER: -- in which there is -- demonstrable harm to institutions and individuals who didn't get into the school gets 14 days which I think a lot of people might see as a slap on the wrist.
HONIG: Yes, Jake, it really is an injustice and it's inequity in our system. And when you hear Democratic candidates for president and Republican candidates talking about criminal justice reform and disparities, this is a perfect example where we see that in play. I think the sentence in Texas is a clear injustice. It would have been even worse if Felicity Huffman had been given straight probation and never had to go behind bars. So, there's a bit of a message here but I think -- I think the
disparity is on full display.
TAPPER: All right. Elie Honig, thank you so much.
HONIG: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: Coming up, it maybe one of the oddest things President Trump has ever said. Wow, that is quite a characterization.
What is it? That's coming up next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Delighted to be here with so many terrific Republicans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[16:36:10]
TAPPER: We're back with the politics lead.
And President Trump going on yet another bizarre rant. This one was about energy efficient light bulbs. He said that they make his skin look more orange. He was speaking to House Republicans last night in Baltimore.
As CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports for us now, that was far from the only odd comment made by the president of the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As Democrats battled it out on the debate stage, President Trump had one to himself in Baltimore.
TRUMP: You're a big environmentalist. Could you explain the straw? I don't think so. Nobody else can.
COLLINS: At times, the president's hour-long speech at a Republican policy retreat was rambling, as he hit Democrats over the calls to get rid of plastic straws and defended rolling back energy efficiency standards for light bulbs.
TRUMP: Most importantly, the light is not good. I always look orange.
COLLINS: He renewed the attack on windmills.
TRUMP: They make noise. They kill the birds. The energy is intermittent.
COLLINS: And some Democrats plan to deal with the climate crisis. TRUMP: The $100 trillion Green New Deal. That's a beauty. No more
cows, no more planes.
COLLINS: At one point, he even fact checked himself.
TRUMP: We have the cleanest air. We have the cleanest water. That we've ever had in the history of our country, right?
And just for the press, because they'll get me on that one, I'm thinking, let's say the history of our country over the last 25 years.
COLLINS: With an eye on 2020, Trump also promised another round of tax cuts.
TRUMP: For the middle income people, that is going to be very, very inspirational.
COLLINS: Though sources say those would have zero chance of passing a Democrat-controlled House.
All of this as the president is still searching for a new national security adviser.
TRUMP: I actually spoke to Mike Pompeo about that.
COLLINS: He ruled out giving Secretary of State Mike Pompeo two jobs and claims the number of candidates has tripled but Trump says whoever he picks will have an easy job.
TRUMP: You know why it is easy, because I make all of the decisions. They don't have to work.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Now, Jake, the president might have hit on a slew of topics during the speech to Republicans last night but he didn't mention gun control or his ideas or willing to put forward to lawmakers as they're wondering behind the scenes what it is the president will commit to.
TAPPER: If anything.
Kaitlan Collins at the White House, thanks so much.
Coming up, they are in the United States trying to get life-saving medical treatments and now some children's lives are in limbo, thanks to a confusing change in rules by the Trump administration.
Stay with us.
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[16:43:29]
TAPPER: In our health lead today, kids with cancer and other grave diseases could be kicked out of the United States because of their immigration status. Children and some adults for that matter say without the medical care that they are currently receiving in the United States, they will die. This after the Trump administration notified some undocumented migrant families that they could no longer stay to be treated in the United States because the rules have changed. And there is no longer an exemption from deportation for seriously ill patients.
Now a source tells me that Democrats in Congress have demanded answers on this from the Trump administration by close of business today under the threat of subpoena.
As CNN's Tom Foreman now reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONATHAN SANCHEZ, PATIENT WHO COULD BE DEPORTED: I don't want to die. I don't want to die.
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One after another, they are pleading with Congress, immigrants in the United States for medical care who now fear being forced to go home.
MARIA ISABEL BUESO, PATIENT WHO COULD BE DEPORTED: This is not a partisan issue. This is a humanitarian issue. And our life depends on it.
FOREMAN: The issue is a change to a program that has allowed some undocumented migrant families to stay in the U.S. for treatment of serious medical issues. Applications, about a thousand a year, were previously handle by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
But now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, is in charge and civil rights advocates is a many migrants have been told they must depart or be deported.
Jonathan Sanchez is just 16 and was suffocating from cystic fibrosis. He believes if he leaves his doctors in Boston and go back to Honduras --
[16:45:00]
SANCHEZ: It will be a legal homicide because in our country it doesn't exist any type of treatment.
FIONA DANAHER, CO-CHAIR, MGH IMMIGRANT HEALTH COALITION: To inform families via a letter that they -- their status in this country is at risk is not only cruel but it is harmful to these children's health.
FOREMAN: Immigration advocates immediately sued, but even that legal challenge is being complicated by the mystery of it all.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): I'm baffled. I've never seen a situation like this before.
FOREMAN: At a hearing, Congressional Democrats asked who ordered this change, when, why, and will anyone get medical deferrals now?
DANIEL RENAUD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FIELD OPERATIONS DIRECTORATE, USOS: We're not able to respond to that today.
FOREMAN: And you heard right.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Who advised you to do this?
FOREMAN: Immigration officials repeatedly said, because of the lawsuit, they would not answer except maybe in writing, maybe in the future.
REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY (D-MA): Was this a policy change that was a result of a request from any high-ranking political appointee at the White House?
RENAUD: At the advice of counsel, I'm not able to discuss the reasons for any change.
FOREMAN: So all Serena Badia from Spain knows is this. She is 14, has a rare heart defect that has already put her through five surgeries and her future remains wildly uncertain.
SERENA BADIA, PATIENT WHO COULD BE DEPORTED: I don't think I had to come to D.C. to fight for my life. I only thought I had to go to the hospital for that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: We reach out to the head of Citizenship and Immigration Services who once again told us they have little or nothing to say because of the lawsuit. But one immigration official told us whether a very limited version of deferred action will continue is still under review. Jake?
TAPPER: Tom Foreman, thanks so much. Ana Navarro, your response to the story.
ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There is no bounds to the -- to the debts that this administration can go to when it comes to cruelty against immigrants. Look, immigration policy in the United States has been one that's been guided by many principles, and one of them has been compassion. Whether it's towards political asylees, whether it's granting temporary protective status to people fleeing natural disasters.
And what we have seen in the last few months, in particular, it's heartlessness against heartlessness after more heartlessness whether it's denying Bahamians the right to come to the United States who are fleeing a devastated island that's practically a neighborhood of Miami's, whether it's refusing to grant temporary protective status to Venezuelans even though Trump spent all this time talking against Maduro who is a murderous dictator, whether it is denying these children the ability to get health care here, denying citizenship to the children born abroad of people serving in the U.S. military.
Just name it. Pick a week and pick a topic, the asylum claims, putting children in cages at the border. Our asylum -- our immigration policy right now has absolutely no heart. And I would tell those Republicans, those Bible clutching Christian values Republicans who like to quote the Bible on a daily basis, what are you going to do about this? How are we going to treat children? Is this the image that the United States wants to portray around the world, an image of a country that has no heart and no compassion that can help but won't do so.
TAPPER: I think it is. I think that is the image that a lot of Conservative Republicans in Washington wants. They want people to not come here.
AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think if anyone in the Trump administration is listening in a very real-world way, if you thought kids in cages was a P.R. disaster which you should, think about kids getting ripped out of a hospital by ICE agents. Is that really where you want to go? So you have to think, why would they be doing something so stupid, so obviously wrong?
Well, Kevin Cuccinelli who we know is digging through the depths of regulation that they can move unilaterally in order to do something to reduce the illegal immigrant population because Donald Trump has done nothing. There's no law. So they're desperate for some kind of win where they can show that they're reducing this population but they are nibbling at the edges and they are preying on the most vulnerable and it is going to be a disaster.
TAPPER: Well, speaking of the most vulnerable, as Ana just mentioned, this week the Trump administration decided they will not grant temporary protected status, TPS, to Bahamians affected by Hurricane Dorian, an administration official tells us.
TPS has been granted after humanitarian crises since the 1990s including to victims of the earthquake in Haiti.
ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think there again no surprises there. We know that it is not humanity or nor compassion that governed his immigration principles or the policies that they put forth. I do want to say kudos to Ayanna Presley and other members of the squad who urged for the hearing that we were just watching --
[16:50:03]
TAPPER: Sure. AOC and Pressley did great.
CARPENTER: They should be more responsive to their questions. Hiding behind a lawsuit is pathetic. They're entitled to do congressional oversight.
NAVARO: You know, people ask and sometimes complain that we always talk about race. But you know, I keep asking myself, what would have happened in this devastating hurricane had hit Norway with a bunch of white --
JEN PSAKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think we know what would happen.
NAVARRO: Except that -- PSAKI: And there's a consistency here that you touched on which is
that if you are not white, if you are not somebody who looks like Donald Trump and people who surround him, you are not welcome here. And they want to send that message because that's a message that many of their supporters like to hear.
TAPPER: Everyone, stick around. Thanks so much. There was outrage around the world over the Amazon rainforest burning. Well, now a forest in Alaska known as North America's Amazon could be looking at the same fate because of a move made by the Trump administration. Stay with us.
[16:55:00]
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TAPPER: In our Earth Matters Series today, as the Amazon rainforest continues to burn and the Brazilian government faces worldwide scrutiny for emboldening loggers and ranchers to set those fires to clear the land, President Trump and Republican lawmakers want to tear down parts of what is known as America's Amazon.
The Tongass Forest, it's the nation's largest national forest and covers most of Southeast Alaska 17 million acres. And a CNN's Bill Weir now reports, even some of the people who could profit from Tongass resources oppose President Trump on this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: In the hottest Alaskan summer on record, amid countless signs of a climate in crisis, a camera phone captured a Republican fundraiser on Kenai Peninsula, not far from the Swan Lake fire now burning for over three months.
SEN. DAN SULLIVAN (R-AK): The of the President United States cares about Alaska.
WEIR: With Donald Trump on speaker, that is Alaskan Senator Dan Sullivan, holding the phone and swatting at Hornets. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker nods and smiles as the president promises to help them drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge up north and build a road through protected habitat in the south.
SULLIVAN: King Cove road, yes sir.
WEIR: And then Governor Mike Dunleavy enters the picture. He's been bonding with Trump during Air Force One refueling stops.
GOV. MIKE DUNLEAVY (R-AK): He's doing everything he can on our mining concerns, timber concerns.
WEIR: Often bringing a wish list of rules and regulations he wants overturned in the interest of creating new industry.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's a green guy and he's doing something with your logging and all of your other things. We're working on that together. That's moving along now.
WEIR: And when the President mentioned logging, they knew exactly what he meant. Republicans want to put new roads into the old grove of Tongass National Forest, the crown jewel of the National Forest system.
GORDON CHEW, BUILDER AND LUMBERJACK: You know, we're very much against that. And I would say first that there's nobody in this town that a mile a road here or there would benefit more than me.
WEIR: Gordon Chew runs a father-son timber operation.
So you built this yourself the whole house?
CHEW: Yes.
WEIR: And while he believes old-growth spruce and cedar can be carefully harvested one tree at a time, he's terrified of a move back to the clear-cutting days of old when ancient ecosystems returned into paper.
CHEW: We're not going to be grinding up trees for paper anymore. That's -- not in my watch. When you build a road, you don't know what's going to come down the road. And the reason that you would build a million dollar a mile road is to extract resources big time.
WEIR: Former mayor Art Bloom tells me the roadless (ph) rule is result of decades of negotiation to protect a place that soaks up more carbon dioxide than anywhere else in America.
ART BLOOM, FORMER MAYOR, TENAKEE SPRINGS, ALASKA: You can never have this again, you know, once you cut it. It's going to come back as an even-aged stand that needs to be managed.
WEIR: And it's a plantation, not a forest.
BLOOM: It's a plantation. And that won't support the wildlife that this supports.
WEIR: This just in the CNN. Bears do poop in the woods, and the bears and these woods, poop salmon, the most incredible fertilizer. The kind of fertilizer that grows cathedrals like this, and these days also fuels a multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industry.
So in Alaska, if you're going to talk about cutting down 500-year-old trees, even if you're the president, you're going to make some fishermen really angry.
What's your reaction?
TUCK HARRY, FISHING CAPTAIN: That's one of shock and dismay, I guess. You know, after all the work that we put in to keep this area roadless and keep this as pristine as we possibly can.
WEIR: And would you characterize yourself as sort of a tree-hugging liberal? HARRY: No, not at all. Not a tree-hugging liberal at all. And the governor and the president you know, this is what I'm saying, do not -- do not do this to us. We need to keep this place intact as much as we can.
WEIR: Oh, and Captain Tuck wants me to remind you, these are your trees, America. And any new roads would be built with your tax dollars. Bill Weir, Tenakee Springs, Alaska.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: And our latest in the Earth Matters Series, Bill Weir doing a great piece from Alaska. Thanks so much. Be sure to tune in to "STATE OF THE UNION" this Sunday morning. My guests will be Democratic Presidential Candidates Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Andrew Yang, plus Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. That's at 9:00 a.m. and noon, Eastern on Sunday.
You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Jake Tapper. You could tweet the show @THELEADCNN. Our coverage on CNN continues right now. Thanks so much. See you Sunday morning.
