Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

President Trump Blames Democrats for Policy of Separating Immigrant Children from Parents at U.S. Border; House of Representatives to Propose Immigration Bills for Vote; Former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort Imprisoned for Witness Tampering; Rudy Giuliani Suggest Presidential Pardons Possible for Those Arrested in Mueller Probe; Jeff Sessions Quotes Bible in Defense of Zero-Tolerance Policy for Undocumented Immigrants; Golden State Warriors General Manager Bob Myers Discusses Experience Playing Basketball in San Quentin with Inmates. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired June 16, 2018 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:13] CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Thank you very much for being with us. It is Saturday, June 16th. I'm Christi Paul.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Martin Savidge in for Victor Blackwell.

Breaking news this hour, the president doubling down on false claims that the Democrats are to blame for the thousands of immigrant children being separated from their families.

PAUL: And pending trial, while the president wakes up at the White House, his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is waking up in the VIP section of a Virginia jail.

SAVIDGE: And tariff backlash, Chinese state media not holding back this morning. They're blasting the president for slapping tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods.

You're in the CNN Newsroom.

President Trump is repeating his false claim that the widely criticized practice of separating immigrant children from their parents at the Mexican border is the Democrats' fault. This morning he tweeted this -- "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."

PAUL: Again, that is a tweet from the president this morning. The president could stop the practice he himself called cruel. He could stop it with a phone call, in fact. But the "Washington Post" reports he's using the family separations as a negotiating tool to get what he wants from Congress. And now we're getting an idea of the scope of that practice. SAVIDGE: The Homeland Security department says at least 2,000

immigrant children were separated from their parents in April and May. That's when the government started enforcing a zero-tolerance policy for adults caught crossing the border illegally.

PAUL: Of course this story is about more than politics or about numbers. This is about people and about families. So how is this practice affecting those children and their parents at the border? CNN's Ed Lavandera knows all too well because he's been talking to some of these families. He's live for us from McAllen, Texas. Ed, talk to me about what you're learning there from the folks who are trying to get to the border or are crossing and what's happening once they get across.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christi, one of the things that the Trump administration has said since this zero-tolerance policy was unveiled in early May is that they had hoped it would serve as a deterrent as news of this spread through Central America and Mexico where most of these immigrants are coming from, that that would stop them and convince them not to come. But as we found, that's simply not the case.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: It's hard to see people moving through the thick south Texas vegetation. The Rio Grande rolls by just beyond the tree-line. And then just like that, they appear out of the brush, a small group of undocumented immigrants walking into a public park.

We just came across this group of undocumented immigrants in Mission, Texas. Two adults, four children just finished crossing the Rio Grande here a little while ago. And now they're in the custody of border patrol.

This group is actually made up of three different groups. They say they met along the journey from Honduras and decided to enter the United States together. Border patrol agents give them water and they sit in the shade as they wait for a vehicle to take them to a border patrol station. There's Jonathan Ariel, 11-years-old. He says he left Honduras with cousins, but they abandoned him along the way. He says his mother lives in Virginia and told him not to make this journey alone, but now he's here. "I told her I wanted to come," he says, "but she said it's very dangerous." Are you scared? "A little," he says.

It's a brief conversation that leaves you with many more questions about how a young boy can get to this point. As an unaccompanied minor he will likely end up for the time being in a children's shelter like this one as federal authorities try to connect the boy with his mother.

The rest of this group is made up of two adult women with their children. Dalia Sayupa is 24 years old, and she crossed the border with her little boy. Did you come? She says gang members left a note at her home threatening to kill her and that's when she decided to flee. Are you afraid they're going to separate you from your children? "Yes, he's my son, and I love him," she says. "I have carried him throughout my journey."

Dalia says she did not know that she might be separated from her son once she was taken into custody in the United States. But she says, I have nothing left in Honduras. The families are loaded up and taken away unsure of what happens next.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[10:05:06] LAVANDERA: And Christi and Martin, what happens next is still very much up in the air, especially for the two adult women and their children. What happens to them, whether or not they'll be split up, is unclear. The fact of the matter is throughout all of the process, it has been rather uneven and arbitrary. Not everyone is being prosecuted and separated. But federal officials won't say how those choices are determined and what goes into those -- what's considered when making those decisions as to who is prosecuted and separated and who is given a court date and a GPS ankle monitor and allowed to be released. Those questions are still very difficult to answer at this point.

SAVIDGE: So much confusion over all of this, Ed. Thank you very much for bringing some clarity through your reporting.

PAUL: Ed Lavandera, thank you.

CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson with us now. Stephen, I want to go back to the president's tweet just a couple of minutes ago where he said Democrats can fixed their forced family breakup at the border by working with Republicans on new legislation for a change. He is putting the onus on Democrats, but he also does not have to be implementing this no-tolerance policy or practice which is what's causing the separation. He could stop it at any time, is that correct?

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, that's correct. What happened under the zero-tolerance policy was that people who are undocumented coming across the border are being funneled into the criminal justice system. Before this was brought in in May, they were largely put in through the civil deportation legal stream.

So what that means is that the United States authorities do not put children with their parents in jail. So that's where this separation issue comes up. So the president could pick up the phone to Attorney General Jeff Sessions using his power to implement immigration legislation, immigration laws that he has the discretion to do, and change this and revert back to the position that was prevailing before May.

I think what's interesting about this tweet is that the president appears to be confirming that he's using this growing political issue over separations which is having a real impact in Washington on the politics of this issue as leverage and as a negotiating chip. That seems to be a little step further than when he's been -- where he's been over the last few weeks.

SAVIDGE: And so doesn't that then bring up the opportunity for Democrats here to kind of step in and take control of this issue and maybe try to bring about some sort of solution? But yet when it comes to the two bills at least on the GOP side, they say they're not going to participate.

COLLINSON: Right. So the problem that Democrats have is, yes, this is clearly a political issue that could help them in the midterm elections. You could argue that for more moderate voters it puts the president and the Republican Party in a harsh light.

Of course, the Democrats don't have any power in Congress. Both houses of Congress are run by the Republicans. There's a possibility that this could get addressed in several House bills that are currently being debated which we could see move forward in the next week. The problem is that Congress has been trying to do something on immigration for 15 years, dating back to the Bush administration, and has always failed because it's such a hot-button issue. There are so many constituencies here.

Now, if you look at the bills in the House, Republicans are only going to pass a bill that the president will sign. That requires it to have the pillars of the president's immigration policy within the bill, including, for example, changes to the legal immigration system, the visa lottery system, family-based migration. When that is in the bill, it's possible it could pass the House of Representatives, but those changes to legal immigration make it very unlikely that such a bill could make it through the Senate, and ultimately to the president's desk. So we can talk about fixing the separations issue with legislation, but in practice it doesn't seem like it's very likely to happen.

PAUL: All right, Stephen Collinson, always good to have you here. Thank you, sir.

SAVIDGE: Let's try to ignore the political hyperbole here. These are the facts of the situation. The separation of families itself is not a policy. It's an effect of the bigger policy of zero tolerance. That policy went into effect in April when the attorney general decided to prosecute all migrants who illegally crossed the border including those with young children. Before then U.S. authorities would separate children from adults when the relationship couldn't be verified. And in the past, the children who were detained were mostly traveling by themselves.

PAUL: Do you remember, you may have heard this story this week, the undocumented immigrant from Honduras who said officials took her daughter while she was breast-feeding. This happened in a detention center.

[10:10:03] Natalia is an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. She spoke with that woman, and she's with us now live from Denver. Natalia Cornelio, thank you for being here. You talked to this woman. What did she tell you?

NATALIA CORNELIO, CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM DIRECTOR, TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT: I spoke to this woman, and she indicated to me that when border patrol took her child, she was in the middle of breast-feeding. And she resisted that, they continued to do it. This woman's story is one of many traumatic stories that the parents have experienced while being separated from their children.

I know back in May when we first started speaking to parents that were separated from their kids, one father indicated to us that he was worried that his son was not being taken care of medically. His son has frequent nose bleeds and is deaf in one ear. Another father was separated from his kid -- he was placed in a cell. The kid was outside. And then when he came out of the cell, the kid was gone. And he asked, where's my child, when will I see him. And border patrol said tomorrow. We spoke to this man several days after tomorrow, and he still hadn't seen his child.

The father with the son who was deaf in one ear, he still hasn't been reunited with his son. And that separation happened in fact in May. We know of a mother that was separated from three of her children at once. We know of a mother that was separated from a son who has brain damage. There are a lot of really sad stories, and the parents that we speak to about the situation are each clearly traumatized, most of them are crying. If not when we first start speaking to them, as soon as the question of separation from their child comes up. And it's hard to get the words out because it's such a difficult experience for them, and a lot express to us how hard they know it is for their children, which is a part of the story that nobody's asking them what this is like, and it's really concerning.

PAUL: So we know the woman who you talked to who was breast-feeding her daughter when her daughter was taken from her, do you know if they have been reunited or where either of them are right now?

CORNELIO: I haven't been able to find that out yet, no.

PAUL: OK. Do you have --

CORNELIO: But I believe that they have not been reunited.

PAUL: They have not been reunited. What are her options?

CORNELIO: She has an immigration lawyer now. So they're going to be able to help her with her immigration case and reunification of her child hopefully.

PAUL: And real quickly, do you have any idea what the conditions are at the facilities where the children are held or how they might be separated?

CORNELIO: We haven't been able to meet any of the children at a facility. I know that there's been some coverage of what the facilities are like. I think -- I don't know. I know it's a jail. The children aren't free to leave. They, you know -- they don't go in and out as they please. The other thing that's lost is regardless of the specific conditions it can be described as Disneyland. And at the end of the day if they aren't with their parents and they don't know when they'll be with their parents again, that's a problem.

PAUL: It's scary all around. No doubt about it. Natalia Cornelio, thank you very much for helping us understands what you're hearing from your perspective.

CORNELIO: Thank you.

PAUL: Thank you.

SAVIDGE: In other news, as former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort wakes up in jail this morning, one of President Trump's attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, says pardons, they could be in the pipeline.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: He is not obviously going to give up his right to pardon if a miscarriage of justice has prevented --

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Doesn't that wind up meaning that he could, that he might?

GIULIANI: Of course he could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: Also, Chinese state media is mocking President Trump and the U.S. decision to slap tariffs on Chinese goods. Both sides preparing for those tariffs to take effect next month. We have details from Beijing ahead.

SAVIDGE: And then there's this. A bear appears to be celebrating a World Cup victory for Russia. And animal rights groups everywhere sounding the alarm.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:33] SAVIDGE: A former Trump campaign chairman, that's Paul Manafort, waking up in the VIP section -- I don't know what that is, but it sounds interesting -- of a Virginia jail this morning.

PAUL: We have not gotten any guidance as to what that is but we are told that's where he is. He was taken there last night after his bail was revoked, of course. He may have to stay in jail until his trial on foreign lobbying charges starts, which is in September.

SAVIDGE: President Trump has called the treatment of Manafort unfair. Remember that word, it's a key word. Then hours later, his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, says pardons could be in the pipeline if the president thinks his former staffers are prosecuted unfairly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: So you're saying after the probe is over, it may be cleaned up with any pardons -- GIULIANI: If people were unfairly prosecuted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: CNN politics reporter Jeremy Herb is joining us live from Washington. Jeremy, what are you hearing about possible pardons?

JEREMY HERB, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, that's right. The questions of pardons are swirling now in the wake of Rudy Giuliani's comments, especially after Paul Manafort was sent to jail by a federal judge on Friday when his bail was revoked over allegations of witness tampering.

Giuliani's comments to Chris Cuomo in a way were walking back what he had said earlier that day to the "New York Daily News" when he suggested the cleaning up could be of the Mueller investigation.

[10:20:07] President Trump when asked about the pardons didn't want to discuss it on Friday, but he did downplay his relationship to Mr. Manafort who was his campaign chairman. Mr. Trump said he was only on the campaign for a short period of time. Trump later tweeted, though, about the Manafort case saying, wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort. What about Comey and crooked Hillary? Very unfair.

The question here about pardons and about the sentence of Manafort even though it wasn't actually a sentence, it's relevant because of the question of whether Manafort will cooperate with federal investigators. That's been a question for Manafort for a while. But now he's going to have to contemplate that from a jail cell instead of under house arrest.

And the question of cooperation, it's not just about Manafort. Also Manafort, Trump's personal attorney, is now raising the potential prospect of cooperation. My colleague, CNN's Kara Scannell, reported yesterday that Manafort is now considering and telling colleagues that he could cooperate. He's feeling isolated from the president, according to a source, based on the comments that both the president and Rudy Giuliani made about Mr. Cohen. The next step, though, for Cohen is going to be that he has to finish reviewing of the millions of records that were seized. That deadline has been set for June 25th.

PAUL: All right, Jeremy Herb, thank you for walking us through it.

SAVIDGE: There's still much more we can talk about on this. So joining me to do that, CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin. Good morning, Michael. How are you?

MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, fine, thank you. How are you?

SAVIDGE: I'm good. So to me, this is almost like at least in the case of Manafort the president or Giuliani trying to slip a note through the prison bars here. It does seem to be clear communication coming from this administration to those who are caught up right now, and I'm talking about Cohen and Manafort, that don't worry, we're looking after you, we've got your back. Keep your mouth closed. Am I being too blunt, or is that the way it is?

ZELDIN: Well, it's hard to know. Firstly, I have stopped listening to Rudy Giuliani because each day he says something different, often within the same day he says things which are different. And so to believe that he actually is speaking for the president as opposed to himself, I just can't credit it at the moment.

But that said, I think there is a history that Giuliani pointed to of other presidents who have pardoned people after being charged or after being convicted when they felt that the charges were political. Whether that's telling these guys be quiet, don't cooperate, is not clear.

SAVIDGE: How much of -- to say to someone that if you are convicted that don't worry, the pardon will come, doesn't help you much for the predicament you're in now, does it?

ZELDIN: No. And in fact, if you take Manafort as an example, were he to be pardoned and the Mueller team felt that he had evidence to provide that was relevant to the president's legal status, he could still be compelled to testify. The fact that he's been pardoned personally doesn't mean he is free from subpoena to testify, and he has no Fifth Amendment right at that point because he's been pardoned. And if he lies in the course of that trial, he could be charged with perjury.

So it's not like this is a complete get out of testifying card. He just doesn't face individual liability if he's pardoned. But Mueller can still proceed with his inquiry as to whether Manafort or anybody else has relevant evidence.

SAVIDGE: We have asked this of other legal experts today, but I'll ask it was you. And that is, is there any way you could see that the president could pardon before -- in other words, to stop testimony?

ZELDIN: Well, we've had that happen. Weinberger was pardoned by Bush just before his trial. Ford pardoned Nixon before he was indicted. So there's a history of presidents being able to do it. Whether or not this president is willing to do that and whether or not it would be seen as obstructionist behavior in an impeachable offense remains to be seen. But I think it's his prerogative as president to do it, it just has political consequences that he has to take account of.

SAVIDGE: Whether he always measures those at the moment or not is uncertain. Michael Zeldin, thank you very much for joining us.

ZELDIN: My pleasure.

PAUL: Thank you, Michael.

So still ahead, religious groups and leaders condemning the Trump administration for using the Bible to defend separating immigrant families. We're getting reaction from the Christian community who's now pushing back.

SAVIDGE: And Sunday night, CNN shares the life of chief storyteller and colleague Anthony Bourdain. That will be tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:29:32] PAUL: It's 29 minutes past the hour this Saturday morning. So glad to have you with us. I'm Christi Paul.

SAVIDGE: I'm Martin Savidge in for Victor Blackwell.

The Department of Homeland Security now says 2,000 children were separated from their families at the Mexican border over the course of six weeks. The practice of splitting up immigrant families trying to enter the country is part of the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, a policy that Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended this week using the Bible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:30:00] JEFF SESSIONS, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I would cite you to the apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Not surprisingly, advocates for immigrants are speaking out against the policy. The Catholic Church and other religious leaders have also criticized the policy as immoral. The U.S. director of the Church Mobilization for World Relief, Matthew Soerens, spoke to us earlier, and here's his perspective on the passage being used to justify Trump's policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW SOERENS, U.S. DIRECTOR OF CHURCH MOBILIZATION FOR WORLD RELIEF: Later in Romans chapter 13, it says that, yes, God has established government, the law is good, we should respect the law. But then it tells us how government should behave. It says if you're doing what is right, the government should not be a terror to you.

And I think terror is actually the word I would use to describe it. If I put myself in the shoes of a father from El Salvador who is so afraid of threats of violence that he would take his children, seek asylum as our U.S. laws allow, and make it to the U.S. border only to have his children taken from him, reportedly in some cases children being taken away saying that they're going to be given a bath and not brought back. That to me sounds like terror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: So CNN political commentator John Thomas and Democratic strategist Dave Jacobson both with us here. First of all, John to you, what do you say to that thought that he is not the first one, I should point out, to say, Mr. Soerens is not the first to point out that he believes this in a sense is terroristic.

JOHN THOMAS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all, it hurts me to see these children used as political pawns basically for the left to gain amnesty. It also hurts me that adults are making bad decisions to break the law, break our immigration law, and bring their children across the border because they think they'll get citizenship that way.

The reality is this law has been on the books for a number of years prior to the Trump administration. Now it needs to be solved. But I just -- I hate it when you're seeing this -- the convenience of this situation being used for political gain, when somebody like Paul Manafort, who's being separated from his family now, there's no outcry, right. So the issue is it's politically convenient, it drives an agenda for the left, and they want to use it rather than enforcing the law --

PAUL: Paul Manafort for one is charged with lying, and he's an adult, he's not a child separated from his family, which is different for one. But two, there are also allegations about President Trump himself using this as a political strategy, because he's -- in a sense, many have asserted, saying, look at how bad this is. Yes, we need to fix it, but the president could fix this with one phone call.

THOMAS: Well, it's not that -- but it's --

PAUL: Part of it --

THOMAS: It's not that simple. You're right, if you fix that, it will encourage more illegal immigration. He understands that you can't just put duct tape on the problem because you still have a look at the border. You don't want to encourage illegal immigration. And that's what Trump would do if he changed this law without a comprehensive fix at the border. More border security, building that wall, ending chain migration, it's a much more complicated problem than just making a phone call.

DAVE JACOBSON, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I don't think it equates to duct tape by allowing children to be with their families. Look, bottom line, Donald Trump increasingly looks like Hitler in Nazi Germany. He looks like --

THOMAS: Dave, it's rewarding breaking our immigration laws --

JACOBSON: It's cruel and unusual punishment, John. The fact of the matter is you have got evangelicals, the religious right who has come out calling this immoral, and you've got a president digging his heels in for political gain. It's disgusting.

SAVIDGE: John, I would say that I think David's right in this matter in that it does -- no matter what justification Republicans may give, it looks reprehensible to separate young children from their parents. There is no good image of this. So politically, and politics is about image, this looks very bad, and you have coming this fall some very important elections coming now. So how do you avoid the mess that now you're in? And Republicans are in a mess.

THOMAS: Yes, absolutely. It's a complicated mess. But it looks like the House is driving forth legislation that will strengthen border security, that may perhaps provide a pathway to citizenship for all of these Dreamers and try to solve this problem. But you can't just put a duct tape and say, hey, we're going to reward adults for bringing their children here illegally. You can't do that either without a complete immigration fix. Remember, Donald Trump was elected largely on the promise not just to build the wall but to fix our immigration problem --

SAVIDGE: Let me ask you, if you think that some of this is going to trickle back, word of mouth to the people who are south of the border, if you're locking them up, how is that message going to be spread? Is the government buying airtime down in Central America? Are they -- no, are they spreading this warning, they're saying, look, don't come to the U.S. because we are enforcing this policy. Are they putting it out in Spanish or to all of those countries down there and say don't come? If you're not, then literally what you're doing is locking people up.

[10:35:08] THOMAS: Perhaps they should, but I think history is our best guide for what happens. Up until recently illegal border crossings were nearly at an all-time low. Why? We never paid for an ad in Spanish. It's because the election of Donald Trump and his rhetoric made it very clear all the way south of the border that if you come here you're going to be arrested.

SAVIDGE: They were at an all-time low without locking up children. So how do you explain now it's working better?

THOMAS: I would argue partially because the president has not gotten his border wall. He has not passed an immigration plan. So people are starting to see what envelopes they can push because they understand my friends on the left are willing to use their children as a political opportunity that perhaps if they can smuggle their children across and their children get citizenship and we have chain migration --

SAVIDGE: Hold on. Let's get Dave in.

JACOBSON: Let's not be disingenuous, Democrats have nothing to do with this.

THOMAS: They absolutely do.

JACOBSON: No, no, no. And by the way, this is a Donald Trump policy that was put forward by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general. If Donald Trump was against separating these children, he's not someone to shy away from criticizing and skewering his attorney general. He's been dead silent on this issue. He's embracing what Jeff Sessions is doing. The fact of the matter is he's going to have blood on his hands at the end of the day. These are children being ripped apart --

THOMAS: I guess Obama and George Bush have blood on their hands --

JACOBSON: They're not separating children --

PAUL: The point, as Steven Collinson said, it's been 15 years. How is it this falls not just on Republicans but on Democrats. This falls on both. Why is it they had six months -- they had years under the Obama administration, the Democrats did, to try to enforce some sort of legislative change. They had six months, the president gave them six months, they did nothing in those six months. Congress is to blame. How do they fix this, and can they fix this before the U.S. now has a liability of taking care of all of these children? They're going to run out of space. They're going to run out of resources. If something happens to any of those children, there's going to be somebody that's going to have to pay. And do you know who's going to pay? The U.S. if a child is hurt or abused or lost.

JACOBSON: The reality is, there is a commonsense plan that's being discussed in Congress. It's bipartisan. That's the way that this should be done. We shouldn't have a hardline immigration plan that's not going to pass the Senate that the GOP leadership and Donald Trump are supporting. There is a moderate sort of middle ground place with Democrats and moderate Republicans that are putting forward legislation that does not include the border wall. It strengthens the border, but it provides a comprehensive pathway to citizenship for the DACA kids. And let's not forget --

SAVIDGE: It won't ever happen, and if it won't ever happen, you're not going to solve it on the Democratic side --

JACOBSON: It will happen if Democrats take back the house in 2016 -- 2018, pardon me --

SAVIDGE: Meanwhile, how many families are separated while we wait for that? That does not seem a realistic solution --

THOMAS: There are dueling plans. One provides funding for a border wall that the president indicated on Friday afternoon that he would sign. So I'm optimistic that something will get done. I think something has to get done because, you're right, not only is it going to cost taxpayers, but it's boiling over and it may become the fundamental issue as we go into the midterms.

PAUL: And these children, these children are going to be suffering. These children need to be taken care of, they need to be with their parents. And I think both sides agree with that. Even the president has said this is not his solution. But it's still happening. So thank you, we appreciate both of you coming here. Thank you. John Thomas, Dave Jacobson, appreciate your thoughts.

JACOBSON: Thank you. Take care.

PAUL: Absolutely. Later today do not miss Ana Cabrera's interview with President Obama's former homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson on the border separations. That's 3:00 p.m. eastern right here on CNN.

SAVIDGE: Meanwhile, still to come, China slamming the U.S. for starting a trade war after the U.S. slapped tariffs on Chinese goods. Now Chinese media is mocking the decision, and China is retaliating. Details ahead from Beijing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [10:43:28] SAVIDGE: This week the president decided to slap tariffs on I think it's $50 billion worth of Chinese products, sparking concerns of a trade war. And that could potentially damage the entire global economy.

PAUL: So in retaliation, of course, China is now slapping their own set of tariffs on American goods. That's set to take effect July 6th. CNN international correspondent Matt Rivers is in Beijing with more.

MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Chinese government has accused the United States of launching a trade war, and more than a day after the $50 million on Chinese imports became official, China's state-run media not holding back. Let's give you a sample of what we're reading in Beijing. Start with Xinhua, state-run media outlet that wrote in an editorial in part, quote, "The wise man builds bridges, the fool builds walls," a not-so-subtle reference there of course to tariffs.

Next up would be the "The People's Daily," a state-run newspaper that wrote in a commentary in part, quote, "Erratic actions have become the norm for the U.S. Not only is it damaging their reputation, China can step by step see the Trump administration is rude, unreasonable, selfish, and headstrong."

And given that that's the view of state-sanctioned media here, it should be no surprise that China retaliated against this U.S. action by levying $50 billion in tariffs on American imports shortly after those tariffs in the U.S. became official. The list of products that's being targeted is pretty wide ranging. Everything from soybeans to American beef, certain types of cars, even fruits made that list. What the Chinese government is doing there is trying find impact both economically and politically. What products can be targeted that would have an impact on the American consumer.

[10:45:10] And we should note that when you speak to American business men and women here in China, there is widespread agreement with the Trump administration that the relationship between China and the United States in the trading realm is not equal, that there are fundamental problems there -- intellectual property theft, market access, so on and so on. But what there is disagreement on is that tariffs are the best way to fix that, and now there is great concern that this trade war will only get worse and ultimately hurt the American consumer.

Matt Rivers, CNN, Beijing.

SAVIDGE: Matt, thank you for that.

Twenty-five miles never felt so far away. We're going to take you inside one of the nation's most notorious prisons as inmates play a pickup game with some basketball superstars.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:41] SAVIDGE: As the Golden State Warriors come down from their high of defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers, and it's their third dealership in four years, the team has found a way to inspire a different group of players.

PAUL: Coy Wire is here with today's "Difference Makers." We're both from Cleveland.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Too soon to do a story like this. I apologize, but it's a good one.

SAVIDGE: It is.

WIRE: "Difference Makers" brought to you by Ford, going further so you can.

Warriors' general manager Bob Myers has been visiting the prison in San Quentin for the past five years. And the Warriors players and the prisoners, despite their being worlds apart, share one thing in common, and that's a love of the game.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOB MYERS, GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS GENERAL MANAGER: You say San Quentin and the folks, there's a visceral feeling when you say those words. As you walk into San Quentin, you go through a series of gates. You look to your left, there's a building that says, the first time I walked in there it said adjustment center. I asked the guard, I said what's that building. And he said that's death row. However that process is in your mind, people are sitting up there waiting to die.

And then you walk down the yard into what the court is and you see the inmates, and you're walking down the first time and going what am I -- why did I decide to do this? Why did I do this? I have kids. Basketball is basketball, and if you just play basketball, you're not thinking about it. Last time I was there we went and saw a cell. I hadn't done that, and I've been five or six times, and I went and I walked into a cell, and they are so much smaller than you think.

That's tight.

And you sit there and envision a life in a cell. I couldn't sit in there two minutes. It's not claustrophobic, it's just imagining a life in a cell. Why you go in there, I think, is your own reasons, but what I've taken from it is when we go in, I think Mark Jackson has been there, Steve has been in there, Draymond, Kevin, all these guys, it shows them that they matter and that there's people that care.

The people that are in there, I didn't grow up like they did, so how can I sit there and say why did you make that bad choice? If I'd grown up like some people grew up that are in San Quentin, I could have been in San Quentin. If they grew up like I did, they probably wouldn't be in San Quentin. It marks you. It marks you when you go in there. It's not an experience that you forget.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: Athletes using the stage they've been given to instill to hope and in this case in those who are looking for redemption and looking to overcome their difficult pasts. SAVIDGE: Good spot, thank you.

PAUL: Thank you, Coy.

WIRE: You're welcome.

PAUL: So a bear appears to be celebrating a World Cup victory for Russia. Look at this. Animal rights groups, they got something to say about this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: This week's CNN Hero was once in America's foster care system and remembers carrying just a few belongings he had in a trash bag.

SAVIDGE: Thirty years later when he adopted four foster children, he couldn't believe it when each of his children arrived trash bags in tow. Rob Scheer's shock sparked a mission to provide kids in foster care with a tangible sign of love.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's cozy.

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

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

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: Go to CNNHeroes.com for the full story there.

SAVIDGE: Meanwhile, the animal rights group PETA is demanding answers after a video surfaced of a bear at the World Cup forced to sit in a moving car and play an instrument. This was after Russia won its first match. He's playing a vuvuzela, and it's an instrument that was hugely popular during the 2010 tournament.

PAUL: PETA's asking for the Moscow mayor to name the bear's owner so they can rescue it and take it to a sanctuary. The group says it's also very dangerous to the public to put an unpredictable wild animal on the streets. In all fairness, I thought it was a man in a bear suit initially. Apparently it's the real thing. So there you have it.

SAVIDGE: Hopefully we'll find him a good home.

(LAUGHTER)

PAUL: We hope that obviously for all animals certainly. Children, everybody.

Listen, we thank you very much for spending your morning with us. We always appreciate your company and we hope you make good memories today.

SAVIDGE: We're going to turn it over to our colleague Fredricka Whitfield. Good morning, Fred.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see.

PAUL: Good morning.

WHITFIELD: See you all bright and early tomorrow morning.