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Iran Crisis; Trump Continues Racist Attacks on Congresswomen; Unrest in Puerto Rico. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 22, 2019 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Demanding the resignation of Puerto Rico's Governor Ricardo Rossello. You see there people flooding the streets of San Juan, after the governor refused to step down falling the leak of sexist and homophobic messages between him and members of his inner circle.

Protesters and San Juan's mayor, who is also running for governor, say they are sick and tired of years of corruption and economic instability.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARMEN YULIN CRUZ, MAYOR OF SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO: It is a corrupt government.

QUESTION: But suddenly having the secretary of justice in place isn't going to remove the political elite that many of the people in the streets are angry about. You're simply deferring the problem for another time, aren't you?

CRUZ: No. Well, democracies work that way.

QUESTION: which is the question we asked before. This is a democracy. Why is this opposition movement so special, that it doesn't have to wait for an election?

CRUZ: Because the crimes committed by the governor are so horrendous, that it cannot wait. It cannot wait.

QUESTION: So, it is impeachment or it's just...

CRUZ: It is impeachment. It is impeachment time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Nick Paton Walsh, CNN senior international correspondent, and CNN's Juan Carlos Lopez are both in San Juan.

And, Nick, first to you.

What's happening on the ground there right now?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you saw that protests on the main expressway Las Americas.

They got to their hundreds of thousands of mark, certainly, extraordinary numbers. And many of them, despite this at times torrential rain, have started moving towards the old town of San Juan.

Now, not many behind me here, despite the noise they're making. And, actually, for the first time in days, we can see the barricades manned by police and down in the distance Fortaleza, where we believe Governor Rossello still is.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has spoken out today and said that he considers the governor to be -- quote -- "terrible." He's also criticized his key opponent you just heard from there, the mayor of San Juan, saying she's -- quote -- "a horror show."

So, clearly, no obvious positioning from Washington here, though, but we also heard from those in the crowd who had flown in from Washington, Puerto Ricans who live here in their past, about how they felt, about why they attended today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I voted for him, and I am so disillusioned with our he has managed everything since Maria. And now this. And he needs to step down. He just needs to step down.

Here are -- I bet here are people who voted for him and are mad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a historic moment for the people of Puerto Rico here in the island and everywhere around the world. Everyone is telling Ricky that the game is over. He no longer represents the people of Puerto Rico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: So the protests really fueled by pretty much anybody with a blue tick on Instagram turning up on a stage recently, Ricky Martin, various others, trying to move these protesters on a substantial number.

The rain may well get in their way, possibly. And it depends whether or not tonight passes peacefully, I think, whether it changes maybe the mind of Governor Rossello.

What happens if he doesn't choose to resign? Well, there's an impeachment investigation under way. The results of that will then inform congress as to whether or not they decide to launch impeachment proceedings. Unclear, though, if that will do the job of getting him out of the governor's mansion behind me.

He says he wants to work to get the confidence of the people back. And he was elected. So he has said he won't be sitting for power -- for reelection, I should, say next year. But, still, these protesters want him out now.

And it depends, in the hours ahead, whether they mass number enough here to make any impact on his pretty resolute mind-set.

HILL: Yes. And he's made it very clear where he stands. He does not intend to go anywhere, does not intend to step down.

Juan Carlos, what about -- what have you been hearing just on that front? We just heard from a couple of folks that Nick spoke with, saying, the game is over. It's time for you to go.

As Nick pointed out, though, it's not necessarily that simple. And there's also the question of then what's left behind?

JUAN CARLOS LOPEZ, CNN EN ESPANOL CORRESPONDENT: Well, so far, he hasn't been paying a lot of attention to these protests.

We saw him yesterday addressing Puerto Ricans through Facebook. He hasn't given interviews. And he did signal that he will not run for reelection, that he will not be the head of the party anymore, the Partido Nuevo Progresista.

But he didn't have any chance really of a reelection after this scandal. Right now, it appears that Governor Rossello is trying to buy time. But what we saw on the streets, what we saw today, these thousands of protesters, the message they have -- and this comes from all different political groups in Puerto Rico -- they don't want him in the governor's mansion.

They don't want him running the country. He has time. He can play the political game. And he's doing so. The constitution allows him. But you have to understand Puerto Rico has a very particular political situation right now. It's a U.S. territory. It has its own congress. It has its own constitution. It has its own governor, but it's under controlled by a board, this after a very deep financial crisis.

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So, there is a very deep relationship with Washington and the frustration that they feel treated as a colonial entity, not as an independent entity they want to be. Some want to be a state. Some want to be independent.

This doesn't change things, but Governor Rossello doesn't want to leave.

HILL: Juan Carlos Lopez, Nick Paton Walsh, appreciate it. Thank you both.

When we look at the conditions in Puerto Rico, for so many people, they may have first really woken up to what was happening there in the devastation left behind by Hurricane Maria. That was only in 2017. Government officials, though, for some time have been accused of corruption and, since Maria, accused of misusing federal disaster aid.

Frances Sola-Santiago is a journalist for Brut Media. She lost her aunt. She died in Puerto Rico in the days immediately following Hurricane Maria. She joins us now. So part of what you're looking at too is what's happened in the

aftermath of Hurricane Maria. And a lot of what has happened is also bringing people out into the streets right now, because they are so fed up on so many levels. What are you finding? What's the situation today?

FRANCES SOLA-SANTIAGO, BRUT MEDIA: I think what we're seeing today, and what we have been seeing in the last 10 days of these historic protests, is really a country that is claiming and raising their voice as to what happened almost two years ago.

Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico in devastation. And I think a lot of people didn't have the time, didn't have the energy, didn't have the resources to go out and voice their frustrations.

I think what we saw in the 889-page chats was very much the last straw for a lot of Puerto Ricans. So, the chat revealed not only homophobic and sexist messages, but it also revealed a lot of details about what happened in the months and years after Hurricane Maria.

So it revealed a lot of details about the femicide crisis. It's revealed details about how they hid a lot of stories about the death toll in Puerto Rico and how they plan to lie about it.

And so what -- a lot of Puerto Ricans, this isn't just about a chat. This is much more than that.

HILL: And there's also the talk -- and you bring this up -- about part of what we saw in the chat, right, not just the information, was -- but sexism in a lot of these messages.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Yes.

HILL: And that speaks to, in your mind, a much broader issue when it comes to the government in Puerto Rico and the role of women and how women are seen and how they're treated.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Mm-hmm. For sure.

A lot of what we saw on the chat was this group of men -- and there were 12 men in this chat -- that were basically talking about the mayor of San Juan. They were insulting Melissa Mark-Viverito. So -- and these are just top officials. So you can just imagine how that extends to the rest of the female population in Puerto Rico.

So we also saw the governor and his administration mocking the Colectiva Feminista En Construccion, which is an organization in Puerto Rico that has been calling out for the femicide crisis, for women's rights.

And they actually asked the governor last year to declare a state of emergency, because women were being assassinated by their domestic partners in unprecedented numbers. And the governor in the chat is being seen mocking them and mocking their protests.

So I think a lot of women today are taking the streets and that a symbolism of, you might think that you shut us down, but we haven't. We're here.

HILL: You know, another person I was speaking to about this was saying that, in so many ways, this governor and people's frustration with him has united people from so many different backgrounds, and with so many different issues that are at the top of their specific list.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Yes.

HILL: How do you see that energy, the energy that we're seeing in the streets here in the pouring rain in San Juan today, how do you see that energy being channeled moving forward, especially since, as we know, the governor has said he's not stepping down?

We have to wait in here from the legislature about impeachment. There's not a clear answer today that some of those demands are going to be met.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Yes.

So, yesterday, as we all know, he renounced -- he resigned from his party's presidency, and he said that he won't be seeking reelection. But that's not enough for a lot of Puerto Ricans that are protesting today.

The impeachment process has begun in the legislature. And he said that he would be welcoming an impeachment process. But that could take months. That could take years. And next year, as you all know, we have an election as well.

I think for a lot of Puerto Ricans, and what I have been seeing from my reporting and from talking to other people on the ground, is that it isn't enough for just Ricardo Rossello to step down. I think this has united people in unprecedented numbers, in unprecedented ways that has become much more about a people that want to kind of rethink how they want the government to be run.

So I don't think people will stop at just the pro-statehood party or just Ricardo Rossello or members of his administrations. You got to think that, in Puerto Rico, we have a bipartisanship, like here in the States, that has run Puerto Rico since we became a commonwealth of the United States.

And so I think a lot of people are fed up by that back and forth and how much pain and disillusionment it has cost.

HILL: Certainly not the last time we will talk about it.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Yes, for sure.

HILL: Frances, great talking to you today. Thank you.

SOLA-SANTIAGO: Thank you.

HILL: There are new concerns right now that the U.S. could actually be inching closer to an all-out confrontation with Iran. President Trump on Twitter this morning blasting claims by Tehran that it's broken up a CIA spy ring, broken it wide open, according to Iran, arrested 17 Iranians for allegedly spying for the U.S.

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Just last hour at the White House, President Trump firing back again, saying Iran's actions are making it tougher to resume negotiations at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They put their finger up in the air, and this finger, the thumb. They put their finger up in the air, and they disrespected the United States. You shouldn't have done that. That was a big mistake.

And one of the best things I have done is terminate that ridiculous deal. If they want to make a deal, it's -- frankly, it's getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran, because they behave very badly. They're saying bad things.

And I will tell you, it could go either way very easily, very easily. And I'm OK either way it goes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is with us now.

So, Barbara, you heard the president there saying it's getting harder for him to wait to make a deal, that he's glad he pulled us out of the Iran nuclear agreement. And there's been a lot going on, to put it mildly, in the last few days with Iran.

At the point where we are now, though, Bob Baer telling me just last hour he thinks that Iran is really trying to push the U.S. closer and closer to war, a war he says the U.S. is not prepared for.

What is the sense, what is the talk there at the Pentagon?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Pentagon has been watching President Trump's remarks, obviously, very closely.

And the president has several times said he's not looking for war with Iran. So these comments today will be of considerable fresh interest. It could go either way. What's he really talking about?

He has said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons program. So you either are going to negotiate it through diplomacy and negotiate it away, or what would the alternative be? In fact, would it be military force?

One of the challenges is -- I don't think anybody's looking for war, right? But the calculation is, if you wanted to use force to make Iran give up its nuclear program, you can't really just have that single goal. You are automatically talking about full regime change in Iran. And that is really just a prospect that seems incredibly difficult.

If nothing else, the U.S. has learned over the last 18 years what regime change can drag it into, especially in the Middle East. So I think it's a very difficult proposition to see a way ahead on the president's words today.

HILL: Also hearing from the president today about Afghanistan.

For folks who may have missed it, I just want to play what he had to say earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Because we're like policemen. We're fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don't want to kill 10 million people. Does that make sense to you? I don't want to kill 10 million people.

I have plans on Afghanistan, that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone. It would be over in -- literally in 10 days. And I don't want to do that. I don't want to go that route.

So we're working with Pakistan and others to extricate ourselves, nor do we want to be policeman, because, basically, we're policemen right now. And we're not supposed to be policemen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: These comments, of course, coming from the Oval Office today.

The president meeting with Pakistan's prime minister today. He says he has plans. It's certainly not the first time we have heard the president say he wants troops out of Afghanistan, talking about help from Pakistan.

Do we have any better sense, though, of what that plan is, Barbara?

STARR: Well, a negotiated settlement with Pakistan's help, if Pakistan could make it work, they could close off that border with Afghanistan, and really dry up the flow of terrorists coming across into Afghanistan.

That's been one of the big problems over the years. It's a very porous border. Pakistan does not control it very well. People go back and forth. And that's to a large extent how these terrorist populations keep coming into Afghanistan.

As for the president's remarks that he could obliterate Afghanistan, but he doesn't want to kill 10 million people, let's just have a little bit of common sense here. Military orders have to be legal, moral, ethical, and use proportional force.

So any prospect of meeting the president's rhetoric is just really not reality-based. He has talked in the past about a semi-obliteration strategy. Today, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, these are not realistic military strategies to achieve military goals.

HILL: Barbara Starr, always appreciate it. Thank you.

STARR: Sure.

HILL: Up next: President Trump continuing his attacks on four Democratic congresswoman today, saying they're not very smart, also insisting there is no racial tension.

This as one of those congresswomen is reiterating her calls for impeachment.

Plus: shocking e-mail shedding new light on just how drug companies flooded two Ohio counties with opioids, even at one point joking about how addictive their pills are. You will hear from parents who lost their son to addiction.

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Plus, President Trump getting involved in the legal case of an American rapper arrested in Sweden. So far, though, those efforts not really working. We're live in Sweden to explain why.

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HILL: The president defending his racist tweets aimed at four Democratic congresswomen for more than a week now, and even saying more, calling them un-American, saying they're bad.

Today, the president was asked again about those comments and specifically about racial tensions. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Congresswomen, what they have said about Israel, what they have said about our country, when they talk about disgusting people, when they talk the way they talk, when the one mentioned that brown people should speak for brown people, and Muslim people should speak for Muslim people, and you hear all this, it's not what our country's all about.

No, I think they're very bad for our country. I think they're very bad for the Democrat Party. I think you see that. And they're pulling the Democrats way left. Nobody knows how to handle them. I feel they're easy to handle.

To me, they're easy to handle, because they're just out there. They're very bad for our country, absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: No, I don't think -- no, no racial tension. No, no, there's no racial tension.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: And as for those remarks outside of Washington, how is all of this rhetoric playing?

Well, let's take you to Illinois and get this, a Photoshopped image posted to the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association Facebook page. In it, as you can see, it depicts the for congresswomen as -- quote -- "The Jihad Squad."

Now, the image has since been taken down from the group's page. It included the caption -- quote -- "Political jihad is their game. And if you don't agree with their socialist ideology, you're racist."

The president of that group posting the following statement -- quote -- "A couple of days ago, an image which was not authorized by me was posted on the Facebook page of the Illinois Republican County Chairmen's Association. I condemn this unauthorized posting and it has been deleted," going on to say, "I am sorry if anyone who saw the image was offended by the contents."

Abdullah Mitchell is the executive director of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago and joins us now.

Appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

I have to ask first, what was your reaction when you saw that Photoshopped image and the caption as well?

ABDULLAH MITCHELL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COUNCIL OF ISLAMIC ORGANIZATIONS OF GREATER CHICAGO: Well, the my reaction, as many Muslims and let's say people color, is offended.

It was disrespectful, xenophobic, racist, but, more importantly, it brought a moment of concern, a concern that now how, as a country, are we dealing with dissent? To merely characterize the message, assassinate the messenger, as opposed to substantively dealing with the issues that are being raised by these four women ignores the real principles of what this country is about.

And that is free debate. It is not to say to merely oppose the policies of this administration or the views of Republican Party now to be characterized as, one, you're not even a citizen, you go back to your country, when these -- three of the people were actually born here.

It really ignores the real crux of the problem is that, when do we as a country begin to address the substantive issues that are facing us as a nation, not merely engaging in the practice of assassinating the messengers?

HILL: You have also said that these types of images, I know, in your mind, cut short productive conversations. And that's sort of what you were touching on there.

Where are we missing the boat on those productive conversations? I mean, how do you bring it back, so that you can sit down, people who are trying to tackle maybe the same problem coming at it with different viewpoints, as you point out, be they Republican, Democrat, somewhere else, maybe not even belonging to a party?

How do you get to a place where there can be a productive conversation right now?

MITCHELL: Clearly, that's the challenge.

And it can start from the White House, where you have discourses to address to the issues, and not to call someone they don't love this country, which Muslims have been characterized as, to say they're socialists, when, regardless of their political philosophy, what it really comes down to is, how are we going to address the issue of climate change?

How are we going to address the issue of the asylum seekers at our borders? How are we going to address the crisis in health care? None of these issues are being discussed by this administration. It's just those that bring viewpoints counter to what their narrative is, they are un-American.

They need to go back to the country they came from. So that's where the process must begin. And we're to hold political leaders on both sides of the aisle, but particularly this particular administration, to hold them to account and give answers to the issues, not to attack those that oppose them.

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HILL: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke this morning at the annual NAACP Convention and addressed some of what we have been talking about. I want to play some of what she had to say for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): We need bold action, folks. And I know what's happening out there. There's all this young women, and it's beyond just the four of us. The Squad is all of you.

And I can tell you that you are all the Squad, trust me. If you support equity, you support justice, you are one of us.

Yes, I'm not going nowhere, not until I impeach this president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Are you happy with the way that Congresswoman Tlaib and the other three women who've been targeted, with the way they're handling this and their message?

MITCHELL: In handling the message, once again, I would prefer that the attack address the issues.

Whether or not it's going to be impeachment, impeachment, all it's going to do is further polarize the -- both sides, because we're not addressing the issues as they are. And that is incumbent. That's what needs to take place today, to begin to address the issues.

And to the extent that we have a process or addressing the issues by attacking the messengers, then we will not achieve substantive solutions to our problems.

There's going to be continued polarization. And then we're going to see an uptick, further uptick in let's -- what I would call hate crimes, how people react to those particular -- we already know all four of these women have increased threats against their life.

(CROSSTALK)

HILL: Right.

Well, let's hope that it's not where this ends up, in an increase in hate crimes.

Abdullah Mitchell, really appreciate you joining us today, sir. Thank you.

And I do want to point out we did reach out to the Illinois Republican Party, to their chairman, Tim Schneider. We also reached out to the County Chairmen's Association, their president, Mark Shaw. We asked them to join us. They have not responded to those requests.

Just ahead, you will meet two parents whose son got hooked on opioids after a series of surgeries. They later lost their son Tyler to addiction. Today, they are working to help other families to make sure it doesn't happen again. And they're also reacting to newly uncovered e-mails that show drug executives joking about the deadly opioid crisis.

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