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Trump's Head-Spinning Q&A: Insults, Tropes, Backtracks; Trump Moves to Detain Immigrant Families & Children Indefinitely; Trump Backtracks on Payroll Tax Cuts Amid Many Head-Spinning Spins on "Recession" from Trump & Aides; School Apologizes for Lack of Transparency in Nazi Video Incident. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired August 21, 2019 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00] MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: So he's throwing out these notions, you know, that I am chosen. You know, well, the Jews are considered the chosen people.
And when he talks about being the king or someone else talks about him being the second coming, well, that's sort of mixes up terms that have nothing to do with Judaism. But it's a reference to religion and he wants to play with that now.
BALDWIN: There was one more clip I want to play. This is a claim or a threat that he would let ISIS prisoners into France and Germany. Here he was.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're holding thousands of ISIS fighters right now. And Europe has to take them. If Europe doesn't take them, I'll have no choice but to release them into the countries from which they came, which is Germany and France and other places.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Michael, I can't climb into his head. I don't know if he's kidding. This is the president of the United States, that is releasing ISIS prisoners into France and Germany and other countries? That is not even close to being funny.
D'ANTONIO: No, it's not close to being funny. And I think, since he is the president of the United States, we should all take him seriously, pretty much at all times. You know, he's not a guy who can tell a joke, so I wouldn't assume he's ever joking. He'll mock people, make fun of others, he's not a guy that tells jokes.
This I would take very seriously as a clue to how his mind works. There's nothing more depraved than the notion of releasing would-be terrorists onto the streets of our allies, and yet this is what he's going to propose.
I don't know where this derangement is headed. But it's very disturbing to watch. And I think it's most instructive when it comes to the president's own temperament and personality, and his fitness for office.
BALDWIN: You said it.
Michael D'Antonio, thank you.
D'ANTONIO: Thank you, Brooke.
BALDWIN: White supremacy in our schools? The latest on this investigation into disturbing video that shows high school students giving the Nazi salute. Now new questions after the school issues an apology.
And why the administration just moved to keep migrant families in detention longer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:36:47] BALDWIN: New today, the Trump administration is unveiling a new immigration rule that broadly expands the detentions of migrant families and children. President Trump's move today dumps the decades-old Flores settlement which set a 20-day limit for holding children.
The new plan paves the way for indefinite detention of families while allowing the government to use different detention standards.
This is what acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN MCALEENAN, ACTING SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: All children in government's care will be universally treated with dignity, respect and special concern in concert with American values and faithful to the intent of the original settlement.
The facilities we will be using to temporarily house families under this rule are appropriately fundamentally different than the facilities where migrants are processed following apprehension or encounter at the border. They are campus-like settings with appropriate medical, educational, recreational, dining and private housing facilities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: McAleenan adding the rule change is meant to reduce the number of families illegally entering the United States. A federal judge must sign off on today's proposed rule change which faces an almost certain legal challenge.
With me now, Caitlin Dickerson, a national immigration reporter with the "New York Times."
Caitlin, first of all, explain how, if they're able to change the rules of the Flores settlement, how that would impact the immigration system and specifically these children. CAITLIN DICKERSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: The idea here is to minimize the
number of people crossing the border. It's a deterrence measure. This has been a pet project for the Trump administration from day one.
When you hear President Trump talk about legal loopholes, or talk about --
(CROSSTALK)
DICKERSON: -- he's talking about family detention. So this is the real focus. They think, if they can detain families indefinitely, that it will deter people from coming to the United States.
BALDWIN: What do you think?
DICKERSON: It's possible. With deterrence measures, we've talked about various deterrence measures and whether they're going to work.
BALDWIN: Yes.
DICKERSON: We don't have evidence so far that they do. But there's no question that when you combine all the different policies that are bearing down on people trying to cross the border right now, from policies that require many asylum seekers to now wait in Mexico before crossing the border or wait months before they can get on a line to approached the United States border to try to apply for asylum, there's so many different things keeping people from coming in.
And when they do enter, going into these facilities, where conditions have been discussed, very difficult, not enough food, not enough blankets, not mats to sleep on. Kids are sleeping on the floor, on concrete floors.
And you heard the secretary talk about how the standards will be upheld, that children will be kept in good conditions. But remember, this is the administration where, a few months ago, lawyers were in court arguing, as part of the Flores settlement, against needing to supply things like toothpaste. So --
BALDWIN: Right.
DICKERSON: And they were arguing in court. So they're not hiding what their goals are.
BALDWIN: There have been conversations about providing flu shots to some of these people in detention facilities.
DICKERSON: Yes.
BALDWIN: What are the -- presumably, there will be appeals, there will be fights against this notion of closing this, to quote him, "loophole." How tough of a battle will that be?
DICKERSON: I think it's going to be very difficult, in particular, with regard to this 20-day rule, which is something that the judge that the government is going to have to take this regulation to, she's the one that decided on the 20-day rule. They're going to have to try to talk her out of it. That's going to be hard.
[14:40:12] But we have seen prolonged detention in the past and it's possible that we'll see it again. The 20-day rule only dates back to 2015. It's fairly recent.
We've also saw dozens of the separated families being held in long- term detention last summer.
And what advocates who work in these facilities describe seeing, when you have families staying longer than 20-days, is behavioral regression. Things like bed wetting, kids refusing to eat, kids refusing to leave their parents side or starting to bite or starting to get violent with other kids.
That's the concern, that if they are successful in winning the elimination of this 20-day rule, what's that going to look like. The administration hopes that it looks like fewer families crossing the border.
As I said, with one deterrent measure, we don't have any evidence that that will work, but when you combine all of these together, I think it's possible.
BALDWIN: OK. We shall see if this even goes through on changing the rules of this Flores settlement, letting people stay, be detained more than 20-days.
Caitlan, thank you very much, as always.
DICKERSON: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Just 24 hours after admitting he is thinking about a payroll tax cut for an economy he insists isn't showing warning signs, the president backtracks. But that is not the only mixed message when it comes to fears of a recession.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:45:51] BALDWIN: President Trump's tone on recession fears changing quickly and often as he runs for re-election. Just moments ago, yet another economic about face as he dismissed the idea of a possible payroll tax cut to stimulate the economy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm not looking at a tax cut now. We don't need it. We have a strong economy. Certainly, a payroll tax cut -- President Obama did that in order to artificially jack up the economy. President Obama had zero interest rates. I don't have zero interest. I have real interest rates. Despite that, I have a strong economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Just let me remind you what President Trump had to say about payroll tax cuts just yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Payroll tax is something that we think about. And a lot of people would like to see that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Chris Cillizza, CNN's editor-at-large.
I know, I think we've rewritten this three times today based on what's been going on.
(CROSSTALK)
CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER & CNN EDITOR-AT-LARGE: -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: Sometimes his views on the recession evolve within one press conference.
CILLIZZA: Yes, absolutely. If it's a recession, whose fault it is.
Let's play some sound first. Let's go to our first bit of sound. Donald Trump talking about the recession or not recession. Let's play that.
BALDWIN: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm doing this whether it's good or bad for your statement about, oh, will we fall into a recession for two months, OK? The fact is somebody had to take China -- my life would be a lot easier if I didn't take China on. But I like doing it, because I have to do it. And we're getting great results.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CILLIZZA: There's part one. Now, part two, let's play this Trump on recession. You'll notice, Brooke, same background, same chair, same suit-and-tie combo from Donald Trump, because it's from the same day, yesterday. Let's play it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think the word "recession" is a word that's inappropriate. Because it's just a word that the -- certain people -- I'm going to be kind -- certain people in the media are trying to build up, because they'd love to see a recession. We're very far from a recession.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CILLIZZA: But you just said that -- OK. Also, let's add this in. Mick Mulvaney, White House chief of staff, is in Wyoming this week. This is what he had to say, fund-raising luncheon in Jackson, Wyoming. Mike Mulvaney acknowledged the risk: "If you were to face the recession, it would be moderate and short," Mulvaney told the audience. But I thought the recession wasn't.
OK, so as you can see, Donald Trump contradicting himself literally in the same press conference. And his chief of staff saying a recession would be moderate and short.
So there we are -- Brooke?
BALDWIN: Here we are as of 2:48:13 on Wednesday 8/21/19.
CILLIZZA: Synchronize your watches.
BALDWIN: And when things aren't going so great, the president tends to finger point, but then the targets for blame keep changing.
CILLIZZA: We know he does not like to blame himself. He will blame anyone else. Who he blames can change very rapidly.
What you're looking at here, August 21st, 5:32 a.m., draw your own conclusions. "The fake news, lame-stream media is doing everything possible to create a U.S. recession. They will be willing to hurt many people. That doesn't matter to them. Our economy is so strong."
Donald Trump, got it.
Now let's play this sound.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have such a strong economy. If the Fed did what they were supposed to do, they would drop interest rates by 100 basis points. They maybe would do, not only not tightening, but they'd do some loosening or leave it alone, do nothing. But they drop interest rates by 100 basis points or more. Nobody, nobody would be able to compete with the United States.
Right now, the Fed is tying our hands, because we're paying interest rates. And Germany and other countries that aren't like us are not. It should be the other way around.
The Fed has missed the call for a long time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CILLIZZA: Just to put this in a timeline, Brooke, the tweet is about seven hours from that clip you just saw, which is from Donald Trump's press conference today. Even within a day, even within a press conference, even within a matter of minutes, he can change whether we're in recession, potentially, whether we're not, who's to blame, who's not. He's making it up as he goes along.
[14:50:12] I think the two and a half years of his presidency are ample proof of that very theory.
BALDWIN: Wow.
Chris, I appreciate you pointing out all the twists and turns. CILLIZZA: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Thank you very much, Chris Cillizza.
We have to get to this. Parents and teachers outraged. They were kept in the dark about a video showing students giving this Nazi salute. See what happened at the school board meeting.
Plus, once again, the president is all over the place when it comes to guns, background checks. I'll talk to a father whose son survived that mass shooting at Parkland. And this father, I can tell, has had enough.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:56:10] BALDWIN: Parents and teachers in southern California's Garden Grove School District are outraged that administrators at Pacifica High did not tell them about this video at an off-campus awards banquet.
When you what this, it shows members of the school's water polo team giving the Nazi salute and singing a Nazi marching song.
The video was reported last November. It was shared on social media by a group of students. But four months would pass before school administrators actually found out about it and then quietly disciplined the students.
Parents called the school's lack of transparency, and I'm quoting, "simply horrifying."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED PARENT: Why did it take four months for the school administration to hear about this incident? Did the school board know about the incident at the same time as the school administrators? If so, why did it take five months for the rest of us to hear about it.
UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: We, as teachers, were not informed of this event by our administration or district leadership. We were completely blindsided and we feel outraged.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Sara Sidner is covering this for us. She's our CNN national correspondent.
And so what exactly has the school district said?
SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: that is now one of several videos that the school district now has.
Initially, they said the school had taken care of this when they learned of it about four months after that video was put out there in 2018. In 2019, they said, look, we took care of it, we disciplined the students, we talked to their parents. Then the district said yesterday, actually, the school did not take this as seriously as it needed to. And the district did not know about this video that now the whole world has seen. They only learned of the video after it was published. So that everyone in the community knew about it and certainly the nation now knows about it.
Now they are reopening an investigation into this, partly, because of this video, because they hadn't seen it, and because they have seen new videos, one of which I have seen, which shows -- appears to show two students at the school, walking around with a German flag, and marching like they're marching in the Third Reich.
When you look at this on its face, the students took the time to learn a Nazi marching song in German. And then they also decided it was OK to throw up their hands in a Nazi salute while at a school function. It was supposed to be one of their sports banquets.
They went into a separate room, according to the district, and did this unsupervised.
But there's a lot of kids gathered there. This wasn't done by one or two kids. This is at least a dozen kids that took part in this.
I want you to know there's one kid we see stand up and walk out of the area. He never does the salute. He leaves the area. And good on him if he was trying to get away from all that.
This has outraged the community, the teachers, the parents. None of them knew anything about this. They feel like the school let them all down. Clearly, something more needs to be done not only because of this video but because there are others coming out.
And the students we talked to, Brooke, say this has been a problem for a while now.
(CROSSTALK)
SIDNER: The students know this stuff is going on there that is completely unacceptable. And they're glad there's an actual investigation going on that is far wider than the one that was initially done in March of 2019 -- Brooke?
[15:00:04] BALDWIN: Makes so many questions about how they would learn about this song. So much. So much.
