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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Obama Calls For Business Tax Reform; Are Trump's And Cruz's Proposals Doing Harm To U.S. Foreign Policy?; Hillary Clinton Attends New York Governor's Wage Event; Trump Unveils Plan To Make Mexico Pay For Wall; Obama Says Trump's Mexico Wall Plan Is "Impractical"; Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland To Meet With Several Senators Today; New Religious Liberty Bill Passes In Mississippi. Aired 12:30- 1p ET

Aired April 05, 2016 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:02] ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that means the company is essentially paying a 35 percent tax rate. The U.S. has what's known as a worldwide corporate tax system, something that other countries don't have.

They have what's known as a territorial tax -- income tax system where if the company is headquartered in the other country, that company does not have to pay U.S. tax. And that is what is so appealing to so many companies. They want to get out of paying millions of dollars in taxes.

And here's the rub. It's legal. Did you know companies are legally not paying anywhere from 100 to $240 billion in taxes every year?

So this is what's really driving companies to move their headquarters overseas because those countries don't play by the same tax rules as us and they usually have lower tax rate, corporate tax rates than here in the U.S.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Legal, if you call it. One of the most ...

KOSIK: It is legal.

BANFIELD: ... insidious loophole.

Female: It is.

BANFIELD: We'll continue to watch what happens on that front. I want to also bring in Alison Kosik, thank you. Wolf Blitzer, the anchor and host of the Situation Room.

So Wolf, there was sort of a two-prong approach here. I'm sure that the president knew what questions he was going to get some kind of a question about the current campaign.

And one of those questions was specifically about how the current campaign is effecting foreign relations and what he deals with when he speaks with leaders overseas. And he did not hold back at all. He called Donald Trump's wall policy half baked. And he also said that also Ted Cruz's hurting foreign policy.

This White House has without questions doubled down and said we are not holding off on this anymore.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, remember the other day, the president also when he was talking at us on NATO summit, the nuclear summit here in Washington, he really went after Donald Trump basically saying he knows nothing about nuclear policy, foreign policy and knows nothing about Japan, What's going on there. And he says that, he really doesn't know much at all. He really went after Trump big time.

And today, he added Cruz to the equation, going after Cruz, as well, saying that Cruz's foreign policy, his trade policies, other initiatives that he's going forward would hurt the United States. At the same time, it was interesting, you make a good point, Ashleigh, that the president the other day was referring largely to Donald Trump.

And today he added Ted Cruz. I will say this, the decision to go forward with his new executive order on what's called this corporate inversion to try to prevent American companies from establishing some sort of tax based overseas, to avoid paying taxes to the IRS. To get the benefits of being in the United States without necessarily paying the taxes, a corporate loophole as the president says. You know who else has been talking about the corporate inversion now for months?

BANFIELD: Hillary Clinton. Yeah.

BLITZER: Well, not only Hillary Clinton but Donald Trump has been mentioning it over and over and over again saying that if he were president he would deal with the issue of corporate inversion, as well.

It's a fancy term for big corporations setting up some sort of so- called headquarters in another country to avoid paying taxes as Alison just pointed out here on our show.

But this is an issue that Trump has been pushing now for a long time, as well. Do a check of Trump and corporate inversion. You'll see he speaks out about it a lot of time. He always said something is very complicated, hard to understand. But he says he would deal with this issue if he were elected president.

Interesting today the current president of the United States, he is dealing with this issue in the White House statement. He also points out, the White House points out. The president is trying to get congress to deal legislatively with this issue of corporate inversion after three budgets in a row. But that has not passed.

He is urging congress to take action on it right now. So this is an important issue for U.S. business, important issue for congress. Let's see if the president can get it done.

BANFIELD: So Wolf.

BLITZER: ... at least on an executive order basis, he could take some steps together with the Department of Treasury.

BANFIELD: Yeah, and that was my question. You can't rule completely (inaudible). But he can circumvent the congressional deadlock on this just through executive order. Will there be all sorts of challenges to that?

BLITZER: Well, he can take some steps. The president has a lot of authority according to the constitution with executive orders, executive action as it's called. And the president, clearly the lawyers, the Department of Treasury they've gone through. And said he could take this action today.

Let's see if it holds up. But the president, as you know, he is taking executive orders over the past year and several issues that the courts have suggested may not necessarily be constitutional.

So including allowing some undocumented immigrants to stay here in the United States, that's on hold for the time being as the courts consider it and eventually will go up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So it's a -- these are all sensitive issues. Whenever the president takes executive action on these kinds of issues, the good thing from the president's perspective is he can do it. The next president can undo it on day one if he or she decides to do that. So executive action, as supposed to legislative action, laws that are signed by the president after both houses of congress passed that legislation. That's much more difficult to undo. Executive orders make it undo them if they want.

BANFIELD: All right, Wolf Blitzer, thank you for that. I know you're coming up in about 26 minutes with your program. I know you'll dedicate there a bit to this as well. Wolf Blitzer, thank you, and Alison Kosik, my thank you to you as well.

[12:35:09] Coming up, we just heard the president say things like we're not going to track every western union transaction. That's of course in response to Donald Trump's plan to get Mexico to pay for the wall between our two countries by threatening to pay -- to cut off all of those remittance payments that families in the U.S. send to their families in Mexico. He says it is legal. And he cites the U.S. Patriot Act.

But what about the challenges of that? What about the fallout?

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Our breaking news coming to us as Donald Trump fights for some last-minute votes in today's Wisconsin primary, the GOP front runner is now elaborating on how he would force the Mexican government to pay for that big proposed border wall that he mentions almost every single speech on the campaign trail.

Brand new memo out today saying that he would threaten to cut off the billions and billions of dollars that immigrants here in the United States send home to Mexico on a regular basis. The president was asked exactly about these just moments ago.

[12:40:04] Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think that I have been very clear earlier that I'm getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made. I do have to emphasize that it's not just Mr. Trump's proposals. I mean you are also hearing concerns about Mr. Cruz's proposals which in some ways just as draconian when it comes to immigration for example.

The implications with respect to ending remittances, as many of why by the way are from illegal immigrants and from individuals who are sending money back to their families are enormous.

First of all, they are impractical. We just talked about the difficulties of trying to enforce huge outflows of capital. The notion that we're going to track every western union, you know, bit of money that's being sent to Mexico, you know, good luck with that. Then we got the issue of the implications for the Mexican economy, which in turn if it is collapsing actually sends more immigrants north because they can't find jobs back in Mexico. But this is just one more example of something that is not thought through and is primarily put forward for political consumption.

And as I have tried to emphasize throughout, we got serious problems here. We got big issues around the world. People expect the president of the United States and the elected officials in this country to treat these problems seriously to put forth policies that have been examined, analyzed are effective, where unintended consequences are taken in to account. They don't expect half-baked notions coming out of the White House. We can't afford that. All right? Thanks you, guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Well, I'm sure that's going to land pretty hard of the campaign trail.

That's what Jim Acosta is standing live right now live in Wisconsin. And also Attorney and CNN Opinion Writer, Raul Reyes is with us, as well.

Jim, first to you with the fallout, half-bake, unintended consequences, one of the wackier suggestions, these are very strident words from the White House. They're probably going to be dealt with somehow by folks on the campaign trail today.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think this was a pretty crafty move on the part of the Trump campaign. Are we talking about any of the messes that Donald Trump has had over the last several days?

No, we're not. We're now talking about this, a wall proposal that he is putting out, you know. People have been asking for months how are you going to force Mexico to pay for this wall on the boarder. And so now he's done it and with the White House, you're hearing the White House come out and talk about this, the President come out and talk about this, you know, he is going to be the surrogate in chief presumably for Hillary Clinton if it works out for her later on this fall. So the President is not going to be bashful in terms of coming out and slamming Donald Trump's proposals.

But it works for Donald Trump, Ashleigh, I will tell you when Vicente Fox, the former Mexican President came out a couple of months ago slamming Donald Trump saying Mexico is not going to pay for that and used an expletive wall. You know, that worked really well out on the stump for Donald Trump. He had a lot of people, you know, tearing up the furniture, you know, when they heard those comments at his rallies. They rally just ate it up. And so, if he is going to have the president going after him today, I would think presumably that's just going to work just as well, you know, in this primary.

And I could tell you Ashleigh, just going to these campaign events, not only here in Wisconsin but just all over the country, you know, that wall proposal for Donald Trump, even though, you know, he gets a lot of criticism inside the beltway and up and down the Acela corridor, I will tell you, it is the biggest applause line Donald Trump has on the campaign trail.

BANFIELD: Yeah, very popular for him among his supporters. Jim Acosta, thank you.

So what about the unintended consequence, again, and the practicality and the legality of all of it?

Raul, jump in on this if you would because Donald Trump says he would use provisions in the U.S. Patriot Act and the anti-terror laws to be able to put a halt to outgoing money. We're talking about $25 billion, roughly $25 billion that Mexican immigrants both documented and undocumented send out of this country every year. Some to Mexico, some not to Mexico, but take it from there and just walk me through the practicality of it.

RAUL REYES, CNN OPINION WRITER: Right, when we look at the practical effects it becomes very complicated because let's put aside all the Trump rhetoric and bombast. What he is proposing, he is called for an 80-foot wall on a southern boarder, that's 1,000 miles. And just for comparison purposes the Great Wall of China was 20 feet tall. The Berlin Wall I think was 12 feet tall. So this is an enormous undertaking. Just the physical construct of doing this wall would be up there like up there with the Eisenhower program to revitalize our highways.

[12:45:00] BANFIELD: Yeah, it's about 8 billion he wants to Mexico.

REYES: Right, it's a huge undertaking.

BANFIELD: Open the floodgates of those transactions of western union.

REYES: Right. Now, the way he says we can do that is to go to Section 326 of the Patriot Act and insert a provision that says all remittances must be made by people with lawful presence. And then also another provision which would allow the government to in effect confiscate these remittances in order to fund the wall.

The problem with this is two fold. One is our global banking and money exchange system is so global. It's so complicated that where he put this -- to put this in effect, it would also effect other countries which rank ahead of Mexico in terms of the outgoing remittances from the U.S., namely China, the Philippines and India.

BANFIELD: He refer about the money that Mexican immigrants send to their country?

REYES: Yes, and it's absolutely necessary to Mexican economy because remember, Mexico doesn't really have a social service program, social safety net like we do when it comes to social security, Medicare and things like that.

So Mexican -- Mexico's economy depends on this money and is a segment of Mexican population that absolutely needs this money to survive. It's a time-honored tradition that people of United States and overseas send money back to Mexico.

Now, the problem even if Trump were able to put these provisions through, there would almost certainly be a legal challenge and even as that went on, congress would still have to apportion the money to allow the wall to be built. So these are two huge hurdles he has to get through before the wall could even be built.

And meanwhile, Mexico is our second largest export market. Mexico is our third largest trading partner. So I'm sure that we would be push back from the Mexican government. The only option I see that he could possibly do something much simpler is to impose some tax on boarder crossing and boarder fees. But then Mexico would likely do something back to us because Mexico is the number one destination.

BANFIELD: No one said it wouldn't be complicated.

REYES: Yeah.

BANFIELD: But it is fascinating because of the rhetoric that comes out of it.

Raul Reyes, as always, thank you so much ...

REYES: Thank you.

BANFIELD: We're following some breaking news as well, moments ago, the governor of Mississippi has signed in to law a controversial proposal that critics say allows discrimination against the LGBT community. We're going to bring you an updated to that story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: A rare move by some senate Republicans. They are meeting with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. If he makes his courtesy calls all around Capitol Hill.

Yeah, they are having a meeting. Garland is also -- got a breakfast invitation from Republican Senator, Chuck Grassley, apparently, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he plans to have a chat with Garland at a later date to explain why the senate does not want to consider a nominee anytime soon.

It's been a lot of political rhetoric but one of the Republican lawmakers sitting down with Merrick Garland today is the senior senator from Maine. Also happens to be a Republican, Susan Collins just met with the nominee and she joins me now. Senator, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

So I'm a little confused as to why you'll have the meeting when I assume that you along with your Republican colleagues have no intention of confirming Merrick Garland.

[12:50:09] SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, (R) MAINE: My position Ashleigh is that we should follow the normal order. Having sit down with the nominee, as I did today for more than an hour, to explore the issues is the first step. I then have called for the judiciary committee to hold hearings on the nominee. That's the normal second step and the meeting that he had today confirmed my belief that we should proceed to hearings.

BANFIELD: Do you think he's the right choice? Then would you confirm him?

COLLINS: Well, it's a premature for me to decide whether or not would vote for him. I never make that decision on a Supreme Court nominee until the public hearings have been held because you never know what's going to happen at the hearings. Usually those hearings cover several days. You have many senators who are posing questions, and you learn a lot more about the nominee.

I learned enough today to be impressed with Judge Garland and to believe that we should proceed to that next step, but I've been calling for the normal process for some time.

BANFIELD: So there are eight colleagues you included who have agreed to have these meeting, Republican senators like yourself, but two of these Republican senators who originally expressed interest in meeting with Merrick Garland have backed out of that notion saying that they wouldn't confirm him in a hearing. Why did that happen? Why would they come out on the record previously and said "We are good with the meeting. We are open to the process and then snatch that back?

COLLINS: I don't know. I really can't speak for my colleagues. You will have to pose that question to them. All I can say is it has been my experience that the Senate usually operates best when we follow the normal order whether it's with legislation or treaties or nominations.

BANFIELD: Yeah. There has been quite a Democratic -- coming from the White House lobby push to try to wrangle senators who are intransigent about this idea by suggesting to their constituents that this could be, you know, a lynch pin in an election that could oust him out from office. But is that not strong enough to say for hearings that actually could result in a justice being confirmed? Or just the hearing alone it seems like a bit of a fool's errand to me.

COLLINS: Well, I guess I don't understand why you think hearings would be a full hearing ...

BANFIELD: When it's they complaint, they all said no intention of confirming him any way. I'm just going through the emotions of the process.

COLLINS: Hearings that allow senators to understand a nominee's viewpoint, qualifications, experience, respect for the law and fidelity to the constitution. I think that is very valuable and that is the next step in the process. What you're asking me to do is to predict the ultimate step and I can't do that prior to hearings. I do think hearings would be valuable and I believe that Judge Garland, based on the meeting I had with him today, would perform very well in those hearings. I found him to be thoughtful, intelligent and I found that he answered every single question that I posed to him, including some tough ones.

BANFIELD: Senator Collins, I appreciate you being so candid, thoughtful and intelligent. Those are strong words I haven't heard from your Republican colleagues who're weighing in on this. Thank you very much. And I look forward to our next outing together.

COLLINS: Thank you.

BANFIELD: We are also following breaking news out of Mississippi where that's state governor has sign into law a controversial proposal. The critics say allows discrimination between gays, lesbians and more.

[12:55:47] Latest on this hot button issue next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Just moments ago, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a controversial bill that impacts the LGBT community there. It's the religious freedom bill. And it would seemingly make it easier to discriminate against gender and sexual minorities in that state.

Meanwhile, pressure is growing in North Carolina to change a similar law that requires transgender people to use public restrooms that corresponds to the sex that's listed on their birth certificate. I want to bring in Candis Cayne, she's a transgender woman, an actress and an activist who's on the show. I am Cait reality series starring Caitlyn Jenner.

Candis, thank so much for being on the program. Just your reaction to this kind of legislation that so intimately involves your life, the kind of things we never think of, just walking into the bathroom.

CANDIS CAYNE, ACTRESS: Yeah. I mean, to me, it's really difficult. I know people get scared over this issue. You know, I really feel like it's a total invasion, first of all, of everyone's privacy and it doesn't just affect trans people. It affects the whole community and it affects everyone. I mean, Right now it is scary to think your wife or your husband or your daughter or child could actually be checked every time they want to use a public restroom. It is a scary thought. You know?

BANFIELD: So Candis, they've been some language that's been used among those who are critical of the freedoms that you're seeking in this protection that you are seeking. And some of the language has been fairly vitriolic. But at the same time those who support this kind of legislation say the language doesn't apply let say to the trans person. It would apply to say the person who exploits the law to do nefarious things, for instance, a man who simply wants to go in to a locker room or bathroom of a woman to commit a crime. Can we understand at least that area of the reason for the legislation?

CAYNE: Well, you know, it's hard to understand. It's just not true. There's been no cases of that being proven. What is true is that it makes it more dangerous to have this law because then you start to check people as they go in to bathrooms. I mean, it's kind of its interesting because in 32 states there are no laws that protect the LGBT community. I can be at, you know, work and somebody can turn me in as being a trans person and I can be fired just for that. These aren't laws to get it, you know, to help us get special protection. It's just laws to make us equal in the eyes of the government. You know?

BANFIELD: So can I ask you, if you were to travel to North Carolina and I don't know if you have reason to or spend any time there at all, effectively this law would tell you that you have to use the men's bathroom. Can you sort of walk me through what that feels like and what's the reaction to you in there is from the mens who are in there.

CAYNE: Well, I don't know. I've never been in to a men's room. Not for at least 30 years. So, what I do know is that it will stop people from being comfortable in society. It will stop people from wanting to leave their house because going to the bathroom is a natural function. You leave your house every day. You want to go shopping. You want to go to the post office, but if you have to go to the bathroom along the way you are not allowed to. It is a bill that is kind of making people in my community have to stay home. Have to not be a part of our society.

BANFIELD: Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sort of weigh in on this and give us a personal perspective. I think sometimes people forget there are faces behind the legislation. So I appreciate your time. Candis Cayne, thank you.

CAYNE: Thank you so much.

BANFIELD: And thank you, everyone for watching. Well, I'm going to turn the mic over to my colleague Wolf Blitzer who's standing by. He's program starts right now.

[13:00:12] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer it's new in Madison, Wisconsin.