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tv   Inside Politics  CNN  June 20, 2018 9:00am-10:00am PDT

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you'll be able to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. and there are no referrals needed. so don't wait. call unitedhealthcare now to request your free [decision guide.] this easy-to-understand guide will answer some of your questions.... and help you find the aarp medicare supplement plan that's right for you. welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing this day with us. major breaking news happening right now at the white house. the president in the oval office with reporters, telling them he will soon sign an order ending his administration's border policy. that policy, of course, controversial that separates families. we do not know yet the exact details of the order. we're waiting for the tape of the president meeting with reporters. republicans hope the president's
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decision to bypass congress will end the growing political nightmare for the republican party, and they hope quiet down what has become a global controversy. we'll go to phil mattingly in just a moment. joining me now is my panel. caitlin, we need to see the details and exactly what the president says he's doing. but this is a major retreat from a president who does not like to admit i was wrong in the face. pope francis criticized him today, the canadian and british prime ministers, more importantly here in the realm of domestic politics, republicans are in a panic, think thing is going to be a nightmare in the midterms. a big retreat. why? >> certainly a reversal. if he does sign something which does do this, which is all still up in the air, we have no idea what that's going to look like or when he's going to sign something. people on capitol hill are just as surprised by this as we are. they have not heard anything
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from the white house and found out about it through tweets. if the president does do this, he's going back on everything he has said for the last few days and had his officials say and his dhs secretary that this is a problem for congress, that it's not their policy, a policy that they can reverse. and now the president saying he's going to sign something to end separation of families on the border. that is in direct result to something the president did, that zero tolerance immigration policy that led to this. so it would be a big reversal for the president, him backing off doing what democrats and republicans alike have called on him to do for several days. and you wonder why now, because he did not have this idea in mind last night when he was meeting with house republicans behind closed doors. he told them then this is a situation for you to fix, not me. >> you guys are being i think maybe diplomatic saying it's a retreat or reversal. he's caving. he's caving in the face of very, very real political pressure, and that political pressure born
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out of genuine outrage, that this kind of situation is happening in the united states of america. that you have children, that you have babies being taken away from their parents, because a policy that up until i guess maybe now, the trump administration denied was a new policy, but it is a new policy. and we're waiting to get some details. but it sounds as though what they're trying to do with whatever this executive action is, is try to get over what the administration says has been the biggest challenge to keeping families together, which is a court decision, known as the flores decision, which allows for -- sorry, not allows for, which requires children to not be with their parents after 20 days. excuse me, that children -- >> can't detain children for more than 20 days. >> thank you. so what the president is going to try to do is somehow override
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that with executive action. so look, you know, kudos to him if he does in fact do this, to getting it. but it really flies in the face of the comments, day after day, that we've seen that this is not possible, a. >> steven midefended by the jus department throughout the entire controversy, the president has blamed democrats. he's going to sign a piece of paper that essentially says, and he'll never say the words, i was wrong. let's see what he signs first. >> remember, just a week ago, this was a president who wanted to tell the world he had reached an agreement to denuclearize the korean peninsula without sharing the details. at that time, the plan was not to share anything until he left korea. so we'll see what he signs first. like you said, this is not only a policy that has been repeated
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and underscored by his entire white house and entire administration, but we've seen several reports saying that this was a political stunt for the midterms. so if he pulls back on the policy, this has wide ranging implications and is going to create a lot more questions than answers. >> create questions about policy. we need to read everything and hook where the semi colons are. they're hoping congress jumps in with a solution. but the fact that the president went to capitol hill last night and essentially, my words, not his, sure, i created this mess, but you have to clean it up. that was just last night, in a room full of republicans who will tell cameras that i'm getting hammered back home. that my pollster tells me i might lose my race. so something got to the president to say, okay, my party has a problem here. i need to stop this. >> i would be curious to know between 6:00 p.m. last night and
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today, because he seemed emphatic about this. secretary nielsen seems to have changed her view, too. she's already written up an order to do something and made sure the press knows about it. so she at least has changed her view and is no longer defending this policy. >> one of the things that might have changed, i'm sure it's more than one factor, but what we've seen are republican governors, and some democrats, but this is key, republican governors like in maryland, taking back their decision to send national guard troops to the border. so the strategy there, the immigration strategy became quickly harder to implement, thanks to the outrage about this policy, because of republican governors saying we're not playing this game. >> excellent point, because this president is in a very unfamiliar position. in his experience, he has won these political arguments on immigration. he believes it's why he was the
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republican nominee. larry hogan, moderate republican, governor of maryland, says i'm pulling my national guard troops. then a conservative governor of wisconsin to the department of homeland security. all running for re-election. welcome to the midterm election here. that is a very important point. the republican party yy revolt. this week the party stood up to the president, in part because of their own survival. >> two things to consider are the optics. it wasn't the images of these children that has caused the president to now do something and sign something. those have been played out for days and he's not backed down. so the political pressure that has gotten to the president, so he is caving and will sign something. if he does sign something, it's important to keep in mind what he says. i guarantee he'll blame this on the democrats and congress, so he had to fix it.
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to be clear, this is a mess of the president's own making. he is fixing something he created, not democrats, not republicans, not congress. >> i think it is a combination of the two. i know the pictures have been playing out, but if anyone understands the visceral reaction to pictures of children, i think when you add that, the pressure from within the party -- >> no question. and inside the administration, whether it's the white house or the department of homeland security, they complain, they say the media is overplaying this, the media is hyping this too much. they say the democrats are playing politics with immigration. interesting to hear the trump administration to say that. welcome to the election year. but listen, to understand the president is retreating here. he's caving, as dana says. listen to the president. this is just yesterday. the same arguments were being made. mr. president, do something with your executive powers. stop this, help your party and help these children. the president was defiant saying
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no, i'm right. >> they send these people up, and they're not sending their finest. does that sound familiar? remember i made that speech and i was badly criticized. so terrible what he said. turned out i was 100% right. that's why i got elected. >> that's why he did this. they implemented the policy, even though they were told this would be controversial. he trust his gut on this, and today he is flipping. >> yeah, it's striking that video, because he pushed back on that speech. for so long, for so many months, said that the media was taking that speech out of context, and you had to read the whole hour and a half long to understand the point. now here he is, when he thinks he's right, saying essentially what he said was true all along, and when he felt like he was winning. now when he's getting -- when he's getting pushback from within the party, when there's a couple of votes, on the house
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floor tomorrow, the outcome is in major doubt, a couple months away from the midterms here, you know, we're seeing some cave here. >> and to the point of caving, one of the conversations today is, stand alone legislation to give the administration the authority to detain the families. right now, as dana noted, the flores decision, which goes back to the clinton administration, says you cannot keep children in custody for more than 20 days. therefore, the argument has opinion you have to separate them. if you want to keep the parents in custody while awaiting trial for illegally crossing the border, you have to separate them. but last night, the president went to capitol hill and said no, deal with this in a big package that gives me my wall funding. see what you can get through the congress. this is the house speaker paul ryan just a short time ago. clearly the president shifted quickly. >> we don't think families should be separated, period. but we've seen the videos, heard the audio. he asked us to pass this
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legislation, which stops this policy for good. >> this legislation. but last night it was sweeping legislation. this morning, we're told we're going to get an executive action. we'll hear from the president momentarily. republican senators also at the white house. number two, word is there will be some stand alone legislation. again, something this president of the united states, a man whose trademark is stubbornness, is caving again. >> yes. and look, last night was -- i was up on capitol hill. i think it was pretty much a bust, and we can talk about that later, since we have this breaking news. but i think the question is whether it really is even possible for congress to pass a stop gap measure, to pass legislation that just deals with this issue of separating children, because even if the president deals with the flores issue, the court issue through executive action, there still is going to be an outcry to do it
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by statute. and the democrats, who have said that the president should do what he's doing now. chuck schumer said, we're not doing anything, because the president could just sign something. guess what? it seems as though he was right. i'm sure we're going to get an "i told you so" from chuck schumer. but the question is whether the democrats will play their hands, because they need to play ball to deal with this issue legislatively and it's an open question whether they will. >> i'll be curious to hear how he explains the policy. they believe this kind of policy is a deterrent. i'll be curious to see where they go from here, because folding on this issue also means oh, what do we do next? the whole point is to be really draconian, to prevent team frlt from coming to the country in the first place. >> how they explain it will be
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critical. we're waiting to hear from the president of the united states, who is explaining this major decision to retreat on this controversial border policy to reporters. we'll bring you the tape as soon as we can and live reaction from capitol hill. stay with us. "inside politics" will be right back. [music playing] (vo) from day one,
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we always came through for our customers. it's how we earned your trust. until... we lost it. today, we're renewing our commitment to you. fixing what went wrong. and ending product sales goals for branch bankers. so we can focus on your satisfaction. it's a new day at wells fargo. but it's a lot like our first day. wells fargo. established 1852. re-established 2018. welcome back. major breaking news this hour. the president of the united states retreating from that controversial trump administration immigration policy that separates parents from their children when they areapprehended illegally
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crossing the border. the president confirming he will sign an executive order, accusing the media of having a double standard, saying things were just as bad in the obama administration. we'll bring you the president's remarks as soon as we can. this is welcome relief for republicans on capitol hill, who have been urging the president, citing their poll numbers and midterm election chances to reverse this controversial policy. phil mattingly is live right now. phil, seems to be the speaker this morning didn't seem to know about this when he spoke publicly. what is the administration telling key members of the party? >> to give you a window into the last hour, when fox news broke the possibility this would happen, i got a text message from a senior republican with a link to the story that said, do you know anything more about this? and please tell me this is true. it underscores two key points. the hill was not clued in until just a short time ago, a. and b, they wanted some type of
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escape hatch from the administration from a policy that the administration unilaterally administered itself. what i'm being told right now is the white house has started communicating to republican offices the broad details of what this would be. you talked about it in terms of the flores consent decree, trying to find some way around it. while it would not reverse the policy, it would allow the families to stay together through criminal proceedings. whether this would stand up in court, i don't know the answers to that. there's a lot of things in the details that are going to be important when it happens. you mentioned a key point here. as of last night, the president was steadfast, that he was sticking with this policy. as of this morning, house and senate republicans were clearly under the impression that was also going to be the case. the speaker talking about the house votes -- as of now, they still don't have the votes for proposals. republicans trying a more targeted approach. there's no clear pathway out of either of those proposals, with
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the understanding the administration was not going to help them out. that appears to have shifted. there was no clear legislative pathway going forward on the hill. you had republicans, senior senate republicans calling for a freeze in the zero tolerance policy. i've been told by several republican lawmakers and aides there offices have been inundated with phone calls of people outraged with the policy. now we see it appears the white house will provide the answer, at least to some degree, john. >> phil, stay with us. we're about to hear from the president. we'll play the tape of his meeting with reporters. among the reporters there was abby phillip. abby, a major retreat from the president. >> reporter: the president kept talking about democrats, but also acknowledged that the images were having an effect. he talked about the dilemma he faced, that's his word, saying that he could either be tough and look like he had no heart,
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or he could be weak and look like he had compassion for these families. but he did confirm that he's going to be signing some kind of executive order that would keep families together. the implication in the room was that this would mean the families would be held in some kind of form of detention near the border, while their immigration status is being adjudicated. but we don't have any details. the president made it clear that he's still waiting for congress to act on this, and he also had a lot to say about past administrations. he said he felt like there was a double standard being applied to him, that in the past administrations -- >> abby, i need to interrupt you. let's listen to the president of the united states. >> two stops, one a very big one, and it will be a lot of fun. we're meeting right now on immigration, and we are very strong at the word border and v
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strong on security. we want security for our country. the republicans want security, and insist on security for our country. and we will have that at the same time we have compassion, we want to keep families together. it's very important. i'll be signing something in a little while that's going to do that. and the people in this room want to do that, and they're working on various piecing of legislation to get it done. but i'll be doing something that is somewhat preemptive, but ultimately we'll be met with some legislation, i'm sure. we're having a lot of problems with democrats. they don't care about lack of security. they would like to have open borders where anybody in the world can just flow in, including from the middle east, from anybody, anywhere, they can just flow into our country. tremendous problems with that. tremendous crime caused by that. we're just not going to do it. i do want to say that because we're all so busy, and i just mentioned to the congressman and the senators in the room, that
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we are going to cancel and postpone tomorrow's congressional picnic. we have a congressional picnic tomorrow, and i was just walking over to the oval office and i said, you know, it doesn't feel right to have a picnic for congress when we're working on doing something very important. we have many things that are important. we're talking about trade and many, many things. it didn't feel exactly right to me. so we will be officially postponing the congressional picnic for tomorrow. we'll make it another time when things are going extremely well. and they are going for the country extremely well. we have record setting numbers in every way economically. but we want to solve this immigration problem, which has been going on for 20 years or more. it's been going on forever. and we want to see if we can solve it. so we are canceling or postponing the congressional picnic tomorrow. would anybody in the room have any question or statement that you would like to make while the press is here?
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anybody? anybody? >> i'll say one thing, mr. president, on the issue of immigration, trade, investment, these are all areas where congress has a lot of authority under the constitution and you have the authority, the executive branch has authority under the constitution. i think that's why meetings like this are really important, bringing the leadership on both sides together. so appreciate the opportunity to let you see our views, hear our views on these issues where we share authority on important matters. thank you. >> and we all very much have the same views. we want to keep family together, but we want to be strong on the border. otherwise, you'll have millions of people coming up, not thousands, but millions overtaking the country and we're not letting that happen. so we have to be very strong on the border. but at the same time, we want to be very compassionate. yes, lamar? >> mr. president, thanks for having us. i think what dan said was good.
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we really have -- on the issues, on trade, immigration, we have a partnership under the constitution. we have some authority, the president has some authority. we need to work together. i was thinking this morning when we look at president nixon's portrait in the white house, we think that he did the unexpected when he went to china, because he could do that. he was in a position to do that. president reagan did the unexpected, he went to the berlin wall and moscow. when we were here a year ago, i think i suggested to you that immigration, which has bedeviled us for 40 years, i believe you can -- you're the president who can help us solve immigration problem with your leadership. you may be able to do for immigration what nixon did for china and reagan did for the soviet union. a lot of us would like to work with you on that. >> thank you very much. we need the democrats' support, because we need their votes. it's simple. people say we have a majority. well, we have a one majority in
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the senate. we need 60, unfortunately, we don't go with the majority. we go with 60. that's the way it is. we need 60 votes. we have 51 votes at the most. so we need democrat votes in order to do it. otherwise you can't do it. tom, you were going to say something? >> i think it's very important that we protect our border. we cannot allow a child to be a get out of free card and get into the u.s. free ticket. but as we've all said, we would like to keep families together at the border for the orderly and timely processing of the adult's immigration claim. if it's a lawful claim, we can admit them into the country. if not, they have to go back to their home country. we're working on legislation that will allow our border patrol agents to keep families together at the border while we process their claims. >> you bring up something i have to say, our border patrol agents and i.c.e. agents have done one
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great job. ms-13 comes into the country, we're liberating towns in long island and other places. we're throwing them out by the thousands, but we need laws that don't allow them to come back in. mack, do you have anything to say? >> well, mr. president, there are a number of issues that we're going to be able to discuss today that touch on our country's national security. and certainly controlling who and what comes across our border is an element of national security, as we do the compassionate thing with families. and i look forward to working with you, to further strengthen our military. together, we have turned around a declining situation, but that's also part of what we need to do together. back to lamar's point, we both have responsibilities. we can do more together. >> i will say, with all of the numbers that you see, if we weren't strong on the border,
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you have have hundreds of thousands pouring through the border. they would be pouring through and the country would not be the country anymore. lindsey? >> we've got a big massive mess that's been going on for decades, and we're all going to fix it one day, i hope. we have a specific problem that puts the country in a dilemma. here's your dilemma, our dilemma, if a family shows up at the border, and we let the family go into the country and say please come back for your hearing, about 80% of the time the adults never show up for the hearing. i think most americans feel like that is bad. and it will create a third wave of illegal immigration. i want to be fair to the people who came here under the old system, but i don't want to create a third wave. the other choice is, if you detain the parents who broke the law under the flores decision, you have to break the family up. so there's a 1997 supreme court
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case we would to deal with. so i would urge my democratic friends to find a way to keep families together, have a legislative fix of the flores decision and argue about the other things later. right now, you're in a real bind, mr. president. if you detain the adults, the law requires the children to be separated. if you let the adults into the country, they never show up. it seems to me that we want to keep the family together and have the parents show up for their day in court. to senator schumer, i know there's a lot we don't agree on, but surely to goodness we can fix this court decision, because the country is in a bad spot, not just you. >> lindsey, the dilemma is that if you're weak, if you're weak, which some people would like you to be, if you're really, really pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people. and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. that's a tough dilemma.
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perhaps i would rather with stro strong, but that's a tough dilemma. >> at homeland security, we've held 30 hearings on border security. senator graham mentioned that we have these incentives. there's nothing compassionate about enticing tepeople to take this journey. we've seen pictures of dead bodies in the desert. there's nothing compassionate about that. here's what has happened since 2012. prior to that, somewhere between 3,000, 4,000 unaccompanied children came into this country. then daca was instituted in 2012, and that problem skyrocketed. the numbers on it, about 225,000 incoming children from central america, about -- almost half a million family members. so we've got another 750,000 individuals, very sympathetic,
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and we have to stop those incentives. the goal of our policy should be to reduce the flow of people coming into this country. that's what strong enforcement actually does. >> so just so everybody knows, this deal was just about done. we had a deal signed. president obama signed daca. when he signed it, he said i'm really not allowed to sign it, i'm going to sign it any way. but he said, i'm not allowed to sign this, never going to hold up. and they got a judge, who held it up and another one who held it up. then we have a couple that turned it down, and it's going to be a supreme court issue. but before it was held up, everyone assumed that the daca would not be held up, and we had a deal with the democrats. it was a deal that everybody agreed to. it was $25 billion, we're going to build a wall, take care of many, many different things, including loopholes. it was all done, except when this judge ruled in favor of daca, meaning that it could continue until we get to the
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supreme court, all of a sudden they weren't there anymore. and that's what happened. and that's why we near this mess, because we had a couple of court decisions, which is going to force an issue to the supreme court that should. be forced to the supreme court. yes, john? >> thanks for inviting us up on these important issues and for having this discussion. certainly on immigration, but also on trade. the context that i want to make sure we talk about is, we've made incredible progress on tax relief and on regulatory relief. and it's reflected in our economy. now, if we can do the same thing on trade, think what that means for our country, in terms of economic growth, in terms of jobs, in terms of getting wages moving higher, and the impact that has for all americans. so we have to look at nit that context. we talk about trade, it's on top of tax relief, regulatory relief, and now if we can get the right policies in place on
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trade, think what that means for our country. >> we're doing very well on trade, i will say. we've been really hurt as a country on trade for many years, despite bad trade deals, we're doing very well. now we're making very good trade deals. you'll be seeing that. they will be announced pretty rapidly. we already have a couple that are made. and honestly, we need people coming into our country, we have a lot of companies coming into our country. chrysler just announced. we have fox con going up to wisconsin, they make laptops and the apple iphone and unbelievable company. we need people. we need people that work for these companies, because they're coming in at a number nobody thought possible. so we want people to come into our country, but i think i can speak for everybody at the table, we want them to come in based on merit. we want great people that will be great for our country.
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and we want them to come in based on merit. we're going to need those people because we have so many people coming to our country. john? >> america is the most generous country in the world when it comes to legal immigration. we need to draw a clear line of legal immigration which benefits our country and illegal immigration. i want to make the point about being able to enforce the law and keep families together. it's not a mutually exclusive choice. we can do both. and i'm confident we will achieve that goal. but i just want to point out that coming from a border state like mack and i do, the borders -- the illegality along the boarder is a complex problem, because it is, as somebody pointed out, it's commodity ago no, sir nostic. it's people, drugs, weapons.
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you talk about an opioid crisis. it's heroine that comes from mexico. we need law and order along the border. we need to be compassionate the way we handle these families, but it's important to remember that larger context, because the cartels and criminal organizations that benefit from this, they just are making a lot of money and keep thing situation very dangerous for everybody involved. >> and john, in many ways they're using their children and always they're using the children as a ticket to getting into the country. we have to remember that. there's a number of the 12,000 children, 2,000 are with the parents, and 10,000 came up with some really horrible people in some cases. you have the coyotes, you have the traffickers, the human traffickers. not only drug traffickers, but the human traffickers. they use these children as passports to get into the country. so we have to work on that, too. it's a very complex issue.
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it's been going on for many, many years, many, many decades. but we're going to solve that along with a lot of other problems that we've already solved. we're doing well at solving problems. when i became president, we had north korea, we had the iran deal, which was no good. we had lots of problems with trade and bad trade deals. a lot of things that we solved and are solving. that in theory i shouldn't have had to solve. these are things that should have been solved for a long time. even on trade. we should have never allow eed our past leaders should have never allowed china to have a $500 billion trade deficit with the united states. when they went up, we should have gone up. we should have gone up together. not we allowed one to get so far ahead. that includes the european union and many others. shouldn't have happened. so we came at a time when there were plenty of problems to solve. one of the big problems is
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immigration. i hope that -- i mean beyond just one problem of immigration. you can mention the word comprehensive or you don't have to use it. a lot of politicians don't like the word comprehensive immigration reform. but i think we have an opportunity to do the whole immigration picture, and that's what i'm looking to do ultimately. but we want to fix this problem. does anybody else -- david, do you want to say something? >> mr. president, the last year and a half has shown an absolute turn around in this economy. we were faced with eight years of 1.9% economic growth. we focused on regulation, energy, taxes. this year we put a dodd frank bill, and what this administration has done is freed up $6 trillion to go back into this economy. this is real job. 3.5 million new jobs. this economy is moving. the rest of the world is paying attention.
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nato has doubled their investment in terms of their military spends. we have a new free trade agreement with korea. we're heading in the right direction. i just hope we can focus on the priorities right now within this trade equation to get equal access. it's not right when ali baba can do cloud computing and google can't do it in china. we've reduced global poverty by 2/3 in the last 40 years and poverty in the united states has remained flat and this is moving to change that. >> john, i appreciate the fact that you call attention to what's really happening now with the economy. due to two things -- the tax bill and the regulations. you know, we were killing people with regulations. but what hasn't been said around this table, and i'm surprised, the biggest accomplishment from your administration is what you've done with the military. you succeeded a president that had a policy who said you can't
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do anything unless you do it with the nondefense, and we changed that. we had to vote for a lousy budget bill to do it, but nonetheless, it is change, and we are now rebuilding our military. >> military is really incredible. we're ordering new planes, new ships, all jobs, too. jobs i would say in this case is a far second. but we're going to have a military like we've never had before, and it's great. $700 million approved. and in this budget, $6 billion for open yoeioid. mike pence, did you have something to say? >> thank you, mr. president. i know i speak for the president when i prexpress the gratitude r the support of the members of the senate and house. you have delivered for the american people on national security, and rebuilding our military. tax cuts and regulatory reform
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and restoring our economy. what the president reiterated again yesterday, and he's said every day from when he sought this office, we have a crisis of illegal immigration, and as the president made cheelear, we don want families to be separated. we don't want children taken away from parents. but right now, under the law, and we said with these lawmakers, we only have two choices before us. number one, don't prosecute people who come into our country illegally, or prosecute them and then under court cases and the law, they have to be separated from their children. what i want to be clear about is we're calling on these lawmakers, mr. president, not just to solve this problem in a way that affirms our commitment to law and order and compassion, which we can do. and there are proposals in the senate and house to do that. but the president's vision articulated in his state of the union address is let's solve the whole problem. let's build a wall, let's close the loopholes, let's solve the problem for 1.8 million people
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that were brought into this country through no fault of their own, and let's deal with law and order and compassion with this issue of family separation at our borders. and i would say with great respect to the members of congress, as the house considers legislation tomorrow, the senate is considering legislation, the president has postponed the congressional picnic. we're calling on congres to act. let's roll our sleeves up and end this crisis of illegal immigration. >> thank you very much. anybody else have anything to say? i think -- yes. >> mr. president, thank you. just from the house perspective, as a currently servin guard member, there's been a marked difference in the security and the good feelings in the military. they understand that we're investing in them again, even though we're asking them to do a lot. and secondly, security plays a big role. that includes border security. the bill we'll hopefully pass this week fully takes care of
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these issues. i wish democrats would join us, because there's a lot of stuff they hike like too. but unfortunately, i think they like the politics a little better. we wish you really didn't take secretary pompeo from the house because he did a great job. he's doing a great job now. >> thank you. appreciate it. yes? >> thank you, mr. president. i want to echo particularly what was said in terms of the change that we've seen in terms of resources for the military. we've got to make sure we don't have another cr in the military. we are working hard in the house. we're hopeful we'll pass a defense appropriations bill next week in the house. and we need to make sure that gets taken up and past in the senate and we don't give you another omnibus bill, that we get a straight defense appropriations bill taken up.
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and that will be very important. >> say hello to your father, please. handsome guy. thank you all very much. we appreciate it. [ overlapping speakers ] >> we are. we are looking to keep families together. we'll be signing an executive order. we are signing an executive order in a little while. we are going to keep families together. but we have to maintain toughness, or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don't stand for, that we don't want. so i'm going to be signing an executive order in a little while before i go to minnesota. but at the same time, i think you have to understand we're keeping families together, but we have to keep our borders strong. we will be overrun with crime and with people that should not be in our country. [ overlapping speakers ]
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>> we're going to see what happens. [ inaudible ] >> yes. those images affect everybody. but i have to say, double standards. you have people that want absolute security and safety, and you have people that do look at the children and then you have people like me, and i think most of the people in this room, that want both. we want the heart, but we also want strong borders, and we want no crime. we don't want crime in this country. we don't want people coming in -- we don't want people coming in from the middle east through our border using children to get through the line. we don't want that. we're doing too good of a job to allow that to happen. so we're not going to allow that to happen. thank you very much. [ overlapping speakers ] >> this has been going on for 50 years, longer. this has been going on under president obama, under president
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bush. this has been going on for many, many years. we'll see if we can solve it. this is not something that happened just now. you look at the images from 2014, i was watching this morning, and they were showing images from 2014. they blow away what we're looking at today. and that was not during this, that was during the obama administration. i saw images that were horrible. and you know the ones i'm talking about. we're going see if we can solve the immigration problem like we've solved so many other problems. and i think we'll get it done. thank you very much. [ overlapping speakers ] >> you've been watching a remarkable 24 minutes, the president of the united states in the cabinet room at the white house with republican members of congress, almost all men as he went around the table. going around the table to talk about other subjects, because the president didn't want all the attention on what is a major administration about face. the president saying he'll sign an executive order, reversing a
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policy implemented during his presidency to separate families at the border. the president saying he wants to keep families together, and will act on this, the same president who implemented this policy. a lot to discuss there. let's go first to abby phillip at the white house. you were in this room. the president clearly did not want all of the attention, at least when the tape played, on his reversal. but the central defining story in washington will be the president's about face. after just last night telling congress he wasn't going to act that way. >> reporter: that's right. and the white house has been saying all week that they can't do anything about this problem. they've been saying that congress has to deal with it. this is now the white house changing their tune and deciding that the president is, in fact, going to do something. but what's interesting about this potential move, and again, we don't know exact hi what the president is going to sign, but it's likely going to mean the president is going to allow
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families to stay together, but perhaps stay together in detention. now, there is a court case, the flores decision, that prevents children from being held for long periods of time in a prison or detention like setting. so the real question is, is this really triggering a legal fight or legal battle down the road? is this creating a whole new set of problems that the administration will have to deal with? at the same time congress is deliberating on ways to act. this is about the white house hooking for a way out of a series of big problems for them. these images had been politically toxic, not only for the president, but also for republicans. he was getting a lot of people from members of his own party. and the president is really difficult. you heard him say it there. he doesn't want to look weak in this environment. and so this is what they're doing in order to look strong in some way. but i think it raises a lot of questions about what this actually means for families a t
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the border. and whether this will be a solution, a long-term solution or even a near-term solution given that there are court decisions out there dictating what can happen with these children and whether or not they can be held in these environments. >> and to phil mattingly on capitol hill, phil, it sounds very much like abby's reporting there, what the president said, the administration, the president will sign something, giving him the justification, but it sounds like that they are worried about losing on legal grounds. and it's a stop gap measure. when we talked before we heard from the president, you said that members of capitol hill knew little or nothing about this. have they been briefed during the last 25 minutes or so? >> reporter: still waiting to hear specific details, at least according to the ones i'm talking to. an interesting development though, john, a group of house republicans, including house flun le republican leaders, are heading to the white house now, according to two aides, to talk
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about the immigration proposals that they will be voting on tomorrow. obviously, as we all know at this point, house republican leaders are pushing for that broad immigration overhaul bill they helped negotiate to pass. we know from their whipping effort last night they're well short of the votes to pass that bill. it i think the interesting element is, that bill deals with family separation. but it didn't have a clear path forward in the senate. so there's a lot of questions what the incentive is for the members to vote for that bill. it will be interesting to see if a lobbying effort, particularly in the wake of the president's unclear support of the bill last night in his closed door meeting will help that process going forward. look, we talked about this earlier. i think the biggest deal right now with republicans in the house and senate as it relates to the executive order the president says he's going to sign, it's a pressure release valve. there was no chelear ledggislat
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path forward and general unease about everything going on. the president looks like he's about to relieve republicans of that. the big question now is, does this take incentive to do anything legislatively off the table? the answer is probably yes, but the counter is not sure the incentive was there to get something done in the first place. >> all the more so to button it up as the president asks, as we now expect, for stand alone legislation to give him the authority to detain families together at the border. if you pass that stand alone bill, the president then can come back to a second bill and can you pass that stand alone bill? will the democrats go along because they have some political gains right now. a and the idea that you're going to pass sweeping immigration reform, we've been having that conversation for more than a decade. >> reporter: the latter just isn't on the table. just the dynamics of this issue, the emotion that surrounds it,
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the repeated failures over the course of the last decade. that's not really there, despite what house republicans do tomorrow. i think it's interesting, because the small board tailored proposals attack the same issues the president is trying to do, in terms of the flores consent decree, it's worth noting that was put in place as an idea or way to protect children that were in federal custody, and to limit how long they could be held. i haven't talked to a lot of democrats that want to see that done away with in any way. so the idea that a tailored proposal could work that does anything other than just require the justice department to reverse its zero tolerance policy, which would be also complicated on legal grounds, you're not going to see a lot of democrats come on board. you saw chuck schumer say explicitly yesterday, legislation is not the answer, the president can do this himself. they don't want to start down the path of a legislative debate when the president can do it. all of those things being on the
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table, i don't think there's a path forward for even a tailored fix right now, which just underscores the reason why the president acting on his own to basically turn back or change his own policy was so necessary at this moment. >> phil mattingly on the hill, thanks. to that point, the president could pick up the phone, call the department of homeland security, say stop. just stop doing this. go back to the way it was a couple of weeks ago, stop separating families. he didn't. he said he's going to sign something, which i take as a way to politically to deflect and blame the flores decision and say now we're going to act this way and not looking in the mirror and saying we screwed this up. >> and we heard a little bit more over the past 24 hours what it is going on in the president's mind as these images were playing out, he was noting how bad they were it will cpoli
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for him. the media was showing the pictures the government was handing out to him, because in a lot of cases they weren't allowing cameras into the facilities. the president does not have to sign an executive order to end this policy of separating the families on the border that. is the result of jeff sessions announcing they are going to pursue a zero tolerance immigration policy. so he could call jeff sessions and end this without signing an executive order that. is what he's doing here. so he is being decisive. he told aides he didn't want this to be a quiet reversal of this policy where he didn't sign anything. then if he signed something, it looks like he's putting a stop to it, even though this is a problem he created. >> because this is a fast-moving story as you're talking, it looks as though there's movement to send key administration officials to capitol hill. the capitol police are preparing for mike pence to arrive on the senate side, and maybe talk to
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them about what -- maybe get their ideas on what they'll do or talk to them about what the president is going to do. on the question of what the president is signing, it's an important point to say that it's narrow and that he's just changing the separation of families, which is obviously a huge issue. but he's not changing the overall policy. this is a way to keep the zero tolerance policy going. they want to apprehend -- catch and release is over, which is what he promised, and that's what the base wants. this is a way to keep the aggressive policy, zero tolerance policy on the border going, without the horrible reality, the inhumane reality of what they say the law requires them to do, which is separating families that are apprehended. >> on that, if that's the case, and they can cleanly, ultimately, cleanly get out of this very messy mess they made for themselves.
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the president is on much stronger ground in the country with zero tolerance. i don't think you're going to see a democratic senator from north dakota standing up and screaming about zero tolerance. she will scream about separating families. the idea might have politically been strong. the implementation of it was a disaster, which it's interesting. melania trump, the first lady, among those who pushed the president. we saw criticism from the pope and international heeders today. criticism from fellow republicaning. melania trump has had several private conversations with her husband saying move on this, you're wrong. this looks bad. this makes it all the more interesting. here's the president saying he faced a very difficult dilemma. >> if you're weak, if you're weak, which some people would like you to be, if you're really pathetically weak, the country will be overrun with millions of
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people. and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. that's a tough dilemma. perhaps i would rather be strong, but that's a tough dilemma. >> it is a dilemma of his own making. >> first of all, this meeting goes in the pantheon of amazing trump moments in the white house. this is up there with that nra meeting when they spitballed the gun policy. the meeting with auto execs where he announced new tariffs in china. this shows two things. one, this is trump on the fly, making policy. this is a trump white house -- this is the process in the trump white house. two, that clip you just showed and the entirety of that 25-minute display was that so much of this is about him, whether -- he talks about immigration in terms of how it affects him. you know, they're talking about, you know, what is more devastating, pictures from 2014 during the obama administration or the pictures -- no, no, which is just immaterial. and they're talking about
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canceling the congressional picnic as an act of leadership in this situation. you know, i just wonder how much of this is going to resonate, especially when you're talking about north kree worea in the p tense, talking about the trade issue in the past tense. >> he has a credibility problem, but has he solved the republican short-term midterm problem? >> i think this immediate issue is over for now, i think. people will remember this in november. this is an issue that has galvanized people. >> two seconds, the idea of optics, we're talking a lot about it, the fact that he had one woman at that table for any conversation is kind of crazy about this issue, about families. >> they rushed this. he wasn't ready to say exactly what he was going to sign. and you're right, it's a statement about the leadership. the democratic party has men and women, it's just older.
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and the republican party, you got to see it right there. so the big question is the details of the executive order. >> it matters what the actual order says. and now people are looking how are the children are going to be treated, are they going to be detained for long periods of time. so what happens next, separation is bad. but where the children are in the future and where the girls are being held is a big question. >> the biggest thing we know is a remarkable retreat from a 39 who does not like to retreat. but today a 180 from the president of the united states. thanks for joining us on "inside politics." wof more on this after a quick break. have a great afternoon. i'm very proud of the fact
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this is cnn breaking news. >> hello, i'm wolf blitzer. wherever you're watching from around the world, thank you very much for joining us. we begin with breaking news. after days of finger pointing and false claims, president trump caves to pressure and promises to end family separations at the border with mexico. the president says he will sign, in his words, something soon to improve border security and help keep families together. listen to what the president said just a few

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