tv Happening Now FOX News April 9, 2018 8:00am-9:00am PDT
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i'll see you at noon. a lot more news to get to. "happening now" starts now. >> a fox news alert on tough talk from the white house on syria. with president trump denouncing dictator bashar al-assad and saying there will be a price to pay for what he's calling a mindless chemical attack. hello. i'm julie banderas. >> i'm eric shawn in for jon scott. president trump getting ready to meet with his cabinet at the bottom of the hour. he will confer with military leaders later on today. after the suspected chemical attack over the weekend that killed dozens of civilians, mostly helpless women and children. it's charged the syrian government used poison gas after their own government.
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president trump is not only criticizing assad but also going after russian president vladimir putin for supporting the syrian dictator. all this while the white house is weighing options for how to respond to the deadly attack. >> i think we need a bold and swift response. the last time assad did this, we responded with 59 tomahawk missiles destroying his landing and air base capability so they couldn't deliver the barrel bombs. something similar to this. but as the president said, all options are on the table. >> will there be air strikes tiahrt? john roberts with live with the story. >> good morning. remains to be seen. i'm told that we can expect to hear from the president talking about this when he convenes his cabinet meeting at 11:30 a.m. we should point out, this is the first day at the white house for john bolton who convened a
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meeting of the national security council. he will be at the meeting but he won't be seated at the table with the rest of the cabinet officials. he will be in a chair behind the president as is tradition. president taking a tough stand against syria and vladimir putin in the wake of that suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held town of douma. many dead and women and children killed in attack in syria. the area is encircled by syrian army. president putin, russia and iran are responsible for backing animal assad. big price to pay. another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. at congressman mccall pointed out, the last time this happened a year ago, the u.s. responded by hitting the base the chemical
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weapons were launched from with 59 cruise missiles. one of the things is u.s. is doing is to determine whether chemical weapons were used. secretary of defense james mattis said he couldn't confirm the use of chemical weapons but that is the suspicion. mattis said the u.s. is ruling nothing out and pointing fingers at russia for allowing this to happen. listen here. >> the first thing we have to look at is why are chemical weapons being used at all when russia was the guarantor of removing chemical weapons. so working with our allies and partners, we're going to address this issue. >> can you rule out taking actions, launching air strikes? >> i don't rule out anything right now. >> can't rule out anything right now. the secretary of defense responding there. the president laying the blame for this latest attack at the
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foot of the obama administration. the president said if president obama had crossed his red line in the sand, animal assad would have been history. in a phone call with emanuel macron, president trump promised to coordinate a strong joint response. all of this comes as the president is looking to get troops out of syria. president said a couple of times in the last couple weeks that he wants to get them home soon. i'm told the president would like to bring them home today but receded to the secretary of defense to leave them in there for a while during the stabilization process. i'm told by sources that if secretary mattis doesn't have a plan to get troops home in six months, he will get an earful from the president. >> for more, let's bring in mike warren. thanks for talking to us. the timing of this is intense
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and crucial due to the fact that u.s. troops are about to withdraw from syria leaving our allies in the region like saudi arabia and israel. but israel carries out this air strike in syria. as tensions escalate between the u.s. and russia. so where do you begin to dissect what the u.s. should do next? >> you have to examine and appreciate the conflict going on in the trump administration and even with trump himself. let's go back to a year ago. bashar al-assad attacked his own people and the united states responded with an attack on that syrian air field. the president was moved by images from that attack a year ago of women and children, civilians injured by this. this is a president that is moved emotionally by these images. he's pulled in a separate direction as john roberts just noted in his desire to move
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american troops out. so do we have some sort of pinpoint strike strategy against assad? if we move some 2,000 american troops out who are not supposed to be fighting against the assad regime. they're supposed to be attacking isis troops in the east. it's a complicated problem that the president notes was really exacerbated by the obama administration mistakes. but the president is sort of torn between two impulses and how to address it. >> yeah. president obama administration as you mentioned, i want to throw up a tweet again and talk about that. the mistake of the past. but then the question is how to right them. right the wrong. if president obama had crossed his red line in the sand, the syrian disaster would have ended long ago. animal assad would have been history. so now what is next? at this point we have retaliated
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against syria for murdering their own people. now he's pointing the finger at russia. what do we do next with regard to russia? maybe is it time to perhaps rethink pulling troops out of syria when a lot of military experts say that would be a bad idea, especially right now? >> that's right. that's what the national security team is telling the president. russia is a big problem. they want to be a big player and they are a big player in this part of the world as the sort of american presence has receded. iran, too. assad is a state of the islamic republic. a big problem in north korea as well. we have a good piece about this from thomas jocelyn from the weekly standard. talks about how the bad actors prop up the assad regime. you have to imagine a good path forward in addressing these problems is adds dressing those more powerful companies that do
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prop up assad in syria to act better. we're seeing movement on that against russia last week from the trump administration for other actions. perhaps we'll see more. >> i want to switch gears to another war, the war on illegal immigration. texas being the first state to send national guard troops to the border after president said he would send the military there. he announced over the weekend 4,000 national guard troops would be sent to the border. the white house defending the decision and saying there's more work to be done regarding immigration. listen to this. >> the over 200% increase coupled with the pending seasonal uptick, coupled with the caravan, which is an annual event, trended in the wrong direction. right now we don't have the capacity to address the problem.
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>> so if there won't be a wall in the foreseeable future, the president wants the guards to remain until there is one. the question is then until we see comprehensive immigration reform, how long will the troops be on guard? >> i suppose indefinitely. i'm not sure. the administration is trying to sort of catch up with where the president is. i cover the white house every day. i'm struck by the difference by the way this administration is addressing this issue of sending troops to the border with some other issues that are more planned out. say take the chinese tariffs. this is a process that a lot of people have been involved in for a long period of time in trying to get these out. sending the troops to the border seems to be responding to the president's own frustrations with the fact that he can't seem to get anything through congress on the issues of immigration, so he feels the need to act and respond to like tom bossert said, the annual caravan.
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i think the response is a little more haphazard than might otherwise be if there was a plan in place. >> thanks, mike. appreciate your time. >> thank you. >> well, after a lot of speculation and public arm-twisting from president trump, florida's republican governor rick scott is in. he's running for the u.s. senate. the governor formally announcing campaign within the last hour. >> why have to go to working on the and get to work. we're tired of washington working for them. they need to start working for us. and they're going to. >> governor scott now ames to unseat florida's only democrat, senator bill nelson. that could be one of the most expensive and highly watched races in the nation. julie? >> a fox news alert. a body of a tennessee murder
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suspect has been found in mississippi. police say 23-year-old casey lawhorn killed his mother and his friend. lawhorn admitting to the murders in a facebook post. he notified authorities about the bodies before fleeing the state. in the social media post, he said probably three or four minutes he killed his mother. after picking her up from a bar. he also shot a man that he described as a close friend. >> there's a new analysis of the 2016 presidential campaign. it found that the president seemed to thrive in what they call news desserts. areas where local news is absent. why is that and what does that mean to our democracy? our media panel will weigh-in next. plus, look at this. astonishing pictures of a bus after it hit an overpass. what happened to the young people that were the passengers on board. that is the most amazing thing of all. >> we're very lucky.
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>> julie: several students are injured after their bus hit a highway overpass. it happened sunday night. the bus carrying the students was returning from spring break. the impact of the crash so severe that the top of the bus was literally sheared off. officials say the driver seemed to be unfamiliar with vehicle restrictions for this particular parkway. >> i don't think he had any awareness. it's a high impact strike. there's no commercial vehicles on the parkway whatsoever. the height of that bridge is probably less than ten feet. >> officials describe the injuries as serious but say it could have been much worse. more than 40 people were on the bus when it crashed.
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>> eric: wow. there's new context about the presidential election. politco writing this. there's no correlation between low subscription rating and trump's success in the 2016 election. the links were significant when accounting for other factors that influenced voter choices such as college education and the decline of local media sources may have played a result in the election results. that gives new voice to academia's assertions about bold facts without any independent checks. so what does this mean for the media and our democracy? tammy boost joins us and judy
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miller, reporter and author. box are fox news contributors. >> high will. >> eric: judy, let's start with you. the conclusion is the president thrived in areas where people are less informed. is that legitimate and you think it's fair? >> i know the people that did this study. it is very, very well-done. i'm afraid it's probably true. just, eric, to give you some insight to what's going on in this country, we only have 7,900 newspapers left and 1,300 of those happen to be daily newspapers. i know this because i'm looking at the news desert problem. the fact is that the people that voted were a lot less well-educated than they should have been. the absence of news is part of that problem. >> eric: there's a lot of other news outlets. you have cable television, the networks, local tv, social
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media. people share all of these articles. does that fill the gap or there's no editorial process in social media, for example, to weed some of the stuff 0 it? >> exactly. you never know what you're getting. that's the part of the problem on social media. you can get complete falsehoods. the disappearance of local news is one of the biggest challenges we face. the fact that people didn't have access to newspapers didn't know whether or not donald trump was telling the truth, which often he wasn't. that's why they weren't in a position to check. they weren't in a position to verify. >> eric: all right. tammy, what about that? is that fair? is that an insult? >> the decline of newspapers began in 2000. that is correlated with the rise of the internet. we know this is the case. when you talk about news deserts, the opposite has
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occurred for towns all across the country, places that normally you won't be getting "the new york times" or other outlets. there's an increase in information and not just social media. that you might not be a subscriber. this study was about subscriptions to newspapers. i think there's a certain kind of arrogance and suggesting that unless you have a newspaper in front of you, you won't know what's going on. the average person then could sit in front of their desk top at home and not only see all of those newspapers still, but without subscribing, but the local town's newspaper, the next county's newspaper, local news on television. i would argue that the ability to make better decisions is even more clear because you do have more sources. i think that a source when you looking at, if it's "the new york times" or l.a. times or the "boston globe" that are arguing without them people don't know what to think, that is part of the arrogance that people have
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rejected. >> eric: you know, all of those wise men, not many women originally, you know, from on high came down with their tablets and their daily column to tell us what to think, judy. >> that era was long long gone. we have seen it kind of blending these days. confusion between what is on the editorial page of newspapers and what is on the front page. but i have to take issue with my friend tammy a little. that is that most of what you see on tv, local news stations, happens to be regurgitated newspapers. so the single largest and most important source of news remains newspaper and their disappearance and their scaling back is a huge challenge if we want to have an educated population. >> the other challenge, 70%, a
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new pugh -- monmouth poll of american people believe that the media does perpetuate some fake news occasionally and if not frequently. so this is also a crisis of confidence. i think that the ability to be able to go on the internet and the average person in their community, local news or their own community people, their own pta, their own gathering, people can make up their minds based on the choices about which sources they want. more information is better and that could be the reason why donald trump won, because they didn't -- weren't just relying on one newspaper that had one narrative. they were able to get additional pieces of information that helped inform their decision making. >> eric: we're out of time. ben bradley said the way to read a newspaper is like this. subscribe. so support the newspapers. julie? >> julie: well, the threat of a trade war between the u.s. and china escalating.
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so could potential tariffs put jitters on wall street and also affect the mid-terms? that's the question next. people would stare. psoriasis does that. it was tough getting out there on stage. i wanted to be clear. i wanted it to last. so i kept on fighting. i found something that worked. and keeps on working. now? they see me. see me. see if cosentyx could make a difference for you- cosentyx is proven to help people with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis... ...find clear skin that can last. don't use if you're allergic to cosentyx. before starting cosentyx, you should be checked for tuberculosis. an increased risk of infections and lowered ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease, tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. never give up. see me. see me. clear skin can last.
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and these kids, and these guys, him, ah. oh hello. that lady, these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. >> julie: as we approach the mid-terms, there's big concerns about how a potential trade war with china could affect the elections. tariffs would be likely felt by farmers in battleground states. the same areas that helped up trump win the white house. some despite harsh rhetoric between the u.s. and china, talks will turn out to be productive. >> our expectation is that we don't think there will be a trade war. our objective is to continue to have discussions with china. we want to have free and fair
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reciprocal trade. we're looking for our companies and our workers to have a level playing field. right now we have about $500 billion of goods that they buy from china and they buy about $135 billion from us. one of the single biggest opportunities for american companies and american workers if we're free and fair trade. that's what the president wants. >> julie: for more on this, let's bring in richard fowler, a radio talk show host and alex conditt, partner at firehouse strategies. thanks for being here. >> good to be here. >> julie: so alex, how much of mnuchin's comments are meant to calm the american public after the dow has slumped? >> everybody loses in a trade war, especially trump voters. we've seen pork producers in iowa. if you work in a chemical plant in michigan, a trade war with china is bad news for you. we want more trade with china.
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we want it to be fair. we want china to stop cheating but we don't want both sides to raise tariffs. we want more trade with them. that's a signal that the treasury secretary was sending yesterday. it's probably why the stock mark is up today. >> julie: it worked. >> trade wars are bad for everybody. we take it day by day with this administration. by to the extend they're signalling they want more trade with china, it's a positive step. >> julie: richard, how have the president's attacks on china put republicans in a difficult spot? >> let me say when the president first started this thing with steel, i was with him. i thought the idea of the steel tariff wasn't the worst thing in the world. now he's doing this -- creating this trade war for creating a trade war's sake for who can levy the biggest trade tariff against the other. meantime, he's hurting real
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americans. he's hurting big farmers and soy beam farmers in wisconsin and hurting trump voters. remember, this president has never been a free trader to begin with. this is where he differs from the republican party. now he's the leader of the republican party. they go to the mid-terms where they're vulnerable. many are nervous about their chances of re-election with this president having a possible trade war of chain. >> julie: and the president just wants to win. he's living up to promises by getting tough on china. it's something that should have happened long ago. many republicans are torn with siding with president trump and acknowledging the economic challenge they're up against to their constituents. in a tough mid-term with control of the senate up for grabs, you have the farmers in the midwest that helped get trump elected,
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they don't want to be elected, how could that hurt in rural areas? >> that's the biggest question right now. how do we position ourselves on trade so it's pro america, you're creating jobs here in the u.s. but at the same time, not starting a trade war with china. there's ways to do this. at the end of the day, we need to recommit ourselves to free trade. we need to say trading with china is a net positive for the u.s. economy and for workers especially in trump states. we want to make sure that china stops cheating, we can make trade more fair but at the same time, now spark a trade war. that's what the secretary -- the treasury secretary was trying to do yesterday. >> here's my problem with that. i don't think this white house can have their cake and eat it, too. you have secretary mnuchin saying a trade wars is not the worst things in the world. you can't have your cake and eat
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it too. they want fair trade and they're going to do everything in their power to get it or they're not. >> julie: and the president talking tough to say it's not the worst thing. it's not something he asks for or wants but it's not the worst thing. >> but julie, talking tough has real impacts on hog farmers and soy bean farmers. talking tough has implications. >> julie: but it's worked -- >> and talking tariffs -- >> julie: it works for this president. look at kim jong-un. he's talking about denuclearization. vladimir putin said he would visit the white house. talk works for this president. >> and talking plummeted the market last week. talking tough has real implications that cost real people's lice and real people jobs. that's the problem. >> julie: real quick. we have to go. >> i think tough rhetoric is fine. if the president can get the chinese to come to the table and we can get better trade, that's a victory for everybody. >> julie: things, guys.
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good to see you both. >> after syria killed dozens in a poison gas attack, one country overnight responded with a missile attack against syria. could president trump order the very same response later on tonight? >> can you recall out taking actions, launching air strikes against assad? >> i don't rule out anything right now. somehow we always leave packing to the last minute. guys, i have a couple of things to wash we got this. even on quick cycle, tide pods cleans great 6x the cleaning power, even in the quick cycle it's got to be tide
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>> eric: a fox news alert on the horrible chemical attack in syria. the president weighs a possible u.s. response in what could be the eighth time the assad regime has targeted to kill his own people. defense secretary james mattis refusing to rule anything out amid calls for the white house to take action. >> the world is watching the president. iran is watching the president. russia is watching the president and north korea is watching the president. this president has a chance to do the opposite of obama. send a strong signal, that there's a new sheriff in town and america is back. >> eric: could that signal be new air strikes later on tonight? basam, welcome. the israelis launched an attack against a syrian air base overnight. you think it's a toughness and blunt message to assad to stop these attacks? >> the attacks from the israelis
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is just the start. those were because assad has moved his forces into a buffer zone and threatening the israelis. the israelis said they're not going to allow for an iranian expansion and hezbollah to threaten their security. i don't blame them for those attacks. that came on really an iranian base that had launched attacks against the israelis before and the israelis had countered. the israelis shut them down and there was no retaliation because they have no will to fight the israelis or any super power. >> eric: that is a key. you said there's no retaliation against the russians on the syrians. so basically what do you think about potential fears or concerns if the u.s. launched air strikes again? russia said that would be unacceptable and meet with serious consequences. but you don't worry.
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>> no, i don't worry. you have that segment there with senator lindsey graham just now. he had also just recently mentioned about this same topic lindsey graham who said that really we're not concerned about fighting against russia right now. the russians have been operating with impunity and have been covering assad. they are just as culpable as assad is. they should be held accountable and they are also accused of war crimes. >> eric: the president tweeted out and named vladimir putin by name. do you expect there could be air strikes later on tonight or this week similar to what we saw last year with the chemical attack at that point? when the president sent 59 tomahawk missiles into that syrian air base? >> i would be surprised if i didn't see any strikes. the president needs to take swift and decisive action right
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now. president trump, i'm speaking to you directly. do not take the same mistake that president obama had made. the action that you had taken to take out the air base, that was important. that was strong. that was a very strong message. what we need to do right now is to take out the assad's air force. if we ground all of his air force, we won't have the capability to attack syrians by the air anymore. >> eric: that is a plea from your heart. it's astounding that chemical weapons are still being used. they were outlawed in 1925. this is a strike against the heart that we stand for. >> yes. eight chemical attacks just this year. you know, we're not even far into the year and he's been attacking with chlorine gas and now it's been confirmed that the
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u.s. assessments that said it looks like a nerve agent. the people that were killed were innocent civilians, mostly women and children. they were there hiding for their safety. >> eric: it's just horrific and overwhelming. thank you, bassam. a plea to the president of the united states to take action on behalf of the world. thank you. >> thank you for having me. >> eric: julie? >> julie: facebook's ceo mark zuckerberg arriving on capitol hill right now. he's likely to face very tough questions when he appears before congress. he will appear in two separate high profile hearings. white house officials say they're taking a wait and see approach on what to do about the social media giant. we'll discuss in a live interview next.
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facebook. i don't want to regulate them to death. but we have a problem. our promised digital utopia has minefields in it. mr. zuckerberg has not exhausted himself being forthcoming. we had one hearing. mr. zuckerberg sent his lawyer. very bright, very articulate. could talk a dog off a meat wagon. >> julie: john kennedy there warning facebook needs to do more to address privacy issues or the government will have to take action. mark zuckerberg just arriving in capitol hill ahead of two days of congressional hearings. the social media giant is in damage control mode after they admitted the data of 87 million users may have been accessed by cambridge analytica. facebook just suspended cube you, another data firm as reports that they were collecting information about
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users through quizzes. joining me now for more, morgan wright, a cyber security analyst. thanks very much. we have a problem all right. first of all, zuckerberg needs more explaining on how people's privacy has been violated and what facebook plans to do about it. the fact all of our info is already out there. they can't take it back. we can't take it back. so then now what? >> that is the ultimate question. what do we do now? the only thing you can do is put the right type of privacy controls forward. it's not a technology issue. there's nothing about the technology. it's around the policies around privacy. the rules in the united states will get as tough -- it's coming up in may in the european union with the global privacy data regulation. to tech companies, they're draconian. this is what the tech companies are facing if they don't get ahead of the curve and do things
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about protecting our privacy. >> julie: i want to talk about the cube you discovery. it suggested that collecting data from quizzes was used for marketing purposes. it was far from an isolated incident. facebook did nothing to stop it. they allowed their data to be used for unintended purposes so what does facebook do to fix its governance process? since obviously self-regulation clearly hasn't worked. >> most people don't know this. when you click on the quizzes and agree to share your information, there's 48 separate data points that gets shared. when you do this, they get access to everything. what did you like, who are your friends. what concerts did you attend. tons of information in relation so demographics. so they have to be more forthcoming. a lot of these apps these folks remember, if it's free, you're
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the predict. people need to understand that. >> julie: stay away from the quizzes. when i see them and i can't stand when people repost them and share them and i'm like wait, they're getting your personal information. you don't think this is a fun pop quiz being taken by facebook? obviously they're going to do something with that information. don't get me started. you say it's not just facebook that should be held accountable here. >> absolutely. >> julie: we should be, too. let's use our common sense. this is a public domain. but the government has also failed miserably. >> absolutely in the 2016 elections, it was not unknown that the russian pro farm was also in operation. google this. a reporter in the u.k. laid out the entire operation. there's a thing called the domestic security advisory council where it's the responsibility of the federal government to let companies in the u.s., especially those that are members, know about operations, influence operations.
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you can't put it on the backs of the governments. the russians are good at this. >> julie: if we can't contain our own u.s.-based social media, what are we doing to protect us from cyber terror? it does open a lot of doors that are -- have been alarming. >> that's why when i testified before congress, that was the big issue. lots of questions for mark. >> julie: morgan wright, thanks very much. >> you bet. >> eric: i thought facebook did that because it's fun. >> julie: no. >> eric: president trump blasting china's trade practices. a house committee gets ready to delve into the financial impact of those controversial tariffs. >> this is a problem caused by china. not a problem caused by president trump. i would go so far to say trump is there to fix the problem. hey! we didn't have a homeowners claim last year
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and putin. the president said he would make a decision on what the u.s. would do in a day or two. >> and the president is accusing the justice department slow-walking the release of documents looking into the handling of hillary clinton's e-mail. the secret server. she had. it's an investigation. whether we will ever get any real answer is the question. >> and our lucky guy on "outnumbered," top of the hours. >> i've always been a hard-liner on china. while i don't like tariffs, sometimes there's no substitution for putting tariffs into the discussion, into the process. that's part of the president. he's a great negotiator. he has a history of that. but in this process, tariffs have to be a part of it. hopefully there will be discussions. in the next two months, the chinese will come seriously back
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to the table. >> eric: could that happen? that's larry kudlow trying to ease the fears with a trade war over china. this as the house ways and means prepares to hold a hearing of the economic impact of the president's tariffs, his proposals on steel, aluminum and other things. what will the panel learn? i'm joined by congressman jim ranasse from ohio. what do you think will come out of this hearing? >> we'll have expects that can tell us about these issues, especially in ohio. we have to make sure our steel industry is strong. at the same time, the exports and some of the things that occur with china, which is not really free and fair, will hurt us in the soy bean destroy in ohio. we're the second most supporter and china is the number 1 importer. >> eric: so how do you deal with
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this without having a trade war? >> what the president does so well, he casts out a big net and sees the issues and pulls the net back. that's why i'm glad to see him take canada and mexico out of the equation. and give people to be excluded. this is what the president does extremely well. we have a problem with china. we have to make sure we're addressing it. >> eric: how do we do that? what do you suggest? >> what the president is doing is a starting point. we can't ignore it. past administrations have ignored it. we have to start the process and that's what this president is doing. >> eric: you've been a successful businessman. some say it's government overreach. some say it's action we need. >> i lost my general motors dealership because of government overreach. we have to be cautious. at the same time, we -- >> eric: congressman, we have to interrupt you. the president of the united states with a tape play back from the cabinet meeting.
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>> the syrians hit their own people with banned chemical weapons. it was an atrocious attack. it was horrible. you don't see things like that as bad as the news is around the world, you just don't see those images. woe are studying that situation extremely closely. we're meeting with our military and everybody else. we'll be making some major decisions over the next 24 to 48 hours. we are very concerned. when a thing like that can happen -- we're talking about humanity. it can't be allowed to happen. we'll be looking at that barbaric act and studying what's going on. we're trying to get people in there it's been surrounded. it's hard to get people in. not only has it been hit, it's
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been surrounded. and if they're innocent, why aren't they allowing people to go in and prove? they're claiming they didn't make the attack. so if it's russia, if it's syria, if it's iran, if it's all of them together, we'll figure it out. we'll know the answers quite soon. so we're looking at that very, very strongly and very seriously. i'd also like to provide an update on trade negotiations. we have a situation with china where we have a very good relationship with china. i think we'll maintain that relationship. i'm very good friends with president xi. i have great respect for president xi. i spent two days in china. the president spent two days with us at mar-a-largo in florida.
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four great days. with that being said, china has been taking advantage of the united states for many years. if you look at it, since the start of the world trade organization. and they have really done a number on this country. and i don't blame china. i blame the people running our country. i blame presidents and representatives and i blame negotiators. we should have done what they did. we didn't do it. they did. it's the most lopsided set of trade rules, regulations that anybody has ever seen. with that being said, we have many of them. nafta was a horrible deal. we're renegotiating. we'll see what happens. we're strongly renegotiating nafta. if you look at the european union, they have tremendous trade barriers. we have brad deals with
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everyone. we're close to finishing a deal with south korea. it was going to give us 200,000 jobs. didn't exactly happen. gave them 200,000 jobs. we lost jobs. it was a horrible deal. that is being renegotiated. and we have a long way to go. we made a lot of progress. we're fairly close on nafta. if we don't make the right deal, we'll terminate nafta and make the right deal after that. we have a chance to make a deal on nafta. as i said, the north korea and south korea situation, which complicates it, the deal with south korea i think is going to be -- i think it's going to be a very fair deal. we want a fair deal. we don't have fair deals. north korea, as you have seen and we'll be in touch with them and we'll be meeting with them
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sometime in may or early june, and i think there will be great respect paid by both parties and hopefully we can make a deal on the denuking of north korea. they've said so and we said so. hopefully a relationship that is different from many, many years. this should have been done by other presidents and they decided they didn't do it. would have been easy if it was down five years ago, ten years ago, 20 years ago. we have a meeting being set up with north korea. it will be exciting for the world. i think it's going to be a very exciting thing for the world. we're going to talk about opioid destruction today and drug destruction. as you know, we strengthened up our certain border. last year we had record low numbers, this year they have
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gone up to a certain extend. might be people are trying to come into our good economy. but we're putting the national guard and military at the border. we're beefing up the border patrol who have done a fantastic job. ice has done a fantastic job. we will take care of that situation. we need a well. whether you're a republican or a democrat, we need a wall. it will stop your drug flow and knock a lot of people out that we don't want in this country this are coming into this country. right now we're putting the military and the national guard and we're going to have strong borders now. we have strong borders now but they'll be much stronger. with that, the cabinet meeting will begin. we're going to discuss a lot of different elements of what's going on. the country is doing very well.
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