Woman Wearing Puerto Rico T- Shirt Gets Harassed; Elderly Man Gets Attacked for Crossing Border Legally
CUOMO: Welcome back. No matter your politics, this scene that we're about to show you was embarrassing for us all as Americans. This woman is wearing a t-shirt that said "Puerto Rico." And she starts getting harassed at a park near Chicago. Take a look at this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not going to change us, you know that?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not trying to change anyone. I'm just trying to come here for a birthday party.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, the world is not going to change the United States of America. Period.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should not be wearing that in the United States of America.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you a citizen?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I am a citizen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you a United States citizen?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you please get away from me?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then you should not be wearing that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you please get away from me?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should be wearing the United States of America flag, not Puerto Rico.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Officer, I feel highly uncomfortable. Can you please grab him?</s>CUOMO: Puerto Rico is part of the United States, by the way. And look, even giving this guy the benefit of in vino veritas, you know, if he had a few, it's still the ugliest kind of sense we get better than. And then you get to this other element. So, there is this young woman with this fool accosting her, and what do the cops do? Later on in the video, there is a female police officer who starts warning off the man, but there was another male officer who seemingly stood by and did nothing. It was under review, and we're now being told that officer has resigned. Now, this is not a one-off. There was another incident that fueled a ton of outrage. The 91-year-old man who had traveled from Mexico legally to visit his family in Willowbrook, California. He was beaten with a brick by a woman and several men. The woman who according to an eyewitness shouted "go back to your country" has been identified by authorities as 30-year-old Laquesha Jones (ph). She was arrested late Tuesday on a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Why are these happening right now? Are they a sign of the times or one-offs? And what do they say about us? It is worthy of debate. Let's bring in Ana Navarro and Steve Cortes. Ana Navarro, what do you think we're seeing in these incidents?</s>ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I think, it feels, contribution as if every crazy racist has been let loose on the streets of America. I am very happy to see that racists are being held accountable. There's also the case of the cop in El Paso who pulled out a gun on Hispanic children. And what's happening with the African-American community is horrible. Cops are getting called because somebody's wearing socks at a pool. Cops are getting called because somebody is barbecuing, because a little girl is selling lemonade. I think the racists feel legitimized, feel empowered, feel that they can do it. I think there's this environment of us against them. There is rampant division. And, you know -- and we're seeing it worse and worse every day. I will tell everybody, you know, whites, blacks, Hispanics, particularly communities of color -- folks, it used to be don't leave home without the American Express. Don't leave home without a smartphone that can video. It makes all the difference. The images is what is making people accountable.</s>CUOMO: All right. So let's flip it to you, Steve, with this notion. We all know the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire", right? It's always burning since the world's been turning. Another line in that song is, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it. And it's that second part that puts scrutiny on your side of the ball here. If you look at this, what, half dozen people that you have running on the Republican side who have some degree of cottoning to white supremacy or worse in different races around the country, the rhetoric of the president, the outgrowth of these incidents, do you feel a sense of responsibility?</s>STEVE CORTES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: OK. Chris, when you say there, by the way, that cottoning to white supremacists, that's just patently untrue regarding the president. I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else, but on behalf of Donald Trump. That's just not true.</s>CUOMO: I'm talking about the six people you have running around the country. I'm talking about the guy in Jersey, the guy who's Trump's choice for Senate in Virginia --</s>CORTES: OK. Look, here's the thing, I -- you know, violence is never OK. And the thugs who beat up that elderly man are thugs and I hope are held criminally responsible. That idiot in Chicago who didn't even know, by the way, that Puerto Rico's part of America needs a geography lesson first of all, a history lesson. You know, he's reprehensible and totally dismiss him. Let's also point this out. In Chicago also, my hometown, there was a white teenager, a disabled -- a mentally disabled young man who was incredibly abused by people and who repeatedly shouted "F Donald Trump" while they broadcast it on Facebook live. So, there's ugliness all around. There's the violence against Steve Scalise. I don't ascribe those, by the way, and I don't blame those on Hillary Clinton or on Bernie Sanders just because the Scalise shooter happened to be a fervent Bernie Sanders supporter. And I think it's unfair for you or for Ana to try to ascribe or blame Donald Trump because there might be some reprehensible racists out there doing rude and violent things in our country. That is not Trump's fault. Just as the Scalise shooter is not Bernie Sanders' fault.</s>CUOMO: Do you think it's an unfair question, Ana?</s>NAVARRO: I don't. Look, this much is true. Donald Trump did not invent racism. He did not invent bigotry. He did not invent racial violence. But it is also true that he has pandered to it. He pandered to it in Charlottesville when he equated neo-Nazis with those protesting against them. He pandered to it when he called black athletes sons of bitches. He panders to it at every rally when he demonizes immigrants and never brings up a positive immigrant story. It's all about the bad things that immigrants do. The other day I was watching TV and I saw this clip of these two little kids in Montana going to a Trump rally. They must have been 8 years old. These two little kids talking about not wanting any more Mexicans here. Look, you're not born a racist. You are taught to hate. And what we are listening over and over again -- and even if you say that Trump does not have a responsibility, and I do think he is not solely to blame, but I do think he's legitimized, but even if you want to argue that he doesn't have a responsibility, I would say to you that as president of the United States and with the bully pulpit that he has he does have a responsibility to address what we are seeing daily in America, to address this division, and to call for racial unity and to tell people not to attack Hispanics, not to detain Hispanics for speaking Spanish, not to berate Hispanics in New York for speaking Spanish, not to berate a woman for, you know, displaying a flag of a Puerto Rico -- of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory. And to the people who feel attacked, the communities who feel under attack right now, the Puerto Ricans, the Hispanics, the African- Americans, everybody, you know what the fight back is? Vote in November. Vote. And stand with those that stand against that. And punish the ones that don't.</s>CUOMO: Steve?</s>CORTES: Everything you just said about Trump supposedly cottoning racists is wrong. It just patently is. When he talked about Charlottesville, when he said both sides he meant both sides of the debate over Confederate monuments, not both sides of the Charlotte protests. When he talked --</s>CUOMO: Where did you get that from?</s>CORTES: -- when he called NFL players who are protesting a bad -- from watching the speech --</s>CUOMO: He said there were good people down there who were just wanting to celebrate their monuments and their history. No, there weren't. They were haters --</s>CORTES: No, he meant the both sides --</s>CUOMO: Who liked the Confederate flag because of its ugliness. You know that, Steve. Those people don't like you either, by the way.</s>CORTES: Chris, there are good people on both sides of the monument debate. Not good people in the neo-Nazi side. There are no good people there. And regarding the NFL, there were white players who kneeled as well, who knelt as well. So that was not also a racial issue --</s>CUOMO: Come on, Steve. Please.</s>NAVARRO: Come on.</s>NAVARRO: Stop playing dumb on national</s>TV. CORTES: It's totally -- no. Because, you know, it's corrosive to our political discourse in this country that when you disagree with somebody politically, your automatic instinct is to call them a racist rather than talk about the policy on which you disagree.</s>CUOMO: And you don't believe the president has anything to do with that tone, who when he watches this segment will call it fake news and find five terrible things that my kids should never hear about me and put them out there. And his talk like that you don't think --</s>CORTES: No.</s>CUOMO: -- contributes in any way to a tone of cynicism and ugliness. And you don't think he has a responsibility to be better than that?</s>CORTES: No, quite the opposite, Chris. This president, first of all, is not a racist. And there's no --</s>CUOMO: I never said he was.</s>CORTES: There's zero evidence that he is.</s>CUOMO: I never said he was.</s>CORTES: Secondly, his policies have been the opposite of racist. All he's doing is making life better for my community, for Hispanics, for African-Americans --</s>CUOMO: Then why are we seeing all these incidents popping up around the country? Why is there an increase?</s>CORTES: Because, unfortunately, we live in a fallen world where there's ugliness and some of the ugliness is from people who hate Trump. Some of the ugliness is from people who love Trump. Ugliness regardless. That's why. But again --</s>CUOMO: You don't think it's weird that your party --</s>NAVARRO: Yes, merely coincidence. Just merely coincidence --</s>CUOMO: Is it coincidence that your party's got six guys running this year who are all -- who align themselves with this kind of ugliness and one of them the president picks as his choice for senator?</s>CORTES: You'd have to list me these six. I know one of them who's in Chicago who by the way ran --</s>CUOMO: Mel, give the list of all six. You got the guy in jersey. You've got the senator -- the guy who's running in Virginia. I don't like saying their names because frankly I don't want to give them any more attention.</s>NAVARRO: California. The guy in Virginia.</s>CUOMO: I mean, there are about six guys who are doing it now.</s>NAVARRO: Guy who lost in Virginia who talked about the Chinese --</s>CUOMO: I'm just saying why, why encourage that kind of stuff?</s>CORTES: I have no interest in -- I have no interest in defending these guys. And I don't know enough about them to even want to defend them. And I don't want to quite frankly. But I will absolutely defend President Trump and tell you that he's not a racist.</s>CUOMO: He's backing one of them for U.S. Senate.</s>CORTES: I think it's evidence to Americans from the public record --</s>CUOMO: He is backing one of them for U.S. Senate. He's backing a guy -- Steve, you need to hear this.</s>NAVARRO: The Central Park five, housing issues.</s>CORTES: Oh, gosh.</s>NAVARRO: Mexicans are rapists and criminals.</s>CORTES: We're going to go back to Central Park Five now?</s>CUOMO: It's not like it stopped mattering to those --</s>NAVARRO: It's not like it was something --</s>CUOMO: You spend 13 years in prison, see if it doesn't matter anymore to you, Steve.</s>NAVARRO: Right, nothing matters.</s>CORTES: Hold on.</s>CUOMO: He called for the death penalty for those guys.</s>CORTES: Another thing that you said is that he is disparaging of immigrants. And that's not true. He's disparaging of illegal immigrants. And I am sick and tired of liberals trying to conflate illegal immigration with legal immigration --</s>CUOMO: So when he says they are sending us some real beauties --</s>CORTES: He's married to an immigrant.</s>NAVARRO: Yes, he loves immigration, particularly the ones that he wants to work at Mar-a-Lago. Talk about the epitome of hypocrisy. The guy spends his time railing against immigration and yet wants to bring 78 foreigners to work at Mar-a-Lago here down the road. You think there's not any people here where I live who can do the job? He's a hypocrite and he's a racist.</s>CORTES: I have never heard him say one disparaging thing about legal immigrants to this country. He's the son of an immigrant, as I am. He's married to an immigrant. He loves immigration and what it does for this country. He can't stand illegal immigration, and he couldn't have been more clear about that, by the way, in his race for the presidency --</s>CUOMO: So he doesn't want to reduce -- he doesn't want to reduce legal immigration? He doesn't want to reduce legal immigration?</s>NAVARRO: Let me ask you something.</s>CUOMO: Hold on a second. We do --</s>CUOMO: He wants to reduce -- let me do it differently. He wants to reduce legal immigration. He does not speak out when these incidents happen that smack of an ugliness in this country even though theoretically he holds the highest moral position in the country. Why?</s>CORTES: Look, regarding immigration, I think we do need to do immigration better. And that's not racist to say that we should move to a merit-based system.</s>CUOMO: I didn't say better. I said less is what he wants. He wants less people coming in.</s>CORTES: Well, by the way --</s>CUOMO: So don't say he loves it when he's looking to abridge it is what I'm trying to say. But also --</s>CORTES: Hold on. We shouldn't be called racist just because --</s>CUOMO: I'm not calling you a racist. I'm not about the labels. I'm about the reality of it, Steve. That's all I'm saying. Ana made a point earlier. You never responded to it. Maybe he has no responsibility for any of these ugly acts we're seeing. Maybe this is just who we are at our worst and this is what he inherited. Doesn't he have a responsibility to speak to it and say stop it? And if you think you're doing this because you're aligned with me I hate you for it. And if you think this is us at our best you're the worst. Why doesn't he say that?</s>CORTES: He did just that if you remember during the transition when he was the president-elect. He did just that. When he literally looked in the camera, I believe it was on "60 Minutes," and he looked in the camera and he said if you think you're doing this in my name, stop it. And that's exactly what he said. And he couldn't have been clearer.</s>NAVARRO: And he'd been president for 18 months and daily members of our community are getting assaulted and attacked. And he hasn't said one word. He hasn't used that presidential pulpit --</s>CORTES: That's not true.</s>NAVARRO: -- once. And if you think those little kids --</s>CUOMO: That is true.</s>NAVARRO: Let me tell you, if you think those little kids at that Trump rally, when they say they don't want any Mexicans here because they're overpopulating the country, can tell the difference between you or a Mexican who crossed the border yesterday, they can't.</s>CUOMO: And remember --</s>NAVARRO: For them, you're all Mexicans. We're all Mexicans.</s>CUOMO: Let's end the debate on that. On one expression that came from a much better mind than my own. What you inspire, you own, and what you ignore, you empower. That's guidance for us. It's guidance for the president as well. Steve Cortes, thank you for making the case. Ana Navarro, as always.</s>CORTES: Thank you.</s>CUOMO: As a reminder of who we are at our best, because I don't want you to think that I'm just trying to project a reality of America that's always ugly, that's always bad, that is part reality but it's not the entire reality. And here's the proof. You remember the pint- sized African-American entrepreneur Reggie Fields, reported to the cops by his white neighbors for accidentally mowing part of their lawn? For free, by the way. Well, guess what. Business is booming for the 12-year-old tycoon. He's hiring so much and so many people with his expansion of his business, President Trump may claim him as proof of the new economy and rising fortunes for African-Americans. Ah, the irony. All right. Next topic, this is a hot one also. Are Democrats looking for a new leader in Congress? Congressman Tim Ryan, he tried and fell short in 2016. But is now the time for change? Is this the face of the future? We discuss next.