Trump Offers No Preference on Immigration Bills; U.S. Pulls Out of U.N. Human Rights Council
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Outrage is building over images and audio of terrified children in cages. The president greeted angrily by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus including California's Juan Vargas.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quit separating the kids. You're separating the children! Mr. President, don't you have kids?</s>BRIGGS: That was Vargas there. What one Republican in the meeting tells CNN's Dana Bash, the president only talked about separating children from their families in the context of political optics, not necessarily the actual policy. More now from Kaitlan Collins at the White House.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPOTER: Christine and Dave, the president went to Capitol Hill. He met with House Republicans and he spoke at length for about an hour during a meeting that was supposed to be a pep rally for immigration. But members seemed to walk away confused at which bill exactly it was that the president was putting forth support for if either of those House immigration bills that the president was there talk about. The confusion was so great that the White House had to issue a statement after clarifying that the president did support both bills as they have said in the last few days. Of course, that meeting came after the president was getting more and more criticism, some from members of even his own party over that family separation issue that is happening on the border as we've seen these images play out on the news and front pages of newspapers throughout the country. That is something that the president spoke about during that meeting with those Republican lawmakers, but it wasn't the focus of the meeting, CNN is told by several sources. But he did go back to the family separation issue, saying he had spoken with his daughter, Ivanka Trump, about it. She had shown him the pictures and she told him that was a practice that needed to end. The president agreed but said he believed it was a legislative solution that they were looking for. So, the president walked out of the meeting not offering a lot of momentum for either of those bills, leaving House members a little confused as to what they're going to support and leaving a lot of questions about what's going to happen with immigration -- Christine and Dave.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Kaitlan, thank you. "The Associated Press" reports the Trump administration is sending babies separated from their parents to at least three facilities in South Texas known as tender age shelters. "The A.P." says there are plans to open a fourth tender age shelter in a Houston warehouse previously used for displaced victims of Hurricane Harvey.</s>BRIGGS: City leaders in Houston denouncing the move. But the Department of Health and Human services tells the "</s>A.P.": We have specialized facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs and tender age children. They're staffed by people who know how to deal with the needs, particularly of the younger children.</s>ROMANS: You know who else knows how to deal with the needs of those younger children?</s>BRIGGS: The parents.</s>ROMANS: Their parents. Let's bring in CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer. He is a historian and professor at Princeton University, author of "The Fierce Urgency of Now." Give us some historical perspective for what's happening here, because the United States has always been a country of laws with heart. We are also a refugee-accepting nation. We're a nation with some of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. What is happening with these children at the border, and how does it fit in historically?</s>JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is certainly one of those moments we're going to look back to, I think, and wonder how we got there and how we ended up doing this through government policy. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which is another moment like this. You had in the 1920s when Congress imposed really severe restrictions on immigrants coming into this country using all kind of nativist arguments. I think that's the kind of moment we're living through right now.</s>ROMANS: Legal but wrong.</s>ZELIZER: Legal but wrong. Absolutely.</s>BRIGGS: It is needless to say, a very emotional issue. But as you write on CNN.com, President Trump is an electoral animal of the highest degree. You say his broader political objective is clear. What is his political objective here?</s>ZELIZER: He wants to keep his coalition together. That means loyal Republicans, Trump fanatics, and disaffected Democrats and fighting against undocumented immigrants has been a core issue for him. I think he believes this is something that stirs up his support, and that has broad support in the</s>GOP. ROMANS: Let's listen to what the president said yesterday about this issue. You know, you heard Chuck Grassley, for example, and others say we need more immigration judges, we need to fix the process. This is what the president says --</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We don't want judges. We want security on the border. We don't want people to come in. We want them to come in through a legal process like everybody else that's waiting to come into our country.</s>ROMANS: That's why he was elected. You know, sometimes I think, you know, in this outrage over what's happening at the border, he was elected to shut down illegal immigration. Isn't that what he's doing?</s>ZELIZER: Well, he is. He is fulfilling a campaign promise. But I think when you see it, it looks different than when he's talking about it on the campaign trail.</s>ROMANS: Right.</s>ZELIZER: This is what it means to really crack down on undocumented immigrants. And the way he is doing is shocking, I think, to many Americans. And so, it's true that he's fulfilling his promise. And it's also true why so many people are horrified by what that actually means.</s>BRIGGS: A lot of people are also horrified by the way the story's being covered by some. Laura Ingraham referring to the detention centers as essentially summer camps, the other night. Then this gem from Corey Lewandowski last night. Listen --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I read today about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage --</s>COREY LEWANDOSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Womp, womp.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I read -- did you say "womp-womp" about a child with Down syndrome being taken from her mother?</s>LEWANDOWSKI: What I said is you can think you --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How dare you? How dare you? How absolutely dare you, sir?</s>BRIGGS: What do you make of that? Is this red meat for the Trump base? Do they want womp-womp about special needs?</s>ZELIZER: Well, I think it's a little red meat, but it's insight into some of the people who have surrounded President Trump and President Trump himself. It reflects the kind of callousness about what people are reacting to. That suggests they know what they're doing, this is what they want to do, and they will move forward with doing policies like this until the, quote/unquote, optics are so bad they have to pull away.</s>ROMANS: And some of the reporting is that the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump went to him, showed him pictures, said this can't be happening. And he's more concerned about the political optics than the policy. He also, reporting from "The New York Times" and "Washington Post," shows that -- and our own reporting, too, that inside the White House, he feels as though we, the media, the enemy, are orchestrating all of this to make him look bad. It's unclear if the president understands that this is the heart and the soul of a nation on display here.</s>ZELIZER: I think he understands it. I think he knows what the policy's about. I think he's pursuing this policy with the intention of forcing Congress to send him a bill that he wants. And he's working with hard-line elements in the GOP who have grown in numbers over the decades and want to get a bill that cracks down on the border, that builds a wall, and this is leverage. This is his idea of leverage in legislative negotiations.</s>BRIGGS: Well, when it comes to legislation, there are two bills in the House this week. One, a conservative approach that doesn't appear to have the votes. One, a more compromised bill, backed by Paul Ryan. It's not certain it has the votes either. So, the president goes and speaks with the House Republicans, and they walk away going, we're not sure which if anything he backs. This is his party, but is he the leader of the party in the traditional sense? Is he saying here is my bill, here's what I believe, here's what I need?</s>ZELIZER: No, he doesn't have that kind of leverage yet. But he still is the leader of the party. Look, he shifted the debate, even the two bills that are the compromise, bills being debated, both are pretty tough --</s>BRIGGS: Is he leading it legislatively is my question?</s>ZELIZER: No, he doesn't care about that --</s>BRIGGS: The rhetoric --</s>ZELIZER: No, he's an executive president. He likes executive action. He's not totally invested in legislation. And I don't think that's his major concern. He likes presidential power, and he uses it ruthlessly. I think legislation is secondary to him.</s>ROMANS: Yes, he got the big spending bill through. After the fact, he was like, wait, this -- he didn't like the things that were in it. We'll come back in a few minutes and talk about Jeff Sessions' big op- ed in "USA Today" this morning where he's saying that the kids are cared for so well, they're cared for better than a lot of American kids are --</s>BRIGGS: Yes, a billion dollars of taxpayer money, he says.</s>ROMANS: We'll talk about that when you come back. Julian Zelizer, thank you.</s>BRIGGS: Thank you, sir.</s>ROMANS: The U.S. is withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Trump administration claims the group is biased against Israel, fails to hold human rights violators accountable. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley calling the council a cesspool of political bias and a protector of abusers.</s>NIKKI HALEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: This step is not a retreat from human rights commitments. On the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain parity of the hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.</s>ROMANS: The U.S. withdrawal comes one day after the U.N. Human Rights Office criticized the separation of children from their parents, calling the policy unconscionable.</s>BRIGGS: FBI agent Peter Strzok escorted out of the bureau Friday as part of an ongoing internal investigation of his conduct. He is still, though, an FBI employee. Strzok played a lead role in the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe. He later worked on the Russia investigation until his disparaging text messages about President Trump and his supporters were discovered. Strzok is under increased scrutiny following a critical report by the Justice Department's inspector general. His attorney says Strzok, quote, played by the rules and respected the process, and yet he continues to be the target of unfounded personal attacks. He claims the disciplinary process is tainted by political influence.</s>ROMANS: Who holds the cards in the battle for influence with North Korea? Kim Jong-un's latest trip to China could give some answers. We're live in Beijing.