President Trump Vows to Close U.S. Border with Mexico if Mexican Government Does Not Stop Illegal Immigration into U.S.; Rep. Ted Yoho (R) Florida is Interviewed on President Trump's Proposal to Close U.S.-Mexico Border; Rep. Susan Wild, (D) Pennsylvania is Interviewed on President Trump's Claims of Republican Health Care Reform Ideas and Co-Sponsorship of Equal Pay Act
CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. It's Saturday, March 30th, 2019. So good to have you here. I am Christi Paul.</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I am Victor Blackwell. You are in the CNN Newsroom.</s>PAUL: So President Trump has a very strong message for Mexico. Stop migrants entering the U.S. or he is closing the border next week.</s>BLACKWELL: Listen, this is not the first time that the president has threatened to shut down the border. He has never actually followed through on the threat, but that does not mean that he won't do it this time.</s>PAUL: In the meantime, today is Beto O'Rourke big campaign kickoff. He has got three rallies in Texas, El Paso, Houston, Austin. All of course near the U.S.-Mexico border.</s>BLACKWELL: The Democratic presidential candidate has been meeting with asylum seekers, and he tweeted he will continue to push for answers on immigration. CNN's Natasha Chen is live from the border town of Hidalgo, Texas. Natasha, tell us more about what, first, President Trump said.</s>NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Victor, President Trump was claiming that a shutdown of the border would be a huge profit-making move for the U.S., but in fact there would be a huge economic loss for both countries here. We are at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge where you can see a lot of cars now going toward the Mexico side. This is because a lot of people living in these border towns really cross daily for their business. We even met a young student just now who goes to school here, a lot of U.S. born children attend American schools but then cross the border into Mexico to be with their families. So a lot of that daily activity would be disrupted as well as commerce. Those trucks bringing cargo actually going through a port about two miles away from us. Now, President Trump did say in his Twitter feed yesterday that if Mexico doesn't stop all illegal immigration from their side, he would close the border.</s>PAUL: So how would this effect imports across the border, Natasha?</s>CHEN: Right. First, you and I would probably see a difference at grocery stores if that were to happen because just less than half of the U.S. fruit and vegetables that are imported from all countries actually come from Mexico. So a lot of that, think of your avocados, tomatoes perhaps, a lot of these fruits and vegetables you see in the stores come from the southern side. And so we are going to see that effected probably, like I said, at the port two miles away from us where most of those trucks come in, Christi.</s>PAUL: All right, good to know. Natasha Chen, thank you so much for that update.</s>BLACKWELL: As we said, immigration will be a key focus today when Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke holds a campaign rally in his hometown of El Paso.</s>PAUL: The Texas city has been really the center of the immigration debate with O'Rourke and President Trump holding dueling rallies there just last month. CNN's Leyla Santiago is in El Paso. So what is planned today, Leyla? What do we expect?</s>LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, in the next two hours we expect Beto O'Rourke to come right here to start his rally, to officially launch his campaign for the White House. One of the things we do expect him to talk about is immigration. And I'll tell you what, I actually just went to the border within a half mile of where we are right now. And I want to show you what we saw there, just a short video I was able to film of migrants, still a number of them, under that bridge being held. And when I talked to the mayor of Juarez, he told me that right now they have 487 people in a shelter waiting to seek asylum in the U.S. So when we talk about shutting the border, as President Trump has said, that could mean a significant increase in waiting time for those asylum seekers if that happens. Now, the very day that we heard President Trump say that, Beto O'Rourke also tweeted that he, too, which was yesterday, went to visit the border. So yes, I expect he will talk about that today as he officially launches his campaign. He will likely also talk health care, criminal justice reform, and climate change. Those are things he has been talking about over the last two weeks as he has visited those early voting states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. He is now back in his hometown to talk about that on his turf where he is most comfortable, and really where he became a rising Democratic star, where he went up against Senator Ted Cruz in the midterm election and really raised some eyebrows with his fundraising abilities. For the midterm elections, he raised $80 million. His campaign saying on day one in the first 24 hours after his announcement, we have video, he was able to raise $6.1 million. That's the most we've seen of any candidate in the field. So we'll have to see if the excitement that he creates here in El Paso will be something that he can do nationwide.</s>BLACKWELL: Leyla Santiago for us here in El Paso. Thanks so much.</s>PAUL: So Attorney General Bill Barr says the redacted Mueller report could be released in a few weeks. The Justice Department in fact is already working on those redactions.</s>BLACKWELL: The president first tweeted that he had nothing to hide, said it on camera as well. But then he followed up with what seemed like a warning about the release. The president is at his beach resort there at Mar-a-Lago. CNN's Boris Sanchez is not too far away in West Palm Beach. Boris, good morning to you.</s>BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Victor and Christi. That's right. The Attorney General William Barr confirming that he is working now on redacting portions of the Mueller report. And President Trump was asked about his confidence in the attorney general, what he would like to see him do with the report. The president said he has full confidence. Listen to this. Looks like we don't have the soundbite, but the president yesterday said that he had full confidence in the attorney general, that he trusted him to do what was right, and that he wanted transparency. He wanted the report out there. Despite that, he did tweet this. Take a look, the president writing, quote, "Robert Mueller was a hero to the radical left Democrats until he ruled that there was no collusion with Russia, so ridiculous to even say. After more than two years since the insurance policy statement was made by a dirty cop, I got the answers I wanted, the truth." The president goes on to say that he does not believe whatever he gives Democrats will be enough. He says "So maybe we should just take our victory and say no, we've got a country to run." So the president appears to be suggesting that he may use executive privilege to try to block some portions of the Mueller report from going to Congress, from being made public. The attorney general has said that the White House has the right to exert executive privilege but that he doesn't intend to share the report with them at this time. The president, meantime, just arrived a short time agate his golf resort here in south Florida. No public events on the schedule, except later today he is meeting with a group of supporters, Victor and Christi.</s>PAUL: Boris Sanchez, good to know. Thank you so much.</s>BLACKWELL: Joining me, Republican Congressman Ted Yoho. Congressman, good morning to you.</s>REP. TED YOHO, (R) FLORIDA: Good morning, Victor, how are you?</s>BLACKWELL: I'm doing well, thank you. First, let's start here. The president says that if Mexico doesn't crackdown on migrants coming through Mexico and to the U.S. border that he is going to shut down the border. How will closing the southern border reduce the number of people who are trying to cross in or seeking asylum?</s>YOHO: I think what you'll see is it's an attitude of the United States that enough is enough, and that it will impede that because that message will go back to Guatemala, Honduras, these countries where these people are coming from, and that message will go out that America has changed how they're going to deal with illegal immigration, and I fully support the president on this.</s>BLACKWELL: You don't think that that message, that attitude, was effectively relayed when the president was elected and all that he said thus far about people coming through the southern border, and this month the CBP says they're on track for 100,000 encounters and apprehensions at the southern border. What's different about the attitude now that didn't lead to what you're hoping it will lead to now?</s>YOHO: It goes directly to the Mexican government. The president has said this before, but Mexico has failed to act. They have deported more people as they come into Mexico, but they have control of the border as much as we do. And this is just as much for them as it is for us. And I talked to President Trump early on in his campaign that Mexico gets -- they've received over $2 billion in foreign aid on the war on drugs, and they've received about $300 million in foreign aid for other things, and that they really could help pay for this or we could suspend that, that would go to the border. This is something that's breaking down America. And this is the tip of the iceberg. When you see what's going on in Venezuela --</s>BLACKWELL: Congressman, let's stay on point here, let's stay on focus here, because I understand the leverage that the president, that the U.S. government has potentially economically over Mexico. My question is, how does closing the border stop the increase of people coming to seek asylum, because what we learned from a September, 2018, Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report, is that when the CBP regulated, slowed asylum seekers through ports of entry, that they may have seen an increase of illegal border crossings. So if you close down the border, won't all the people who were coming to ports of entry to seek asylum simply do it between ports of entry?</s>YOHO: Well, what we're doing has not worked, as you just brought out. More people are coming in. And we're doing everything we can to stem that right now. And if it hasn't worked, I think you need to go to the next step. And we'll see what happens, and hopefully Mexico will come and help us.</s>BLACKWELL: But what evidence, I'm asking for evidence. To see what happens, you know that there will be a disastrous economic effect for closing down the border. You know how much commerce goes through the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. To simply say we'll see what happens, don't you need some evidence that closing the border would reduce the number of people, as the president hopes it will, who are coming into the country illegally or coming to seek asylum? Is there any evidence that that's going to be an effective --</s>YOHO: I don't have a crystal ball. Nobody has a crystal ball to see how this is going to affect that. But I can tell you what we're doing is not working. Yes, it's going to be painful for some people, and trade will probably be affected somewhat. But things will get adjusted. And the goal is we want legal immigration in an orderly manner. And if we have done everything we have up to this point, and as Secretary Nielsen has said, it's a crisis, it's overrun. So we have got to change the strategy. I think this is the right way to go.</s>BLACKWELL: Evidence is not equal to a crystal ball, but I hear the point that there is no evidence. So let me move on to this. You're a Ranking Member on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation. So let's talk now about North Korea, if we can. There's been the announcement that the South Korean president Moon Jae-in will be coming to the White House April 11th to talk with the president, potentially to change the strategy, because there's been, you've admitted this in the committee, there's been no progress on denuclearization with North Korea. Moon needs these sanctions to be lifted to continue to grow his economic relationship with the North. So are you concerned that Moon will convince the president to reduce sanctions? We've already seen the tweet where the president called off sanctions that were potentially headed to either China or North Korea. That wasn't even clear. What's your concern about this meeting?</s>YOHO: That president Moon will come here, they'll try to work that out. They have waivers where they can do humanitarian and some economic development in the Kaesong Industrial Park. President Trump did pull back on those sanctions. We on the committee are going to keep pressuring the treasury and the administration to put the sanctions on these companies that are evading the sanctions, i.e. China and Russia, Russian, Chinese banks, Chinese businesses that are funneling money for North Korea. If everybody agreed to the sanctions that were voted on --</s>BLACKWELL: Was the president wrong to pull back on sanctions? I apologize for interrupting, but there's a bit of a delay.</s>YOHO: You know what, I can't say he was wrong on that because I don't know what his strategy was. I don't have that insider information.</s>BLACKWELL: Sarah Sanders says the president likes Kim Jong-un and thought the sanctions weren't necessary. Let me read for you your own words here, because you said right before the Hanoi summit, "Kim Jong- un appears to be using the same play book as his two predecessors used before, which is to promise peace and denuclearization in exchange for sanctions relief. Once this is granted, the DPRK continues their deceit, lying, and continuation of a dangerous nuclear program." There is the reporting from South Korean lawmakers that they're rebuilding the launch side for long range missiles and there's no progress on denuclearization. The president likes Kim. Isn't the president being played by your own description here of what's happened before?</s>YOHO: No, I don't, because he has met with Kim. You've got to have a dialogue going. He's backing off sanctions that were going to go in there. Like I said, we're going to keep pushing to put those back on there. The sanctions need to go on China so that China, who does about 94 percent of trade with North Korea, will put enough pressure on North Korea for them to finally come to the table earnestly and sincerely, to let's bring this to an end. And President Trump has to have the freedom to be able to keep a dialogue open. And if you close that all together, we're going to go back to where we were when President Obama was in office. And so I'm going to give him the flexibility of negotiating with what he thinks is right. My job is to make sure that they're held accountable, the Treasury Department, that we're going to keep putting pressure on them. And if they don't, we're going to call those committees in or those departments in.</s>BLACKWELL: Congressman, we will see if the president closes the border next weekend and what will be the fruit of this meeting with Moon Jae-in.</s>YOHO: We will see.</s>BLACKWELL: Congressman Ted Yoho, thanks so much for being with us this morning.</s>YOHO: Thank you.</s>PAUL: President Trump says he has a group of Republicans coming up with an alternative for Obamacare. Why apparently it's been hard to find out more about that group.</s>BLACKWELL: Plus, an expensive demand from the city of Chicago. It's demanding that actor Jussie Smollett repay a little more than $130,000 for investigating a crime that police say never happened.