Police Use Tear Gas in Puerto Rico Protests; Trump's Ugly Plan to Get Reelected
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This is CNN breaking news.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, welcome to our viewers all around the world, great to have you with us, I'm John Vause. We continue with breaking news in Puerto Rico. A fifth day of protests has turned violent on the streets of the capital, San Juan. Police fired tear gas into the crowds demanding the resignation of Puerto Rico's governor over leaked text messages from his administration that were homophobic, misogynistic and laced with profanity between Ricardo Rossello and members of his inner circle and he targeted political homes and celebrities. The governor has expressed regret but refuses to leave. These are the live images from the capital, San Juan, and a day of violence and unrest as the police have fired tear gas and protesters have responded by burning barricades. They are still on the streets there as the clock ticks past midnight. San Juan island has suffered so much in recent months in the past year or so from hurricane devastation to now this unrest across the island. This is not just about text messages, which were homophobic and laced with profanity, it's about corruption at the highest levels of the office of the governor there and these are protests joined by celebrities in Puerto Rico on the mainland and also Puerto Ricans who live on the mainland United States. Leyla Santiago is now on the line with more. Leyla, it's just past midnight there. What's the latest?</s>LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John I'm, calling in because we're struggling to get a live shot out of here. What are seeing is</s>VAUSE: It does seem --</s>SANTIAGO: -- scandal.</s>VAUSE: Leyla, we're having some problems with the phone line; it's dropping in and out but we'd like you to stay with us for as long as you can. One thing we noted -- and you brought this up -- this isn't just about the leaks of these text messages, which have been dubbed there, RickyLeaks after the governor. This is also now pitting the governor of Puerto Rico against the popular mayor of San Juan. She's the face of the opposition, if you like, to the governor. She was also the face of the opposition against Donald Trump at the time of Hurricane Maria, which left the island devastated and the U.S. president had engaged in a controversies when it came dealing with the island, when it came to emergency aid --</s>VAUSE: -- and assistance and how much financial assistance they received from Washington. Leyla, we still have you, so we are looking at a situation with five days a protest, from what you've seen, would you say they are growing increasingly violent? When we look at these images we see the results being drawn from the crowd and the police are responding with tear gas and if this is the case, there must be a concern for the authorities?</s>SANTIAGO: We were actually on Monday night with a massive protest and things escalating to tear gas with police with at the barricade in front of the governor's mansion and then tonight we saw the exact same thing. Protesters were out on the streets and you can feel their anger, their frustration. They don't read the signs and they are feeling through their words</s>VAUSE: Leyla Santiago, we appreciate the update there from the capital of San Juan, giving us the latest there and context of what is happening right now. This is tens of thousands of people turning out for a fifth day now, protesting a leak of text messages between the governor and his aides, profanity laced messages, 889 pages in all but that's a tip of the iceberg for many people who are suffering from a multibillion dollar debt crisis and coming from Hurricane Maria. We will monitor the situation in San Juan. We'll continue to check in with Leyla Santiago on the scene. But we now go on to the other major news of the day. In the past few hours we possibly saw the U.S. president plans to campaign for a second term, whipping a crowd of thousands into a frenzy and leading them in racist chants. It's become increasingly obvious over the past few days, that Donald Trump is prepared to do almost anything, no low is too low to do whatever it takes to get a second term. At that rally in North Carolina, Trump's message was clear --</s>VAUSE: -- reelect a true patriot, the flag-loving defender of the white middle class, Donald Trump. And in return he promises four years of economic prosperity and those who look different or sound different will be on notice to mind their place. For a Democrat, he'll be supporting a rabble of violent American hating Communists. And at that rally in North Carolina, Trump's message was this. He was essentially bringing out there by attacking those four Democratic congresswoman, doubling down, tripling down, if you like, on those attacks which he made earlier in the week. And in fact, he also thanked the Democrats who removed or tabled a motion to impeach the president. That was put on hold, much to the delight of Donald Trump.</s>TRUMP: I just heard that the United States House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to kill the most ridiculous project I've ever been involved in: the resolution -- how stupid is that? -- on impeachment. I want to thank those Democrats because many of them voted for us. The vote was a totally lopsided 332 to 95 to 1.</s>VAUSE: Ron Brownstein is the analyst and the senior editor for "The Atlantic" and he joins me now from Los Angeles. Ron, now the president is clearly energized and enjoying this controversy possibly more than any other of his presidency. A Reuters opinion poll has seen support for him among Republicans tick up compared to a week ago. He believes he's on a roll. Listen to the president before Wednesday's rally.</s>TRUMP: I do think I'm winning the political fight, I think I'm winning it by a lot. The Democratic Party is really going in a direction that nobody thought possible. They're going so far Left they're going to fall off a cliff.</s>VAUSE: To his point, Democrats seem to be flat-footed here. An impeachment vote was tabled on Wednesday and the president, we just heard, falsely claiming that impeachment is off the table because the Democrats killed it.</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Obviously that is not true. It is still continuing in the Judiciary Committee. But, John, that is a sideshow next to the magnitude of what we're watching here today. A president of the United States openly leading a racist taunt, an unabashedly, full-throated racist chant in front of a crowd of Americans, who are gleefully joining in. I just want to ask listeners to think about this scene applied to any other aspect of life in America or, for that matter, anywhere else. If 20 high school students surrounded an immigrant classmate on the football field and chanted, "Send her home," how many of them would be expelled? If 20 employees at your company surrounded someone in the lunchroom and chanted, "Send her home," how many of them would be fire? If 20 soldiers did that to a fellow platoon mate, much less a commanding officer leading the chant, how many of them would be discharged from the Army? We know the answer to all of those question and yet now we are being -- in effect, the president is saying that this is an acceptable way to deal with each other in a country that is growing inexorably more diverse and more connected to the globe. And it is an absolute moment of looking in the mirror for all Americans about what they will accept from the highest office in the land. And by the way, imagine a CEO doing this. Would a board of directors let them stay in their job?</s>VAUSE: Well, in 2016, Trump felt just like one person, Hillary, "Lock her up" Clinton. In 2020, it's these four Democratic congresswomen. Who knows who else will be a target. Instead of jailing political opponents, now it's deportation. You talked about the crowd, let's listen to the crowd.</s>TRUMP: And obviously and importantly Omar has a history of launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds.</s>VAUSE: How is it that a significant part of the country can look at that rally, can listen to it and listen to the chant and not find it chilling, abhorrent, to a point terrifying while others see nothing wrong or even enthusiastically agree? Look, as you know, I've said to you for year, I've believed for years that the fundamental fault in American politics is what I call the coalition of restoration and the coalition of transformation, that essentially our politics now divides along an axis between those groups and areas of American society that are comfortable with the way we are changing, demographically, culturally and even economically. And those who view it as a threat to the America they have known.</s>BROWNSTEIN: And that was who Donald Trump was talking to when he put the single most important words of the 2016 campaign in his slogan, make America great again because again is about looking back. There are a lot of 30-year-old African American MBAs who think America is imperfect today but there's not an "again" they are trying to get back to or professional women in the workforce. There is not an "again" they are trying to get back to. He is directly, ever more directly, as he goes on, appealing to the portions of the electorate, who believe that they are threatened by changing realities in the country on every front, cultural, demographic and economic, as I said. And this is the line that he wants to draw in the country for 2020. I think it is an expression of weakness as much as strength, because if you're talking about unemployment at 4 percent and the stock market at an all-time high, most presidents would be wanting to ask, are you better off than you were four years ago? But Trump knows that there are enough people who answer yes to that question, that answered no to him for other reasons, precisely in many ways these reasons, that he is not assured of winning that question. So he wants the question to be, who is a real American? And he will take his chances on that front. And again, it is a moment of choosing for the country that he is precipitating.</s>VAUSE: Here's the type of language that the president used to whip up the crowd.</s>TRUMP: And tonight I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down. They never have anything good to say. That's why I say, "Hey, if they don't like it, let them leave, let them leave, let them leave." They're always telling us how to run it, how to do this, how to do -- you know what, if they don't love it, tell them to leave it.</s>VAUSE: Quickly, the president is equating criticism of him --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes.</s>VAUSE: -- criticism of his administration as being the same as an attempt to tear down the country. I really hesitate about this next point but in March 1933, the German Reichstag passed the Malicious Practices Act, making it a crime to speak out against the new government or criticize its leaders. It made even the smallest expression of dissent a crime. They called it the Enabling Act, which enabled the chancellor to punish anyone he considered an enemy of the state. It sounds insane, it sounds hyperbolic. But this is what history teaches us, that these acts</s>BROWNSTEIN: Look, I'm always, you know, I am first on the list to be leery of any kind of comparisons to Nazi Germany. But your intermediate point, that you don't know how far this can go once you start, I think, is a very valid one. And that's why I find it astonishing that we have not heard more from the collective social leadership of the country. I would like to hear from the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the business roundtable and Apple and GM and Exxon and IBM, what -- and Microsoft. What would happen at their company to a senior executive who, when being disagreed with by a colleague of color, told them to go back to where they were from? I would like to know from school superintendents in every major city, what would happen to a group of students who chanted, "Go back where you came from," at a classmate? And, again, military leaders, I mean, this is a moment where it is pretty clear that the congressional Republican almost completely having accepted Trump's transformation acceleration -- he didn't start -- the acceleration of their transformation into a party centered on the parts and voters in America most uneasy about what the country is becoming, are not going to really make any stand for a collective American identity. They are allowing him to both on moral and political terms execute this enormous gamble of redefining them as a party of white racial grievance against a changing America above all. And that is -- and so that is kind of baked in at this point. The question is, are there other voices in the society that are going to stand up and say, look, at a time when a majority of public school students are already non-white, when a majority of our under 18 population will be nonwhite by 2020, when a majority of our high school graduates will be nonwhite by 2023 or so, is it OK to use this kind of language, to use and to cleave the country in this way as we are growing inexorably more diverse?</s>VAUSE: We spoke a couple of years ago about what the future holds. And we're out of time, but I remember you clearly saying to me at the time that this will only get more amplified as we -- as the years go on --</s>VAUSE: -- and that's what we're seeing play out right now and in so many ways --</s>BROWNSTEIN: -- John, a very quick thought. History will have no problem understanding what it was that precipitated this moment in American history. We are going through a profound demographic --</s>BROWNSTEIN: -- change along with a profound economic change and there are big parts of the country who want no part of either.</s>VAUSE: Yes. Ron, as always, thank you so much. A short break: still to come, Theresa May rails against populism and absolutism, claiming in her final speech as British prime minister that politics has sunk to an all-time low.