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UCLA Player's Dad Won't Concede Trump Won Son's Release; Trump Golf Club Reimburses Trump Foundation for Lawsuit; Judge Blocks Trump's Sanctuary Cities Order; Trump Administration to End Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired November 21, 2017 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[11:32:53] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: We're back. You're watching CNN.

The father of one of the jailed UCLA basketball players says he is not in a feud with President Trump but also not willing to give him credit for freeing the young men, including his son, during the recent trip to China. President Trump shot back that he would have left the Americans in jail.

This father, LaVar Ball, who revels in the shock value of often outlandish statements, escalated the hostilities right here on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAVAR BALL, FATHER OF UCLA BASKETBALL PLAYER: If he said he helped, that's good for his mind.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: What do you mean good for his mind?

BALL: If you help you shouldn't have to say anything. If you helped -- if I help somebody I don't walk around saying you know I help you now. Come on now. Give me some love. I helped you. Come on for real. I would say thank you if he would have put him on his plane and took him home. Then I would have said, thank you, Mr. Trump, for taking my boys out of China and bringing them back to the U.S. There's a lot of room on that plane. Did he help the boys get out? I don't know.

CUOMO: Why do you doubt it?

BALL: I don't know. If I was going to thank somebody, I would probably thank President Xi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's talk about this. Carrie Sheffield, conservative commentator, and Keith Boykin, CNN political commentator and former Clinton White House aide.

Good to see both of you.

To you first. You heard the father's opinion. How do you feel about that?

CARRIE SHEFFIELD, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: Well, I respect his right to express himself. I respect our president's right to express himself. That's the whole thing about this. We have the first amendment and I think we need to get talking to each other. That's what I would love to see. I would love to see the fact that this is really rallying to the bases in terms of what Trump is doing here. People felt disaffected seeing the conflict around black lives matter and felt they haven't been respected. We need a conversation.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: He said in a tweet they should have stayed in jail. He was irked by what this father saying not so sure you should be taking the credit for this.

SHEFFIELD: Sure. Again, that's his right to express -- -- we know the president expresses himself in the moment. He uses a lot of passion. I think it's our responsibility as people in the media to say OK, let's unpack this and see the bigger issue of what he's expressing himself about.

BALDWIN: In the spirit of unpacking, how do you see it?

[11:35:08] KEITH BOYKIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's interesting, whenever someone like LaVar Ball, Colin Kaepernick or an African-American athlete, says something that Donald Trump doesn't like he's quick to criticize them. Even while they're exercising their basic constitutional rights. When you have somebody like or somebody accused of doing something improper or like Joe Arpaio, who is a white nationalist essentially, Trump is willing to excuse their behavior. He pardoned Joe Arpaio. And when it comes to Roy Moore he's not said a word about the sexual assault allegations against him.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: You think the theme is race?

BOYKIN: Of course. Trump is playing to his base of white racial resentment. A core of what he's doing.

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: That's why he's been trying to get rid of the Haitians, going after LaVar Ball, going after the NFL athletes. It's all about an orchestrated Steve Bannon-esque policy of attacking people of color.

SHEFFIELD: I'm going to give you free advice. If you want to win in 2020 --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: I'm not running a campaign. I'm telling you what's going on regardless --

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: I don't think it's a good strategy of Democrats --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: I'm not representing the Democratic Party. I'm representing myself as an African-American man. I see a president of the United States who is here, out there, basically, attacking black people and using their politics of white racial resentment to go after African- Americans, Haitians, people of color, Mexicans, Muslims, others not part of the white --

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: The Democrats have controlled the urban areas for 60 years.

BOYKIN: I'm not here --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKI: Oh, my gosh.

SHEFFIELD: And the reality is we have nothing to show for it. The reality is Democrats have controlled urban areas for --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: What does this have to do with anything.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: One voice. One voice.

BOYKIN: What are we talking about?

BALDWIN: How do you respond? To his points, let me add a couple names. NBA coaches criticizing the president, Popovich and Kerr, and recently the Eminem video. People who have been critical of the president, and yet, he hasn't touched them. He says there is absolutely a racial component and you say no there absolutely isn't?

SHEFFIELD: I'm saying he is an around-the-clock, around-the-board criticizer of a lot of people. We all know that. That was what -- the reason why a lot of women voted for him, because he is an equal opportunity --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: Offender.

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: Sexual assaulter.

(CROSSTALK) SHEFFIELD: It's because he has a reason for doing it. So -- and to the point on, you know, there is an utter hypocrisy for the fact that Democrats have controlled urban areas for the last 60 years for nothing --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: What does that --

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: -- controlled where a lot of these issues around poverty, crime, race in America, what do liberal policies have to show for it?

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: This is -- and this is where --

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: Ben Carson would strongly disagree -

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's hang on. Let me --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: Let's focus on the issue.

BALDWIN: Let's stay on topic.

Here is my question, speaking of some of these players, Marshawn Lynch, we saw the tweet --

BOYKIN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: -- the other day from President Trump. So the president called for the suspension of this player because he, as he called it out, saying essentially why did he stand for the Mexican anthem and not the U.S. Anthem. This is the tweet. This is the tweet from Marshawn's mom firing back, tweeting, "What NFL team does Trump own?" If you don't know the history, Trump did try to buy. "Oh, yes, they wouldn't let him have one."

Here's my question to Carrie.

I know you want to jump in Keith.

But will the president ignore the dig? If you say he's an around-the- clock offender does he back off it or go there, hit the mom.

SHEFFIELD: I don't work for the president. And even the people who work closely with him, cannot predict what he's going to say at any given moment.

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: That's a problem.

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: I agree that the Republican Party has done a terrible job when dating back to 1964 when Barry Goldwater opposes --

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: Don't deflect the issue.

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: Let me respond to this before you start going off on your talking points.

(CROSSTALK)

BOYKIN: The president of the United States should not be tweeting about professional athletes, he should be running the country. Crisis in North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria and the president is busy talking about professional athletes and what they're doing. Doesn't he have something more important to do with his time?

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Final thought from you.

SHEFFIELD: Again, the president has the right to express himself.

BOYKIN: So do these athletes.

SHEFFIELD: Maybe -- again, if we sit at the table and have a deeper conversation about what his tweets represent, what do they represent, they represent a lot --

(CROSSTALK)

SHEFFIELD: Again, I think that's a throwaway line. Much deeper things we need to be talking about.

BOYKIN: The president isn't.

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

Carrie and Keith, thank you.

BOYKIN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Happy Thanksgiving.

BOYKIN: Happy Thanksgiving.

SHEFFIELD: Happy Thanksgiving. [11:39:39] BALDWIN: Still ahead on CNN, new details today on one of President Trump's golf courses and the thousands and thousands of dollars it reportedly paid back to its own charity. We will talk to the reporter who dug it all up coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: There is new reporting out today on questions about how President Trump's foundation actually used its money. One of Donald Trump's golf courses paid back $158,000 to the charity. The money had been used to settle a lawsuit against this golf club. The reimbursement happened after the state of New York launched an investigation into the charity.

And it was David Fahrenthold who broke this story wide open from "The Washington Post," and also a CNN contributor.

David Fahrenthold, at it again. Let's start with the reimbursement. Tell me about that.

[11:44:46] DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: This is a weird case we uncovered last year. I can tell you at the start one of the things you're not allowed to do as a charity if you run a charity not allowed to use the money to pay off your businesses' debts or legal settlements. The money in the charity is meant for charity. Trump's golf course involved in a lawsuit. A guy had one a hole in one prize the golf course took away. He sued the golf course and in settling the lawsuit the golf course agreed to pay the guy's charity money. But it wasn't the golf course that paid. It was the charity, the Donald j. Trump Foundation that paid the guy's -- the golfer's charity. That's the kind of thing you're not allowed to do. What they're doing here later is paying it back.

BALDWIN: So, you write, you know, in your piece about this reimbursement the $158,000 paid back to the charitable foundation but then there was another, David, chunk of change, the $62,000 that you say the foundation received? What was that regarding?

FAHRENTHOLD: It's hard to know because they don't -- the Trump Foundation, we know this because the Trump Foundation put out a tax filing yesterday. It didn't spell out what it's talking about. There were a number of cases we found where the Trump Foundation, Trump had used it to buy things basically shouldn't have bought, things he should have paid for with his money used the charity's money to buy, autographed Tim Tebow football helmet, giant portraits of himself, list a couple examples. The tax filing said somebody reimbursed the foundation for donations it shouldn't have given before. Was that the portrait the helmet or something else? We're still waiting for those details.

BALDWIN: OK. Between the portrait and the helmet and the money the political committees, which is a no-no to paying legal fees, did you come across anything authentically charitable about the Trump Foundation? FAHRENTHOLD: The Trump Foundation is a strange foundation. It has

Donald Trump's name on it, but he doesn't give it money. Gives away other people's money under his name. There are gifts to veteran charities made as a result of fund-raiser Trump had on the campaign trail for veterans in Iowa. A few other gifts. He gave $50,000 to his son's school in Manhattan. Gifts that have to do with his business or personal life. Those are real charity. But there's a lot of other things that have been questionable about this over the years.

BALDWIN: Which is what you have been spending much time writing about.

David Fahrenthold, thank you.

BALDWIN: As always, good to see you.

Another one of President Trump's executive orders has been blocked now by a federal judge. This one intended to cut funding from sanctuary cities in the country. And now the Department of Justice is firing back. We have those details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:25] BALDWIN: President Trump's executive order to cut funding for so-called sanctuary cities is now blocked. A federal judge ruled that the president cannot set new conditions on spending approved by Congress.

Democratic Congresswoman, Suzan DelBene, of Washington, joins me now.

Congresswoman, nice to see you. Welcome.

REP. SUZAN DELBENE, (D), WASHINGTON: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: First your reaction to this judge's ruling, because we know Seattle is considered a sanctuary city. This is a big win for your side, no?

DELBENE: The president and the Department of Justice threatening to abruptly cut off funding for public safety is no way to strengthen our communities or help to keep them safe. This administration has been about reckless behavior and chaos and confusion. And what our communities need is stability and, certainty, so they have the resources to do their job and to protect all members of our community.

BALDWIN: The Department of Justice spokesperson saying his department, quote, "will vindicate the president's lawful authority to direct the executive branch."

So my reading is they don't seem to be backing down. How do you plan to fight that?

DELBENE: I think again, this has been reckless behavior. I think that the president needs to focus on helping our communities and supporting our communities. So this seems to be a continued kind of action directly from the administration without actually trying to work with communities and address the important issues of our country.

BALDWIN: Also, Congresswoman, I wanted to ask you on immigration as well, news today that the Trump administration announced they will end this temporary protected status designation for Haiti by July 2019. Haitians allowed to come to the U.S. in the wake of the earthquake in 2010. Now they have to pack their bags and head back, according to the administration. There is a lot of outrage over this. Perhaps supporters of the administration would say, listen, they have been here since 2010 and, at some point, they need to go home. What would you say?

DELBENE: I would say that the president and his actions are putting families at risk. We saw this with the travel ban and the abrupt actions and families who have sought refuge in this country. We need to work on comprehensive immigration reform. That's something Congress needs to act on and is critically important. Actions like the president that are really going to hurt families across the country is no way to support this problem.

BALDWIN: Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, thank you so much. Happy holidays to you this week, as we tackle these important issues here on CNN.

DELBENE: Thank you.

BALDWIN: We have new pictures in from -- thank you so much. New pictures from inside the White House briefing room. We have some special guests. Speaking of happy holidays, maybe not so happy for the turkeys in this country. For these, perhaps. President Trump will be pardoning them later this afternoon before heading to Florida for Thanksgiving. Stand by for the big turkey pardoning, President Trump's first this year. There is that.

Also here on CNN, breaking news. History in Africa and celebrations in the streets after long-time President Robert Mugabe announces he is resigning. Look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:54:25] BALDWIN: About 10:00 at night there in Zimbabwe. That's the scene there. We'll continue to talk to Africans in the wake of this massive resignation coming up here.

Also ahead, more on the breaking news. President Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin speaking moments ago on the future of Syria. Those details coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:59:31] JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us. We begin the hour with major international news. A late-morning phone

conversation between President Trump and the Russian President Vladimir Putin, and what the call tells us about America's role, or lack of a role, in plotting Syria's future. The two leaders spoke a short time ago. President Putin set up the call to brief President Trump on what Russia described as a new effort to end the Syrian civil war, a conflict that has left close to a half million people dead. And it comes a day after this picture was taken. Look at it. One that might sum up what you need to know about how little say the United States will have in those discussions as Russia and Putin take the lead.