Trump Plaque Commemorates Civil War Battle That Never Was; Trump's Second Pick For Army Secretary Drops Out
BURNETT: Breaking news at this hour. A top nominee of President Trump dropping out. Mark Green was Trump's second pick, second try for army secretary, made a host of controversial comments including saying that being transgender is a disease. Green justifying his withdrawal saying, unfortunately due to false and misleading attacks against me, this nomination has become a distraction. Athena Jones is OutFront near President Trump's golf club in New Jersey toight. And, Athena, look, this is the second try. He had made those comments about transgendered people. What is the administration saying tonight?</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: All right. Erin, well, the White House is declining to comment. So is the Pentagon. But as you mentioned, Green is with drawling after coming under fire after past controversial statements have come to light, not just on transgender issues but also on Islam and evolution. Green is a retired army sergeant, a West Point graduate, and is serving right now as a state senator in Tennessee. And, as you mentioned, he's the president's second pick for this post. The president tapped Green in April after his first choice, billionaire Vincent Viola had to withdraw because he had issues related to divesting from his financial holdings. Now, Green is accusing the, quote, "liberal left" of distorting some of his remarks. But it isn't just liberals who have been critical of Green. Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, both Republicans, have also expressed concerns -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right. So, obviously, a blow -- I mean, in terms of they need to get those positions in. Now they have to find someone else for that. There was, though, very big news and good news for the president today, the latest jobs report, 4.4 percent for unemployment in April. That is the lowest rate in the decade. How big of a deal is this? Does the president think this is?</s>JONES: Well, this is a big deal. This is a president who ran on being a jobs president. In that video the White House put out last week, a week or so ago, touting his accomplishments in the first 100 days, one of the data points was about the number of jobs the economy has added while he's been in office. So, it's a bit surprising to not see him take to Twitter early this morning to celebrate as we've often seen him to do. He did tweet late in the day, sometime after 3:00, tweeting out a link, saying "Jobs, jobs, jobs," and a link to a FOX News clip that talks about this, what they call an exceptional jobs report. So, the White House not making as big a deal out of it today as you might expect, Erin. Not as big a deal but, of course, he did come out with all caps and, you know, finally come out with his personality in that tweet. Thank you so much, Athena. And OUTFRONT now, a former senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign and senior economics analyst for us, Stephen Moore, and the president of the Economic Future Group, Democratic strategist Jonathan Tasini. Jonathan, 4.4 percent, lowest level in a decade. That puts it back to the peak of the incredibly strong job market before the Great Recession. How much credit do you give President Trump?</s>JONATHAN TASINI, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Very little credit and I think in fact any honest economist would tell you that presidents don't have that much effect on jobs at that level. Certainly, Trump's only been in office, as we know three months, and it has very little to do with him, even though he's been a pathological liar about this, and I have some standards from this. "Fortune" magazine actually looked at the claims he's made over the last three months, looked at dozen or so examples and found most of them either false or misleading, including your reporter mentioned his claim that he had created 600,000 jobs. That was a claim he made back in April, when in fact the BLS said in that time period since he'd been in office, only 533,000 jobs had been created. "Fortune" gave that a false grade. I could go through a whole lot of others. But he gets very little credit for this.</s>BURNETT: Steve, very little credit?</s>STEPHEN MOORE, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ECONOMIC ADVISER: Well, I think this is confirmation that there has been a Trump bounce in the economy. We saw it the day after the election with the stock market really taking off. By the way, there's relief in the White House, Erin, because we had a bad jobs report as you recall last month.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>MOORE: And the GDP number that came out a week or two ago for the first quarter was pretty weak, very weak, you know, less than 1 percent growth.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>MOORE: So, I think there's a sigh of relief right now that it looks like the economy's back on track. You know, it's interesting with these numbers right now, we have a situation where we're getting -- while we still have a lot of -- we still have a lot of people out of labor force, that's a problem.</s>TASINI: Right. I agree with that.</s>MOORE: But we're getting close to getting to pretty full employment where more and more employers that I talk to, Erin, are telling me that one of their biggest problems now, or one of their biggest problems is finding workers.</s>BURNETT: So --</s>MOORE: And filling these jobs that are out there.</s>TASINI: Let me take off on those points. I agree with Steve that certainly it's a sigh of relief but it is one month and we have to look, you'll agree, several months --</s>MOORE: Sure.</s>TASINI: -- and see how that plays out. Here are the two points. I think the first one Steve will agree with me. Part of the problem is that people's wages are still low, and that there's been -- the buying power of people, particularly in an economy that's powered 70 percent on consumer spending, people wages are too low. Now, on this point, you may not agree that this is one of the reasons we've been pushing for a hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. I know Steve don't agree with that, but the minimum wage should be actually, if you look at productivity over the 30 years, about $20 an hour. So, we have to -- if I can say one last thing --</s>BURNETT: OK.</s>TASINI: If the Affordable Care Act is repealed the Milliken Institute estimates that we will lose 3 million jobs and we will lose in GDP $1.5 trillion between 2019 and 2023. So, that's another reason that repeal is</s>BURNETT: OK, I want to ask you about this, Steve. The president came out today, jobs, jobs, jobs, OK?</s>MOORE: Uh-huh.</s>BURNETT: He's proud of this report. Here's the thing and this is what I love about the president. He has a trail 50 miles long and he doesn't try to hide his trail. Here is what he said in the past about the jobs numbers and whether we can trust them.</s>TRUMP: The unemployment number, as you know, is totally fiction. I hear 5.3 percent unemployment. That is the biggest joke there is in this country. The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics.</s>BURNETT: OK. If 5 percent was the biggest hoax in modern politics, I don't know what 4.4 is, Steve.</s>MOORE: Well, I'm a little guilty here, because, you know, I was one of the advisers of Donald Trump and I was telling him, look, these unemployment numbers are misleading, and even this latest numbers misleading because we have so many millions of people outside of the labor force. That's simply true that, you know, there's another statistic that -- I don't want to get in too much details -- that takes into account people who have dropped out of the workforce, people cannot find a fulltime job.</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>MOORE: And that's a lot higher number. And, frankly, I think that should be the number we should be using. Now, another quick point about the jobs report that I think is interesting because I've talked about this on your show and others and been criticized for it. You know, in terms of the mining industry, another 8,000 jobs created in the mining industry this month.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>MOORE: That's 44,000 since Donald Trump --</s>BURNETT: Which he promised he would create mining jobs.</s>MOORE: Yes, and he's creating them. Coal is back.</s>TASINI: Mining jobs are not the future of this economy but health care is. And we're going to lose if the ACA is repealed.</s>MOORE: Well, you know what? I got to address that. There are two things that deterred employment in the Obamacare bill. One was the 50-worker rules, which a lot of employers became 49ers, they capped their employment at 49 workers and the other was the 30-hour week rule that if you had somebody over 30 hours. And people cut back on hours as well. So, both those things actually hurt employment, not helped it.</s>BURNETT: All right. As we go, I don't know whether it was you guys or what it was, but anyway, the president has just tweeted, "Great jobs report today. It is all beginning to work!" Somewhere in the depths another tweet has emerged.</s>TASINI: I'm not taking responsibility for that at all.</s>BURNETT: Thank you both. I appreciate your time tonight. OK. OUTFRONT next, rape charges against two undocumented teens dropped. What's the White House saying now? After all, it had used that story to crack down on illegal immigration. And one state may have found a way to force Donald Trump to release his taxes, so says the United States attorney general. He's my guest OUTFRONT.</s>BURNETT: Tonight, the White House not backing down, refusing to retract its comments on an alleged rape case used -- that they used as an example of why the United States should crack down on illegal immigration. Prosecutors have dropped rape charges against two teens who entered the United States illegally and were accused of attacking a 14-year-old class mate in a bathroom stall. Ryan Nobles is OUTFRONT with the story.</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A startling case that drew national attention. A 14-year-old girl allegedly attacked and raped by two teenage boys in a Maryland high school bathroom. The fact that the boys has entered the United States illegally just a few months ago was enough to draw a strong rebuke from the White House.</s>SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This is a tragic event and it's horrendous and horrible and disgusting what this young woman in Rockville went through. I can't possibly imagine.</s>NOBLES: Press Secretary Sean Spicer didn't stop there, framing the case as an example of the need for tougher immigration standards.</s>SPICER: But I think part of the reason that the president has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this.</s>NOBLES: But that story that drew such a strong reaction from the highest perched of American government has changed dramatically.</s>MARIA MENA, ATTORNEY FOR JOSE MONTANO: I commend the state's attorney's office for doing the correct thing and dropping the rape charges and doing the right thing, because, obviously, this young girl was not raped.</s>NOBLES: Prosecutors today dropping the charges against 18-year-old Henry Sanchez Milian and 17-year-old Jose Montano after determining that there was not enough to corroborate the girl's initial claims.</s>JOHN MCCARTHY, STATE'S ATTORNEY FOR MONTGOMERY COUNTY: We have concluded that the facts in this case do not support the original charges filed in this matter.</s>NOBLES: The suspects' attorneys have argued from the beginning that the encounter was consensual. At this point, prosecutors have introduced new child porn charges because of sexual images shared between the teens on their phones prior to the incident. Attorney Maria Mena believes the rush to convict her client was in part because of he political furor over immigration.</s>MENA: This case blew up because they immediately assumed they were immigrants and as a result, they immediately assumed they were rapists.</s>NOBLES: But despite the new dynamics in this case, the White House refuses to retract its earlier statements.</s>REPORTER: Is there a general danger that the White House in its rhetoric are animating too many people to jump to conclusions against immigrants and in the process diminishing the entire immigrant community, whether they're law abiding or not?</s>SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Not at all. The president has been incredibly outspoken against crime in any form, fashion. Look, this is a law and order president. He's focused on restoring law and order.</s>NOBLES: Meanwhile, the Maryland school district where this took place has no interest being the focus of a political argument here in Washington. At the time, the Montgomery County Public School superintendent Jack Smith said that the district serves, quote, "every student who walks through the door." Today, he said that the focus of the district is on the safety and security of every student in their schools -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right. Brian, thank you very much. And next, President Trump's tax returns may be released, whether he likes it or not. New York's attorney general is my guest. And Madeleine McCann dominated headlines. If you remember the sweet face when she disappeared decades ago. Will new witness details reveal what happened?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They saw what they described what they called an ugly, pockmarked or spotty skinned man watching apartment 5A.