President Trump Doubles Down On Racist Politics; Biden And Sanders Battle Over Health Care; Missing Camper Found Alive.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As far as I'm concerned, if you hate our country -- if you're not happy here you can leave.</s>REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): This is the agenda of white nationalists.</s>JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: The defense of racism now an ironclad part of the president's playbook. His rhetoric met with mild criticism from the Republican Party he reshaped.</s>JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The transition of dropping 300 million people on a new plan is a little risky.</s>SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The system that Joe and others are trying to prop up is the most wasteful, bureaucratic, and expensive system on earth.</s>DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders squaring off on health care, the pivotal issue now dividing some Democrats.</s>DEAN: Joy and relief after a missing hiker is rescued in California. Sheryl Powell went missing for four days. We'll tell you what happened.</s>DEPUTY WILL KIMBRO, BERKELEY COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE, BERKELEY COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA: There we go, there we go. Come on -- come on, baby. She's breathing. As long as she's crying like that, she's breathing.</s>BRIGGS: A heart-pumping rescue in South Carolina. A deputy pulls a car over for speeding and saves a baby in distress. Welcome back to EARLY START on a Tuesday. I'm Dave Briggs.</s>DEAN: Good morning. I'm Jessica Dean in for Christine Romans. It is 31 minutes past the hour. President Trump escalating the ugliest of ugly politics. Instead of apologizing for his racist attack on four progressive House members, he justified it at a White House news conference. Trump sparked the controversy Sunday when he tweeted the congresswomen, all of them U.S. citizens, should, quote, "Go back where they came from." John Roberts, of Fox News, put this question to him yesterday.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Does it concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist, and that white nationalist groups are finding common cause with you on that point?</s>TRUMP: It doesn't concern me because many people agree with me. And all I'm saying -- they want to leave, they can leave.</s>DEAN: The episode reflects the president's certainty he won't lose the support of his base or the Republican Party he's reshaped.</s>BRIGGS: Most GOP lawmakers kept silent, but a number of prominent Republicans did come out against the remark, if not against the president. Here's the only black Republican in the House, Will Hurd, of Texas.</s>REP. WILL HURD (R-TX): The tweets are racist and xenophobic. They're also inaccurate. It's behavior that's unbecoming of a President of the United States and a leader of the free world.</s>BRIGGS: George Conway, a conservative prominent Washington lawyer, Trump critic, and husband of Kellyanne Conway, wrote a blistering op- ed for "The Washington Post" saying, quote, "Sunday left no doubt. Naivete, resentment, and outright racism, roiled in a toxic mix, have given us a racist president." Now, the women Trump painted as the America-hating face of the Democratic Party are pushing back. So let's bring in Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of "Inside Elections" and a CNN political analyst. Good to see you, sir.</s>DEAN: Hey.</s>NATHAN GONZALES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, "INSIDE ELECTIONS": Good morning.</s>BRIGGS: All right, let's play a little game of then and now with Sen. Lindsey Graham.</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel. They hate our own country.</s>BRIGGS: OK, Nathan, so what's the calculation for Republicans, like Graham? Is it about tax cuts, and conservative judges, and deregulation or is it about those few names -- Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mark Sanford -- and maybe you could throw in Justin Amash who was forced to leave the party that they cannot survive after criticizing the president? Is there any room for true criticism of this president? And then, that question is can Will Hurd stick around?</s>GONZALES: Well, yes. I don't -- I don't think there's a universal reason why for the lack or delayed response from the Republican Party. I mean, specifically, with Sen. Graham. He went from someone who was running against candidate Donald Trump to someone who is up for reelection in a very pro-Trump state in South Carolina in 2020. And so, I think that he started to make that transition a while ago -- you know, really interjected himself in the Kavanaugh hearings and now he is definitely as pro-President Trump as it gets. You know, I keep coming back to a piece on cnn.com that Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, wrote about attitude and gratitude, and that you could put a lot of the Republican support for the president into either they like when the president talks this way or tweets this way or they have gratitude for those judges. And I think there's another category, though, of candidates and Republicans who don't want to have to answer for every tweet. I mean, these have been going on for four years now from since when Trump was a candidate. And -- but -- and so their initial response is I'm not going to respond because if I respond to this one, then I'm going to get asked about all the others, even though this one, I think, is different than a lot of the other tweets.</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>BRIGGS: Yes. Mark Meadows said that he doesn't respond to tweets. But let's just be clear, as the courts have made clear. These are official statements from the President of the United States. You can couch them as tweets -- that is not what they are. But it is a nice duck for some of those that don't want to comment.</s>DEAN: And if we turn to the Democrats involved in all of this, I want to listen to the congresswomen. They responded yesterday. Let's listen to that, first.</s>REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Weak minds and leaders challenge loyalty to our country in order to avoid challenging and debating the policy.</s>OMAR: This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms or it's happening on national T.V. And now, it's reached the White House garden.</s>DEAN: And, Nathan, we've seen that fracture within the Democratic Party between those four particular congresswomen and Nancy Pelosi. There was all of this back-and-forth. Did the president turn around and unify the Democratic Party? In a way, does this affect the party in any way, politically?</s>GONZALES: Yes. Well, just a couple of days ago -- you're right -- we were talking about the rift between Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. And now, look what we're talking about.</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>GONZALES: In a few hours, we'll probably have more tweets --</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>GONZALES: -- and we'll see -- we'll see what the president tweets today. But, I think this is a microcosm of what we're going to see over the next year and a half, meaning I think the Democratic primary and the rift in the Democratic Party is actually going to get larger and bigger and nastier as the presidential race continues. But when we get to November of 2020, we're going to see a unified Democratic Party against President Trump getting a second term. I think that all the Democrats are going to come together and try to defeat the president, and then we're going to see a rift again about where the party should go, and what it should look like, and what it should stand for.</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>BRIGGS: And the central issue that probably decides this election is not these four House members or racist statements from the president, but health care. And that's the issue, really, they're talking about on the campaign trail -- that people are asking about. Joe Biden unveiled his health care plan yesterday. He and Bernie Sanders, obviously, very contrasting versions of what's ahead -- listen.</s>BIDEN: The transition of dropping 300 million people on a new plan -- a totally new -- is, I think, kind of a little risky.</s>SANDERS: The system that Joe and others are trying to prop up is the most wasteful, bureaucratic, and expensive system on earth. And when you talk about subsidies, what you're talking about is spending even more money -- in this case, taxpayer money -- on a dysfunctional, wasteful, and bureaucratic system. We need a simple system.</s>BRIGGS: Say for the irony of Bernie Sanders talking about excessive spending, where is the party on this central issue? Joe Biden is the only -- the only Democrat, according to the latest polls, that leads Trump with Independents. What's the winning plan ahead?</s>GONZALES: Well, I think we saw from the debates -- the initial debates that there's not a clear consensus on the issue. I think that there's a clear consensus on the Democratic side against what Republicans on the Hill and what President Trump have tried to do. Kind of a coalition behind initially helping the Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- and making that better. But, you know, everyone didn't raise their hand when the question was asked about abolishing private health insurance. But I think it's an important issue because Democratic primary voters do care about it. But there's also a concern on the Democratic side that the Democratic nominee is going to define the Democratic Party for the general election. And so, whether it's defined -- doesn't want to be defined as the party that wants to --</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>GONZALES: -- abolish private health insurance --</s>BRIGGS: Yes.</s>GONZALES: -- or defined as something else. And I keep -- you know, that clip of Bernie Sanders talking about what wasteful, bureaucratic, expensive -- I could just see Republicans playing those exact words over and over in their ads, even if Joe Biden or someone who has a more moderate position on health care ends up winning the nomination.</s>DEAN: Yes.</s>BRIGGS: Yes. On the flip side, if someone like Sanders or Warren gets the nomination and you have Republicans suddenly in the position of perhaps defending Obamacare, you could have a very interesting optic ahead. But health care will be the central issue. Nathan Gonzales, good to see you, sir. Thank you.</s>DEAN: Thanks so much, Nathan.</s>GONZALES: Thank you -- appreciate it.</s>SHERYL POWELL, MISSING CAMPER FOUND AFTER FOUR DAYS: I'm so happy. I can't believe it.</s>DEAN: Tears of joy after a missing camper in California is found alive. Sixty-year-old Sheryl Powell, of Huntington Beach, disappeared Friday near the Grandview Campground in the Bristlecone Pine Forest. She'd taken the family dog for a bathroom break and her son believes someone threatened her, forcing her to run down the hill where she got lost. This is a photo of Sheryl reunited with her husband and her children, Greg and Darrah.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Magnificent.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Magnificent. We were so --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a miracle.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a miracle after so many days gone.</s>DEAN: Powell's son tells CNN his mother was dehydrated but is otherwise doing well.</s>BRIGGS: Netflix has removed a controversial suicide scene from its hit teen drama "13 REASONS WHY". The move follows a debate over whether the show increased the risk of teen suicide among its viewers. "13 REASONS WHY" is the story of a depressed high school girl who takes her own life and sends a classmate a tape explaining why she did it and who she blames. In the first season's final episode, the story is told in flashback. Creator Brian Yorkey says, quote, "No one scene is more important than the life of the show. We believe this edit will help the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers." Coming up here, Huggies diaper boxes getting a much-due makeover. That story ahead in "CNN Business".