i'm brianna keilar live from cnn's washington headquarters. under way right now, the season premiere of the president's re-election launch goes fear factor. why he's threatening to deport millions of people. and he was going to one of america's most notorious jails but the trump administration stepped in and now it appears he'll be spared. the inmate, the president's former campaign chairman. plus a debate erupts over harvard's decision to take away its acceptance of a parkland shooting survivor for racist remarks he made in the past. a man approaches a federal build armed for war, dressed to kill. what we know about his past and what his online profile tells us. president trump is heading to florida today for what he says will be a wild rally. this is the official kickoff of the 2020 trump re-election campaign in orlando, florida. and it may seem like the

president kicked off his campaign a long time ago. he has, after all, held more than 50 political rallies during his two-plus years in office and actually filed 2020 election paperwork on his inauguration day in 2017. but this is the one that he says really gets the ball rolling. with more than 20 democratic contenders vying to take his job and poll numbers showing him behind a number of them, expect the president to come out swinging. cnn's kaitlin collins is in orlando. part of the run-up to today's announcement was a tweet that the president put out that said next week immigration and customs enforcement is going to start removing millions of undocumented immigrants. tell us about what he's talking about there. >> reporter: yeah, it was a vague tweet we got from the president overnight and it seemed to be a nod to the base that he's going to be speaking to here in orlando tonight. but the president was saying starting next week that immigration and customs enforcement is going to start

deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. now, the president didn't offer a lot of details and in the hours since that tweet was fired out from the president's account, we haven't gotten a lot of clarification from the administration either. the white house is referring us to i.c.e. and i.c.e. is referring us back to the white house. one i.c.e. official said they did not know the president would make that announcement. what we heard is typically an announcement like that wouldn't be telegraphed on the president's twitter account because they don't want to tip their hand. and this comes at a time when we know i.c.e. has strained by the crush of immigrants trying to cross the border, something the president and his allies have lamented millions of times. so we're still waiting to hear more on that, but of course it could be a nod to the president's time here tonight. of course you can see all of the people waiting to get inside for the president's rally. as you noted, he's already held several this year. this is the one that the campaign is feeling is the official launch of his re-election bid.

of course you know better than anyone, he won on immigration in 2016. some republicans are hoping the president will use that as his platform again in 2020 in addition to the economy instead of focusing on something like health care, which the president said recently his administration plans to roll out a health care plan in the next few months. so of course this is going to be a big rally tonight. that's how the campaign is billing it. the president is likely going to hit his greatest notes that he typically does at these rallies. >> stay with me here. actually we've had some breaking news. the president has been tweeting as we have been talking he just said this. acting secretary of defense -- he said the acting secretary of defense, patrick shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family. i thank pat for his outstanding service and will be naming secretary of the army, mark esper, to be the new acting secretary of defense.

i know mark, and have no doubt he will do a fantastic job. i know we are just getting wind of this and you're there at what is supposed to be the official kickoff rally for the president later today, but this does not come as too much of a surprise to you. tell us a little bit about the context around this, finding out that the secretary of defense, who's been acting patrick shanahan since jim mattis resigned, tell us about this now that it's no longer going forward. >> yeah, patrick shanahan has been acting defense secretary since james mattis resigned last fall, left in december. then patrick shanahan took over. he's this former boeing executive. for so long he languished in that role as acting defense secretary. he and the chief of staff, mick mul mulvaney, pushed the president to nominate him because they said it was affecting his abilities to carry out the job to the best of his ability. then the president announced, yes, he did intend to nominate

patrick shap hnahan as the permanent defense secretary. but that never became official. you have to actually sending the paperwork up to capitol hill. there have been questions with whether his background check had been completed, what essentially was tying up his nomination. there was speculation there was a chance it could be withdrawn. now of course we should note that the president privately has been talking very highly of patrick shanahan, has been praising him lately. now that he's told the president he's decided to withdraw is just another name that we've seen on a list of names coming out of this administration of people that the president has wanted to put in positions but later because they're not sure about their nomination or confirmation process have had to withdraw. now, mark esper, the guy the president said he's going to nominate to be the defense secretary is something that people we've reported that have been pushing the president to pick him when he was debating whether or not he should pick patrick shanahan. but of course you cannot ignore the very serious backdrop that

is happening in all of this, which is of course the escalating tensions in iran that are happening and all of that. that is why the president and his allies will be pushing him to get someone in that position and get them nominated. >> sending more troops to the region for the defensive posture. the fact that there's an acting defense secretary who's out of the process and moving forward is pretty stunning. kaitlin collins, thank you so much. i want to bring in barbara starr who is at the pentagon. barbara, what are you hearing about this change? what all does this mean just in general to the trump administration? at a critical time where this is a critical role. >> well, let's step back just a minute. what we have known through most of the day today is that the acting secretary was struggling to make a decision about what he wanted to do and what was he struggling about. patrick shanahan, this is part of a public record, several

years ago had a very contentious divorce. he has three children. he had a family situation with an ex-wife, his wife at the time, where police had been called to the house. this is a matter of public record, assault and battery. there was information that his wife had engaged in assault and battery, that she had engaged in substance abuse. patrick shanahan had told the police he had never laid a hand on his wife but the police had been called to this residence. late yesterday shanahan put out a statement as well as two of his three children speaking about his wife, them speaking about their mother, and their very difficult family situation. they had not been in touch with their mother for some time. two of his three children being involved in that statement. so when we came in today, we knew that shanahan described by one of his closest aides was in a bad space. he did not want to put his children through this public

situation where they might have to speak more publicly, where he might have to speak more publicly in a confirmation hearing about something that was intensely personal to his family. by all accounts, he was looking at all of this and deciding throughout today whether he wanted to put his children through that again. that's where we are right now on our understanding of the situation. but on the broader national security stage, here's the situation. he's the acting secretary of defense. he is scheduled to travel to nato in the coming days for a defense minister y. he is scheduled to travel to asia. the iran situation heats up by the day. talking to allies about that, trying to get other countries in the middle east to also engage in deterrent activities against iran. how long he will stay in this acting position we don't know.

will he stay until a new secretary is confirmed and how long that may take may put all of this way behind schedule. >> all right, barbara starr, if you can stand by for me at the pentagon, i want to bring in john kirby, retired rear admiral, former spokesperson in the obama pentagon and the obama state department. this is perhaps not completely unforeseen at this point in time. we had wondered what was going to happen with patrick shanahan and if this process of him going from acting secretary of defense to a confirmation process was going to go forward. but what is your reaction to this? >> well, certainly on the face of it it sounds like he did the right thing for his family. i think i would suspect that his concern over his former wife also probably weighed into this. there was in the statements of the children mentioned that she might suffer some mental issues. maybe he was trying to look after her too. it sounds like he's done the right thing for the family. remember, he never had really been nominated.

it was an intent to nominate and that was six or seven weeks ago. we had stories yesterday about fbi checks not being complete. so it almost -- i don't want to sound conspiratorial, but it sounds like maybe there was more to it than him just looking after the family. >> that signalled to you that there was something awry? >> he's been -- he was the deputy secretary of defense and then acting for a long time, since mattis resigned and yet still these fbi checks weren't complete. that is not normal. there's probably just something there. maybe that also helped lead him to this decision. maybe he just determined it was going to be too hard to get through a confirmation battle. >> anyone in government will tell you you need to have a secretary of defense. the actings thing is a problem for the trump administration. the acting thing is especially a problem when it comes to the defense secretary. so let's talk about who's now going to be the next acting and then we'll talk about moving forward from there. tell us about mark esper. >> i don't know the man well but he's well regarded, well

respected. he's done an able job as secretary of the army, which is of course the largest service. and so we'll have to see. we'll have to see what his priorities are. even he will be acting for a while. you're right about it being problematic. when you're empty midin the midz all over the world. they need somebody that's senate confirmed and has the voice and the ear of the president of the united states and mr. shanahan suffered from that a little bit. >> john kirby, stay with me as we continue this breaking news. guys, where did you want to go next? all right. let's change -- let's change our direction here. president trump has been making some unsubstantiated claims about the state of the 2020 race for the white house. he says that he's leading in all of the battleground states and he says that he is, quote, winning everywhere. but the polls paint a much different picture. let's go to senior political analyst ron brownstein to join us. he is giving us a fact check

here. first let's talk, ron, about the president's claim that he is ahead in 17 battleground states. >> first of all, 17 battleground states is kind of like the spring training moment in baseball when the grass is green and every team can imagine they're a competitor. 17 is probably the broadest possible definition of states we'll be looking at next year. but essentially you have ten states that donald trump won that democrats are targeting to one degree or another. you have six or seven or eight states that hillary clinton won that donald trump is targeting. if you look at the states that clinton won, she won 20 states, probably the ones that professionals in both parties give trump the best chance at are minnesota, nevada, new hampshire and after that the pickings get significantly slimmer. he talks about new mexico, he talks about oregon. there's colorado and virginia and probably they would add maine in there. right now you would not say donald trump is the favorite in any of those states. so the idea that he's ahead in all 17 seems a bit of a stretch.

>> and let's talk about joe biden. the former vice president, he just said that he would do well in the south. let's listen. >> i plan on campaigning in the south. i plan and if i'm your nominee winning georgia, north carolina, south carolina believe it or not, and i believe we can win texas and florida. if you look at the polling data now. >> all right. is that really polssible, ron? >> even if texas and georgia are competitive, they are never going to be in the first 270 electoral votes a democrat wins. by the time they win texas or georgia or north carolina, they almost certainly would have won the states closer to that 270 tipping point which are pennsylvania, michigan and wisconsin, the three states in the so-called blue wall that donald trump won in 2016. so those are always going to be the top priority for the democrats. there is polling that shows democrats might be competitive in texas, but the amount of money and time that would be

required to convert that into an actual bid for texas is so overwhelming that it's hard to imagine a democrat truly putting in the dollars and the time to do that. beyond the big three in the rust belt, the next ones most likely are in fact arizona, florida and north carolina. that's probably the inner circle. georgia, texas are the kind of and south carolina are the states democrats will win if they have already won in effect, if it is a landslide victory in 2020. >> georgia, wow, wow, right? that would be pretty -- that would be something. ron, thank you so much for breaking that down for us. orange county, california, has historically been so synonymous with the gop. fast forward to 2019. a democrat has flipped the district and now calling for impeachment hearings. katie porter is one to come out and she says it's not a decision

that she takes lightly. >> after weeks of study, deliberation and conversations with orange county families, i have decided to support an impeachment investigation of the president. i have not come to this easily. i come to this decision after much deliberation and i know deeply what this means for our democracy. >> andrew gillum is a cnn political commentator who's the former mayor of tallahassee and he was the democratic candidate for florida governor last year. do you, mayor, look at this and say that support from someone like katie porter, for starting an impeachment inquiry, may put more pressure on speaker pelosi to finally pull the parking brake on moving forward with this or not? what do you think? >> well, i tell you, adding congresswoman porter to the list, the growing list i should say of democrats who are working to hold this president accountable for his more than ten occasions of obstruction of

justice is a big blow to those who are trying to keep the conversation around an impeachment inquiry from moving forward. this is a congresswoman who won a district that was solidly republican. many folks would have doubted her ability to transform that seat. prior to this point most of the calls, save but one have come from congressional members who are from safe democratic areas. this is not one of those safe democratic areas. i want to applaud the congresswoman for quite frankly yielding and bending to her constitutional responsibility to hold this president accountable. it's quite clear that the mueller report set up the opportunity for democrats to really weigh into this conversation and hold this president accountable. i'm hoping that that list will continue to grow. >> so if you are watching this, does this to you say that at some point speaker pelosi is going to have to change her mind? at some point soon, i would say.

to you is the writing on the wall here that she'll have to bend to this pressure? or do you think knowing her maybe that's not the case? >> i think the dam is beginning to break a bit. now you've got members from pretty contested areas of our country now saying that the president ought to be held accountable for his actions. at some point i believe the speaker is going to have to bend to the will where the majority of that caucus is. and i honestly believe that this is just the beginning of those calls that we're going to see coming from, increasingly from democrats from various districts. democrat, republican, blue, purple areas of this country saying that it's time to act and hold this president finally accountable for his actions. >> keeping an eye on the president, he's having his first official row election rally tonight in orlando. he won florida in the last election. the democratic establishment really thought you were going to win your race for governor last year and you did not. >> i did too. >> you did as well.

do you see anything changing in the next year that could secure florida? >> for sure. i thought we'd secure the governor's race, but i will tell you we had three statewide offices go into a recount process, elected our first democrat statewide in a statewide office in 12 years with nikki freed. obviously my race and senator nelson's race came down to fewer than 0.4% for me and fewer than 10,000 votes for him. donald trump is going to face a more difficult florida than he faced in 2016. he knows that state can deny him re-election. that's why he's kicking off what is sure to be a rally full of insults and name calling and you know what else. democrats are organizing on the

groundin ground. we got closer in the race for governor than we had for 24 years in the state of florida. we'll continue to build off that momentum. i've launched an effort to register a million new democrats in the state florida. i feel that we're better positioned now than we were in 2016 to turn this state blue. >> andrew gillum, thank you so much, mayor, we appreciate you being with us. >> thank you. as iran says it's heading toward a confrontation with the u.s. secretary of state mike pompeo insists the u.s. does not want war. i'll speak with a 2020 candidate about that next. plus, just in, another american tourist has died in the dominican republic. what is behind the series of deaths there and should harvard have resingcinded the admission a parkland shooting survivor for making racist remarks online when he was 16 years old? the debate over this is raging. stop the movie.

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up to and apologized for. this is stirring up a hornet's nest with some suggesting a conspiracy and accusing harvard of rescinding the acceptance because he is conservative and a second amendment activist. let's bring in taylor lauren. she has written about similar stories in the past for "the atlantic." i'm so glad to have you on to lend context to this and get us to the truth on this. is this unusual for harvard to rescind acceptance of a student when comments like this come out? >> i almost have to laugh because it's not unusual at all. i mean just like a little bit over two years ago, actually ten students in a single class had their offers rescinded after making racist jokes very similar to what kyle said in a facebook group chat. so i mean this is something that they do constantly. >> and when this -- there's this theory that we're seeing floated about that it's because it's conservative. fact check that for us. >> no, it's absolutely not

because he's conservative. all of these children are held to the same standard. you cannot make racist comments. if harvard finds out about that, they do have a character clause, just the way that every high school sports team does. this is very common. so yeah, i mean those ten students who had their offers rescinded just ten years ago from harvard, in which harvard made a very public showing of it saying this stuff is not okay for saying the "n" word they ranged from very conservative to very liberal. they had a range of political views. you know, this comes down to, you know, display of character. of course he made a mistake but you have to be held accountable at some point. >> he is arguing that he should be allowed to show he's grown as a person, that he has apologized for what he said. what do you think about that? it sounds like other students haven't been given that opportunity, but what do you think about him making that argument? >> look, exactly what you just said. all of these other students. by the way, i just want to reiterate this is not an

uncommon thing. i think the way that you grow an learn is by suffering consequences for your actions. and so to kind of skirt consequences and say, oh, i grew, i learned. well, then own up and suffer the consequences. >> well, he certainly is in this case very publicly as well. taylor lorenz, thank you so much for coming on. >> thanks for having me. former trump campaign chairman paul manafort may no longer be heading to new york's notorious rikers island prison after the doj intervenes. we have details on this unusual request ahead. plus democratic congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez is getting flak after she compares the trump administration's border detention facilities to concentration camps. hear how she is trying to clarify herself, next.

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administration blaming iran for attacking tankers in the gulf of oman. iran denies any involvement, but it does say the u.s. is moving towards confrontation. congressman tim ryan is joining me now, a democrat from ohio, and he is running for president. congressman, i know that you blame the president for pulling out of the accord with iran as precipitating this showdown. as you're running for president, how are you thinking about this? if you inherited this, how would you handle it? >> well, you've got to be engaged, completely engaged moment to moment. if you read history, you see whether it was roosevelt or kennedy during the cuban missile crisis or any other significant time, the president of the united states has got to be engaged and you have to be surrounded with people who i don't think have an agenda. that's why i worry about john bolton. i think he has an agenda. he wants regime change in iran and has wanted it for a long time. as president you've got to make

sure you've got people giving you good advice, not an ax to grind that may steer you in a direction you don't want to be in. >> do you feel the president is using restraint, as some republicans have said? >> well, he's a distractor in chief. his whole goal regardless of what the issue is, is how do i get the american people distracted from the economy, the distracted from the fact they're living paycheck to paycheck and all the promises that he not fulfilled, especially in places like ohio, michigan and wisconsin that he states he has to win and so he uses these opportunities to take all the oxygen out of the room on any other issue. so i worry that that's his goal. his goal isn't to solve the problem but his goal is to be in the news regardless of what the issue is. now here we are with iran, that could spin out of control very, very quickly. he's in it for all the wrong reasons. that's what i worry about more than anything. >> tom cotton says the u.s.

needs to immediately launch a retaliatory strike against iran. what's your reaction to that? >> i just think that is so irresponsible, quite frankly. with all due respect, to talk about launching missiles and escalating tensions right out of the gate, we don't even have all the facts yet, let's be honest. we don't have the information we need to start lobbing bombs. if we're going to have that kind of reactionary leadership, this country is going to go down the tubes because we can't afford it. we've got a trillion dollar deficit, annual deficit, trillion dollars. $22 trillion debt. we've got russia, we've got china breathing down our necks. we've got the highest income inequality we've had since the great depression and now we're going to get into a war in the middle east? are you freaking kidding me? that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard in my life. we need statesmen today, we don't need reactionaries. we need statesmen to put this

stuff at ease. we should re-engage iran, we should get back into the iran deal we had with them and the rest of the world was in agreement and stop this nonsense of how can we get on tv, how can we start beating the war drums. this is not what we need right now. we need a president that's focused on making peace, being strong, but making peace and then focus on getting the middle class rebuilt in the united states. >> i want to talk to you about impeachment proceedings because you have recently started calling for them to begin against president trump. speaker pelosi is still resisting the calls from democrats like yourself. is she going to have to budge on this, do you think? >> she's juggling a caucus that's divided. and so i personally think that the president has committed crimes, and i don't think he's above the law. if someone in youngstown, ohio, that works at the auto plant or did work at the auto plant did what the president did, that person would be indicted. and so we can't have a king, we have a president.

and so that's why the pressure is mounting. she's got to juggle the interests of the caucus, and it's not easy because there are people in our caucus who don't want to go down the road of impeachment. that makes it difficult for her as leader, but we're saying that we think we need to do this and we'll see where the cards fall. >> i want to ask, you mentioned the opioid crisis. you're co-chair of the military mental health caucus, co-chair of the addiction and recovery caucus. the opioid crisis has torn your state apart. the president at a recent opioid crisis event, which was last week, touted a new drug and its use among veterans. this is a ketamine nasal spray which has shown some promise in treating depression that's resistant to other drugs. it also appears to work similarly to an opioid. let's listen to what the president said. >> i think it's made by johnson & johnson, but it's a suicide --

if you're depressed. >> yes. >> you take it. it's an inhaler. and it almost immediately cures depression at least for a little while. and i said order -- corner the market on it and give it to anybody that has the problem because you have people calling. our folks do a great job on the phone but it's a telephone. you have people calling, looking for help. if those people had that, i'm hearing like instantaneously they're in much better shape. >> i wonder as someone who is involved in combatting the opioid crisis as well as trying to combat veteran suicide, do you have any concerns here? >> well, i have a concern when the president says things like i think it's johnson & johnson, when he knows damn well it's johnson & johnson and it's his friends at mar-a-lago that are making the deal with him and the va on all of this an it's not going through the proper protocols.

it's abhorrent that we lose 22 vets a day to suicide. we all need to be figuring out how to fix that, both from the pharmacological end and alternative treatments. but to have the president fast track something that his buddies are involved in with a deal with johnson & johnson and we don't know all the protocols haven't been done, which means we don't know what the side effects are on this, i think is reckless. again, it's a pattern of behavior. we just had an event here in youngstown a couple of days ago with a double amputee vet who was teaching yoga classes to other vets and healing them from their posttraumatic stress with yoga, with meditation, with transdental medication that the david lynch foundation is doing such good work. this actually gets them off of their drugs which is what they want. we know vets who have gone from taking 20 drugs down to two or three and saving the va a lot of

money, getting their life back. let's explore these treatments that get this off of the drugs. if this works, i'll be all for it because it's about saving lives. but let's not fast track somebody where trump has a back room deal with somebody that we don't know anything about and we'll skip over these protocols. some of these drugs, you don't know what the side effects are. some of the side effects could make things worse but we won't know because we didn't go through the proper protocol. so i think we have to be very, very careful as we try to address it but knowing that there are already real solutions out there that vets who have had posttraumatic stress will tell you all about things like i mentioned around these integrative health approaches. >> congressman tim ryan, thank you for being with us. >> thanks for having me. former trump campaign chairman paul manafort may no longer be heading to new york's notorious rikers prison after the doj intervenes. we'll have details on their unusual request ahead.

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in an extremely unusual move, the department of justice has swooped in at the 11th hour to try to save purchaser's former campaign chairman, paul manafort, from rikers island in new york. the long-time trump associate was expected to await trial there, but then the deputy attorney general, jeffrey rosen, stepped in with a letter to state prosecutors fielding a request from manafort's defense lawyers to keep him in a federal manhattan prison instead. now it appears that that may happen. elliott williams was the deputy assistant attorney general under president obama. i mean how unusual is it for the second highest official at doj to intervene like this? and would this have gone up to the attorney general? >> no. unusual would make it seem like it might happen, but infrequently. this kind of thing would never happen. it just shows the kinds of inequalities you see in our criminal justice system. look, if you have friends in high places, to paraphrase garth brooks, you can get out of

situations that ordinary people just would not. >> now, i'm going to ask you about this because i've also talked to some legal minds who say they felt it was in their view punitive that he was going to be sent to rikers island. they thought this was an odd play. they also thought this was an odd place for him to go, that this might be prosecutors trying to send a message. i also spoke to a former corrections officer from rikers and here's what he told me about the possibility of manafort serving time there in solitary confinement. >> it's very unusual. in a million years i would never imagine that he would actually be going to such a violent jail. i worked in solitary confinement on rikers island and just the conditions, the inhumane treatment. it's a place that -- it's the last place on earth that anyone needs to go through. >> he found it odd that he was there in the first place. did you find it odd? >> no. if there's a silver lining to all this, it's shining a light

on solitary confinement as a tactic which is never good for anyone and bad for the human psyche and is almost a form of torture. put that aside, though. paul manafort is no longer a federal prisoner. for lack of a better way to put it, he's in state custody so he had to be transferred from the federal custody to the new york local prison, which was rikers island. now, the solitary confinement thing that's done for his protection. but again, rikers is a tough place, there's no question about that. solitary is a really bad thing to do to people. but what we need to make clear, he had to be moved from federal prison to be in the custody of the state. that's why it's so funny that this deal was struck to get him back into a federal prison. again, he's awaiting trial on state charges, which would mean he would be put in a state jail. >> the bigger issue being that rikers has issues that need to be reformed but that paul manafort, in your estimation, in your view, is getting special treatment in order to be moved from there. >> there's no question.

and there's a tragic bit of poetry to all of this. look, one of the central park five was held at rikers island that the president of the united states called for -- >> the death penalty for. >> the death penalty for. now the president's campaign manager managed to get out of because he had friends in high places. >> yesterday there was a case that i want to ask you about. the supreme court ruled that a person can be prosecuted twice for the same crime in both federal and state courts. tell us how this is going to play when it comes to manafort. >> well, again, manafort, because he's facing state charges now, and i guess there was a question as to whether if the supreme court had ruled a certain way whether it might have complicated or thrown things out. this is an incredibly complex law but the simple fact is he can still be tried on state charges. there's a "new york times" piece that lays out all the stuff about manafort today. it quotes manafort's lawyers as saying these charges are nonsense. because he's already faced federal charges this isn't fair. well, it is fair.

under new york state law and frankly as ratified by the supreme court yesterday, he can still face trial in new york on these state charges. >> it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. elliott williams, thank you so much. >> thanks. hours ahead of president trump's official launch of his re-election campaign, the president tweets that mass roundups of undocumented migrants could start as early as next week. but is this a ploy to fix weak polling numbers? we'll discuss. my insurance rates are probably gonna double. but dad, you've got allstate. with accident forgiveness they guarantee your rates won't go up just because of an accident. smart kid. indeed. are you in good hands?

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congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez stirred things up. >> the united states is running concentration camps on our southern border. and that is exactly what they are. they're concentration camps.

and if that doesn't bother you, i don't -- we can have -- i want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not -- that never again means something. >> the comments triggered a backlash. there is about mass detention. her comments come as president trump tweeted out that ice immigration and customs enforcement would begin removing the millions of undocumented immigrants from the u.s. starting as soon as next week. a senior official telling us there is no plan to pick up millions. there are 2e7b tative plans in

july to pick up families that did not show up to their hearings. a target list is not final, but it is not millions. jim acosta is here with us, our chief correspondent. i wonder, when you're looking at alexandria ocasio-cortez, she wasn't saying death camps, but she brought up never again. it seemed like she was trying to make a connection. what did you make of what she was saying? >> i think what she was trying to say, i'm not going to explain away what she had to say. this is a real sticking point in the democratic party rpz and i think for a lot of americans, separation of children from their mothers. some of those kids went into a jail or cage like settings. that has certainly unnerved a lot of people in the latino community. and going back to what the president tweeted last night, it sounded as if he was talking

about this deportation force he talked about in the 2016 campaign. i talked to an official this morning, who said there are not a lot of happy faces over there, because they believe the president essentially let the cat out of the bag that this operation was coming. the operation is not imminent as you were saying a few moments ago, but they are talking about an operation to sweep up undocumented immigrants, and that includes families this is going to concern a lot of people in the latino community. a lot of these families are mixed status families. if you go in and try to sweep up families looking for undocumented immigrants. you may sweep up people who are documented. there's a lot of concern out there. >> and splitting up adults for children which has been a political issue for the administration where he's talking about this, this is -- he tweeted this on the eve of the launch. the official launch. he's had many events.

this is the kickoff for his election. what does the timing tell you? >> it tells me, this has been an an mating issue going back to the 2016 campaign. then candidate trump launched his campaign talking about mexicans being rapists and crimin criminals. now -- locking at the 2018 election cycle, the policy of immigration didn't work forehim in the midterms. it's interesting that he's right before this re-election campaign going back to this issue that exciting his base time and time again. wane that's immigration, buts when you talk to republican strategists and you know this, there's a mixed bag as to whether they think this works on a national level. a lot of operatives were saying, he's turns off people on these

swing district races. that strategy did not work out so well. >> you mention your new book, i have it right here, the enemy of the people. >> thank you. >> i want you to tell us a little bit about the book, and in light of this news that sarah sanders is going to be leaving the white house. this is something you talk about in the book, what do you talk about when it comes to her as press secretary, someone we didn't see doing briefings. >> brianne, that you were a white house correspondent, so you remember this. we worked together at the white house, we had regular briefing lds, it was something the american people expected. to pass on very vital and important information on to the american people and for the last 90 or so days we haven't had a white house briefing. what do sarah and the rest of

the gang do? exclusively interviews on fox news, if there's time, they'll go down the drive way to talk to the rest of us for a few minutes. i think sarah leaves behind, and her predecessor leaves behind a record of dishonesty, the kind we have not seen from a white house press secretary in many, many years. i hate to say that, it pains me to say that. when the press secretary feels comfortable tweeting out a doctored video and shows up in the mueller report, admitting she passed on false information to the american people when it came to the firing of james comey, it's unfortunate this happened. hopefully the president will select a new press secretary that will get back to giving us facts. >> enemy of the people, a dangerous time to tell the truth.

more on our breaking news this hour. president trump putting the brakes on the confirmation process for pat shanahan. we'll have details on his replacement next. y for what you need. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? oh. well, we just spend all day telling everyone how we customize car insurance, because no two people are alike, so... limu gets a little confused when he sees another bird that looks exactly like him. [ loud crash ] yeah. he'll figure it out. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty ♪

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