to go on a listening tour for the next six or eight weeks, not do any major campaign rallies. what s up with that? hillary clinton is one of the only candidates who s already a celebrity. everybody in the world knows who she is unless you ve been living under a rock somewhere. so what hillary clinton has to do is reintroduce herself to people who think they know her and newer voters and do it in a different way. she can t behave as if she s entitled to this nomination. so she s got to go out and earn it as they say. the campaign advisors had a background call with journalists and they said the same thing. she s got to earn it vote by vote which means stopping and refilling your van and meeting voters at the gas station. driving from new york a thousand miles or whatever to iowa that s i looked it up. 1086 miles. she s riding, of course. she s not driving. the secret service is driving i
so the white house had a green light to move forward. one other thing i want to point out in listening to this background call with senior administration officials, this is not lifting the embargo. this is not ending the travel ban. americans will not be able to go to orbitz or travelocity to buy tickets to cuba. you have to go to a third party. you can t go to the store and buy cuban cigars. people can travel to cuba and bring back cuban cigars, but they can t go to a cigar shop in the united states and buy subban cigars in the united states. that s still under the embargo. but no question about it, a major step forward in the relations between the u.s. and cuba. thanks very much, jim acosta. let s go to havana right now. our correspondent there is patrick oppmann, the only u.s. television network correspondent on the scene in cuba for us.
choreographed. obviously kept under tight wraps for a long time. but it looks like this was something that was in the works for at least weeks, if not months. reporter: wolf, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on a background call within the last hour, this has been going on since june of 2013. and to put all this in perspective, you ll recall when the president went to nelson mandela s memorial service last september and he had that handshake with raul castro, they were shaking hands as the u.s. and cuba were involved in these talks jim, i need to interrupt you for a moment. senator marco rubio, very unhappy about this announcement. i want to listen in and hear what he s saying. the white house has conceded everything an gained little. they gained no commitment on the part of the cuban regime to
released and they re heading back to havana. that was not an exchange for alan gross. instead they re making it clear that was an exchange for an intelligent asset of the u.s. who had been imprisoned in cuba for 20 years, tamron. i m being told that the contents of the background call that we received are now able to be reported out. i m going to be give you some of the details. president obama will be announcing a shift in policy between the united states and between cuba. he s going to announce that a number of restrictions will be eased between the two cubs when it comes like travel and commerce. it s going to be a major shift in relations and u.s. embassy will be set up in cuba. of course, that is significant. this is going to be the largest easing of relations between the united states and cuba that we have seen in decades. so this is certainly going to be a significant announcement. this entire exchange was has
is arguing about them. the white house took issue with a white house report that used such sources claiming the obama administration was warned about the potential influx of immigrant children for many months. the lead of that story is hooked entirely to anonymous sources. up criticize anonymous sources. we have anonymous sources from you. except for fact i ve been standing here for an hour answering your questions which is an important practice. the outrage from the administration lasted about four minutes when the white house sent out an invitation for a background call with members of the administration who could only be identified as senior white house officials. california is a confusing and very dry place. in the midst of a drought the state of california approved mandatory outdoor watering restrictions. violations could mean a $500