An emergency the president required this enormous step of closing the border. Thats punted to next year. Why the change . According to President Trump, there is still an emergency, but hes not closing the border, at least not right now. The predjust spoke to reporters just a couple minutes ago on the south lawn. They asked him, why did he change his mind about closing the border and he claimed he never did, but what is happening at the border is that mexico has changed their behavior. Mexico is doing more. Theyre apprehending more people at their southern border and preventing those people from coming up on a journey to the United States. But what were hearing from our sources, jim, is this has been several days in the making of President Trump getting feedback from his aides, from republicans on capitol hill, who have been telling him that closing the border would be catastrophic to the u. S. Economy. And the president has taken the option to find a way out of this threat to close the
That drone was over iranian territory. Its huge. Known as the rq global hawk. Its the equivalent of a wing span of a boeing 757. It weighs eight tons. This is not a little drone that youre used to see. Lets get to the pentagon, Barbara Starr is there. What is centcom saying. Well, they are saying this was often unprovoked attack in International Airspace. Its worth thinking about why is that drone there in the first place. That drone is packed with ing s gathering information on what iran is up to. This is a drone that can fly for about 30 hours and can cover thousands of square miles of surveillance of airspace and land below. So this is a very key asset. Theres going to be a lot of questions about the capability of iranian surfacetoair missiles. That they were able to target this drone very clearly. Theres been a lot of concern that Iranian Missile capability is getting better, more precise, more able to target. This may be an example of those improvements. We will have to see. But a
A sitting democrat, but for democratic president s for 2020. A decision that seems to put on the back burner right now. Last night, nancy pelosi held a call with her caucus. It went almost 90 minutes, and in this caucuswide call, she asked for the Committee Chairman to brief the other members of the House Democratic caucus and asked for them to just continue their investigation. So then the chairmen each sort of took time to talk about what they were looking into. There was some anticipation that impeachment was something that some of them wanted to do. Maxine water, the chairman of the House Financial Services committee argued she supported impeachment personally but she wasnt going to make a push for it. Jerry nadler did not discuss it. He focused on the fact he planned to subpoena don mcgahn and wanted to hear before mueller and barr. Elijah cummings talked about his investigations into the White House Security process and Prescription Drug costs. Thats sort of where the focus is. B
That they had a u. S. Navy Surveillance Aircraft with three dozen crew members on board in their sights who also did not take the shot. The pentagon is confirming to cnn that the plane was in the area when the drone was shot down. But they say that like the drone, it was in International Airspace at the time. We have a team covering the story starting with cnn washington correspondent joe johnson, live they white house. Joe, remarkable for a president to tweet out that he was minutes away from military action and his exactly reasoning and the exact intelligence he got about how many iranian lives were at risk. Reporter absolutely. And thats just the start of it. What we have here, if you look at it from a the 30,000foot view is a potentially Pivotal Moment in this trump administration, the president facing the choice of whether after the shooting down of the United States drone, to escalate into potential conflict with iran, he decides at the last moment or in the last ten minutes not
It looks like an impasse. Sarah westwood is at the white house. Sarah its not a new approach, the white house has stonewalled for weeks and months on other investigations. But for an impeachment inquiry, its significant. Reporter thats right, jim. This is the white house outlining it as an official policy they are taking to this response in that 68thing letter to House Democrats yesterday. The white house making clear they are not going to cooperate in anyway, shape or form with the democrats unless they have an official Impeachment Vote and even in that case, the president S White House counsel writing they wont necessarily even cooperate then. They dont want to speculate on what would happen. I want to read you a part of the letter, in it the white House Counsel writes, President Trump and his administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice, in order to fulfill his duti