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CNN NEWSROOM

Health Care Bill is on the senate table and senators might vote on it this week yet some Republican senators are against it and said it's not a good bill. Russia once again back on the spotlight as the president gives new statement on Russia and the Obama administration. Aired 2-3p ET

Aired June 25, 2017 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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BORRIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: The battle over health care.

TOM PRICE, U.S. SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: The plan in its entirety will absolutely bring premiums down.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KY.: They've promised too much. They say they're going to fix health care and premiums are going to go down? There's no way the Republican bill brings down premiums.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), OHIO: I don't think the bill is adequate now, unless it gets fixed; I'm against it.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, VT.: There is no way on God's earth that this bill should be passed.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: The Democrats themselves, many of them had admitted that ObamaCare is a failure.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), N.Y.: If you stop doing this repeal which is Trump Care, we will sit down with you and make it better.

PAT TOOMEY (R), PA.: I see this bill as a first step; a first important step in the direction of repealing those portions of ObamaCare that we can.

SANCHEZ: The senate health care bill is on the table but will it get the votes to pass? That's ahead in the "CNN NEWSROOM."

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SANCHEZ: Hey there, I'm Boris Sanchez in for Fredricka Whitfield. Thank you so much for joining us on the "CNN NEWSROOM" this Sunday. We start with a bill with harsh. That's the request from President Trump today as Republican senators scramble to adjust their controversial health care plan ahead of this week's vote.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SANCHEZ: Although five lawmakers have publicly opposed the bill in its current form, the president says he is confident they will get there.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Health care is a very complicated subject from the standpoint that you move it this way and this group doesn't like it. You move it a little bit over here, you have a very narrow path. And honestly, nobody can be totally happy, even without the votes. Forget about votes. This has nothing to do with votes. This has to do with picking a plan that everybody is going to like.

I'd like to say love but like. But we have a very good plan. We have a few people that are -- I think you could say modestly that are standing on the rooftops and screaming. They want to get some points, I think they will get some points. And I don't think they're that far off. I don't think they're that far off; a famous last words, right? But I think we're going to get there.

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SANCHEZ: Let's head straight to the White House and CNN White House Correspondent Athena Jones. Athena, is there anymore indication from the president on how he would like to see the bill changed before the vote this week?

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Boris. Well, the White House isn't being specific about what kind of changes the president might like to see. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about this on Friday and he said that he thinks the president is very supportive of and very pleased with the senate version of this repeal effort. He said there are a lot of reforms in it the president likes. He wants to push it forward.

But he also said that if there are other ideas or amendments that could strength the bill, the president is all ears. But as you know, Boris, there are already five senators who have come out -- Republican senators who have come out in opposition to this bill. There are a number of other Republican senators who have expressed serious concerns about the bill, although they're holding out hope that they can get to, yes.

You saw the president just yesterday, yesterday afternoon, trying to put the pressure on members of his own party, tweeting, I cannot imagine that these very fine Republican senators would allow the American people to suffer a broken ObamaCare any longer.

So the president seems to be aware there that he's going to have to rely entirely on his own party to get this through. He's complained frequently about Democrats not being willing to work with Republicans on this but that is no surprise.

Bottom line here, these five senators are already in vocal opposition is the wrong direction to be moving in. The GOP can only afford to lose two senators and still get this bill passed. The president was also asked about comments that his predecessor, President Obama, made about this repeal effort in a pretty lengthy Facebook post on Thursday. President Obama said that the people are going to end up paying more for less. And he called the bill fundamentally mean. Here is what the president had to say about that on Fox.

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TRUMP: He actually used my term, mean. That was my term because I want to see -- I want to see -- and I speak from the heart, that's what I want to see, I want to see a bill with heart.

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JONES: So we've heard this repeatedly from the president, he wants to see a bill with heart. The White House now says he supports the senate version but there are several Republican senators who don't feel that it's going to do enough. You have a conservatives who feel it doesn't go far enough in undoing ObamaCare and then you have moderates who are concerned that it's going to hurt people, for instance, on Medicaid in states hit hard by the opioid crisis; the people are not going to be able to afford treatment.

So it's hard to see how the gaps can be bridged to please enough people but that's what they're going to be working on in the coming days. And there's one more tweet I want to share with you from the president just in the last ten minutes, this is central to the argument the White House says he's been making to senators that he's talking to.

He said that this is the president -- the POTUS account, the official account, saying: ObamaCare (14:05:00) is dead. Insurance markets are collapsing. And millions don't have choices. Americans deserve better. So we can expect that to be a central to the argument he makes as he talks with senators to try to get them onboard to get a vote this week. Boris?

SANCHEZ: All right. Athena Jones reporting from the White House, thank you.

Republicans are very divided on this. One of them, Governor John Kasich was on CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" with Dana Bash this morning expressing his deep concerns over this bill. Listen.

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Do you think that Senator Portman of Ohio should vote no?

KASICH: Well, I don't think the bill is adequate now. unless it gets fixed. Look, I'm against it. And I'm not against it just because I want to be against it. There are some things in these bills, in these provisions, that are an improvement.

My job, as I see my job, as a governor of a state, not as a Republican governor, but the governor of this state, my job is to look, not just today, but in the out years at the impact it's going to have on people who need help. Can they improve this bill? I think they could improve it; I hope they do.

BASH: So if there is no improvement, just to be clear, you are encouraging your senator and other --

KASICH: Look, Dana, he knows how I feel --

BASH: You're encouraging Republicans to vote against this unless it's improved in a way (inaudible).

KASICH: No. What I'm encouraging them to do is to fix it. Now, look, I just wrote a letter with a bunch of Democrat governors and Republican governors, OK? And what we're saying is, let's work together on this. Let's not rush something through. Let's have transparency. Let's have some cooperation between the parties because if you don't, this bill is not sustainable.

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SANCHEZ: Meantime, Tom Price, the Health and Human Services Secretary, was also on CNN this morning defending the bill that he says will bring down insurance premiums for Americans.

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BASH: Can you promise that at the end of the day what the president will sign will bring premiums down for a majority of Americans?

PRICE: Yes. The plan in its entirety will absolutely bring premiums down because you increase competition, you increase choices for individuals, you allow folks to be able to purchase the kind of coverage that they want, not that the government forces them to buy. Those are all the secret keys to a market that actually works for health care and works for patients; that's the key.

We've got a health care system right now that may work for government, may work for insurance companies in certain instances but that's ending as well, but it certainly doesn't work for patients and that's the key that we're trying to get to, have a health care system that works for patients all across this land.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it would be very interesting for the constituencies of every congressman that voted for that bill to ask question, just one question. Are you above 250 on your adjusted gross income? And if you were, how much would you save from what you paid last year from this bill you just passed?

BASH: So what's the answer? How much would you save under the house and senate bills?

PRICE: Remember that ObamaCare taxes were put in place to build a whole new government program, government-run health care. When you back out of that, when you make it so that you've got a patient- centered system, where patients and families and doctors are running health care and not the federal government, then that of necessity allows to you do so with not as much money. And so, we believe it's absolutely vital that we decrease taxes for the American people, allow them to keep more of their hard earned money.

Dana, did you appreciate -- and I don't know if your listeners do, there are 6.5 million Americans right now who are paying $3 billion in penalties, in taxes just for the privilege of not purchasing health coverage. Can you imagine that? That's a system that isn't working for those 6.5 million. How about lowering the taxes for those 6.5 million?

BASH: And I understand that. But the question now is when it comes to the bill that is before the United States senate, the fact of the matter is, people like you are going to get a tax cut.

PRICE: Well, the fact of the matter is, those 6.5 million will no longer have to pay $3 billion in a penalty or a tax to the federal government because they're not interested in purchasing what the government wants to force them to buy.

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SANCHEZ: All right. Let's dig deeper. We've got CNN's presidential historian and CNN political analyst Tim Naftali with us and CNN political analyst Patrick Healy. Gentlemen, thank you so much for sharing your Sunday with us.

Tim, let's start with you. So far we've seen five Republican senators come out and opposed this bill if it doesn't change. Four of them say it doesn't go far enough in repealing ObamaCare. Now, the Freedom Caucus have spent the past eight years calling for a total repeal. Did you expect a stronger response from them? It seems like they're willing to negotiate?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN HISTORIAN AND POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, Boris, I mean, I've never been trained as the majority or minority whip; I am not sure what their messaging is. But I will tell you the important messaging right now and that's what Governor Kasich said. Because Governor (14:05:00) Kasich, like every governor in this country, has to worry about actual individual people.

A lot of the verbiage, a lot of what you're hearing from congress and you heard from Mr. Price is very abstract; the sense that the system will work, that eventually every -- you know, that premiums will come down. Kasich can't wait to do this experiment because he needs to have the money for opioid problems and for the mentally ill, and he needs that money every single year.

And he knows because he's worked on budgets. When he was in the federal government, he knows how expensive these things become over time. So the people who understand the day-to-day reality of the health care system in America are not going to be persuaded by the language that the Republicans are using at the moment to sell this senate bill.

SANCHEZ: And Patrick, to you, you heard Tom Price speaking to our Dana Bash after some pressing he from her, he admitted or rather stood by his statement that this plan in its entirety would bring health insurance premiums down. But, let's listen to what Rand Paul said about that this morning.

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PAUL: They've promised too much. They say they're going to fix health care and premiums are going to go down? There's no way the Republican bill brings down premiums.

Look, I've been in medicine 20 years; I'm 54 years old. Premiums have never gone down. They're not going to go down after the Republican bill and it's a false sort of over-promising to say, oh, yeah, insurance premiums are going to go down but we're keeping 10 of the 12 mandates that caused the prices to go up, it's a foolish notion to promise something you can't provide.

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SANCHEZ: Patrick, Rand Paul obviously one of those GOP senators that is opposing the bill in its current form. Is Tom Price over- promising?

PATRICK HEALY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think Tom Price has talking points. And his talking points are about the entirety of the bill. When you hear Tom Price or other Republicans talk about the entirety of the plan, what they're talking about basically is sort of pass the bill, try to get a plan out of congress and then, we at the Department of Health and Human Services under Tom Price will be working for the states to implement it so it gets better.

And this is, you know, someone would call it kind of wishful thinking. I mean, basically, they're saying that, well, let's just get something through and then sort of after the fact, we will make the adjustments that John Kasich in Ohio or Senator Heller in Nevada and Governor Sandoval in Nevada have real concerns about.

But the reality is, this is a big gamble for people who get health care through either Medicaid, through some kind of government program, through the insurance markets because they're really not going to know how they're going to come out on the other side. The only sort of hope is that, you know, you get something through congress and then Tom Price and President Trump and the others will sort of create again something in its entirety that will bring premiums down.

But Rand Paul has a point. I don't know anyone -- frankly, in my life, in my colleagues' lives, whose premiums have gone drastically down in our lifetime. So these are talking points.

NAFTALI: If I may, one thing that's very significant, and I agree with Patrick, what's very significant about what Mr. Price said is that he actually wants the approach to be judged not on the basis of the bill. He's promising some future work by his department to create a freer market that will bring prices down. It's completely ideological and it's Russian roulette at the same time.

I believe that Mr. Price is preparing for a bad CBO number next week. And what they're saying is, look, the CBO will say that this will not achieve what we think it will but we're promising you it's embedded in a whole new approach. And that's a gamble. I don't see how the country can take.

SANCHEZ: And Patrick, very quickly. What do you think the Republicans are going to do with the CBO number? It seems like, when the house version came around, they kind of scoffed at it, said it wasn't real. How do you think they will approach it this time?

HEALY: It's going to be huge, Boris. I mean, what's going to happen is that the CBO number is going to come out. And you're going to have the moderate Republicans who are going to start saying, my God, you're throwing so many people off of insurance through Medicaid and they're going to be looking for adds to the bill.

But this is Mitch McConnell's tough spot. They're going to be trying to add amendments to the bill, votes to the bill to add spending and then you're going to have people like Mike Lee from Utah, Ted Cruz from Texas, certainly Rand Paul, we're going to be like, wait, this thing is getting bigger? This thing is getting bigger and you expect us to vote for it? It's going to be very hard .

SANCHEZ: All right. Tim Naftali, Patrick Healy, I have 20 more questions for you, gentlemen, but we are out of time. Thank you so much (14:15:00) for joining us.

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SANCHEZ: Up next. The finger pointing over Russia's role in the 2016 election is in full force right now in Washington, with Trump and his administration launching fresh attacks on former President Obama. But it's not just Republicans, Democrats are now adding to the chorus of criticism.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIF.: I think the administration need to call out Russia earlier.

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SANCHEZ: President Trump is, once again, taking aim at his predecessor, now accusing former President Obama of "Doing nothing" about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

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TRUMP: Well, I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election and he did nothing about it. But nobody wants to talk about that. To me, you know, in other words, the question is, if he had the information, why didn't he do something about it? He should've done something about it.

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SANCHEZ: It's not just President Trump criticizing Obama or even the Republican party. Now, members of Obama's own (14:20:00) party are pointing fingers. CNN Washington correspondent Ryan Nobles joins us live from Washington. Ryan, it's kind of rare for so many people to be targeting a former president, you'd think Obama was running for office again.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris. But this "Washington Post" report has revealed a lot that we didn't know before. And President Obama, of course, has spent a lot of time during the campaign and after his election attempt to downplay Russia's role intervening in the 2016 election. But now after this report in the "Post" the details, you know, Obama administration's response to the intelligence community's assessment, he now seems willing to admit that Russia played a role, as long as he can blame President Obama for not doing enough.

Now former Obama administration officials argue that when the then- president found out about the problem, it was really too late to stop the impact of Russia's efforts and that Obama was also concerned that intervening too much might have had a dramatic political ramification, perhaps even giving the impression that Obama was working to help Hillary Clinton's campaign.

But one former administration official concedes in the "Post" report that they could've done more. And on "STATE OF THE UNION" this morning, Adam Schiff, as a Democrat, he's a ranking member in the intelligence committee, he seemed to agree.

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SCHIFF: The American people needed to know and I didn't think it was enough to tell them after the election but rather, given the seriousness of this, I think the administration needed to call out Russia earlier and needed to act to deter and punish Russia earlier and I think that was a very serious mistake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: Now, Schiff did go on to say that even though Obama could have and maybe should have done more that doesn't change the fact that candidate Trump was part of the problem, egging WikiLeaks and even Russia on, telling them in speeches to reveal more hacked DNC e-mails and e-mails from Hillary Clinton's private server. And now it appears that Trump is using Obama's inaction to deflect from the investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia which he has, of course, denied.

This morning, Trump tweeting, "Hillary Clinton colluded with the Democratic party in order to beat crazy Bernie Sanders. Is she allowed to so collude, unfair to Bernie?"

Of course, during the campaign, Trump made this claim and he based it on some of the hacked e-mails that were revealed in the WikiLeaks dump of the Democratic National Committee which showed some officials favoring Clinton's campaign during the primary season.

But this all comes at a time where Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues his investigation and, Boris, there are at least three different congressional committees continuing their probe into Russia's role in the 2016 election. SANCHEZ: Yes. And we will continue following all these

investigations; we are far from done talking about Russia. Ryan Nobles from Washington, thank you.

Let's bring back CNN presidential historian Timothy Naftali and CNN political analyst Patrick Healy. Gentlemen, thanks for staying with us. We've also got CNN law enforcement analyst and retired supervisory special agent at the FBI, Steve Moore with us.

Tim, you've studied a lot of administrations. What does Donald Trump gain with these attacks on a former president?

NAFTALI: Well, it's deflection. By the way, Boris, this is so different. I mean, this is so unprecedented.

SANCHEZ: Right.

NAFTALI: But he is just deflecting the issue. I mean, it's remarkable. In a series of tweets, he denies that Russia was involved. He said it's fake news and now Russia was involved, but the president should've gotten involved. I think it would be most useful for people to keep in mind what the Obama administration was expecting in the fall of 2016. The Obama administration was assuming that Hillary Clinton would win.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

NAFTALI: And they had been through the Benghazi hearings, where the house had taken a microscope to every statement that the Obama team had made in the run-up to the 2012 election. They were, I'm sure, afraid that should Hillary win, the House Operations Committee would -- that Congressman Chaffetz would do the same thing to delegitimize Hillary Clinton's victory by looking at statements that the former president had made about Russia.

And so they backed off. I suspect that's part of the story here. That they were concerned about somehow robbing a Clinton victory of its legitimacy. Now, knowing what we know, and if they knew then what we know now, they might have acted differently.

The feeling, I'm sure, some Democrats have is, my God, you should have said something because the Russians were making a difference. But, again, I don't think people knew then what we know now.

SANCHEZ: Yes, that "Washington Post" report specifically indicates that there was a lack of urgency in part because Obama administration officials thought that Hillary was going to win.

Aside from that, Patrick, to you, with this investigation into Russian meddling still going on, is this the best strategy for President Trump to take, to be in (14:25:00) campaign mode seemingly, still attacking President Obama and Hillary Clinton?

HEALY: It's a very understandable strategy, Boris, because his whole kind of M.O. right now, President Trump's M.O., is to rally his base, is to cement his base, it's to keep them on his side. And he uses twitter for two reasons: One is for, a kind of a direct shot into the blood stream to his base and the second is to, basically, have the news media chase every tweet that he writes to kind of oftentimes sort of deflect what else might be in the news of the day. This is how he operates.

So it makes sense as sort of a strategy but it's really important to keep in mind, Boris, that the politics of him tweeting about Hillary and Bernie and what did President Obama do or not do last year, that's politics. It doesn't really have anything to do with what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the different congressional committees are actually looking at in terms of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Michael Flynn and what he knew and when and what he was telling people.

And, you know, certainly everything from sort of Jared Kushner and other angles of this. So, you know, these sort of tweets and talking about President Obama is politics and the special counsel investigation, you can believe is going straight on ahead.

One last thing. I covered the 2016 presidential campaign in-depth. And President Obama, we have to remember, was someone who basically very much wanted to keep himself not being seen as favoring one candidate over another. He, Denis McDonough, others, were extremely cautious in this regard.

President Obama didn't want to come out and endorse Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the primary even though Hillary was his secretary of state. And Bernie sanders didn't share much of politics but still he wanted to stand back. Now, you can certainly criticize him, you know, for not raising a red flag during the fall on this but I'm just talking about sort of his mind-set throughout was very much not to be seen as putting a thumb on the scale. And I think it is true, they really thought Hillary was going to win.

SANCHEZ: One of the things, Steve, that keeps getting lost in this conversation is the fact that Russia meddled in this election and there was no real strong retribution for what they did. In that "Washington Post" reporting, something that stands out to me that I wanted to ask you about was this program that the Obama administration implemented that would create implants inside Russia's infrastructure and if Russia tried to do something again, those implants would be set off; it would cause havoc in Russia and then, that might deter them from doing it again.

Would that be enough to keep them from interfering in our democratic process, Steve?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, that kind of reminds me of the 'Doctor Strangelove' thing where they had the doomsday device and didn't tell anybody about it. So what you've got to do is make a public statement. You can't just say, by the way, all of these bad stuff that's happening, it just happen -- no, it's us doing it in retaliation.

What we've got here are too many referees looking at the scoreboard. What are people going to think if I do this? Are they going to think that I'm on this team's side? We got to stop that. Too many people got involved this time, worried about how it was going to affect the game. And when you have Russia interfering with an election, a full two months, maybe two and a half months, before the election, that is a time to say, no. That is the time to hit them with sanctions of some type or another.

He didn't have to come out and say, by the way, they're favoring Hillary. He needed to come out and just say, we have evidence that they are interfering with our election and we are taking these steps. And they have to be strong steps. The problem is, whether it was the previous administration, the current administration, everybody is looking at the scoreboard before they throw a flag.

SANCHEZ: Yes. And former administration officials openly admit in the "Washington Post" report that the steps of the Obama administration did take were largely symbolic. We have to leave it at that, gentlemen, but we thank you so much for joining us, Timothy Naftali, Patrick Healy and Stephen Moore on this Sunday afternoon. Thanks again.

NAFTALI: Thanks.

SANCHEZ: Up next. Ohio Governor John Kasich's web site hacked apparently by ISIS supporters. What's behind it and what are the expanded risks? We're going to get some answers, next.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:33:46] BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Amid all this talk about cyber security, we should mention, today, Ohio Governor John Kasich fell victim to hackers. For a short time this afternoon, this was his web page. A black screen with what appeared to be pro-ISIS propaganda.

And it included a message that said, quote, "You will be accountable, Trump, you and all your people, for every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries." Another message read, "I love Islamic State."

The pages of Ohio first lady, Karen Kasich, and the Ohio Department of Corrections were also hacked with this same message.

Now, we should tell you that the message has been since taken off, though their Web sites, at least as far as we know right now, are not working. A group calling itself Team System DZ is claiming responsibility for the attacks.

I'm joined now by David Kennedy. He's a cyber security consultant and ethical hacker, formerly with the NSA.

David, what do you know about this group and its agenda?

DAVID KENNEDY, FORMER CYBER SECURITY CONSULTANT, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: Yes. Team System DZ, their whole purpose is going into Web sites and doing what we call defacing them to get propaganda to certain groups that they may be pro for. You know, this one is specifically pro-ISIS. And that's pretty much what they've done.

They have hacked over 8,000 Web sites in the past. There's a whole Web site called Zone-H that tracks these, you know, defacements.

[14:35:05] And so they are pro-ISIS, you know, pro-Islamic States. And that's what they primarily hack for, is to try to spread media around that and show signs of support and hack into government entities. They've broken into a number of different U.S. specific states as well as federal government Web sites as well.

SANCHEZ: With all respect to the Governor, why John Kasich? It seems like there are a lot of other targets that are preferably closer to Donald Trump who seems that they were trying to get a message across to?

KENNEDY: Yes, I don't think Governor Kasich and Donald Trump are best buds at this point. But, you know, when it comes to what they're trying to do, any site that has security vulnerabilities. And these are usually pretty rudimentary hacks in nature, and so, you know, they go after whatever they possibly can to get their message.

There's a long, long lineage of these types of hackers, too. There is an individual named Junaid Hussain, who got radicalized in a Britain prison for hacking Tony Blair and Sarah Palin's accounts a number of years ago. And he actually led the hacking campaigns for ISIS for a number of years until he slipped up and the U.S. was able to track him and blew him up via a drone, so he is no longer with us.

But, you know, there's a lot of them out there trying to use this propaganda to create buzz, to be able to try to promote ISIS, and this is just one of those as well.

SANCHEZ: Well, we've talked a lot about cyber security lately, specifically from state actors like Russia.

KENNEDY: Yes.

SANCHEZ: But what kind of capability, capacity, does a group like this have?

KENNEDY: Well, these groups are mostly around basic type of hacking. But we definitely see terrorism, you know, al Qaeda, ISIS, a number of other terrorist organizations, building up cyber capabilities, not just for being able to promote their agendas. I mean, recruiting is a huge aspect for ISIS, being able to go and recruit in different countries, be able to reach people.

And these types of groups help promote that type of recruitment across the world, so it is damaging. But the sophistication levels are nowhere near anything like a Russia or a China or United States capabilities.

It is definitely something that is in their desire to do, so I think, you know, as the years progress, we're going to continue to see a lot of this, you know, terrorist groups get more and more sophisticated with what they're doing, the techniques that they're leveraging. Which is a pretty scary situation, you know, seeing as what they can

inflict now, with having these basic levels of hacking. So definitely, I see it as becoming more and more of a trend of terrorists having these types of capabilities in the future.

SANCHEZ: Yes. It appears to be that the new field of warfare is online. David Kennedy, we thank you so much for the time for joining us.

KENNEDY: Thanks, Boris. Appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Coming up, Donald Trump always said Mexico would pay for the wall, but the President is now saying solar panels will pay for it. We'll explain how, next.

But first, CNN MONEY takes you away to Portland, Oregon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Portland, Oregon has become known as a foodie city. It is, after all, one of the first places to jump on the food truck craze. But it's also become a top business destination.

And if you find yourself traveling through town, skip the food scene. This is where you should go. We drove an hour outside Portland and we ended up at a sloth sanctuary.

RAEGAN ROYALE, SLOTH KEEPER, ZOOLOGICAL WILDLIFE CONSERVATION CENTER: So this is our sloth building, the main sloth building.

YURKEVICH (on camera): This doesn't seem like the natural habitat to a sloth.

ROYALE: Correct. Sloths are endemic to South America, so a warm, humid climate. O So the temperature in here runs about 82 to 86 degrees daily. We are hitting at about 40 percent humidity.

YURKEVICH (on camera): Oh, hi! Oh, my god!

(LAUGHTER)

YURKEVICH (voice-over): This is the Zoological Wildlife Conservation Center. They save sloths who are at risk in the wild. The sloth house is kept very zen. Their sole job is to sleep 22 hours a day, mate, and eat.

ROYALE: So these are the tents that we use for the sloth sleepover. It's basically --

YURKEVICH (on camera): Sloth sleepover?

ROYALE: Yes. Sloths, being a nocturnal species, they're most active at night. So that's the best time to actually come and see them and spend time with them, is when they're up and about.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:43:35] SANCHEZ: Gay pride celebrations are in full swing across the country this weekend. One of the largest is under way in New York City right now as we take a live look. We're going to have a live report from there within the next hour. The one on your left is happening in San Francisco right now.

One of his biggest campaign promises, the President assured us that Mexico would pay for the border wall, but Mexican leaders insist that is not going to happen. So, now, the President is offering a new plan involving solar panels. Sara Sidner talks with the businessman who originally pitched the idea a few months ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When President Trump said this.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're thinking about building the wall as a solar wall.

SIDNER (voice-over): Thomas Gleason thought, mission accomplished.

THOMAS GLEASON, MANAGING PARTNER, GLEASON PARTNERS LLC: I'm happy. We've done what we wanted to do.

TRUMP: Pretty good imagination, right? Right. My idea.

SIDNER (voice-over): As for the idea, at least two companies actually proposed it months ago when the Trump administration made an all-call for companies to send in their border wall designs. Thomas Gleason, a Vietnam veteran and small business owner, bid in April, sending photos and details of exactly how his solar wall would work.

SIDNER (on camera): What's the selling point?

GLEASON: He gets to build the wall because it pays for itself.

SIDNER (voice-over): Sound familiar?

TRUMP: So it creates energy and pays for itself.

SIDNER (on camera): How?

GLEASON: The benefit is, is there's going to be a demand for the electricity, even if there isn't a city within 50 miles.

[14:45:03] SIDNER (voice-over): Gleason says it would take about 20 years of producing power for the wall to pay for itself and showed us what a partial section of his solar wall would look like.

SIDNER (on camera): How would you describe what it would take to get through it?

GLEASON: I --

SIDNER (on camera): Is it possible? Virtually impossible?

GLEASON: It's going to take an A Team, you know, kind of crew. They're going to have to be talented.

SIDNER (voice-over): He says that's because this is just one layer of the wall. The base would be six feet of concrete, filled with rocks and sand. Then steel wire mesh. Then the solar panels, followed by more steel wire mesh. And at the top, a pivoting ceiling of more solar panels.

SIDNER (on camera): Could someone scale this?

GLEASON: Well, go ahead. Stick your fingers in that.

SIDNER (on camera): I can't.

SIDNER (voice-over): There's no shortage of sun along the U.S./Mexico border. Gleason says each mile of this solar wall could power up to 400 homes. The government has yet to pick its top proposals and so far, Congress has not allotted funding for the wall.

President Trump's border wall proposal has garnered plenty of controversy, and Gleason has gotten his share for making a bid. He's lost a client and a close friend who was Mexican-American, telling Gleason he'd be helping to divide families.

SIDNER (on camera): So you've lost potentially big business and a friend?

GLEASON: I'll get it back. As long as we don't get the wall.

(LAUGHTER)

SIDNER (on camera): But if he does get the bid, he estimates that his solar wall would cost about $7.5 million per mile. Spread that out across the entire U.S./Mexico border and we're talking a $15 billion price tag.

Sara Sidner, CNN, Vegas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: All right, Sara. Thank you for that.

Still ahead, the plane was shaking like a washing machine. That's how one passenger described their flight today on AirAsia. You won't believe what the crew told these passengers to do. We'll tell you, next.

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[14:51:00] SANCHEZ: A terrifying experience for passengers aboard in AirAsia X flight headed to Kuala Lumpur. The jet was carrying more than 350 passengers, and it began to violently shake about an hour after taking off from Perth, Australia.

But this wasn't ordinary turbulence that comes and goes. Passengers say the plane was shaking like a washing machine for about two hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(LOUD RUMBLING NOISE)

(LAUGHTER)

(LOUD RUMBLING NOISE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: You can see the passengers putting on a brave face, laughing and smiling through the terrifying ordeal. But the pilot, at one point, urged passengers to pray as the plane turned around to fly back to Australia where, fortunately, it landed safely.

Let's discuss this further with CNN Transportation Analyst Mary Schiavo, who is also a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Mary, so far, the airline said it was just a technical issue. An airport spokesman said it was related to the engine. But based on this video that you're seeing, it does seem like this was more than turbulence.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: It was. And, you know, based on the video, you can find similar videos like this on engine manufacturers' websites.

For example, G.E. Engines has one where they have done testing. And what it looks like is a turbine blade or a fan blade failure, and it's called an uncontained engine failure. It's not rare. It probably happens on commercial airlines maybe once a month.

And the engine manufacturers test for it so that the engine will stay on the plane when this happens. And the washing machine analogy is a very good one because the engine is very much -- looks like it.

And if you get a fan blade out or you have some kind of a failure where some of the blades come out, it's an imbalance situation. So that's why it sounds like a washing machine.

SANCHEZ: Well, one passenger actually said that, just before the shaking started, they heard a loud bang. Does that corroborate kind of the idea that it's an engine issue?

SCHIAVO: Right, the loud bang would signify an uncontained engine failure, that the engine lost or a fan blade or a turbine blade was thrown out. And passengers also said they smelled a strong engine smell. Maybe some of the fluids from the engine, which would have been freed from that event. And those two things together do make me think that that's what it is. SANCHEZ: Now, I mean, you have to imagine how passengers felt.

They're sitting on a plane that's shaking and then the crew asks them to pray. Is that weird?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's weird and it's not -- well, we don't know all those facts but the aircraft manuals, the engine manuals, and most airline operation manuals say that if you have an event like this, if you've lost an engine or lost power in the engine, your instructions are to put that plane down, to land at the nearest suitable airport.

Now, I've looked at the maps of the area, and it looked like they did pass up an airport that looks like it could have been suitable. Now, I don't know, but about 10 minutes after this happened. Instead they limped the plane on for an hour and a half back to Perth.

And most airlines, most aircraft manufacturers say, don't do that. Put that down immediately because the old saying is better to be on the ground wishing you were up in the air, than up in the air praying you can make it back to the ground. And that's what they resorted to.

SANCHEZ: Yes. We heard from some Australian officials saying that, at one point, Marine Emergency Services were put on standby to prepare for a possible water landing. What does that tell you about what the pilots were thinking, what they believe might have happened to the plane?

SCHIAVO: Well, it was a very serious event. And, you know, this has happened before. There was Alaska Airlines flight that had a problem. It wasn't an uncontained engine failure, but they passed up several suitable airports trying to limp the plane back to San Francisco, one of their maintenance bases.

[14:54:57] And what happened there is they ended up turning out over the Pacific Ocean where the plane was lost. That one crashed. And so if you have a problem and you can't get it back to the airport, many pilots will take it out over the water, obviously hoping to spare lives.

SANCHEZ: All right. We're very fortunate that the plane did land safely and all those passengers are OK. Their prayers were answered.

Mary Schiavo, thank you so much for the time on this Sunday

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: We still have much more ahead after a quick break. Please stay with us.

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[14:59:57] SANCHEZ: Hey there. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Boris Sanchez in for Fredericka Whitfield, and we start with the art of the health care deal.

The President says he is confident that Republican senators will get the votes they need to pass the bill. Eventually.