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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Receives Kim Jong-Un's Envoy with Letter; Trump: June 12 Summit with Kim Jong-Un Back On; President Trump's Double Standards; MSNBC Anchor Joy Reid Apologizes For Blog Posts, Network Says Some Were 'Obviously Hateful And Hurtful'; Inside An Immigration Detention Center Where Mothers Desperately Want To Be Reunited With Their Children; "Parts Unknown" In Hong Kong Sunday At 9PM ET. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired June 01, 2018 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:40]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening. A strange day, indeed. Tonight, the president of the United States is at fierce odds with some of this country's oldest allies and both of its neighbors, democracies all of them. And at the same time, the president appears to be getting cordial with a bitter enemy, a nuclear-armed Stalinist regime, led by a murderous dictator who presides over half the planet's most oppressive regime. When the president yesterday slapped tariffs on steel from Europe, Mexico and Canada, the administration called it a national security move. And today, Canada is taking umbrage at being labeled, in its view, as a threat to U.S. security.
Today, the president hosted Dictator Kim Jong-Un's top envoy at the White House. They posed for this grip-and-grin shot on the lawn outside. Spent two hours together in preparation for the summit that the president now says is once again back on in its originally scheduled time slot, you might say. And just a short time ago, we got a picture of the letter from Kim the envoy delivered.
Keep in mind, it seems the story line to the summit has changed just a little, which is raising questions even among some top Republicans, about whether the president's eagerness to make a deal could lead him to make a bad deal.
Here is what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: It's going to be quite a challenge. And I think for these situations to work, you have to not want the deal too much. If you fall in love with the deal and it is too important for you to get it and the details become less significant, you could get snookered.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Senator McConnell went on to say, and I'm quoting here, "And I think the president is fully aware of that as he goes into it." However, when you consider some of what the president said today and
contrast it about what's been said about the summit up until now by the president and the White House, it gives weight to Senator McConnel's warning.
Here is how the administration has been describing its goal for the Singapore talks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: North Korea has the opportunity to end decades of poverty and oppression by following the path of denuclearization.
SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The conversation is going to be focused on denuclearization of the peninsula. The goal and the purpose of these conversations would be to have complete and total denuclearization of the peninsula.
TRUMP: Denuclearization --
The denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
(CHEERING)
SANDERS: Total denuclearization will remain the top priority.
The president has laid out what he wants to see as a commitment to denuclearization. That has not changed.
TRUMP: I will be meeting with Kim Jong-Un in the coming weeks as we seek to denuclearize the North Korean area and the entire Korean peninsula.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: So denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula the stated goal. Now, not so much.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I think it is a getting-to-know-you meeting-plus. And that can be a very positive thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: A getting-to-know-you meeting-plus. In the administration, of course, there's another one. Whatever else you might think of the summit, that does sounds like a far different agenda than eliminating all nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Human rights might not be on the agenda either. Here is the president first talking about today's meeting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: We did not talk about human rights.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you expect to talk about it?
TRUMP: Could be. Yes, could be. I think we probably will. And maybe in great detail. We did not talk about human rights
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So human rights, the answer is, could be, probably will. That was criticized by many who want a tougher line against North Korea. As was the president preemptively deferring what he said were, quote, "hundreds of sanctions ready to go." He did not say he got any concessions in return for taking some of the pressure off Pyongyang, only saying again, quoting here, "Why would I do that when we are talking so nicely?"
The envoy from the North's original mission was, as you saw moments ago, to simply present the president with a letter from his boss, which, as you see, he certainly did, a very big letter. What's not clear is whether the president actually read the letter because, first, he indicated he did, and then he said he didn't. So first, he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This was a meeting where a letter was given to me by Kim Jong- Un. And that letter was a nice letter. Oh, would you like to see what is in that letter? Wouldn't you like to --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: How much? How much? How much?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can you give us a flavor -- (INAUDIBLE)?
TRUMP: It was a very interesting letter. At some point, it may be appropriate, I may be able to give it to you, and maybe you'll be able to see it. And maybe fairly soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So he seems to be saying he read the letter. He said it was very nice, very interesting. But again, what he said next was perhaps he simply impressed by the size of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I haven't seen the letter yet. I purposely didn't open the letter. I haven't opened it. I didn't open it in front of the director.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So you can decide for yourself what that means.
All in all, quite a day at the White House. CNN's Jim Acosta is there for us tonight.
Jim, do we know anything about what was in the letter?
[20:05:00] JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We don't know exactly what was in the letter, Anderson. We can tell you that the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the president did read the letter before he left the White House for Camp David for the weekend. But we're told by officials that it was generally positive and, of course, is now one of the steps on the path to the summit in Singapore on June 12th.
But, Anderson, it is not so much about what is in that giant letter, which looks like something from Publisher's Clearinghouse. Maybe the sanctions relief will come in the form of a giant check. It's not so much what's in the letter as what is in the deal. And what you heard the president say earlier today is it is no longer a summit about denuclearization, it is about a getting-to-know-you session-plus. And he didn't really lay out what that plus meant.
He also, very interestingly, said to reporters that this is no longer a maximum-pressure campaign. He volunteered that information, and that is after the White House press secretary and others with this administration have said, repeatedly, that they are applying a maximum-pressure campaign on the North Koreans. The president said that the current sanctions that are in place now will stay in place, but that he is not going to consider new ones. And so the big question about this upcoming summit is whether this is going to be a coin without any currency, so to speak.
COOPER: What a difference a week makes. It was just last Thursday that the president canceled the summit. It's remarkable that, given the kind of planning that normally goes into something like this, that now it is back on.
ACOSTA: That is right. And we have been hearing from officials over the last week. This has almost felt like a fait accompli, Anderson, in that officials were heading over to Singapore with the White House to work on the logistics of this summit. You saw the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, up in New York meeting with that top lieutenant to Kim Jong-Un. It seems like they were keeping all of the wheels in motion for the summit with exception of any kind of demands from the United States to the North Koreans, some hard concessions before even sitting down at the table.
And that is why you heard Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, saying just today -- and I think it is a pretty extraordinary comment coming from a leader of the Republican Party -- that he's worried that the president will be snookered. My sense is, Anderson, you're going to hear similar echoes from other Republicans in the days forward as a lot of people here in Washington are going to be very, very concerned that this president is really just traveling all the way around the world over to Singapore for a reality TV moment and nothing much more -- Anderson?
COOPER: Jim Acosta, appreciate it.
Because this is, in many ways, a two Jim story, we are joined now by CNN chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto.
Jim, it is striking to see what appears to be a shift and certainly tone from the president when it comes to what this meeting is actually about and any kind of a time line for denuclearization.
JIM SCIUITTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Typically, before meetings like this, you might have some managing of expectations. But what you had in the last 24 hours is really a complete re-defining of expectations that were set by this president himself. One, on what this meeting would be about. Today, for the first time, he said it is really just a get-to-know-you meeting and likely one of a series of meetings. That is not abnormal.
Typically, in nuclear negotiations like this -- keep in mind the Iranian nuclear negotiations took two years. So that is typical. But this president had given the strong impression that there would be more, more possibility with this summit. But more crucially is a re- defining of the White House's own expectations prior to this meeting. Remember, just in the last couple of days, White House officials said that the U.S. wanted some grand gesture to demonstrate how serious North Korea is about this.
We don't know what that gesture is. The president certainly didn't announce once. And on the issue of denuclearization, he said today he thinks that they want to denuclearize. Mike Pompeo, in New York yesterday, says he believes they are contemplating denuclearizing. That is not a commitment from North Korea before you go into these talks.
COOPER: It certainly seems -- I mean, obviously, a summit with a sitting U.S. president is something the leader of North Koreans has wanted for a very, very long time. It gives the Kim Jong-Un regime a legitimacy that he has craved, his father has craved, and probably his father before him. So now is it a simple getting-to-know-you meeting? I guess the question is, has the North already received, gotten more out of this meeting than the U.S. is going to get?
SCIUTTO: They certainly have already gotten something. And the White House may not acknowledge that, but the fact is, as you said, this is something that North Korean leaders, Kim, his father, and his grandfather, have wanted for years to demonstrate their stature in the world. And typically, in a negotiation like this, sitting across from the U.S. president, arguably, the most powerful person in the world, is a give. It is a concession. You would expect something in return.
It is not clear that the U.S. got anything in return. And keep in mind, that meeting in the White House today was, in itself, something -- I don't want to say a gift -- but at least it was a deliverable for the North Koreans to have its top spy there standing next to the U.S. president in the Oval Office. So the U.S. has been giving a fair amount here. Based on North Korea's terms, it remains to be seen what the U.S. is going to get back in return.
[20:10:05] COOPER: Jim Sciutto, stay with us.
I want to bring in national security expert, Sue Mi Terry, former North Korea analyst for the CIA. She currently holds the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Also with us, CNN global affairs analyst, Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Terry, first of all, do you see a shift in how the U.S. is describing what this meeting is about, from total denuclearization to just getting-to-know-you-plus?
DR. SUE MI TERRY, SENIOR FELLOW, KOREAN CHAIR, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND FORMER NORTH KOREA ANALYST, CIA: Absolutely. President Trump is walking away from this very high expectation that he set himself up with this meeting. We have a very different definition of denuclearization. Washington, does. Pyongyang does.
When North Korea talks about denuclearization, they're always talking about the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, not just their weapons, nuclear weapons, which, of course, has alliance implications for the U.S, South Korea alliance, relationship, our troop presence in South Korea and our extended nuclear umbrella that we have over South Korea and Japan.
It is very unclear from this meeting that Kim Yong Chol had with Pompeo and maybe with President Trump today that is any different, that they are actually going to talk about or they're going to put denuclearization on the table as we define it, complete, irreversible, verifiable denuclearization of their nuclear weapons.
COOPER: And, Max, even if that is on the table for the summit, there's no way -- I mean, it is realistic for the president to say it is basically a getting-to-know-you meeting. It was unrealistic to portray this as anything else up to now.
MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALSYT: That's right.
COOPER: To really denuclearize, I mean that would take months, years of meetings and working out specific details.
BOOT: Right. And we just saw the leak just a few days ago of the CIA assessment that North Korea is not actually interested in giving up their nuclear weapons, which kind of accords with everything those of us on the outside are looking at. We had to wonder, a month ago, when President Trump was literally tweeting, "They have agreed to denuclearization." You had to wonder, did he know something that we didn't know? And clearly, he didn't. He was making it up.
He kind of decided to enter this summit on the spur of the moment and then he hyped it up to the roof. And now, it came crashing down a week ago and now he's trying to put it back together but in a very different form. So it basically has the appearance of a summit but perhaps very little of the actual substance of it. So you have to wonder, why are we giving the leader of North Korea an opportunity to legitimize himself next to the president of the United States. And at the same time, oh, by the way, President Trump has admitted that we are ready -- the sanctions are basically collapsing because of the concessions that we already are basically making in order to bring Kim Jong-Un to the table.
COOPER: Dr. Terry, it seems like North Korea has already -- I don't know if won is the word -- but gotten a lot of out of this.
TERRY: North Korea has gained a lot for the past few months with the summit and the diplomacy and with our agreement to meet with Kim Jong- Un. And Kim Jong-Un has played his cards very well.
COOPER: They've been very --
(CROSSTALK)
TERRY: Yes. As you said, political will to implement sanctions is already loosening, particularly on the Chinese front. He has met with Moon Jae-in a couple of times. And that inter-Korea stuff is going to continue.
COOPER: The South Korean president.
TERRY: Yes, South Korean President Moon Jae-in. So this maximum pressure that we are going to do is going to be hard, right? And then the whole talk of this military strike, it is impossible for us to get back to that, particularly if North Korea does not continue with further provocation. I don't think they will because Kim Jong-Un is very smart about this. So no more missile tests and nuclear tests. So how are we going to get back to maximum pressure or military strikes? Kim Jong-Un is doing pretty well even without that summit.
BOOT: I'm just picking up on the point that Sue just made. Trump kind of reminds me of Churchill's line that, "He is either at your throat or at your feet." And last fall, he was raining "fire and fury" down on North Korea and referring to him as Little Rocket Man. And now he's swung to the other extreme, saying he is open and honorable, and we are going to do a great deal together. And today, I have to say, I am little bit uncomfortable by the fact that Trump is doing this grip-and-grin photo op in the Oval Office with a guy who is basically the Himmler of North Kora.
He is in charge of a gulag where 200,000 people are in prison. And all Trump has to do is go back to his own State of the Union address in January where he talked about the murder of Otto Warmbier and all of the terrible abuses in North Korea. And now he is rushing to embrace Kim Jong-Un. He's got to find a happy medium. He can't swing from the extreme of hostility to excessive flattery on the one hand. He's got to find that middle path.
COOPER: Jim, it is remarkable for the president to say, why would we be putting in sanctions because they are being nice to us right now.
[20:15:33] SCIUTTO: And to say there's no discussion of human rights is remarkable. This is a man who has been guilty of horrible violations of human rights. He sank a South Korean navy ship, killed 46 sailors. He's the man who was in charge of the intelligence services when North Korea hacked Sony North America. So it is remarkable not to bring these things up at least in the conversation. But another point here, too, it was interesting to hear Mitch
McConnell, of course, a Republican, Senate majority leader, warn the president, don't get snookered by North Korea. There are a lot of players here that have agendas even beyond North Korea. Victor Cha made the point today that China may intentionally be weakening sanctions on North Korea so that sanctions by themselves don't get what the U.S. wants. It is, in effect, forced somewhat to get to the table.
As Sue Mi made the point, South Korea is interested, it really does want to sit down with North Korea, get to something, you know, a formal end to the Korean War, peace on the peninsula, perhaps not on terms that are favorable to the United States. So there's more than one party here that can snooker, as Mitch McConnell said, the U.S. in these negotiations.
COOPER: Dr. Terry, do you think the U.S. has already been snookered?
TERRY: Already we have. But we'll see. I am hoping now that Trump is going to meet with Kim Jong-Un, I'm hoping that something will come out of it. But I am not optimistic.
BOOT: Keep in mind, Donald Trump is a great deal maker only in his own mind. If you look at his record, six corporate bankruptcies. He has made an awful lot of bad deals.
COOPER: Appreciate it, Jim, Sue Mi Terry, thank you. Max Boot as well.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Coming up next, Samantha Bee, Roseanne Barr, and the question of a presidential double standard. We're keeping them honest on that.
Also, later, rare access to a detention center for undocumented immigrants. We'll hear from two mothers who have been separated from their kids.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:19:56] COOPER: There was good news on the economy today. The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, which is the lowest in 18 years, and excellent by any standards. The president tweeted about it today. He might have left it there, could have left it at that and North Korea would be the story for the day. But he didn't. Maybe he couldn't.
President Trump again took aim at a television comedian for saying something offensive. At least, he did for one. "Why aren't they firing no-talent Samantha Bee," he tweeted, "for the horrible language she used on her low-rating show? A total double standard. But that's OK, we are winning, and we'll be doing so for a long time to come."
Samantha Bee, as you know, said this about his daughter and senior advisor, Ivanka Trump. We edited out the profanity, but the point comes through. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAMANTHA BEE, COMEDIAN: Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to post the second-most oblivious tweet we've seen this week. You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices you feckless (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
(LAUGHTER)
He listens to you.
(CHEERING)
BEE: Put on something tight and low cut and tell your father to (EXPLETIVE DELETED) stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes. OK?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: You can certainly understand a father's anger at that. Harry Truman once threatened to slug a music critic just for panning his daughter's singing. You can certainly ask whether it's a double standard. Samantha Bee, a Trump critic, still has a job after what she said, while Roseanne Barr, a Trump supporter, was fired for her racist remarks.
But keeping them honest, merely holding the president to the very same double-standard standard that he himself laid out in his tweet this morning, it is not hard to find places where he himself comes up short, starting with Roseanne Barr, the one who did lose her job three days after she posted a tweet calling an African-American woman the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and an ape.
The president has yet to tweet once about the actual content of her remarks, though he had no trouble embracing her when her ratings were good. He has not tweeted condemning the racist language that prompted ABC to cancel her show. Instead, the president used the moment to air a list his own grievances with ABC, and twice demanded an apology from Robert Iger, the CEO of ABC's parent company, Disney. The president turned an opportunity to speak out against blatant racism into an opportunity to portray himself as a victim. And it's for that double- standard standard, well, the president doesn't hold up so well on that front.
At the same time, the president was ripping disgraced Democratic Senator Al Franken last year for sexual harassment, he was notably silent on Roy Moore, accused, among other alleged offenses, of sexually assaulting a 16 year old, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. Critics back then called it a double standard and selective outrageous, and not just as it applied to Franken and more, but also when it came to Franken and the president himself.
As you know, the president has not only been accused by sexual impropriety by more than a dozen women, he was also caught on tape boasting about the way he could sexually assault a woman and get away with it. His defenders at the time called it locker room talk. But whatever you call it, however you see it, the president's own language makes signaling out someone else for vulgar or insulting language somewhat problematic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Rosie O'Donnell is disgusting, both inside and out. You take a look at her, she's a slob.
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd.
(LAUGHTER)
He's a sleeping son of a bitch.
Or Pocahontas. Pocahontas! How about that?
Maxine Waters, a very low I.Q. individual.
(BOOING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: There are, of course, a lot of others on video, on Twitter, elsewhere. When it comes to double standards, selective outrage, whatever you want to call it, the examples are many and varied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: She wants to blame everyone else for her mounting legal troubles but has really no one else to blame but herself. Hillary is the one who set up an illegal private e-mail server to shield her criminal activity. You know that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That's Candidate Trump, who rarely missed an opportunity to attack Hillary Clinton on her private e-mail server and her handling of sensitive information. Just a few days ago, though, as revealed by "Politico," that the president uses a pair of nonsecure iPhones and does not have them scanned for intrusions at the recommended intervals because it's too inconvenient. Perhaps, a minor example of the president's double standards, but the record is full of them.
The question is, does anyone these days actually seem to care. That a question for our next two guests, Jason Miller and Michaela Angela Davis, who join us after a very quick break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:27:29] COOPER: As you have heard, President Trump is calling the decision not to fire Samantha Bee a, quote, "total double standard." Is that appropriate for a president who has been known to be selective when it comes to who to attack and who to defend?
Joining us now is Michaela Angela Davis and Jason Miller. Michaela, is there a moral equivalence between what Samantha Bee said
and what Roseanne Barr did? Should the president have commented on both?
MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, CNN COMMENTATOR: It is so hard, Anderson. The opening was so exhausting, all the things we have to negotiate. This is tasteless versus tasteless and racist and xenophobia. And what we are looking at is power and the power of words and who is wielding that power by saying those things. The president of the United States should be in a totally different standard than a political satire. And also one of the traps of these false equivalent conversation is that you don't consider context in history. Rosanne has a history of calling black women monkeys.
That was a last straw. Samantha, as tasteless as it was, it was political commentary about helpless children. So who are the people they are representing when they say these tasteless words that they also apologize for? So the comparison -- and this is -- we are often in this false narrative comparison all the time so --
COOPER: But --
(CROSSTALK)
DAVIS: -- to hold the president to the same standard as two comedians is strange. But also the fact that we are expecting him to tweet about a comedian when we have Puerto Rico -- do you know what I mean? So we are in this very strange moment that we are even having this as commentary.
COOPER: That was your point in the past couple of days on the Roseanne thing. The president has a lot to do, why should he wade into the Roseanne Barr thing, even though he had praised Roseanne Barr for her ratings earlier.
Should he -- does it -- do you see it OK that he weighs in on Samantha Bee thing and not the Roseanne Barr?
JASON MILLER, FORMER TRUMP SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS ADVISOR: So very clearly there's no equivalency between Roseanne Barr's comments. I agree with Michaela. Were absolutely horrible, plus racist in nature, versus Samantha Bee's comments, which were absolutely horrible and vile and completely terrible as well. But I think they're at different levels. I wouldn't equate those directly. Traditionally, I would say the president did not need to weigh in on Samantha Bee because I do think they're completely separate things. But I am never going to criticize a father for standing up for his daughter. So I can definitely understand that.
[20:30:00]
But I think in a sense when we talk about kind of culture and society, I feel like we're chasing the wrong thing here. I feel like political opponents on both sides are looking for, I think, people who are mad at what Roseanne Barr said, which should be everybody. But some of the political opponents are looking to President Trump and they want to go and pin it on him.
And I think many members who are conservatives are then looking at Samantha Bee and saying other liberals or other people may go and answer for what Samantha Bee did. I mean, the bottom line is people need to get their own acts together, they need to start treating people with a lot more respect. And I think when we talk about the actual job of the presidency, that's going to create opportunity in jobs, better education, things like for people from all backgrounds and all parts of society. And not try to look for that validation that the president is going to come in and give some kind of moral clarity that's going to magically bring everybody together.
I think the job of the presidency is to go and create those opportunities that'll -- with everybody up.
COOPER: It does say something, though, about where we are at -- where we are in terms of the national dialogue just -- and, you know, conservatives have talked about the coarseness of the culture for a long time. But, just -- I mean, everybody is in their tribe or in their, you know, political camp and they see it through the lens of their politics and they excuse what Samantha Bee said. Or, they attack Roseanne or they excuse Roseanne and attack Samantha Bee.
I mean, it's --
MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, CNN CULTURAL CRITIC: And, you know, that's natural. Tribalism is natural. This is unnatural that we're having this conversation in the context of the presidency and that a tweet would conflate so many things together like adding in a commentary about a show. This is not normal and I think that we have to resist -- or I have to resist thinking that this is normal to talk about a president of the United States of America and his tweets about two comedians. That's not normal. Having --
COOPER: It is interesting that he talked about ratings for both of them.
DAVIS: Both -- and also, I think, again, you have to consider who each person is representing when they say what they say. So Roseanne Barr and his core, he sees them as -- he said this is about us. So of course, he would weigh in on Roseanne because those are -- he's talking for his people.
Samantha, even though it was tasteless, was in her mind speaking for immigrant children. So we have to really look at the difference between who these people are speaking to and how they're using their language and how they're using their power. And words have power. But coming out of the president of the United States of America, the fact that you have that run down is extraordinary. It's extraordinary.
MILLER: So let me tell you, here's where I would disagree with you. And I would say that I don't think that what Samantha Bee said was some kind of commentary on a public policy matter. I mean, this was a very orchestrated, I mean, they wrote it up -- DAVIS: But it was connected to the immigrant.
MILLER: -- and loaded it. Right.
DAVIS: I -- it was completely quite the same chunk (ph).
MILLER: But they loaded it into the prompter, but I mean, that language to go at the daughter of the president of the United States with that vile and that foul of language, that was not an accident, that was not going to move the ball forward on immigration policy of one direction or another. That was a specific effort to tear down the president's daughter. And the president -- and I would say, at the broader -- at the cultural side, here's where I get frustrated as a Trump supporter, when I see the White House Correspondents' Dinner and I see Michelle Wolf attack Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's sitting right there, the other comment that she made about Kellyanne Conway.
There seems to be this pattern from far too many in Hollywood, far too many who are in this comedian space, not all but from far too many, where it's open season on the president, his supporters, anyone who works for him or anyone in his family. I think it's going way too far, I think it's becoming completely tasteless. And the thing that -- the standard that's being set here is that if you criticize the president and say some very foul terrible things, nothing's going to happen --
DAVIS: That would make sense if this president didn't say what he said about immigrants, women, Mexicans, what he said about our private parts. The -- I would totally agree with you if we were talking about someone else. The tone that he set from the moment he came down those escalators, just calling people names, you saw that opening --
MILLER: Right.
DAVIS: -- all the names he called people. So we can't talk about this in a regular context. He -- all he does is insult people so it's not the same.
MILLER: But I -- but let's encourage everybody, let's encourage everybody to take steps forward with their language, to be more positive with it rather than a point and say, well, you did this or you did that. I think we'd all be better off.
COOPER: Jason Miller and Michaela Angela Davis, thanks so much.
DAVIS: Thank you.
COOPER: Incidentally, there's a chance the Roseanne's show could continue without Roseanne Barr. Sources tells CNN the talks of the production company in charge of the show are preliminary. According to TMZ, ABC is focusing the possibility of focusing on the character Darlene played by the actress, Sara Gilbert.
[20:35:01] Just ahead, a look at MSNBC anchor Joy Reid and her extended silence on inflammatory anti-gay conspiratorial blog post she wrote more than a decade ago. Today, both she and the network addressed the issue.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Another TV personality is in hot water tonight. The MSNBC anchor Joy Reid is having to answer for some inflammatory blog post she wrote back in 2005 some were anti-gay, some conspiratorial, some are just downright strange. Back in April, she said her blog history had been hacked, but not today. Today, she apologized and the network issued a statement of its own saying, some of the things she wrote were "hateful and hurtful".
Our Randi Kaye now has details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Look closely, that's Arizona Senator John McCain's head photoshopped on the body of the Virginia Tech shooter, who killed 32 people back in 2207. The offensive blog post was first discovered this week by BuzzFeed. On a now defunct blog called the Reid Report, the blog once belonged to MSNBC host, Joy Reid.
This post was titled, Baghdad John strikes again, and published in October 2007. That discovery just one day after BuzzFeed found another disturbing post from 2006, in which Reid urged readers to watch Loose Change 9/11, which was produced in part by conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, of InfoWars fame (ph). The film series promotes the widely debunked theory that the September 11th terrorist attacks were planned and carried by the United States government.
The blogger who could be Reid herself asks, "The fundamental question is, do you believe the official story of 9/11?" Long before this week, Reid was already under pressure for homophobic blog post more than a decade old. One post suggests Anderson Cooper is the gayest thing on TV, writing that most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing. A twitter user first discovered many of the anti-gay post, including one that calls homosexual sex, gross.
[20:40:01] (on camera): Reid, the original explanation, hackers. She hired a cybersecurity expert to investigate and her attorney said the FBI had opened a probe. In a statement, he suggested the alleged hackers may have found a password on the dark web to access Reid's account.
JOY REID, MSNBC ANCHOR: Frankly, I couldn't imagine where they come from or whose voice that was.
KAYE: In December, Reid issued a statement apologizing for the blog she wrote a decade ago. And her choice of words and tone. That was all she said until late April when she said she actually had no proof of hackers being responsible. So she apologized again for the post, but still didn't take responsibility for writing the post.
REID: I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me. But I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past why some people don't believe me. I've not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that, I am truly, truly sorry.
KAYE: In a statement late today, MSNBC called the post hateful and hurtful. Adding that Joy Reid has grown and evolved in the many years since.
Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: And for the record, I was only a runner up in the gayest guy in TV pageant, but I'm hoping next year.
Joining us now to discuss, CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter. So, if she now saying -- I mean, it seems to me if she said she was hacked, was that a lie? Was she just not telling -- I mean, or she -- I mean, and if she lied, isn't that something that MSNBC would be concerned about?
BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It's not that it would affect her credibility going forward. That really is the key issue here. She may have posted a lot of offensive things over a decade ago. And that comment about 9/11, to just (ph) lots of documentary seems especially troubling to me.
But whatever she posted over a decade ago, it's what happened when she was caught or cornered that is most troubling because that happened just a couple of months ago. In April, when some -- more of these posts came to light, she was backed into a corner and she seemed to come up with answer about hacking. Now, I don't want to get into her, I don't know what she was thinking, but she issued a statement back then that said, I found out that an unknown party accessed and manipulated material from my blog that included offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs, she said she was hacked.
Now, later she admitted she couldn't prove she was hacked. She kind of backed away from the hacking claim. And today, she didn't mention hacking at all. But this does go to her credibility and it's going to be up to her viewers to decide if she is credible going forward given the idea that she claimed she was hacked and then backed away from.
COOPER: It's also interesting that MSNBC, I mean, they've had a lot of time to think of this or consider it because this has been dragging on now for --
STELTER: For months.
COOPER: -- months and --
STELTER: That's right.
COOPER: -- they really haven't said anything.
STELTER: And the new report about that 9/11 blog post that came 48 hours before it was on BuzzFeed came 48 hours before MSNBC eventually weighed in today. The network is strongly supporting Reid. She's one of the most popular weekend host. The network is saying she's evolved and changed. And look, Anderson, I agree, people do change overtime. They have to have the space to evolve and change overtime. That's great. The issue is the deceptive comments about hacking.
COOPER: Also, I mean, her apology about the anti-gay post. She said, I generally do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me, I mean, we're talking about 2005, 2006. I can see if it was something when she was a teenager in high school or something, or college, but this is in her professional life. I mean --
STELTER: Yes, it absolutely is.
COOPER: Right.
STELTER: And, it's a reminder to anybody that when you're blogging, when you're twittering, when you're posting online, those words have meaning, they have significance. They're not going to fade away necessarily. Some Twitter users have been finding her old blog post, there's something called the Wayback archive, the Wayback Machine. It allows you to pull up old blog posts that you thought might have been deleted.
On a week, we've been talking about Roseanne Barr and her tweets, again, a very different case, it's a reminder that what people are posting on the web matters. It's not just for fun, it's not just in your private time. It matters, and in this case, it's haunted Reid more than a decade later. Look, it wasn't -- she's posted about you, she's posted about Wolf Blitzer, she's been posting about dozens of people. A lot of it was offensive in a lot of different ways. And frankly, Anderson, there's probably more that's going to come out from her blog. I think that's why she's trying to issue the statement today.
COOPER: Right. Brian Stelter, thanks very much.
STELTER: Thanks.
COOPER: We've just gotten some breaking news, it would have been better had it arrived just after our reporting on the upcoming summit with North Korea. The "Wall Street Journal" citing people familiar with the efforts is reporting that the White House is planning for a possible summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. This would be their third meeting but their first one-on-one summit.
Up next, children torn away from their parents after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, a new policy in effect by the Trump administration. Tonight, two migrant mothers sharing their stories as we get rare access to a detention story when we continue.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:49:05] COOPER: I want to take you down to California near the Mexico border. Our Gary Tuchman gained rare access to a federal detention center where migrants accused of crossing the border illegally are held. But this often includes mothers who were taken away from their children while awaiting asylum or deportation proceedings.
The children are held in one of a hundred locations across the country. All of this is part of the zero-tolerance policy announced earlier this month by the Trump administration. Everyone is held and referred to prosecution no exceptions, this includes mothers and their children will be separated while they wait for a judge to decide their futures.
Tonight, the story of two mothers and five children surprised by what happened to them when they crossed the border. Here's Gary Tuchman.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These two Honduran women crossed into the United States and asked for asylum because of violence at home. They are now being held in a California immigration detention center. But something is missing, their children who traveled with them. Marbel (ph) just turned 35-years old.
[20:50:02] Immigration officials separated her from her eight-year-old son Jerry (ph) right after they crossed the border together. He has since been sent across the country to a government facility in New York State.
TUCHMAN (on camera): Are you scared (INAUDIBLE)?
(voice-over): She tells me, yes, I'm scared because they took him from me. If I had him with me, I wouldn't have any fears.
Olga (ph) is 31 years old. Her four children ranged from eight to 17 have also been sent to a government facility in New York. She says when her three daughters and son were separated from her, she didn't know what was going on. Olga says, I'm not sure why they did that. They never let me say goodbye, they didn't tell me anything.
The lawyers for both mothers don't want the women's last names used and don't want some details from their cases being revealed because they feel it could be used against them. The mothers tells us they did not have the faintest clue that their children could be taken away from them.
Marbel told us, for me, it was really hard when immigration took him away from me because my son was crying and didn't want to be taken away. And they didn't want to listen. For around two weeks, the mothers say they did not know where their children were. Even now, they've been separated from their children for over a month. They say phone contact is infrequent.
My kids have never been separated from me, says Olga. My son told me on the phone he misses me, and when am I going to be with him again. I told him I don't know. The immigration attorney for the two women says she doesn't know either. MARY MEG MCCARTHY, NATIONAL IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CENTER: So it's unknown
how long these mothers are going to be separated from their children. They're in proceedings. And their children are in proceedings in two different courts.
TUCHMAN: Neither woman had a cellphone when they left Honduras. So not only do they not have their children, Marbel only has one picture of her son. Olga has not pictures.
I want to live a good life with my kids, says Olga, and for them to have a good future, not the same as I've had. Marbel tells us, I love him so much I never thought I'd bring him to have him separated from me. If I would have known, I wouldn't have brought him. I just wish him to be together with me.
After our interviews, both women go back to their cells with no idea whatsoever what will happen to their lives. Or the lives of their children.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: And Gary joins me now. So, I mean, is there -- does anyone have any idea how long the legal process could last for these two women?
TUCHMAN: Yes, Anderson, I asked the lawyers for these women. What do you think? I mean, how long could it last? Are we talking about weeks? Are we talking months? Are we talking 2019, 2020? And they said, with all these parents being separated from children, there's absolutely no way to know. All bets are off as to when this comes to a conclusion. How long these children are separated from the parents? Nobody seems to know. Anderson.
COOPER: Gary, thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Up next, beer and strangely large glass shoes and my chat with Anthony Bourdain about the new episode of "Parts Unknown" airing this weekend on CNN. He's heading to one of his favorite cities. I'll tell you the location when we come back.
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[20:56:21] COOPER: This Sunday night on "Parts Unknown", Anthony Bourdain takes us to Hong Kong, a city experiencing sweeping changes, where the past is slowly being erased. Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hong Kong already developed its own unique culture. The people in Hong Kong really want to see that for the foreign people like you, we want you to say, oh, it's really old Hong Kong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All this is disappearing. All this could be gone. It's vanishing before our eyes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: I recently talked about all this with Tony at the New York Heidelberg Restaurant. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So, in this episode, you go to Hong Kong, which is one of your favorite places.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN, PARTS UNKNOWN HOST: I love Hong Kong. It's ridiculously easy to -- you know, it's so easy to make TV there because there's incredible food everywhere, incredible scenery.
COOPER: I've never been there, it looks amazing, though.
BOURDAIN: Yes. But, this was a very special show for me because it was an odd and miraculous confluence of events. For years, though I've shot in Hong Kong many times, I am obsessed with the work of Wong Kar-wai, the filmmaker who made Happy Together, Chungking Express, Mood for Love and many other films. And in almost all of those films, a guy named Christopher Doyle known in Hong Kong as Du Ke Feng, that's his mandarin name, was his cinematographer. To my mind, he's greatest living director of photography in film.
And my dream for years, and I've been reaching out to trying to make this happen was to go to Hong Kong and to look at Hong Kong through his eyes. Well, at the very last minute, our director pulled out to have emergency surgery. So, two days before we were set to go, we had no director. Fortunately, I know a film director named Asia Argento, and I said, well, will you step in? And she said, yes, I will be there.
And we all arrived in Hong Kong. And we shoot with Christopher Doyle for the first scene. And let's just say, we all really got along very well together. Had a couple of cocktails. And the next thing you know, Christopher Doyle agrees to shoot every scene in the show and ends up being the director of photography for the entire episode.
COOPER: It's so interesting how somebody, you know, with a different eye or a particular talent can -- I mean, does he use the same equipment that he would normally use?
BOURDAIN: Yes.
COOPER: And he made it look different.
BOURDAIN: Oh, yes.
COOPER: That's what's so fascinating.
BOURDAIN: So to go to Chungking Mansions, which is this huge sort of frightening rabbit-warren of a hotel and businesses where refugees from all over the world hole up in the sight of Chungking Express, one of Christopher Doyle's master works. I don't think he'd been back for a long time to return that with him with cameras and say, shoot me, I'm still pinching myself. Of all -- of everything I've done in my life, this was probably the professional highlight, to work with an artist that great.
COOPER: That's cool.
BOURDAIN: And we came back with a show that looks and sounds unlike anything we've ever done before.
COOPER: Really? That's saying a lot. I mean --
BOURDAIN: No. Between, Asia Argento, who's the director and Christopher Doyle as the director of photography, we really did something special.
COOPER: Wow. I can't wait.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Oh, don't miss Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown in Hong Kong Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Thanks very much for watching 360. I hope you have a great weekend.
A Fareed Zakaria special, the Steve Bannon interview, that starts right now. See you again on Monday.
