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Trump on Trudeau Comments; Trump and Moon Speak after Summit; China Considers Sanctions Relief; Jared and Ivanka's Financial Disclosures. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired June 12, 2018 - 09:30   ET

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


[09:32:43] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back.

Right now President Trump says he has a special bond with the North Korean leader after their summit. This as he fires more shots at Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, over what happened right after the G-7 summit.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have a good relationship with Justin Trudeau. I really did. Other than he had a news conference that he had because he assumed I was in an airplane and I wasn't watching. He learned. That's going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: With me now, CNN political analyst Julie Hirschfeld, and Molly Ball.

And, Julie, let me go to you first, as someone who covers the White House, your beat for "The New York Times," is it really that politically advantageous for the president to keep taking shots at Canada?

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I don't know that it's politically advantageous. I mean I think he's doing it out of a sense of peak. You heard him just now refer to what I think happened, which was he was sitting on Air Force One, having left this summit that he didn't really want to attend in the first place, and heard the Canadian prime minister say something about him that essentially hurt his feelings or that he felt was not respectful enough of him and he kind of -- he threw a tantrum and he had his advisers take the United States out of the communique.

I don't know that he thinks that he's going to gain political ground domestically for that. I know his supporters are very much behind this strategy of, you know, he's Trump being Trump and you have -- you know, he's demanding respect from the world instead of apologizing for the world. That's the message that he sent. And I think his supporters like that a lot. I'm not so sure it helps him or Republicans more broadly with the rest

of their party, or certainly independence, and just generally with the American public and a lot of folks in states that will be effected if, you know, retaliation actually does happen and it escalates and farm states and manufacturing states. I don't know that they care about the politics so much of this as they care about the practical effects, which are not going to be good for a lot of American sectors.

HARLOW: Molly, if you juxtapose the language the president used again this morning when talking about Justin Trudeau and Canada, with the words he used about Chairman Kim, words like, quote, very talented, talking about Kim Jong-un, saying, quote, he wants to do what's right. You know, you have Republican Senator Bob Corker, who's speaking his mind a lot more these days since he's not running again, but he says it just seems like the president loves infuriating our friends and befriending folks who have been sort of our natural opposition. That's just who he is.

[09:35:10] Is that what you chalk it up to, that's just who he is?

MOLLY BALL, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think there are actually goals in play that go beyond just he likes our enemies and dislikes our allies, right.

HARLOW: Right.

BALL: But you could not get a more illustrative, sort of split screen of the Trump foreign policy than that diptic (ph), right, of him beating up on the leader of Canada. I don't think anybody would have predicted that our main international conflict right now would be with Canada. And then, on the other hand, as you said, buttering up the brutal dictator of North Korea.

But to the White House's mind, there is a goal in each of these interactions and it is about realism. It is about -- it's not about having some grand moral structure that we want to impose on the world. It's saying America behaves in the way that it needs to, to get what it wants.

And so, you know, Trump wants something out of Canada. He wants to change the trade relationship. And so the tone he takes is related to that. He wants something out of North Korea. He believes that he is on the brink of a historic peace deal. We'll see. It's too early to say whether that's actually going to happen. But he's going to say what he needs to, to achieve that relationship. So it's about more than just saying, well, Obama did it this way, so I'm going to do it the other way.

HARLOW: Let me ask you both, and, Julie, beginning with you, about whether you think President Trump deserves credit for at least having this meeting, right? I mean we know no new language came out. There's no sort of verifiable, you know, irreversible denuclearization that has been agreed to as the administration said that it wanted, at least not yet. But the president did have this meeting and it's a meeting that even President Obama said back in 2007, when he was running, that he would take without preconditions. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I should also point out that Steven is in the crowd tonight.

Senator Obama?

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Julie, what do you think, credit to the president?

DAVIS: Well, I mean, absolutely. And Barack Obama got a lot of criticism for that approach from Republicans and from Donald Trump in particular when he was a candidate before that. But, yes, I mean this president did go to the table. He said he wanted to get to the table. He said he wanted to, you know, leave behind a history of animosity, which sounded a lot like what Barack Obama said on Cuba several years ago.

HARLOW: Yes.

DAVIS: And he did that.

I think we're not going to know whether he deserves credit for a big sort of ground breaking achievement until we see where this goes. Certainly what we saw from the meeting earlier today, it's very unclear whether the United States is going to get what the president professes to want out of this deal. And already upfront, North Korea has gotten something it wants very much, which is to have the president say that he's going to suspend these joint military exercises in South Korea -- with South Korea.

So I think it remains to be seen what he has achieved. Certainly the fact that he was willing to go to the table, I deserves -- I mean that -- this is -- this is a groundbreaking moment. And that's something he should get credit for. I think, you know, the follow-up is what we need to look for next.

HARLOW: Molly, quickly to you. Do you agree?

BALL: Yes, it all depends how this turns out. I would say that, you know, when Obama was criticized for those remarks, his critics said that he was naive, not only because the U.S. could get ripped off in a negotiation, but because of the erosion of America's moral standing in the world. I think Trump has already abundantly shown that that's not something he really cares about and so -- you know, but the critics -- but the people who criticized Obama for that really -- Trump, have to apply the same criticism to Trump to say, you know, America once did stand for the projection of democratic ideals and human rights. That's something that this administration has already basically said, we're not in that business any more.

HARLOW: Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Molly Ball, appreciate you both being here. Thank you very much.

So the president making history in Singapore today. The world is reacting. You'll hear from around the world that reaction, next.

[09:43:43] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Anderson Cooper in Singapore.

We're watching the world's reaction to the historic summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un. We have a team of reporters across our -- across the region. Matt Rivers is standing by for reaction in Beijing. First, I want to get to CNN International's diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, who joins us from Seoul.

So, Nic, President Trump, South Korean President Moon Jae-in spoke today after the summit. What do we know about that conversation and about South Korea's reaction to what emerged here?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, the issue of not -- President Trump saying that it's going to end these big, joint military exercises has been a curious day in a way for President Moon here. He began by telling everyone here that he had had a sleepless night, an indication that he was sort of -- he did have some concerns going into this very important summit. He's been -- he's been praising President Trump through the day.

Just after President Trump made that signing with Kim Jong-un, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, called the foreign minister here. And the nugget in that phone call was, the foreign minister -- South Korean foreign minister said, you know, we would like to have closer cooperation in the future.

Then, after that, that's when President Trump made that statement about ending the joint military exercises. And the Blue House here, the president's office, then issued a statement saying, well, we need to kind of figure out precisely what President Trump means here, the accuracy of that and what the intention is behind that.

[09:45:06] But then this evening, about two hours ago, we heard that President Trump had called President Moon while he was flying back to Washington. The call lasted about 20 minutes. The readout that we've had of that call between President Trump and President Moon doesn't make any mention of those joint military exercises at all. What it does, however, conclude is that it's a foundation for peace, the summit so far. But, again, that very important point that's emerging from the South Korean side is they want more and closer coordination and cooperation with the United States as they move forward.

The president, President Moon here, has said that he's willing, you know, to take significant steps to achieve this better relationship between the United States and North Korea. But that strange silence now on the issue of these military exercises, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, I mean, Nic, pretty surprising to hear President Trump call those exercises war games and say that they're provocative.

ROBERTSON: It is. And when you consider that, you know, for the people of South Korea, for the governments of South Korea, in the past, these military training exercises, a large scale, they're hugely important. The military forces here are on a fight tonight ready standby. You know, they need to be prepared. Their skills need to be sharp. They need to be able to go into action in large numbers. Why? Because the threat from North Korea is close and its perceived to be real.

So, politically, it's been important to have an army that's ready. And for the people of South Korea, important to note, that their army is ready to defend them from the North.

COOPER: Nic Robertson in Seoul. Nic, thanks very much.

I want to go to CNN's international correspondent Matt Rivers, who is in Beijing.

Matt, any reaction so far from China?

MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, overall the Chinese government pretty happy with the way things went here in Singapore for a number of different reasons. The government congratulated both parties and they used this summit as a way to bring up the fact that countries could start considering easing sanctions against North Korea, something China never really wanted to do.

But it was two big things that the president said. He talked about -- even though it's not on the table at the moment, Anderson, he talked about his willingness to remove troops from the Korean peninsula, U.S. troops there. You know who else wants that? The Chinese government. They have want that had for decades now. They've always felt threatened by that.

And then the other thing too would be the war games that President Trump brought up. Military people here, of course, would call them exercises. The Chinese hate those military exercises as much as the North Koreans because those exercises are conducted, not only with North Korea in mind, Anderson, but also with the Chinese. So when you take all of that in totality, a way to ease sanctions, a way to remove troops potentially in the future and stopping these military exercises, if you're an official in Beijing, you're looking at what happened today in Singapore and going, that's not a bad start.

COOPER: Matt Rivers, appreciate that.

We'll be right back. More news ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:52:27] HARLOW: All right. Welcome back. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York.

So, this morning, newly released records show the president's daughter and son-in-law, who both work in the White House, made tens of millions of dollars last year while they were working in the White House.

Does that matter? Why is that significant?

Alison Kosik is here with more.

So we got these records.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right.

HARLOW: This is typical.

KOSIK: Yes.

HARLOW: You went through them. What do they show us?

KOSIK: OK, what's interesting is once you pour over all of these financial disclosure documents, it's clear that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they're not your average government employees because of what they've earned.

For one thing, you look at Ivanka Trump. She pulled in $82 million in outside income in 2017. Jared Kushner also reported similar income sources and amounts as well. Keep in mind, they're serving as senior advisers to the president of the United States.

Now, this includes, as far as Ivanka goes, a $3.9 million amount from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. She made at least $5 million from a trust that was created in March of 2017, called Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust. That trust is valued at more than $50 million.

Now, according to a person familiar with the documents, the president's son-in-law reported assets totaling at least $174 million at the end of 2017. His holdings, though, Poppy, they reach substantially higher, more than $710 million.

One more thing with Kushner. Of course, we know he's very enthralled in real estate. He reported $1.5 million of income from Westminster Management. That, of course, holds -- manages tens of thousands of properties in five states.

HARLOW: Talk to me about why this matters or if this matters. I mean there have been, you know, people who made a lot of money in the private sector before --

KOSIK: Right.

HARLOW: Who continue to make that money and then serve in the government and serve in the White House. So are there concerns here?

KOSIK: Of course. And since the president has been elected, there have been conflict of interest concerns and ethics advisers have warned this is sort of walking very close to the edge of what's ethical and what's not. Since the election, though, Ivanka --

HARLOW: Hold -- hold that thought one second.

KOSIK: Sure.

HARLOW: I think I need to get to Anderson.

KOSIK: OK.

HARLOW: Because, Anderson, we're seeing some movement there in Singapore. I believe Kim Jong-un and his team departing?

COOPER: That's right, Poppy. We understand -- yes, we are beginning to see the movement of motorcycle outriders getting ready. It looks like to take Kim Jong-un to his aircraft. He and his entourage.

They arrived actually in three aircrafts here. Kim Jong-un taking a plane from China, provided by the Chinese, not taking a North Korean aircraft. But there you see the -- the -- some of the vehicles for Kim Jong-un.

[09:55:11] We haven't actually gotten a look yet at Kim Jong-un. This would be the first we've seen him since the end of the summit. We'll continue to watch this, bring you any pictures as we get them.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Top of the hour. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. Anderson Cooper is with me from Singapore, where an historic summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un has just wrapped up.

[10:00:06] COOPER: Well, the two leaders did make history, just meeting face to face. They also signed a declaration in which Kim, quote, commits to work toward the complete