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New Day Sunday
A 12-Year-Old's Emotional Plea For Immigrant Families; Migrant Families Tell CNN Fear Of Death Forced Them To Flee; North And South Korea Reopen Maritime Communications; New U.S. Ambassador To South Korea Sworn In; Is North Korea Hiding Plans For Its Nuclear Program?; Messi And Ronaldo Eliminated; Argentina Fails To Hold Early Lead Versus France; France advances With 4-3 Win; Uruguay's Cavani Scores Twice Before Exit; LeBron Calls Cavs General Manager; "AMERICAN JAIL" Premieres At 8:00 P.M. Eastern Aired 6-7a ET
Aired July 01, 2018 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:00:00]
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: We need to protect families who need our help, and that is not what ICE is doing today, and that's why I believe you should get rid of it.
ELIZABETH RODRIGUEZ, PROTESTER FROM ALTON, TEXAS: This issue is finally getting the attention that it deserves.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Christi Paul.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Martin Savidge in for Victor Blackwell.
Coming up national outrage over the treatment of immigrants to the U.S.
PAUL: And also ahead this hour after satellite images reveal upgrades to a nuclear facility. "The Washington Post" reports new evidence of North Korea's efforts to conceal its warheads.
SAVIDGE: Mexico chooses a new president today who stands to inherit a bitter trade battle with the U.S., widespread corruption and crime at home.
PAUL: And in the World Cup. A shock exit for two of soccer's biggest stars. Your NEW DAY starts now.
All right. From San Francisco to Chicago, Atlanta, New York. You saw it. You can all see it anywhere you turned on your TV yesterday. Hundreds of other cities in between.
There were thousands of marchers ignoring that summer heat yesterday and marching for miles. Their message to the White House was families belong together and it's time to take action.
(VIDEO PLAYING)
SAVIDGE: Here is CNN correspondent Polo Sandoval.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These are the rallying cries heard across the country Saturday.
CROWD: Where are the kids?
SANDOVAL: Protesters led by immigrant rights groups marching in masses with the message for President Trump, eliminate his zero tolerance policy calling for the prosecution of people crossing the board illegally.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The thought that my own family would have difficult coming across the border if they need to do seek asylum for any reason chills me to the bone.
SANDOVAL: In New York, a mile and a half march from Manhattan to Brooklyn, a symbolic moment. The head of the group paused in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, looking towards Lady Liberty, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
CROWD: -- one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
SANDOVAL: Speakers at podiums from coast to coast demanding children be reunited with their parents.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, CREATOR OF "HAMILTON" THE MUSICAL: We're here because there's parents right now who can't sing lullabies to their kids.
ALICIA KEYS, SINGER: This is all of our fight because, if it can happen to any child, it can happen to my child and your child and all of our children.
SANDOVAL: In the nation's capital, a 12-year-old daughter of an undocumented family sent a message to children still in the care of the government.
LEAH CAYASSO, DAUGHTER OF UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS: I want to tell kids at the border and all over the country not to give up and fight for their family. We are all human. And deserve to be loved and cared for.
We are children.
SANDOVAL: Fiery Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren also spoke to the masses in Massachusetts.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: This is about babies scattered all across this country. This is about mamas who want their children back. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
WARREN: President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rules is to rip parents from their families, is to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages.
SANDOVAL: Trump signed an executive order last week, reversing his administration's practice of separating families. But more than 2,000 children are still waiting to be reunited with their parents.
Though protests across the country remained peaceful, first responders in Washington treated dozens of demonstrators for heat-related emergencies.
For some marchers, their protest isn't over. They plan to make their voice heard come November during midterm elections.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want people who want to come here, who want refuge in our country, to know that there are many, many citizens of the U.S. who do not agree with what is going on now.
SANDOVAL: Polo Sandoval, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE: Those protesters make clear demands some of them from right outside the resort where the president is spending the weekend. Reunite separated migrant families and family detentions, and stop the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy.
In response the president tweeted a familiar line. "Democrats want open borders and are weak on crime."
Joining us with more is CNN's White House correspondent and reporter Sarah Westwood.
Sarah, apparently the president is unimpressed with the numbers of people on the streets.
SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right. President Trump spent this weekend inside his golf club here in Bedminster, New Jersey working on filling that Supreme Court vacancy. The White House said he had conversations with his White House counsel, Don McGahn, and to continue fill the vacancy that Anthony Kennedy will leave by next Monday.
[06:05:02]
But outside Bedminster, just about four miles away, protesters were demonstrating against President Trump's zero tolerance immigration policy amidst growing calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that is enforcing Trump's very unpopular policy of separating families at the border.
Massachusetts Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren was among the national Democratic figures who are joining those calls to abolish ICE. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WARREN: The president's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious, we need to rebuild our immigration system from top-to-bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and --
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WESTWOOD: Now Warren joins a growing list of progressives who have called to end or reform ICE. President Trump responding on Twitter by defending the law enforcement agency and alleging that Democrats are simply moving on the road to removing all police, which of course Democrats are not doing -- Martin and Christi.
SAVIDGE: Sarah Westwood, thanks very much you for that report.
PAUL: So on that note, let's talk about how this really got started. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand was one of the first to join the list or to actually start the list of people who say that ICE needs to be revamped.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GILLIBRAND: You don't think ICE today is working as intended? I believe -- I believe that it has become a deportation force. And I think you should separate the criminal justice from the immigration issues, and I think you should reimagine ICE under a new agency with a very different mission and take those two missions out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: All right. Discussing with us now is commentator writer and editor for the "Washington Examiner," Siraj Hashmi, and CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer. Thank you both so much.
Listen, I'm going to get to that in a moment but I do want to ask you about some of the news this morning regarding North Korea. "The Washington Post" reporting that U.S. intelligence officers and they are citing newly obtained evidence apparently show that North Korea doesn't intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile rather they are concealing the number of weapons they have and there are secret productive facilities intact.
I mean, Julian, did anyone -- actually I should ask you, Siraj, did anyone really believe that North Korea was going to give up its nuclear weapons or its program?
SIRAJ HASHMI, COMMENTARY WRITER AND EDITOR, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I personally never thought North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons, considering the fact that guarantee or the agreement that President Trump and Kim Jong-un signed didn't really have any enforcement deadlines or any restrictions with respect to, you know, deadlines that North Korea had to meet. And so I'm not surprised -- honestly I'm not surprised at all that the fact that President Trump is getting played on this. North Korea got the legitimacy that they wanted with respect to this North Korea summit in Singapore and it just so happens that, you know, they're -- they have all of the cards right now.
PAUL: Well, the question and with that said, I mean, you said that the president is being played, but, Julian, what choice does President Trump have now in terms of moving forward with this? What does he do?
JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you need more negotiations. That initial meeting was the first meeting and that's why you need multiple summits and those summits have to culminate in some very real concrete agreement with inspection mechanisms and verification mechanisms, otherwise, these meetings don't really add up to anything.
And so I think what this news is a reminder of. It's not a surprise it just contradicts President Trump's claim that it was all solved after one encounter.
PAUL: All right. Let's move on here to the other issue at hand, the real big one, abolishing ICE as we -- you just saw with Polo's piece there. All of the Democrats who are on board with -- and we say abolishing but it's not necessarily just abolishing. They are using words like reimagining and replacing and modifying.
We've got California senator Kamala Harris who says, we need to think about starting from scratch. We had Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York saying, you do have to abolish it.
Is this, Siraj, going to be the prime issue for Democrats and how do they rally around this?
HASHMI: Well, yes. It's going to be the prime issue at least going into 2018 midterm elections, possibly the 2020 presidential elections.
And it's interesting coming from Kirsten Gillibrand when she was only in House she basically called for -- she denounced any amnesty for undocumented immigrants and actually called out then Governor Eliot Spitzer for trying to give driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants in New York. So her shift, obviously, is, in some ways she might seem -- you know, obviously everybody is allowed to have a change of heart.
[06:10:03]
Whether hers is genuine versus opportunistic is another debate. And so what the Democratic Party is doing right now is shifting further to the left. You know, even further to the left of Bernie Sanders because Bernie Sanders says we should reform ICE and not accomplish it entirely.
And you have Kirsten Gillibrand, and you have Elizabeth Warren, you have Bill de Blasio calling for it to be abolished. And Donald Trump believes this is a winning issue for him because you look at, you know, obviously issues like MS-13 and opioid epidemic, those are two things that ICE is really prioritizing at the moment.
And, you know, I obviously not hearing a lot of this from Democrats when they -- you know, President Obama was in office because not much has really changed, with the exception of families being separated at the border.
PAUL: So with that said, Julian, did President Trump's policy or practice of separating families at the border work in the sense that it enraged people, it made us think harder about what is happening with our agencies and people coming across the border? In a sense, did it bring it to the forefront?
ZELIZER: Well, it worked in terms of sending a message which is I think is the principal point of this. But at the same time, it did stimulate a really big backlash as you saw in the streets of many cities yesterday, and those were serious rallies and a lot of the sentiment outside of the Republican Party is not very good because of that issue.
And I think focusing on ICE -- it might be a good policy discussion but I think it's actually going to distract attention from the family separation which worked for President Trump and his base and his message, but didn't work for a lot of other Americans. But that is not what we are discussing now. We are discussing government reorganization.
So it's a tricky move that Democrats are trying to make.
PAUL: How do -- how do Republicans spin it though, Julian?
ZELIZER: Well, Republicans are spinning it predictably. A, they are for a hardline policy on the borders and then they are going to take this call to abolish ICE as a symbol that Democrats are radical and far left.
And the discussion should be about President Trump pushing immigration policy to the right, but that's not the way Republicans will use this. And I think it could be an effective pushback.
PAUL: James Schwab, a former spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spoke with Van Jones. Listen to what he had to say about whether this makes sense to him, these calls to abolish or to revamp.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES SCHWAB, FORMER ICE SPOKESMAN: It doesn't make sense to me, because we had the INS before and now we have ICE. Immigration enforcement is important. Both sides agree on that. And if you get rid of it, then what? You need something there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: "You need something there." Siraj, do Democrats have a concrete alternative?
HASHMI: At this point, no. I mean, if you're looking at abolishing ICE entirely.
I mean, of course, Julian has a great point, you know, its government reorganization. Democrats should be going after the policy that the Trump administration is putting forward, not specifically about government reorganization. Which is the reason why President Trump believes this is a winning issue for him because if you remove the purposes that ICE is there in place for, the benefits that come with it, for example, combating against the opioid epidemic that is something that President Trump believes he could definitely win on because so many people who are dying unnecessarily from fentanyl abuse or opioid abuse.
And, you know, I don't think Democrats, right now, fully get the immigration issue right now because, you know, their current -- they are constantly at battle with each other and they don't have a unified message like Republicans do.
PAUL: All right. Siraj Hashmi. Julian Zelizer, we appreciate you both being here. Gentlemen, thank you.
ZELIZER: Thank you.
HASHMI: Thank you.
SAVIDGE: Breaking news overnight. Police in Boise, Idaho, looking for a motive in a knife attack in the city's refugee community. Authorities are questioning the man they say stabbed nine people at an apartment complex.
Yesterday afternoon all nine were taken to the hospital four with life-threatening injuries. Investigators say the 30-year-old suspect did not know any of the victims and was not provoked and they have no motive at this time.
PAUL: Ahead, there's this 12-year-old girl who makes a very emotional plea for immigrant families at a rally in Washington. Look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAYASSO: This is evil.
CROWD: Evil.
CAYASSO: And it needs to stop.
CROWD: It needs to stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: Why she says she lives in constant fear.
SAVIDGE: And voters in Mexico, they are heading to the polls in just a few hours in an election that could put a Trump-like candidate in power. What this could mean for the U.S.?
PAUL: And the World Cup comes to an early end for two soccer greats. Oh, my goodness. The anticipation of these two meeting on the field and it didn't happen.
[06:15:01]
We are going to show you the amazing performances it took to knock out a couple of greats.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAVIDGE: Breaking news. Texas this morning has a new congressman.
CNN can project that Michael Cloud will win more than 50 percent of the vote for the 27th district that is along Texas' Gulf Coast. Cloud is a strong Trump supporter who was endorsed by Texas governor Greg Abbott. The special election was called to replace disgraced former congressman, Blake Farenthold, who resigned amidst sexual harassment claims.
PAUL: Well, in just hours voters are heading to the polls in Mexico. This is an election that can put a Trump like candidate in power. The expected winner is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. A popular candidate who like President Trump dislikes NAFTA, thinks his country got a bad deal, and also insists Mexico will not pay for the president's -- President Trump's border wall.
SAVIDGE: This election has been increasing violent and deadly with dozens of politicians killed across the country.
[06:20:03]
But it is also the key to the future of Mexico and more than 600 positions up for grabs, and the country's relationship with the United States definitely at a crossroads.
Here is CNN's Rafael Romo.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAFAEL ROMO, CNN SENIOR LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS EDITOR (voice-over): When he was accused of being a leftist who would allow Russia to meddle the Mexican elections, he went to the ocean and joked he was waiting for a Russian submarine full of gold.
TRUMP: You know, a year and a half ago they said I was an interloper.
ROMO: Just like Donald Trump positioned himself as the anti- establishment candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has turned Mexicans away from the traditional Mexican parties or the "mafia of power" as he calls them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They see themselves as great disruptives.
ROMO: Although Lopez Obrador is a leftist he's also an anti- globalization populist like Trump.
ROMO (on camera): There have been many comparisons regarding Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Donald Trump but politically speaking there is no comparison really, is there?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, listen. The first thing is that Donald Trump is the anti-politician and Andres Manuel is a lifelong professional politician. I think that's the single most important thing to say about AMLO (ph) versus Trump.
But they do share certain characters in terms of economic policy. Both Donald Trump and Andres Manuel are economic nationalists.
ROMO (voice-over): He has promised to cut down the salaries of top government officials and give the money to the poor. Lopez Obrador promised to cut his own salary in half.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Andres Manuel is the leading candidate for Sunday's vote because he has run a fantastic campaign, nearly flawless. He has hit all of the right notes with the Mexican people.
ROMO: Defiant Trump has been a main campaign theme.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He doesn't want to be the president who bows -- who kowtows to President Trump.
He doesn't want to be the president who sell out national pride. He wants to be a president that stands up to the United States. He wants to be a president who says we deserve and we demand respect.
ROMO: This is the third time he has run for the presidency when he narrowly lost the Mexican presidential elections in 2006, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called fraud and camped out with thousands of his supporters for weeks in Mexico City.
He alienated many Mexicans and lost again by a wider margin in 2012. But after years of gang violence and corruption scandals involving traditional parties, this time around, Lopez Obrador is leading by double digits in the polls. Voters have embraced him as the candidate of change and seem to be willing to tell him that the third time is a charm.
Rafael Romo, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE: Just two days before today's election, another Mexican journalist was killed. Colleagues protested the murder of him. Reporter Jose Guadalupe Chan is the seventh journalist who has been killed in Mexico in 2018.
The organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.
PAUL: That saying out of mouths of babes we can learn a lot from children. There was this powerful moment at the immigration rally in Washington. We have this coming up for you.
A 12-year-old girl tells the crowd that she lives in constant fear that her mom is going to be taken away from her.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAYASSO: I won't give up fighting for the rights to stay with my mom. I am not asking for a favor. It is my right to stay as a child to live in peace with my mother.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAVIDGE: Also ahead, CNN follows border patrol for a firsthand look at what happens when people attempt to illegally cross into the United States.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:28:25]
PAUL: So glad to have you with us. Twenty-eight minutes past the hour right now. I'm Christi Paul.
SAVIDGE: And I'm Martin Savidge in for Victor Blackwell.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were on the streets across the country Saturday protesting the administration's zero tolerance immigration policy which prompted family separations at the U.S./Mexico border. They demanded the government quickly reunite families.
PAUL: So, I want to show you some of the top moments here from those marches.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN LEGEND, SINGER (singing): Everybody saw nothing real is happening because nothing is new now when all this tragedy. I just feel sedated. Why do I feel numb? Is that all I can do.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We must fight for the values that have made this country a victim of hope.
This cannot happen under our watch.
DIANE GUERRERO, ACTOR WHOSE PARENTS WERE DEPORTED: Even some 17 years later, I still remember how it fell when I first cried out for my parents and they couldn't answer. I am here as a voice for thousands of children without one.
AMERICA FERRERA, ACTRESS: I am here as a human being --
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
FERRERA: -- with a beating heart, who can feel pain, who understands compassion, and who can easily imagine what it must feel like to struggle the way families are struggling right now.
WARREN: We need to rebuild our immigration system from top-to-bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality.
[06:30:07]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My father came to America and he was 17 with $400 in his pocket. Now he has his own business, a wife, my sister and I, a nice house in a beautiful neighborhood, and is a proud American citizen.
MIRANDA (singing): I will make the world safe and sound for you. We will come of age with our young nation. We will bleed and fight for you, we will make it right for you if we lay a strong enough foundation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: All the activists and celebrities and families and children that were together to protest the president's zero tolerance policy here. I don't know if you saw it, but among those there is a 12-year- old girl. Her parents are undocumented immigrants and she says the fear of her mom being taken away from her at any moment keeps her awake at night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAYASSO: I live with the constant fear of losing my mom to deportation. My mom is strong, beautiful, and brave. She is also a person who taught me how so speak up when I see things that aren't fair.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
ICE wants to take away my mom from me. I don't like to live with this fear. It's scary.
I can't sleep. I can't study. I am stressed.
I am afraid that they will take my mom away while she is at work, out driving, or at home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAVIDGE: Many families are choosing to leave their homes in Central America for the unknown. A life in the United States. Some are facing life or death situations and they are even risking everything to come here.
CNN's Nick Valencia went to the border to meet the families trying to seek asylum.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Through the tree brush, border patrol agent Robert Rodriguez spots what he says are three smugglers, preparing to launch a raft filled with migrants.
He says they are filming us he says. Along with agent Rodriguez, we followed the raft downstream. It is there we see this, six Central American migrants, some of those who were on the raft, one of them traveling with his father is just three years old.
VALENCIA (on camera): What are you looking for here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
VALENCIA: He is asking for asylum. Strangers would show up to his house, they would ask for money. And they would threaten him in front of his child, threatening to kill him and they were even -- he said they would even kill the 3-year-old.
You know there is people here that are very much against illegal immigration. They don't want people like you in the United States. What do you say to them?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
VALENCIA: He says those people don't know what I have been through. They don't know what I go through nightly. They don't know what it is like to fear death.
VALENCIA (voice-over): This mother and her 13-year-old were also in a group holding back tears, she says she never wanted to leave Honduras. If it wasn't for MS-13, her son says they would have never left.
VALENCIA (on camera): Why are you crying?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
VALENCIA: He said he didn't want to leave Honduras. That is why he is crying. He is really sorry for putting his mom in this position.
She said of course I would never let my son be captured there. So she is saying even though there is zero tolerance was still in place, she said they would still cross. That's how much fear they have.
VALENCIA (voice-over): From here, the group would be taken to a processing center joining hundreds of others just like them. Even still, they are the lucky ones. Had they crossed just last week, the parents and children would have assuredly been torn apart by the U.S. government.
VALENCIA (on camera): The scenes that you just saw give a sense of what border patrol agents are up against every single day here along the U.S./Mexico border. It also gives us an understanding of what families are willing to put themselves through to keep from being killed in their homeland.
Nick Valencia, CNN, McAllen, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE: It's a very heart touching aspect of the story.
Coming up, "The Washington Post" reporting this morning that North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear program and that it's actively working to hide its nuclear warheads.
PAUL: Also a rocket launch -- and it is a disaster folks. We're going to tell you the story behind what some people are saying is just a spectacular failure.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:38:57]
PAUL: Thirty-eight minutes past the hour.
New this morning, South Korea's defense ministry says North Korea and South Korea have reopened a communication channel at sea which means ships from both sides made radio contact today for the first time in a decade. Now this is a move that is part of agreements made between the two countries during their historic summit in April.
In the meantime, the U.S. finally has an ambassador to South Korea. Retired Navy Admiral Harry Harris was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday but sworn in just yesterday. The post had been empty since President Trump took office.
SAVIDGE: U.S. intelligence officials are telling "The Washington Post" North Korea will not fully surrender its nuclear arsenal and is planning to actually hide some of those weapons.
We should tell you CNN cannot independently confirm that but those officials say they obtained evidence after the June 12 summit in Singapore, showing that North Korea has facilities the U.S. knows nothing about and is using them to make fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Just this week, President Trump continued to mark the summit as -- quote -- "a great success."
Joining me now is Uri Friedman. He is a staff writer covering global affairs for the "Atlantic."
[06:40:02]
Good morning to you, Uri.
URI FRIEDMAN, STAFF WRITER, GLOBAL AFFAIRS, THE ATLANTIC: Good morning. Good to be with you.
SAVIDGE: So you've written about some of the mystery surrounding that Singapore summit. What did North Korea actually agree to? And that is the real question mark here, isn't it?
FRIEDMAN: Definitely. The biggest thing that I want to focus on, I think everyone should focus on in assessing whether the summit was a success, is this question of North Korea committing to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
And if you think about it if North Korea really wanted to just give up its nuclear weapons, why wouldn't it say that in plain English or Korean in the summit? You know, what they said is denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And that definition actually really matters because what they want is not just, you know, to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid or even normal relations with the United States.
What they want is a transformation of the relationship with the United States and what that could mean if they want the United States to stop the hostile policy towards North Korea is also potentially withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula potentially and end to the U.S.-South Korean alliance. And so right now we are in this phase where we're trying to assess, OK, how serious is North Korea about its nuclear weapons? And also, what will it demand in return?
And what we have seen in the data points from "The Washington Post" reporting also commercial satellite imagery that shows that kind of business as usual is continuing as main nuclear reactor where they are actually improving the infrastructure there. That North Korea may be talking to the United States and may be committing somewhat vaguely to denuclearization in the future, but they are kind of proceeding with business as usual right now and even potentially continuing production as we see from these reports of fissile material that could be used for nuclear weapons.
So, we have not seen North Korea actually roll back its program. It certainly, you know, Donald Trump said after the summit that the North Korean nuclear threat is gone. That certainly is not the case.
SAVIDGE: How do you think the administration, the president in particular, is going to react to this kind of reporting?
FRIEDMAN: What has been striking is he has been very conspicuously silent. You know, we have not heard him on Twitter say, lying little rocket man has deceived me. We have not heard him dismiss these reports as fake news.
So he has been quiet and it will be very telling to find out how he responds. Now I think one thing to keep in mind is that Donald Trump did something that was very interesting in deciding to meet with the North Korean leader. He became the first American president to do so.
And when I've talked to, you know, officials in the government and also other experts, they say what he may be doing here is saying, you know, we have done 25 years of negotiations that have not worked at all and we have usually started at the lower level and moved up to the higher level. I'm going to start at the very top.
And what he may be doing is saying, I want to transform the political relationship with North Korea in order to build trust that could eventually lead to arms control and denuclearization down the line. So there may be a world in which the president kind of plows ahead because he feels, OK, yes, they are, you know, not committed to completely denuclearize right now. They are still continuing some of their work and, yet, we need to build the trust in order for them down the line to actually give up their nuclear weapons.
So I'm not so worried about the technical details in the moment. I'm going to plow ahead with this political opening to North Korea because if we have better political relationships and for not adversaries maybe they would be willing to make more nuclear concessions.
SAVIDGE: Right. In other words, we're sort of laying the foundations here.
But one of the things that would be critical to know, especially when you come up with some kind of an agreement, is how many nuclear warheads, how many nuclear weapons does North Korea have? And there's a lot of speculations here and it goes all over the map. I mean, I've heard from a couple of dozen to -- I believe it's "The Washington Post" saying 65.
Do you have any idea where that number really is?
FRIEDMAN: Well, we don't know for sure. But I've heard -- usually, I think, it's safe to say there are dozens and dozens of nuclear weapons.
I have heard in the 60s and that is based on the fact that we have one big nuclear facility that we know about that is plutonium production and uranium production but there are also, as we know from this reporting over the last week, one and potentially two undisclosed facilities that do uranium enrichment.
So I think it's fair to say there are several dozen. And what is interesting about the latest reporting is that while we, in the United States and especially intelligence officials, think that it's around 60 -- 65. What they seem to be picking up from their intelligence gathering is that North Korea is planning to tell the United States that it has far less than that.
And one thing to keep in mind North Korea, you know, is probably the hardest intelligence target of all.
SAVIDGE: It is.
FRIEDMAN: So one real challenge in doing any kind of deal with them is -- let's say they say, we have 30 nuclear weapons. How do you know they don't have 31, 32, or 33?
And I actually have talked to some Korea experts who have said, you know, the only thing we can verify is a halt to nuclear and missile tests. So we need to be very modest in our goals what we can actually get verifiable in a deal and it might not be the full denuclearization of North Korea, because we'll never know that.
SAVIDGE: Right. Because what you don't know makes it very difficult to figure out what it is you want to know.
[06:45:01]
Uri Friedman, Thank you very much. We appreciate it this morning.
FRIEDMAN: Thank you for having me on.
PAUL: All right. Ronaldo, Messi, they are soccer's best and they are heading home early, Coy Wire. What?
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: What's going on? That's right.
The best players in the world can only carry their teams so far. Just ask LeBron James. We will show you the stellar performances from the opponents that sent these GOATs, the greatest of all time, packing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SAVIDGE: It is an early exit from the World Cup for soccer's two biggest giants.
PAUL: Of course, which means no game between Ronaldo and Messi.
Coy wire, I can just imagine you, yesterday, watching these games going, what is happening?
WIRE: Yes. We got Victor Paul -- I'm sorry. Victor Blackwell to go and he enjoyed it. He had a drink.
[06:50:00]
We talked about art and antiques. I was watching the game but he had a good time.
But listen here, on the same day two of the greatest players ever eliminated from what could be their very last World Cup ever. End of an era, perhaps?
Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo will be 38 when the next World Cup happens in 2022 in Qatar. Argentina's Lionel Messi will be 35. Neither man has ever won a World Cup.
Argentina they ran into a buzz saw and perhaps we witnessed the passing of the torch. Look at France's 19-year-old, Kylian Mbappe, like the fastest man on the planet, right? Where's Usain Bolt?
He became just the second teenager ever to score multiple goals in a World Cup knockout stage game. The other being the legend Pele who did it in 1958.
France advances with a 4-3 win and it was a party in Paris.
Safe to say the city of lights was lit. Now Uruguay defense played lights out holding Ronaldo scoreless. And Portugal's lone goal by Pepe remained the only goal Uruguay has allowed tournament. A hero would rise for Uruguay though.
Edinson Cavani scored two goals and it was the second in the 62nd minute that solidified his nation's 2-1 victory advancing them to the quarterfinals for just the second time in nearly half a century. Now, Cavani suffered an injury late in the game and look at this display of sportsmanship.
That's Ronaldo with his team losing sees his opponent in pain and helps him off the pitch. That is outstanding. Now day two of the knockout stage begins as David versus Goliath of a matchup. Spain facing host country, Russia, who entered the World Cup with the lowest rank team in the field. That game is at 10:00 Eastern.
And then, 2:00 Eastern it would be Croatia and Denmark.
Quick mention on the LeBron watch. ESPN reports that LeBron spoke to the Cavaliers general manager just after midnight this morning. LeBron also reported flew to Los Angeles last night where he has two homes so it doesn't mean the Lakers, you know, are going to be the team that he chooses. So we will keep our eye out on that.
But a reported 500 some million spent within the first minutes of free agency last night teams grabbing up all of their goods.
A lot of action.
SAVIDGE: Really, it was.
PAUL: All right. Thank you, Coy Wire.
WIRE: You're welcome. Good to see you.
SAVIDGE: All right. From liftoff to let-down. After the rise and fall of this rocket when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:56:50]
PAUL: Sadly, it was a spectacular failure for a Japanese rocket company.
(VIDEO PLAYING)'
PAUL: Oh, yes. A Japanese news agency reports the company was testing a MOMO-2 rocket when, seconds after liftoff, as you saw there, the device crashed and exploded.
SAVIDGE: The one-ton rocket was to go off as high as 62 miles into space. But as you can see it barely looks like it made 62 feet. The company behind the project, Interstellar Technologies, uses commercially available parts to create low-cost mini rockets.
The good news, nobody was injured. There's no word on exactly what caused that crash but they will learn from it and do better the next time.
PAUL: Yes.
SAVIDGE: This Sunday, our CNN or on CNN, our new original film "AMERICAN JAIL" takes a provocative look at the United States criminal justice system, what is working, what is not, and how to fix it.
PAUL: Yes. Ryan Nobles has a look at the latest efforts in Washington to make an impact on this implicate complicated.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN NOBLES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In 2018 it is hard to find an issue both Republicans and Democrats can support.
JARED KUSHNER, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT: The single biggest thing that we want to do is really define what the purpose of the prison is.
NOBLES: But President Trump's top adviser Jared Kushner is hoping he can find common ground on prison reform with the help of his powerful father-in-law.
TRUMP: Get a bill to my desk. I will sign it.
NOBLES: That bill, the First Step Act, passed the House with bipartisan support. It would among other things improve living conditions in prisons, expand programs for individual prisoners, and encourage early release programs like home confinement.
The bill may have a tougher path in the Senate. Prominent Democrats like Dick Durbin, Kamala Harris wrote a letter to their colleagues to warn that it doesn't do enough to address frontend problems like sentencing guidelines. And there are concerns about how truly invested the White House is in the process.
Mr. Trump is normally known for his tough stance on crime even suggesting the death penalty for drug dealers.
TRUMP: That means if we catch a drug dealer, death penalty. That's right.
NOBLES: Still he has shown a desire to give convicted criminals a second chance. He has pardoned several of his political allies, posthumously pardoned the boxer Jack Johnson, and commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson who is serving a life sentence because of a drug crime.
ALICE JOHNSON, PARDONED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want to thank to President Donald John Trump for giving me another chance in life.
NOBLES: The president was made aware of the Johnson case through reality TV star Kim Kardashian who came to the White House to lobby for her.
Some Democrats while thankful for the president's mercy believes he needs to push for broad reforms.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: There's thousands and thousands of people that deserve commutations, deserve pardons, and it shouldn't take Kim Kardashian going to the White House to get something like that done.
NOBLES (on camera): The problems for Democrats like Cory Booker is that they are concerned that despite the bill's name First Step this could become the end of the process as opposed to the beginning. There are a number of reforms they would like to see included in this package and they fear that if this bill becomes law, politicians will lack the motivation to keep the progress going -- back to you.
[07:00:05]
SAVIDGE: That new CNN original film "AMERICAN JAIL" premieres tonight at 8:00 Eastern time.
