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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Short List for Supreme Court; Summit with North Korea. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2018 - 05:00   ET

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Warning he will pull American military might if NATO allies don't increase defense pending.

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Our first look at the short list of the Supreme Court, President conduct his first interview's is said to want a woman for the job.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many of you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirteen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Brilliant.

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ROMANS: Brilliant, a huge sigh of relief as a youth soccer team is found alive in a cave. Now the daunting task for rescuers in Thailand getting everybody out of there. We have reports this morning from Thailand, Germany, China and Washington. Good morning everyone, welcome to Early Start, that story is just incredible. I'm Christine Roman.

BRIGGS: So remarkable, yes I'm Dave Briggs, Tuesday July 3, 5:00 A.M. in the East, we will go live shortly to Thailand to get an update. They have to rehydrate these kids who are malnourished along way to go but certainly some relief. But we start with President Trump, dealing another blow to post war alliances and letters to the leaders of America's long standing NATO allies.

President Trump demanding they increase defense spending and threatening to alter America's global military presence if they don't. The letters first reported by the New York Times, sent to countries including Belgium, Norway, Canada, and Germany last month. According to the Times, the President was especially critical in his letter to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

ROMANS: Right, he writes, "continued German under spending on defense undermines the security of the alliance and provides validation for other allies that also did not plan to meet their military spending commitments because others see you as a role model." The letters fit this pattern of stern Trump critics of NATO particularly over defense spending. NATO members did increase overall a defense menu for a second straight year in 2017, the U.S. still paid about 70 percent. The President travels to Belgium next week for the NATO summit.

BRIGGS: Boy will that be some interesting optics, let's discuss that with Daniel Lippman, he's in Washington for us this morning, reporter and co-officer of the political play book, good to see you sir. This is going to be a fascinating NATO summit, let's listen to John Bolton, National Security Advisor, about the present strategy ahead of it.

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JOHN BOLTON, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: The President wants a strong NATO. If you think Russia's a threat ask yourself this question, why is Germany spending less than 1.2 percent of its GNP? So when people talk about undermining the NATO alliance you should look at those who are carrying out steps that make NATO less effective militarily.

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BRIGGS: The headline on the New York Time, "Spend or else", Daniel what's the President's plan here?

DANIEL LIPPMAN, CO-AUTHOR OF POLITICO PLAYBOOK: So he's trying to almost bully European countries in spending more on defense and basically tell them that he's really serious this time. American Presidents have long raised this concern about the level of defense spending by our European allies.

And there's been some improvement but it really is a tough flip in some of these countries because their publics, their voters don't want to spend as much on defense. They want to spend on social welfare or helping migrants coming in to their countries and so Trump is basically going to threaten them and say, hey we're going to think about what's drawing our troops from Germany even. Unless you step up to the plate.