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New Day
Family of Detained American Fears for his Safety; Russia Detains American for Spying; Kim Jong-un's Promise; Purdue Superfan Dies of Cancer. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired January 02, 2019 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:32:41] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news.
At least six people have been killed and 16 others hurt after a train crashed on a bridge in Denmark. An eyewitness tells CNN that a passenger train hit a container that was blown off a passing cargo train. We're going to update you as we get more information and it becomes available.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: An investigation is underway into the fatal shooting of an on duty U.S. Marine inside barracks in Washington, D.C. The circumstances of the Tuesday morning shooting are unclear. A spokesman only says the injury was not self-inflicted. The victim's name has not yet been released. And we'll bring you more reporting when we have it.
BERMAN: A Florida zoo is suspending its up close rhino experience pending a safety review after a toddler fell into a rhino exhibit. An official of Brevard Zoo says a family was given access to feel and brush the rhinos while supervised by zookeepers. The two-year-old girl, she got through the posts, into the rhino's yard and was bumped by a rhino.
CAMEROTA: Oh, God.
BERMAN: I imagine being bumped by a rhino, I mean --
CAMEROTA: Is not pleasant.
BERMAN: No, you want to avoid that. No word on the extent of her injuries. This incident had happened just days after an intern was mauled to death by a lion that escaped its enclosure at a North Carolina wildlife preserve.
CAMEROTA: Heart-pounding video out of Arkansas. Police dash cam captures a dramatic standoff between police and a man with a baby inside his car.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me see your hands! Move! Move! Just move! Run!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go! Go! Go! Go!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got it. That's a cop. That's a cop. That's an officer. Move!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Little Rock Police say the suspect fired shots in a parking lot arguing which his girlfriend. He then drove off with their one- year-old child. Officers immediately followed him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sir, don't do this with your baby.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen, just drop it, man.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't do this with the baby.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: OK, we're happy to report that police were able to get the baby after he surrendered to officers. He's under arrest and faces several charges.
BERMAN: You hear them yelling, don't do this with a baby. Don't do this with a baby.
CAMEROTA: Yes, of course.
BERMAN: I'm glad that ended the way it did.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: All right, more dramatic video involving another baby to show you. This time a baby boy pulled alive from the freezing rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Russia. Video shows rescue workers pulling debris away to reveal the boy covered in dust and then wrapping him in a blanket. Check that out. The child described as less than a year old spent 35 hours buried in that rubble after a suspected gas leak caused the explosion that leveled the building. At least eight people were killed there.
[06:35:04] CAMEROTA: Oh, gosh.
Well, there are growing questions about an American detained in Russia accused of spying. Is Russian President Putin trying to get payback somehow for the conviction of a Russian operative in the U.S.? We explore.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Growing questions this morning about a retired U.S. Marine being detained in Russia accused of spying. Now Paul Whelan's family is speaking out saying his innocence is undoubted and they fear for his safety.
CNN's Martin Savidge is live in Novi, Michigan, which is Whelan's hometown, with the very latest.
Martin.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Yes, this is a really bizarre story and it's certainly a very frightening one for the family of Paul Whelan, as you point out.
So on the 22nd of December, he travels to Russia to attend the wedding of a friend. He's there in part because he's also very familiar with Russia, been there a number of times, speaks some of the language, knows how to get around and he was there to help the guests do the same for that wedding.
Then, on the 28th, last Friday, he just disappears. Family hears nothing from him. Even the bride and groom at the wedding report him as a missing person. And then Russian authorities come out and say, you know what, we know exactly where he is. We have him in custody and we're charging him with espionage. And that has been the stun for everybody over here.
And now the question marks come forward because, you know, this is a former Marine. This is a man with a background in law enforcement. He works private corporate security. His family says he knows better. He would not get involved in anything like that.
Here's his twin brother.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID WHELAN, BROTHER OF PAUL WHELAN: He's not the sort of person who would stumble into a strange environment or make poor choices that could cause him risks. But particularly he wouldn't have made choices that would have gotten him sideways of the Russian government and its Espionage Act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:40:07] SAVIDGE: His family believes that all of this has been fabricated on the part of the Russians. They don't know why. They are waiting for American officials to have a chance to visit him while he's being held by Russian authorities.
Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: All right, Martin, please bring us more reporting when you have it on this strange story. Thank you very much.
Paul Whelan's arrest comes weeks after accused Russian spy Maria Butina pleaded guilty to acting as an agent for the Kremlin and trying to infiltrate U.S. political groups.
CNN's Matthew Chance is live in Moscow with more.
Is there some sense that this might be retribution? MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I
certainly think that's something that's being speculated about. The timing of this detention is suspicious to say the least because, as you say, it comes just a couple of weeks after Maria Butina, that pro- gun lobbyist that was -- pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the United States after prosecutors accused her of infiltrating or attempting to infiltrate conservative groups, like the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party, to influence Americans.
The Kremlin was absolutely furious about that. They say she was not a spy. They say that the Russian intelligence services have no knowledge of her.
But, at the same time, when he was speaking a couple of weeks ago at his annual news conference, President Putin, the Russian leader, said that we're not going to go around arresting people who are innocent just for some kind of trade with Butina. I'm paraphrasing what he is saying there. But then, you know, on the 28th of December, we're told, Paul Nicholas Whelan is taken into custody. He's said to have been caught spying. And the speculation now is that maybe, maybe there is some kind of prisoner swap idea that the Kremlin has in the future to try and get Butina -- to get Butina back. And so that's just speculative but it is something that people are talking about here in Moscow.
BERMAN: All right, Matthew Chance for us in Moscow.
Matthew, thanks very much.
Joining us now is CNN analyst David Sanger. He's the national security correspondent for "The New York Times."
David, we just heard from Matthew in Moscow giving us the official Russian line that, no, no, no, this is not retribution for Maria Butina.
But is this the M.O. of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin to take someone into custody as a form of tit for tat?
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It could well be.
Happy New Year to both of you.
This would be a very typical thing for President Putin and certainly for the Russian security services to do. They realize that given what's happened with Ms. Butina's case that it's very likely, in the next few months, that she'll be deported or their -- the issue will come up and they want to make sure that they've got a card in place.
You already heard President Putin discuss the Butina case and dismiss it as ridiculous about a week ago. So it wouldn't surprise me that they would take somebody who would have been a Marine, works in security, whose actual activities they may be able to try to muddy up. It seems very unlikely to me that he's actually a spy. The U.S. doesn't usually put people in commercial roles in Russia precisely for this reason.
BERMAN: So, David, this has got to be very traumatic for the Whelan family, and I'm not underplaying that at all. But this type of thing, broadly speaking, it happens occasionally between the United States and Russia over time.
So what will the United States' response be? What normally would the State Department role be going forward?
SANGER: Usually they would go and quietly say, hey, you guys know who most of our spies are in Russians and he isn't one of them. And you wouldn't send somebody in briefly to be a wedding guest to be a spy. So they would make that case. The Russians would nod and say, sure, we expect you to go say that and, you know, we watch the Americans as well, so you know that we plant people there and you plant people here, so let's make the whole thing go away. That would be the best case scenario.
The worst case scenario is that President Trump decides that in fact he's got to hold on to Maria Butina or others until he can secure Mr. Whalen's release, and then you get into one of these standoff. And given the nature of the relationship right now, that could get pretty ugly.
BERMAN: So, David, you have a fascinating piece on this morning's "New York Times" on another subject, a hot spot of national security concern, North Korea. Kim Jong-un gave his annual new year's address. It was interesting to watch. He did so in a suit in his library. It looks sort of like a fireside chat, western style very much. But in it he promised not to create, test, use or proliferate nuclear weapons as long as the United States continues to negotiate and perhaps ease up on the sanctions here.
Now there are people who look at this and said, hey, he promised not to create nuclear weapons. Maybe that means he's going to stop trying to build them. On the other hand, you note, in some ways, this sets back the discussions back to square one.
[06:45:02] SANGER: It does. But if you add up together, John, all of the things that the North Koreans have said officially, and what Kim Jong-un said in his fireside chat, as you put it so well, the other night, what you've got is the old set of North Korean demands. They are demanding that the United States pull back any of its ability to strike North Korea with nuclear weapons without the region. Of course the U.S. could reach North Korea with its missiles in the United States. Not clear how they would handle that. They want to pull back American troops in South Korea. They want to end the joint exercises.
And they see a moment, most importantly, to split the South Koreans from the United States because as North and South Korea have put together a very hopeful-sounding detente here, the South Koreans have basically sided with the North and basically said, let's not push them too hard. Let's begin to think about lifting sanctions.
To President Trump, he would end up losing a lot of his leverage. Some of his aides think, and some of his former aides think and have said to me, he may do it anyway because he is so eager to put together a deal with the North as his major diplomatic accomplishment. And you can understand why he'd be eager to go do that.
BERMAN: The deal from Kim Jong-un's standpoint seems to be except for the -- accept the fact that we have nuclear weapons. We won't produce anymore, we won't build anymore, but you've got to acknowledge or at least be content to contain us for what we have already.
SANGER: John, they want to be Pakistan. You know, for years the United States opposed Pakistan having nuclear weapons, India as well. For years the United States put sanctions on Pakistan. We have now basically acknowledged that they have nuclear weapons and that they're not going away. We've never formerly said that they're a nuclear state, but we've lifted the sanctions and, of course, we've worked with the Pakistanis on a number of issues. Come the 9/11 attacks, we decided it was more important to get Pakistan's help on counterterrorism than to worry about the nuclear weapons,
Kim Jong-un has looked at this and he's said, there's the model for me. I can have my nuclear weapons and have an economic relationship with the United States. They've done it before. And I think he's testing that proposition. And it's very possible it may well work because at this point they've got somewhere between 20 and 60 weapons and the fuel to make many more.
BERMAN: David, very quickly, how close is the second U.S.-North Korea summit? Is this just a phone call away? Could this be happening in three weeks in some undisclosed location?
SANGER: It might. It seems unlikely right now. The president said about a month ago that he wanted to have it in January or early in the year. People were initially talking about dates as early as next week. That clearly isn't happening.
I think the bigger risk for the president is to go in unprepared. Part of what's going on here right now, John, is that they rushed into the writing of the commune from the Singapore summit and that's been the source of these very differing interpretations between the United States and North Korea about what it is that they say. And to repeat that mistake might worsen the problem and lead to a backlash. So they have to enter this summit with a deal pretty well cooked about who's going to do what in what order. And that was what was missing when we were all out in Singapore.
BERMAN: We'll see if this next time is any different.
David Sanger, thanks so much for being with us this morning on a variety of subjects. Appreciate it.
Coming up in our next hour, we're going to speak with Paul Whelan's twin brother, David, to find out how his family is doing with Paul Whelan in Russian custody this morning.
CAMEROTA: All right, they say don't mess with Texas, but we'll show you what happened at the Sugar Bowl. The "Bleacher Report" is next. I was not expecting a cow to be involved in this. BERMAN: No, there's a dog fighting a steer.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:52:38] CAMEROTA: We have sad news to report this morning. Tyler Trent, known as the super fan of the Purdue Boilermakers, lost his battle with bone cancer on Tuesday.
Andy Scholes has more in the "Bleacher Report."
Andy.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Alisyn.
You know, Tyler Trent, he inspired college football fans across the country as he battled a rare form of bone cancer. You know, Tyler had to leave school in the ball but was still able to go see his Boilermakers take on then second ranked Ohio State in October. Tyler predicted a Purdue win. And despite being a two touchdown underdog, Purdue beat Ohio State in a landslide in that game. The team dedicated that win to Tyler. In December, Tyler received the Disney Spirit Award.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TYLER TRENT: I say, at the end of the day, there's, you know, always a light at the end of the tunnel. And, you know, as long as you rely on your faith, things will -- things will work out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: Tyler was an honorary captain for Purdue when the Boilermakers faced Auburn in the Music City Bowl just last week. He helped raise more than $100,000 for cancer research in his final months. Tyler Trent was just 20 years old.
All right, there aren't too many live mascots on the field in college football anymore. Bevo the Longhorn of Texas is one of them. And check out what happened before the Sugar Bowl. Uga the Bulldog was just trying to get a pregame pic with Bevo, but he was having none of it. Bevo charging at Uga. Luckily, no one was hurt when he did that. But the tone was definitely set for the game. Texas, the double digit underdog beat Georgia in that one 28-21.
So, guys, if you didn't already know, longhorns apparently do not like bulldogs anywhere near them.
CAMEROTA: Well, now I know that. They apparently want their picture all to themselves. That's what I'm getting from that.
SCHOLES: Right. Only one mascot on the field, and that's Bevo.
BERMAN: I was impressed by the gumption of the bulldog, frankly.
CAMEROTA: Me too.
BERMAN: I'm not going to be intimidated.
CAMEROTA: No. I agree. But then he did run away.
BERMAN: But then he ran away.
CAMEROTA: He ran right away.
BERMAN: Oh, check that, I will be intimidated.
CAMEROTA: I was -- I was impressed by the gumption of the handler there, who's grabbing onto the left horn and wrestling the longhorn into -- back into position.
BERMAN: There is no reason to be gored before a college football game when it's not in the playoffs, I will note. I mean --
CAMEROTA: You're right. No, I just prefer to be bored.
[06:55:01] BERMAN: At a college football game?
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: Truthfully, it was the only one that was anywhere near half decent.
CAMEROTA: Is that right?
BERMAN: The rest of the college bowl games have been lousy so far. But that's a whole other story.
All right, thanks to Andy Scholes for that.
Mitt Romney taking on President Trump in this blistering op-ed a day before he becomes the newest Utah senator. Does he want to be more than just a Utah senator? Stick around.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SENATOR-ELECT MITT ROMNEY (R), UTAH: I'm not looking for Mr. Trump to change a policy. It's more a matter of character and integrity.
CAMEROTA: Incoming Senator Mitt Romney blasting President Trump's behavior in a new op-ed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is he going to lead some kind of revolt in the Republican Party? I kind of doubt that.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to have border security, and the wall is a big part of border security, the biggest part.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump has invited both parties to the White House.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It sounds like the White House is setting up some possible theatrics.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats are willing to come to the table for border security, but they're not going to fund that wall.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A security executive detained under charges of spying for the United States.
DAVID WHELAN, BROTHER OF PAUL WHELAN: He wouldn't have made choices that would have gotten him sideways of the Russian government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Paul Whelan is not a spy, he's a pawn in this game between Moscow and Washington.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Happy New Year.
BERMAN: 2019 is awesome so far.
CAMEROTA: It's off to a great start.
BERMAN: It's a great year. Nothing bad has happened yet.
CAMEROTA: Did you have a great NEW YEAR'S EVE?
BERMAN: I -- I was asleep by about 9:50.
CAMEROTA: Oh, come on.
BERMAN: I was -- I missed you star turn (ph). I missed you like, pressing the button to lower the ball.
[06:59:54] CAMEROTA: I was so exciting. I got to be one of the journalist who was chosen by the Committee to Protect Journalist. I was, of course, representing CNN. And because they were honoring the free press and they were honoring journalist. And it was just a wonderful, moving ceremony to be able to press the button.
