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Trump, Macron Clash On NATO, Russia And ISIS; Stocks Drop As Trump Warns China Trade Deal May Be Far Off; Macron Says, We Sometimes Disagree, Like On Climate Change. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 03, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: I'm not as pessimistic as you. The last two years, we've progressed strengthened operation -- European defense front, European initiative for intervention people said it was impossible.

But now, every time there are new members on the 14th of July, Italy has joined us and it continues and we'll be done when, I would say, in a fully integrated NATO (ph) with regards -- because it's not a question to give in to external threats and be disarmed. Europe takes up its responsibility to take up the position of the United States, which has played its part.

To have talks, in which strategic, we'll start to have it with Mr. Stoltenberg. And we've started to talk about it with President Trump. But it's clear that we must assume together the European countries, I think, that those that are less than 500 kilometers off the Russian boarder not to be exposed to a Russian disarmament.

And so the joint position that we wish to have and with a new treaty, a bilateral treaty, and it is what Europe -- it is that Europe takes up its responsibility and will do so and that we can then, once we have coordination to have a new debate, discussion with the Russians to talk about disarmament and security on our own territory.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I think the situation in Ukraine is very important. I think that the meetings coming up with Russia and Ukraine are very important. And there's a possibility that some very big progress can be made. It's very important for Ukraine. I think it's very important from the standpoint of Russia also that they work out a treaty, they work out peace because they've been fighting for a long time, too long. And I think there's a really good chance that that will happen.

Also with respect to nuclear weapons, I've spoken to President Putin and I've communicated with him and we are -- he very much wants to, and so do we, work out a treaty of some kind on nuclear weapons that will probably then include China at some point and yourselves, by the way, but it will include China and some other countries. But we intend to see if we can work something out to stop the proliferation, to stop what's happening because we are making a lot and we are renovating a lot. And, frankly, the whole situation with nuclear is not a good -- it's not a good situation. We ended the treaty because it wasn't being adhered to by the other side, but they want to make a treaty and so do we and I think it would be a great thing. I think it's one of the most important things we can do, frankly.

So we're going to be dealing with Russia on a treaty where we really -- and we're focused on nuclear and nuclear weapon, missiles but nuclear weapons, and we think something can be worked out. We think they want to do it. We know they want to do it and we want to do it also.

I spoke to China about it. They -- during one of our trade negotiations, they were extremely excited about getting involved in that, so some very good things could happen with respect to that. I think it's very important. The whole nuclear situation, very, very important.

Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Well, that was a newsy press conference, if you want to call it that, or just interaction between the French president and the U.S. president there.

I think, and Poppy and I were talking about this as we were watching. You see Secretary of State Mike Pompeo there in the front row, Jared Kushner often travels with the president on trips like this, but a French president who was willing next to the U.S. president to disagree with him very publicly.

You know, there was this moment here, which was really remarkable, the president kind of -- President Trump kind of lightly said, hey, President Macron, would you like some nice ISIS fighters, but Macron --

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: And he didn't laugh.

SCIUTTO: He said, let's be serious. It's not yet done. I'm sorry to say that. Because, of course, President Trump has said publicly many times that the fight is over, time to withdraw the troops and the endless war. That was notable.

HARLOW: It was very notable. There was a lot of news. We have our experts here with us, Kaitlan Collins, Nic Robertson, David Sanger, all joining us as well.

Where to begin. I mean, I think, Kaitlan, let's begin on that, the fact that these two men see that the terrorist situation, the ISIS situation very, very differently. That was clear.

[10:05:00]

And when the president seemed to make a joke about sending those fighters back to Europe, which he has said very seriously before, Macron did not laugh and said, this is not resolved, which is one of the president's biggest claims. KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's really hard to overstate just how different this meeting was from past meetings we've seen from President Trump and the French leader.

This was very tense at times as they were talking about ISIS, essentially with Macron saying he does not -- they do not have a shared definition on what constitutes a terror group, something he was pushing back on the president with referencing Turkey multiple times.

And, of course, we know that France was pretty fed up with the United States and Trump's decision to withdraw those U.S. troops from Syria, and that is something they were butting heads out there.

And you saw the president was trying to strike a softer tone than what we saw him use this morning when he was criticizing Macron after he said that NATO is experiencing brain dead, but Macron was not having that. He was taking a much more staunch tone there as he was pushing back against this.

And as they were getting into Turkey, where the president was touting his relationship with President Erdogan, the Turkish leader, and Macron pushed back pretty hard ripping into Turkey for purchasing that Russian missile defense system.

And President Trump, you've seen him using this excuse this morning saying that the Obama administration prevented Turkey from purchasing the system and that's why they had to go to Russia. Macron said, no, no, no, that is not the case. They could have purchased a European system and yet they didn't and they are not being compliant with NATO. And that was certainly one of the most tense meetings we have seen between the two of them.

SCIUTTO: That was a remarkable -- you have the French president, in effect, real-time, fact-checking the U.S. president. And it's our reporting as well that Christine Romans, who was with us here too, that under the Obama administration, they were willing to sell those patriot missiles but Turkey wanted a technology transfer and the concern there was that Turkey might share that with Russia. Of course, Turkey is now cooperating with Russia having bought its missile system.

The other disagreement, David Sanger, you heard here to some degree, was what is NATO's role in effect? I mean, the president has said repeatedly, really, we don't get that much out of NATO but about who is the primary adversary there, and President Trump saying, it doesn't have to be Russia. We could talk about China. We could talk about terrorism. That's notable, is it not, the president, again, trying to turn down the temperature on the U.S. relation?

There was even a moment there when he said, we get along with Russia. I think it's a good thing to get along with Russia. I go to big stadiums and people like it.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Jim, that was pretty remarkable. And his statement about stadiums tells you that, for him, this is largely a political issue, one that his supporters seem to -- seem to back him on.

I heard three interesting, I thought, points of disagreement or new pieces of news. The first is what you discussed, which is that Macron got very specific about Russia's activities in Ukraine, he mentioned at one point their cyber activity, something that NATO is supposed to be dealing with and has had a very difficult time dealing with. So on that, Macron was willing to be specific and identifying Russian misbehavior, the president walked right by it.

The president, I couldn't tell whether he heard the question right but he was asked briefly, do we support the U.S. support, the protesters in Iran and he said, no, but I don't want to discuss it. Well, yesterday, Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, who was sitting in the row there, gave a lengthy argument about why the United States supports the protesters in Iran. Those two things can't be true at the same time. And I wonder if the White House is going to go out to try to clean that up or let it stand.

SCIUTTO: Good point.

SANGER: And then the third thing was the president coming out and saying, we want to get a nuclear treaty with Russia. We've begun to discuss it and the Chinese were in support. Well, everything we've heard from this is the Chinese have said, we have no interest in being part of your agreement and, of course, they have so many fewer weapons that you would essentially be allowing them to build up their force if you came to a minimum number with the Russians.

HARLOW: All important, very important points, David.

Nic Robertson, let's take a step back, look big picture. This is about NATO marking 70 years of this critical military alliance against Russian aggression. The president complimented NATO today, said it's getting stronger and stronger. But the only reason he said that is because of the money. More money is coming in. It's becoming financially stronger. More people are paying into this, more countries are paying into this to a greater extent.

Macron turns around and says, quote, when you talk about NATO, it's not just about money, and that was so striking to me because that's the fundamental difference between the view of these two leaders.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. And he also said that, you know, France was contributing as it should. You know, I think there's a sense here that they've got, particularly in the Sahara, in north of Africa, that France has troops very much in the firing line. We heard the comments from the president talking about the recent death of French troops.

[10:10:03]

So, yes, I think that was another place there where we heard the differences.

You know, when we're talking big picture about NATO, President Trump overstating the money side of it, talking about $130 billion as being something that's happening annually. Of course, what NATO is saying this is a figure that that's the increase since 2016.

But President Trump, and he did refer to this many times, was the flexibility of NATO. And here, once again, he bent the facts to fit himself. He spoke about how NATO has become very flexible across the world since 2016 when he became president.

Now, the reality is that NATO stretched itself accost the globe in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks when the United States, the only time in NATO's history, brought in Article 5, that all NATO allies should support each other. So that seemed to be a bending of the facts. So I also thought it's significant that the president mentioned that there were lists of ISIS financiers that he implied had been recovered during the raid that killed al-Baghdadi. He spoke about that there.

But I think with Macron, I really felt here you had the curtains pulled back from, you know, the sort of covers on the meetings that we don't normally get to see. This was a French president as combative as we've seen him publicly side by side with any other leader.

SCIUTTO: Yes, combative, showing some backbone there and notable too, as you mentioned, after 9/11, NATO invoked Article 5, mutual defense. And it is that mutual defense commitment of the treaty which the president has questioned since then as well, perhaps forgetting what happened in 2001.

I do want to ask -- we have Barbara Starr here as well. Because it was notable, and David Sanger brought this up. But the president, again, bringing up the prospect of a nuclear agreement with Russia. He said he has spoken to Putin directly about this. It's not clear when or where. I'm not aware and we've checked of a White House readout of a call specifically on this issue.

But as you well know, Barbara, the U.S. pulled out of the medium-range missile treaty just a number of weeks ago because Russia had been violating it, according to the U.S. view, for some years now. Do you -- does the Pentagon, is the Pentagon aware of serious discussions with both Russia and China that the president is having right now on a new nuclear forces agreement?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it's what the U.S. had hoped to do. Whether it's happening and to what extent it's happening, I think, remains very murky. The policy right now has been, since they pulled out of the INF, the U.S. is going with a sort of test program of new prototype missiles that it might develop that it might feel in the future to counter this sort of dissolution of the INF Treaty.

But let me go back to something. It really underlies this entire development that we saw, this entire thing we saw on T.V. between the French president and the U.S. president, I thought it was exceptionally striking how candid the French leader, Macron, was because President Trump, you know, tried to make light of this issue just on one issue of returning ISIS fighters. He turns to Macron and he says, I've got some nice ISIS fighters I could give back to you, essentially. And Macron comes right back to him and says, let's be serious. How often do you see one leader say that to another leader under the NATO umbrella.

And Macron, I think, really sort of ripped the band-aid off and made very clear that in the European view, ISIS is not dead and gone by any stretch. Europe, as we have seen, continues to suffer attacks of terrorism. Macron very strongly believes getting rid of ISIS once and for all, tough as that will be, is really the issue. Trump comes back claims Macron hasn't given an answer to the question, but the bottom line is you have just seen two leaders really go at it with each other and President Macron not backing down one bit.

HARLOW: No. And, Barbara, to your point exactly, the same kind of response on Turkey, the president says very good relationship with Turkey and Erdogan. Macron turns around and calls out Turkey and says their demands of the NATO alliance to identify all of these groups, the YPG, et cetera, as terrorists is just not something that's going to happen.

Let's talk about China. Christine Romans is here, our Chief Business Correspondent. Not to get lost in all of this, really significant comments that the president made on the China trade deal that he's been promising, he said, I think a week ago in Texas, we could have one right now. And now, he's saying maybe not until after the 2020 election.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It turns out trade wars are not easy to win and turns out tariff man Trump has always been tariff man. Remember, he called himself that. And he is saying that he might be fine with just keeping things as they are until the election is over, and that a trade deal will only happen if he wants that trade deal to happen.

We had thought a deal was going to be close, so-called skinny deal, maybe even symbolic.

[10:15:02]

But the markets have been baking in some kind of at least a lid on further trade tensions. The last two days, you've seen this president actually escalating global trade uncertainties with both Europe, with Brazil and Argentina, and steel tariffs, reinforcing those, re- imposing steel tariffs. So you've got a market that, for the last two months since October 11th when the president said there would be a phase one trade deal they'd get it signed and even talked about where they would sign it, maybe in Iowa, now it looks like it might not happen and, in fact, this president could really decide that he wants to keep tariffs on.

SCIUTTO: And we should be clear what a phase one trade deal actually was. It would shall a restart of purchases that China already made --

HARLOW: A rolling back of what he did.

SCIUTTO: Exactly. So I can't really call that trade --

ROMANS: Small, symbolic, just at least stopping the new trade --

SCIUTTO: Well, stopping the bleeding.

ROMANS: Right.

SCIUTTO: I wonder if the president might be spinning here, forgive me for implying that, in that there has been some analysis from China, that from China's perspective, they know the political pressures on Trump to get a deal. They also know that the outcome of the 2020 election is uncertain from their perspective let it go through the next election. Is it possible Trump is responding here to China's intransigence?

ROMANS: It's very possible. It's also possible this is just a negotiating ploy in the near term that he wants the Chinese to sign on to whatever they have right now.

I will say this. In May, they thought they had a deal and the Chinese reneged. That's according to the American side. In June, you had the treasury secretary who said, we're 90 percent there, the president talking about actually where in October where you could be signing this deal. Nothing has come to fruition. It's a very difficult, difficult deal he's trying to do here.

And this is not the course correction he sought in the American/Chinese trade relationship two or three years ago. We're talking about just doing agriculture purchases and maybe getting some access for financial services into the Chinese market.

So how does he sell this politically? He doesn't have his USMCA signed yet. I mean, it might be close, but he doesn't have that. Does he have a trade deal with China? He started with this trade strategy to help who? Farmers, you know, the Midwest and the Rust Belt. Are they better off today than they were when he started? That could be an interesting calculus for him next year.

HARLOW: Well, the Farm Bureau just said farm bankruptcies are up 24 percent year-over-year. So you talk about helping the farmers with the bailout. It's --

ROMANS: Bailout twice the size of the auto bailout now, a taxpayer- funded bailout, not a tariff-funded bailout.

SCIUTTO: And yet though, some polling has showed the farmers still sticking with the president and saying that --

ROMANS: That's true.

SCIUTTO: -- he's got their back.

HARLOW: A very good point.

SCIUTTO: And we'll see if that lasts, if it carries -- if those lawsuits carry out through November next year, obviously, it's harder to stomach.

HARLOW: Romans, thank you very much. David Sanger, to you. This struck me. The president again talking about who is paying what, what countries are paying what into the NATO alliance. And it was a weird almost threat to them, NATO countries not paying, quote, their way, the president says, will be dealt with. Let me quote him. Maybe I'll deal with them from a trade standpoint. Maybe I'll deal with them in a different way.

SANGER: You know, Poppy, this has been a recurrent theme since the campaign in 2016 for President Trump, which is to merge the trade issues with the defense issues. And he raised in 2016, he said, why should I defend countries that are running a trade surplus with the United States, something that traditionally had been kept secret -- I'm sorry, kept separate.

And so what we're now seeing is he's saying he might use trade retaliation because he doesn't think they're contributing enough to NATO. That tells you that the NATO alliance isn't working well enough that they can get agreement on how much everybody needs to pay much less as Macron pointed out what it is their mission should be.

And I think the main thing we'll remember the 70th anniversary for is this disagreement now shifting from just money to money and mission.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Nic Robertson, we know that France under Macron has wanted to establish itself in a more prominent role in Europe but also internationally and in NATO there, and you saw Macron there speaking publicly about private concerns you hear quite broadly throughout Europe and the alliance about this president, his commitment to the alliance. And I just wonder if Macron was speaking for more than France, in your view, as he pushed back against the president.

ROBERTSON: Well, he likes to speak for Europe, but I think you would find the British, Boris Johnson, at least would disagree with him on some of what he had to say, whether Boris Johnson would do that publicly in the run-up to an election is unclear.

But the reality is that Macron does see himself as, if you will, the new kid on the block, the one with the energy, the one with the ideas, the one with the new political vision for France, the one with a different political vision for Europe, the one that's coming in power as the sort of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is really waning an influence in Europe, he sees an opportunity there to speak for the Europeans.

[10:20:05]

Now, does he represent them all? Look, certainly, everyone here is worried when President Trump comes into the room because they don't know what he is going to say and what decisions he's going to make and how long they'll stick. So what Macron is doing is really talking about people's concerns, that is this just President Trump speaking and once he's out of office it reverts back to a previous United States. Can the trust be rebuilt? Or is this, as Macron believes, really the sign of things to come?

I sense out of this, and particularly as we heard China now being framed as, if you will, something for NATO to focus on, I think this is going to be one of the significant directions of travel in the coming decades because China is the emergent power and the United States is not and will need friends.

SCIUTTO: Good point. Nic, David, Barbara --

HARLOW: Thank you all.

SCIUTTO: -- Lots to digest there. Thanks very much.

HARLOW: Great to have you, and Kaitlan as well. We appreciate it.

We're going to take a quick break.

SCIUTTO: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

HARLOW: Moments ago, President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron were on the world stage. You saw it all live right here. And if you missed it, there was an important point where Macron made the point to bring up how much he and France disagree with President Trump on the issue of climate change this, as right now, the U.S. is in the midst of pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, a process it will complete just around this time next year.

SCIUTTO: As this unfolds, delegations from around the world are coming together in Madrid at the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference. The meeting comes after a recent U.N. report says that countries are not doing enough to keep earth's temperature from rising to near catastrophic levels. This is the agreement of the scientific community.

We're joined by former Secretary of State John Kerry. He and a star- studded bipartisan coalition are rolling out a new initiative to combat this growing crisis and it's called World War Zero. Secretary Kerry, we appreciate you taking the time this morning.

JOHN KERRY, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Thank you, Jim. I'm happy to be with you. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Let me begin, because the climate report really put a sharp point on this, I think, for people just to describe that time is really running out to have a chance of addressing this rise in temperature. You said that no country is getting the job done. You say that the U.S. way behind. As you know, President Trump has reversed many emission standards during his three years in office. What has that done for the possibility that the U.S. can then make up that ground to get where it has to be to make its contribution?

KERRY: Well, it makes it far more difficult, Jim. I mean, the fact is that we are so far behind that you need now to organize nations almost as if we were at war, that is why we call this new organization World War Zero, because no one country can solve the problem of climate change. You have to have every country at the table, most importantly the 20 or so largest economies in the world, which are about 85 percent, 90 percent of all emissions.

Secondly, you've got to start to make a set of decisions that are really enormous, not unlike decisions that were made in the course of World War II to make sure we could win the war. We're not doing that today. We need to accelerate the transition to de-carbonize transportation, to move to electric vehicles. That means you've got to accelerate the process of building the infrastructure so you can charge those vehicles around the nation.

I mean, there are whole set of interlocking decisions none of which are being made by the United States at a large national level because we have a president who says that climate change is a Chinese hoax. And the result of the American presidency moving out of the position of leadership that President Obama and the administration gave it is that other nations that want to be slower and laggard about it are doing so. So the entire effort has been slow. It's very dangerous.

Lives are being lost now here in our country. Mudslides, fires, floods, droughts, and in other parts of the world, which is all interconnected, there are challenges to food production, to habitability, people are going to refugees, climate refugees. There already are climate refugees. So it's an enormous consequence.

SCIUTTO: I would just make a point that the U.S. Navy, you know, people will say, well, does everybody believe the sign? The U.S. Navy certainly does and already makes plans for the national security consequences of these things.

KERRY: One of the virtues of World War Zero, and I urge people to go to worldwarzero.com and they can begin to see and learn what we're going to be doing, but we have admirals and we have generals who have spent their lives protecting the security of our country.

One of our members, an Admiral Lee Gunn, who is a Director of Policy and Planning at the Pentagon, and they will tell you that the threats that the United States faces are augmented as a result of climate change. So it's a threat multiplier. And the Pentagon has generally, until recently, had an office dedicated to trying to plan ahead.

[10:30:00]

So we're bringing these people to the table to change the conversation in our own country.

A lot of people in America think, oh, gosh, you know, that's just about the polar bears --