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New Day
Race to Save Team Trapped in Cave; Pompeo Headed to North Korea; Trump Warns NATO Allies. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired July 03, 2018 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00] LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Doesn't mean the same thing for every single cabinet member. This is further indication of that.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We're all paying his salary.
Laura Coates, Carrie Cordero, thank you both very much for all of the analysis.
So, the clock is ticking right now in Thailand. How will rescuers get to these 12 -- get -- I should say get these 12 boys and their coach, who are currently trapped out of the cave?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RESCUER: How many of you?
CHILDREN: Thirteen.
RESCUER: Thirteen?
CHILDREN: Yes.
RESCUER: Brilliant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: OK, that's 12 young soccer players and their coach. They were located by a team of British divers deep inside a cave in Thailand. But they've been there for ten days and getting them out is very complicated.
So here to explain in Anmar Mirza. Here is the national coordinator of the National Cave Rescue Commission.
[06:35:03] Mr. Mirza, we're so happy to have you and your expertise. I should let people know, you're the editor for the manual of U.S. cave rescue techniques. So you know how complicated this is.
What are the rescuers there in Thailand doing at this hour to try to get these boys out? ANMAR MIRZA, NATIONAL COORDINATOR, NATIONAL CAVE RESCUE COMMISSION:
Right now they're reviewing their options of what to do. As we -- I think we've all heard now, they have three primary options. The one that is the riskiest but maybe their only option depending upon what happens with the weather is to try to dive the kids and the coach out. That's an incredibly dangerous option. If the kids are in a safe location in the cave, they may choose to try to supply them in (INAUDIBLE) and either wait for the water to go down, for it to be pumped down, or for another entrance type to be found or made. If they are in a place in the cave where the water may come up and that place may no longer be a safe place, then their only option may be to dive them out.
It's an incredibly difficult decision process to make. And I trust that the people there who are on side are making the decision with the best information that they have.
CAMEROTA: Can you explain to us why it's so dangerous to dive them out?
MIRZA: Certainly. Cave diving, as an activity, is -- unto itself is incredibly dangerous for people who are -- have trained for it and who have had experience with diving. Many, many years of experience in most cases. Even with that, people regularly die doing it. It is something that requires that level of training and skill to do safely. And even in the safety margin is very, very narrow because if -- if something happens to your air supply, you can't just rise to the surface, like with recreational diving.
To add to that, they're trying to go through very tight passages where initially, before they were made large enough, the divers would have to take off their equipment, push it ahead through them -- ahead of them and squeeze through. Now you're going to take people who have never done any diving and try to maneuver them through while keeping their air supply going.
CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, that is -- it's just so harrowing sounding. But even sheltering in place, which is the other option, is also dangerous. I mean you talk about how they've been without food for ten days. They had some sort of access to scant water supply. But you say that even reintroducing food is dangerous to them now. Never mind their sort of psychological condition that they're in.
MIRZA: Certainly. People who have been without food for many days, after five or six or seven days, depending upon the person, and especially these people for the most part are children whose metabolisms are higher and different than adults, reintroduction of food can actually be very dangerous and, if done improperly, can kill them. I know that they've got medical people who are consulting with this, and so they're going to do it properly. But it's not a matter of just giving them a large meal and saying, OK, now you can get up and move and do a lot of physical exertion on your own. That reintroduction to food has to be done over a period of days with medical monitoring. And even then it would be weeks before the people in there will regain the strength that they had before they had this enforced fast on them. CAMEROTA: Everyone was so excited when the boys were located because
that in itself was a herculean task, just finding them in this maize of caves and finding them alive. And everyone was so excited and felt like it was a miracle. But today, I mean from where you sit, because you have so much experience with this, do you have faith that every one of these boys will get out alive?
MIRZA: I think it's still a very good possibility that they will all get out alive, but I don't consider it a certainty or a guarantee. And I want to caution people not to get your hopes up too high because the -- in many ways the rescue effort has actually much -- gotten much more complicated now.
CAMEROTA: Anmar Mirza, thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us. Obviously we are all praying that today we get some good news about how to get these boys out. Thank you for being with us.
MIRZA: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A sobering warning, just how much work is to be done there.
Meanwhile, is North Korea actually taking concrete steps to denuclearize? Why U.S. intelligence is skeptical.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:43:14] BERMAN: The White House says Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading back to North Korea on Thursday to meet with Kim Jong-un and his team. This comes as the Defense Intelligence Agency believes that Kim has no intention of fully denuclearizing, at least for now.
Our Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon with much more on this.
Barbara.
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Well, you know, President Trump has been saying North Korea no longer a nuclear threat, denuclearization is happening. Well, maybe not so fast. Pompeo on his way back to Pyongyang on Thursday, he's going to have to give Kim Jong-un basically a to-do list, declare all your weapons, declare all your sites and let's agree to a specific plan on denuclearization. But Kim may not be in the mood to do that.
The Defense Intelligence Agency here at the Pentagon has concluded for now they do not believe Kim has the intention of denuclearizing. And, in fact, that he is likely to use this time to hide away more of his warheads, his missiles and his weapons facilities. A good deal of concern about this, worry that he is making more nuclear fuel for more warheads. And some of the most recent commercial satellite imagery is showing activity at some of his sites, at fuel sites, and especially at a ballistic missile site, construction going on there, expansion of that facility. So a lot of indicators that this is moving in the wrong direction
right now. At least in the eyes of Kim Jong-un it's what he wants, not what the U.S. wants. And Pompeo has to go there and try to get this very much on track.
Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: OK, Barbara, thank you very much for that update.
[06:44:55] So, is President Trump trying to redefine NATO? We explore that, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCARBOROUGH: President Trump reportedly sent a sternly-worded letter, several of them, in fact, to NATO allies last month, including Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada, criticizing them for not spending enough in their defense budgets. "The New York Times" reports that President Trump is warning that if these allies do not spend more, the U.S. may adjust its military presence around the world.
Want to bring in CNN military and diplomatic analyst, former State Department spokesman, retired Rear Admiral John Kirby.
Admiral, it is not unusual for the United States to push its NATO allies to spend more in their own defense. President Obama did it, Donald Trump has done, it successfully at times. It may be -- even be an admirable goal.
What is unusual is the explicit threat that if they don't spend more, the United States will change its military posture around the world. This is what reportedly is part of that letter, the president says. It will be increasingly difficult to justify to American citizens why some countries do not share NATO's collective security burden while American soldiers continue to sacrifice their lives overseas or come home gravely wounded.
How do you see that threat?
[06:49:59] REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET), CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: I think it's very dangerous. And it's unwise for the president to take -- to take his complaints about defense expenditures this far. The NATO alliance has been a bedrock of international security, not just on the continent but out of area, like in places like Afghanistan, and we rely on these allies just as much as they rely on us.
Yes, I know we expend 70 percent of NATO's resources. That's true. We do contribute more than anybody else. But they have skills in the field that we don't necessarily have. They have abilities to deploy to places faster in some cases than we do. I mean these are mutually beneficial alliance. And for him to make that threat I think undermines the very core understanding of the alliance itself.
And, number two, John, and more importantly, as he goes into this meeting with Putin, it sends a message to Vladimir Putin that his influence campaign is working. He would love nothing better than to see NATO dissolve, or at least to have disunity inside the alliance.
BERMAN: And U.S. allies are nervous. U.S. allies are nervous about the level of American commitment to these very important alliances.
KIRBY: That's right.
BERMAN: One of these other alliances, the European Union. The United States has been dealing with the European Union for some time. And there was a remarkable moment inside the Oval Office yesterday. I'm trying to remember if I've ever seen anything quite like it. The president was talking about trade deals with the European Union and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, was in there with him. And then I want you to watch this. The Dutch prime minister actually just flat out, publicly, openly interjects and disagrees with the president in the middle of this event. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And if we do work it out, that will be positive. And if we don't, it will be positive also because --
MARK RUTTE, DUTCH PRIME MINISTER: No.
TRUMP: We just think about those cars that pour in here and we'll do something.
RUTTE: It's not positive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So, the prime minister did it with a smile, but that "no" was emphatic.
KIRBY: Yes.
BERMAN: And it seems to me that what you're seeing is these allies around the world, these historical allies of the U.S., seem to be tired of getting pushed around and they're just saying, enough.
KIRBY: Yes. They -- look, they -- I think they're all beginning to realize that America first means America alone. That they cannot rely on the United States for international leadership and good stewardship of these major security and trade issues. And so they are. They're becoming embolden to push back.
Look, I mean, he can make the case that in the waning years of the Obama administration there was concern about U.S. leadership overseas. But President Trump has hit the accelerator on that and made it even more stark. And they are -- they are beginning to believe that they have no other choice now, John, but to push back on the United States and to counter some of our moves.
BERMAN: What does that end up looking like? Play this out for us. You have Justin Trudeau, who openly has split with the president and seems to be saying enough. You have the Dutch prime minister right there. If this keeps on happening, what's the result?
KIRBY: Well, I worry about us from a trade perspective. I mean you do need free and fair trade. And I think with this tariff war that he's now conducting, you could end up actually hurting the American economy and American jobs.
On the security front, I think it will become increasingly hard for the United States to do two things. One, to be a convening power, to get nations together on -- for a common purpose and a security environment, whatever it is. If there's a crisis out there, people may not be quite as willing to take our lead and follow us into harm's way.
Number two, if we become attacked again -- and, remember, it was NATO who declared, you know, Article 5 collective defense to come to our aid on 9/11. If that should happen again, I don't know that they will quite as there as they were. And that's not good for us or the American people.
BERMAN: And one sign of the times, it's worth noting this week, at the end of the week, there will be a meeting on the Iran nuclear deal that the United States no longer a part of. The European nations, those nations inside it, including Iran, will be meeting at the end of the week to figure out how to go forward. An interesting moment.
KIRBY: Yes, I mean, once again, America alone, right? I mean we -- he -- he has -- he has pulled us out of this deal, therefore we have no influence at the table in whichever way the deal goes forward. So we are becoming isolating and -- I'm sorry, we're becoming isolated and we're doing it to ourselves. We're pulling ourselves out of any influence going forward.
They continue to pursue sanctions against Iran, against their other nefarious activities, which is all fine. But the deal was working and now we will be completely remove from any movement going forward as to how Iran's nuclear program progresses.
BERMAN: Admiral John Kirby, always great to have you with us. Thanks so much.
KIRBY: Thank you.
BERMAN: Alisyn.
KIRBY: Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci says he knows who the president will pick for the Supreme Court. That's next.
BERMAN: He'll tell us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:58:17] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president is pro-life. He's not going to discuss specific cases. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any very good candidate would believe and say it's
a major precedent of the court and one has to struggle with precedence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roe v. Wade is up for grabs. This is one of the most consequential Supreme Court nominations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congress has not gotten a clear answer on the whereabouts of the kids and the parents.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To say that we want to go and abolish ICE is so far outside of the mainstream.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), MINORITY LEADER: Pick on immigrants is just one of the worst things I have ever seen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Divers find 12 boys and their football coach after nearly ten days of searching.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not just a simple matter of just swimming out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to be a complicated rescue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
CAMEROTA: Just putting the finishing touches on our (INAUDIBLE).
BERMAN: I can't wait to see what you just wrote there.
CAMEROTA: I know. I just added something really juicy. And you'll see it in one moment.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to your NEW DAY.
John Avlon joins us this morning.
Great to have you.
Up first, we now know who the four federal judges are that President Trump interviewed yesterday for the Supreme Court vacancy. It appears that all would vote to roll back abortion rights on some level and at least one seems to have pretty clear views that a president should not be subject to criminal investigation. The president plans to announce his pick Monday night.
But Anthony Scaramucci may already know the answer, and there he is, coming to us from his beach vacation spot, live. And we will be talking to him momentarily.
BERMAN: In just a moment he will tell us everything.
So, we know the administration can count. They told us the president spoke to four judges. But officials won't tell us how many children they still hold in custody, separated from their parents at the border by the U.S. government. Officials flat out refused to release new numbers for how many of the 2,000 plus children have been reunited with their families.
[07:00:10] Just think about that for a second here. Why won't the administration tell the public
