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New Day

President Trump Takes Photo with Kim Jong-un in North Korea; Democratic Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg Announces Nearly $25 Million in Campaign Contributions in Second Quarter; Small Plane Crashes Near Dallas. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 01, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The danger is that we've legitimized Kim Jong-un and he's given up nothing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump Jr. retweeted and then deleted a tweet that was questioning Senator Harris's blackness.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, (D-CA) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I was born black, I will die black, and I'm proud of being black.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president, he has seen a potential threat in a rising Kamala Harris.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Trump family are trying to find every way they can to divide this, because they really haven't delivered what they promised.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, July 1st, rabbit, rabbit.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you. Good to see you.

BERMAN: Appreciate it. It's 8:00 in the east.

Breaking this morning, reports of a possible major concession in the nuclear talks with North Korea. President Trump, we should say, is back at the White House after his historic meeting with Kim Jong-un where he became the first sitting U.S. president to step foot inside North Korea. It is a picture the president relishes. But what about the substance? This morning "The New York Times" says the Trump administration might be headed towards tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear power, allowing Kim to keep his weapons in exchange for a freeze on production of new weapons. That is a position that the administration has previously said it would not stand for.

INGRAHAM: And we have breaking 2020 news. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg joining the big leagues officially. His campaign just announced a huge fundraising hall in the second quarter, just shy of $25 million. And that certainly cements his top tier status.

So joining us now to talk about all of this, we have Susan Glasser, staff writer at "The New Yorker" and a CNN global affairs analyst, Toluse Olorunnipa, White House correspondent for the "Washington Post" and a CNN political analyst, and Laura Barron-Lopez, a national political reporter at "Politico."

First let's start with what happened in North Korea, Susan over the weekend with Kim Jong-un. So let's just start with what the significance, obviously being the first U.S. president to set foot across DMZ into North Korea is optically quite significant, and historically. But what does it buy President Trump?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's interesting. I guess the question is, what did he give away? Arguably he gave away an enormous concession to Kim, the legitimacy that comes not only with this kind of photo-op, but also the extraordinarily lavish words of praise for a murderous dictator is something that generally speaking U.S. presidents have been reluctant to offer preemptively.

A couple of things, you mentioned this "New York Times" report that's breaking this morning. This would be a significant change in the U.S. negotiating posture, essentially agreeing to recognize de facto North Korea's nuclear status, which is something that American administrations of both parties have refused to do in recent years. And so that would be an enormous change. Reading the American Kremlinology of who is in charge of President Trump's foreign policy, it was quite notable that John Bolton, his national security adviser and noted North Korea hawk was in Mongolia instead of being present for this historic meeting. The president's daughter was there instead. And John Bolton this morning tweeted, he didn't deny this report, he said it means that someone is trying to box in the president, suggesting at a minimum that there continues to be a real division inside the Trump administration over how to negotiate with North Korea.

BERMAN: Let me read you the statement from John Bolton, not Michael Bolton, as the president likes to call him.

CAMEROTA: Though we could read some of his statements later.

BERMAN: But John Bolton, the national security adviser, says I read this "New York Times" story with curiosity. Neither the NSA staff nor I have discussed or heard of any desire to settle for nuclear freeze by North Korea. This was reprehensible attempt by someone to box in the president. There should be consequences." John Bolton wasn't at the DMZ. Tucker Carlson was.

CAMEROTA: What's his statement.

BERMAN: John Bolton -- we're awaiting a statement from Tucker because he may have a better sense of what's actually going on behind the scenes.

James Clapper, former DNI under President Obama actually thinks that a nuclear freeze might be the ultimate and best outcome in these discussions. It's not -- whether or not that's where it's headed or should be headed is a different discussion than whether or not this is a concession, which it is, Laura, for this administration. This administration says that its goal was to have complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and the president comes back from this trip with reporting that he might be willing to accept nuclear weapons.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": And that's the big question right there is how much progress is actually being made. Susan, as you hit on, this appears to be a maintaining of the status quo. And no progress was made, even though it looked as though there was a lot going on given the fact that it was the first time a U.S. president had stepped over into North Korea.

And again to the Bolton part of it, this speaks to the larger theme with the administration, which is that key players in his administration are usually left on the outside, and sometimes it's to their frustration that they don't get adequate information that they need or that they would typically be privy to.

[08:05:08] This so-called progress that the administration is trying to say that they are making with North Korea could also give Trump some kind of talking point entering into 2020, which is maybe why they are pushing so aggressively for some kind of agreement.

CAMEROTA: Toluse, if they get to keep their nuclear weaponry, not dismantle any of it, just freeze it, how does that differ from the Iran nuclear deal that President Trump hated.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes. The president is having some trouble making the case that his diplomacy has been better than what his predecessor was able to do with Iran or with any other country in part because the president has talked about complete denuclearization in the past, but now it seems like he seems to be saying I'm very happy with the way things are, there's no missile testing. I'm not in a hurry. Things are going to be taking place over a long period of time. There's no rush to get to denuclearization. So it does seem like the president from his public comments seems to be OK with the idea of North Koreans having what they have, not moving in any way towards denuclearization, not providing an inventory of the type of weaponry that they already have. And it does seem like the president is just happy with the photo ops and with the headlines that show that he's doing something on this issue, but it's not clear that he's doing any more than what his predecessors were able to do in terms of denuclearization?

BERMAN: And just one more point, as the president is at the White House this morning returning from this trip, and it was a remarkable picture of the president stepping foot into North Korea in terms of what he got, he got that picture. But what he gave, Susan, on this whole trip, it really is interesting. He gave Vladimir Putin cover, once again, on the attack on the U.S. elections, laughing, joking about the attacks on the U.S. elections. He gave Mohammed bin Salman cover for murder of Jamal Khashoggi, appearing in a picture willingly, graciously gushing over MBS. He gave China technology concessions to Huawei, say that U.S. firms can once again sell technology to Huawei to get China back at the table. Maybe that's an admirable goal, but he did give something up there. so again, in terms of the perception of this trip, I just harken back to what if President Obama had done this, people would be saying on the right he gave everything away.

GLASSER: I think it's an important point. I'm glad you put it in this context. We have never seen, I think, a few days of American diplomacy that looks anything like how President Trump chose to spend his time at the G20. At this moment of time of rising autocracy and key powers around the world, President Trump chose to spend his time, chose to have his signature meetings and bilateral conversations at the G20 with some of the world's toughest strongmen, autocrats that generally speaking the United States would not make the focus of its diplomacy. All the major American allies were there. That was not the narrative that the Trump administration chose to have for us. He had a streak of meetings that went from Mohammed bin Salman to Erdogan from Turkey to the leaders of China, Xi Jinping, and then going to Kim Jong-un in Korea. You have a situation where the U.S. visibly seems to prefer -- the president of the U.S. visibly seems to prefer the company of dictators to those of democrats. And I think it's very significant.

Just one minor point, I think also on the Iran and North Korea comparisons, which are essentially spurious. Not only did President Trump pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, but remember, Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon, and North Korea is a nuclear armed state that has been continuing to amass a nuclear arsenal in recent years. So the stakes are quite different in many ways, even higher with North Korea, which already has these nuclear weapons.

CAMEROTA: That's really helpful.

OK, let's talk about what's happening back here at home and certainly on the Democratic side. Mayor Pete Buttigieg this morning announced a huge fundraising hall, $24.8 million in his second quarter alone. So Laura, what does this do to the race?

BARRON-LOPEZ: This helps establish Buttigieg as one of the upper tiers of the candidates. And so this is a significant difference from his Q-1 fundraising numbers. Last time around he only raised $7 million. So it's a drastic increase. This should help him also with establishing more boots on the ground in key states, something that his campaign has struggled to be doing so far in the primary. And so now this will help with him getting more staff in Iowa, more staff in New Hampshire, more in Nevada, more in South Carolina, and could potentially help him turn his polling around in those key swing states.

BERMAN: It sets a bar, Toluse, for all the other candidates. There's a reason Pete Buttigieg came out at 5:30 a.m. eastern time the morning after the second quarter to put these numbers out. It's because they are really impressive. And now when Senator Kamala Harris comes out with her numbers she'll be judged in comparison to Pete Buttigieg. Former Vice President Joe Biden who has spent decades in politics will be judged in comparison to the numbers here.

[08:10:03] OLORUNNIPA: Yes, that's exactly right. And several of these candidates have spent much of the last three months in fundraisers at private events trying to raise a lot of money so they can have that headline, so they prove that they are formidable candidates. And Mayor Pete Buttigieg definitely needed a positive headline after the police shooting back in his home city where he struggled to manage the angst among the community there. This is a way for him to turn the page and show that he is a frontrunner at least when it comes to fundraising. And all the other candidates will try to compare themselves to that and try to outdo what he's done over the last three months.

And we have seen other candidates spend a lot of time in these private fundraisers. So I wouldn't be surprised if we do see big numbers from other candidates as well. But with Mayor Pete putting out his numbers first, it's clear that he is getting the shock value of such a large number after he was someone who was largely unknown just a year ago. Now that he's a presidential candidate he's raising big coin and showing himself to be a formidable force for the 2020 race.

BERMAN: He was at zero in the polls in January.

CAMEROTA: So he's doing better now.

BERMAN: He's doing better.

CAMEROTA: Exponentially. Susan, Toluse, Laura, thank you very much.

Now to this breaking news. Federal investigators are looking into what caused a small plane to crash during takeoff killing all 10 people on board. The crash happened north of Dallas in the community of Addison, and that's where CNN's Scott McLean joins us with the lates. Scott, what have you learned?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. It was clear almost immediately that something was very wrong with this flight. This happened obviously after takeoff when the plane veered into this hangar here and burst into flames. You can still see what looks to be smoke, maybe water damage to the side of it, and a couple of missing windows. There's obviously a lot more damage that you cannot see from this vantage point.

Now, there was only a plane and a helicopter inside that hangar at the time. No people thankfully. It is also lucky that the fire department was only about 220 yards away, just slightly further than I am from this building, and so the response was pretty immediate.

We do not know the identities of the victims at this point. We do know, though, that there were two crew and eight passengers on board, all of them were bound for St. Petersburg. They were traveling in a Beechcraft Super King Air 350. When you think of a small private jet, this is probably the type of plane that comes to mind for most people. CNN safety analyst David Soucie says the plane is reliable, it has a good safety record generally. And it's often used by corporations to shuttle executives from place to place. He even called it the Cadillac of turboprops.

Obviously, the NTSB, the FAA, they will be doing their own investigations. The NTSB expects their preliminary report to be ready in about two weeks. One thing that may complicate things at least initially, though, is this that plane was previously owned by a charter company out of Chicago, but it recently changed hands. And so yesterday the NTSB said that it wasn't immediately clear what the tail number was or what it should have been when it crashed. John?

BERMAN: Scott McLean, please keep us posted on any new reporting there. Thank you very much.

So the president got a remarkable picture stepping into North Korea, the first U.S. president to do so. But what did he give up? There is fresh reporting this morning on possible U.S. concessions. And we're getting new reaction from key leaders. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We just had a very, very good meeting with Chairman Kim. And we've agreed that we're each going to designate a team and the team will try and work out some details.

And again, speed is not the object. We want to see if we can do a really comprehensive good deal. Very big stuff. Pretty complicated, but not as complicated as people think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's President Trump after meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un becoming the first sitting U.S. President to set foot in North Korea.

"The New York Times" reports that the Trump administration -- and this is the breaking news on top of all of this -- that the Trump administration is considering settling for a nuclear freeze tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear power.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman John Garamendi. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for being with us again.

We saw the pictures over the weekend. Let me read you the Breaking News this morning. We are waking up to this reporting in "The New York Times" from Michael Crowley and our friend David Sanger, which says that the United States might be willing to let Kim keep nuclear weapons. "The concept would amount to a nuclear freeze one that essentially enshrines the status quo and tacitly accepts the North as a nuclear power, something administration officials have often said they would never stand for." What's your reaction to that?

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): Not a good thing. It's not a good thing because it would really set up a nuclear arms race in that entire region. You think for a moment that South Korea would accept that situation? Or Japan? And of course, China's not so far away in Russia. Not a good thing. The goal of denuclearization should remain. It's not an easy thing.

The President says it's complicated, it certainly is, and I'm delighted that he's decided to put together a team to carry on the negotiations, which are absolutely essential.

BERMAN: You say not a good thing. It's interesting because former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who worked in the Obama administration, has told me for months now that he thinks the ultimate outcome might be some kind of agreement, which acknowledges that North Korea or accepts the fact that North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and they're not going to get rid of them. So the goal should be a peaceful Korean peninsula with that reality.

GARAMENDI: Well, that reality would undoubtedly made South Korea that's perfectly capable of producing nuclear weapons would want to have the same. Why do you have a nuclear weapon to begin with? It is to assure that your regime will survive.

Are there other ways to provide that assurance? Absolutely, there are. And those are the ways that need to be pursued here. There needs to be a peace treaty on that Peninsula, a recognition there really are two Koreas probably for some years to come, each with their own security situation guaranteed in multiple ways by the countries surrounding it, by the United States and others.

[08:20:11] GARAMENDI: All of those things are possible without nuclear weapons.

BERMAN: Do you think it was the right move for President Trump to step foot in North Korea?

GARAMENDI: It's always good to negotiate, always good to negotiate, and to open the door for negotiations, which this would be the third meeting. That's good. What comes of it? That's the tough part. That's the negotiations and indeed it is complicated, and I believe it could be done with the proper negotiations underway.

Berm On this trip, the President stepped foot in North Korea, it's unclear what he got back in return for that. On this trip, the President has allowed China -- Huawei, a giant technology inside China to get American components to build some of their products, something that had been banned previously.

And on this trip, President Trump provided cover for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Bin Salman, do you think that this was a successful trip? And do you think those moves were worth it for the United States?

GARAMENDI: No, Huawei is a problem. Huawei is a very serious national security problem, not only for us, but for our allies around the world. It is the ultimate way that China can snoop and can find out what's going on, so that's a real serious problem.

With regard to Saudi Arabia. Frankly, this President seems to want to do everything he can to support that regime, often at the cost of the lives of many other people, and certainly, we saw that with the Khashoggi.

So I don't like the way he is dealing with this, but he is the President. He does have the power to do these things. At the end of the day, well, let's not to say the end of the day. In the years to come, we need to recognize that China is using Huawei as a surveillance system really around the world. That is a very serious national security threat. We ought not be allowing that to happen.

BERMAN: You said at the end of the day, he is the President and he gets to direct these negotiations. He also does get to choose his advisers, and one of the advisers he brought on this trip who played a central role in this entire trip was his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is a senior adviser to the President.

This picture getting a lot of attention, you can see President Trump sitting next to Ivanka surrounded by the leaders of the G20 here, do you think this was appropriate?

GARAMENDI: He could choose his advisers and he needs to have people that he could trust and if Ivanka is that person, that's okay. Now is the result of those discussions and that advice good? We just discussed some of this just a moment ago. I think the result, perhaps her advice, perhaps others, we don't know, is not good.

We just discussed Huawei. We'd also discussed Saudi Arabia. If that's her advice, I would say she's not a particularly good adviser.

BERMAN: What message do you think it sends to the rest of the world when the President brings his daughter on a trip, albeit, a senior adviser there in terms of who they need to be speaking with. What's the best way to get to this President? And I say that in the wake of this testimony that was released, we all saw former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, explaining how Jared Kushner was really acting as an independent operator conducting diplomacy around the world.

GARAMENDI: Well, leaders around the world recognized immediately who was close to the President, you might want to take a look at China and the way in which they lavished gifts, if you would, these are licenses for her to sell her products in China almost immediately when he became President

So people recognize, countries recognize where the power structure is. I noticed that John Bolton was not in the North Korea meeting. What does that mean? What does it mean when Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State is excluded from meetings? It means there's a different power structure, it means that the power structure is in fact the President's family.

BERMAN: Yes, well, I should note that Ambassador John Bolton, the National Security adviser put out a statement sort of half denying "The New York Times" story, but the fact of the matter is, he wasn't at the DMZ. So at this point, we don't know how involved he is in these discussions.

Congressman John Garamendi, thank you very much for being with us this morning. GARAMENDI: My pleasure. Thank you.

BERMAN: Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Okay, John, a pregnant woman who was shot in the stomach during a fight and was indicted in her unborn child's death, will the district attorney prosecute her for the manslaughter, that's next?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:21] BERMAN: All right, this morning a real legal controversy in Alabama. The question is this: Should a pregnant woman who was shot face manslaughter charges in connection with the death of her unborn child?

Our Martin Savidge live on the scene in Alabama with the very latest -- Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good Morning john. Yes, this is a case that sparked outrage across the country. A little more subdued reaction here in Alabama.

Let's go back to December, 28-year-old Marshae Jones, she's five months pregnant. She gets into an argument with another woman in a parking lot. The authorities say that the mother instigated that argument. It escalates to the point the other woman pulls out a gun and fires a shot. Marshae Jones is wounded in the abdomen. She later loses her unborn child.

Five months later, well actually May of this year is when a grand jury comes out and rules manslaughter, not against the other woman, but against Marshae Jones, the mother who lost her unborn child.

The reason being this is a state that believes in a person, but in other words, that the legal rights of the unborn child are the same as any human being. So the argument is that the mother here by starting that fight endangered another human, that human died, her unborn child and that's how you come up with the manslaughter charge.

Now, the defense team is coming forward today. They plan to file a motion for dismissal of the charge. Meanwhile, the DA in this case, which is the first African-American female DA in the state says she doesn't have to abide by the grand jury that she could decide to prosecute a manslaughter or maybe to prosecute on a lesser charge or maybe drop the charges altogether. That decision is also expected very soon.

[08:30:10]