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tv   CNN Newsroom With Poppy Harlow  CNN  June 7, 2018 6:00am-7:01am PDT

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>> summer, no homework, relaxation. >> that's exciting. any message that you want to share with, i don't know, dad or somebody. >> hi, dad. >> they're actually triplets. >> we've got recreational math for you after the show. great to have you here. >> all right. >> time for "newsroom" now with brianna kielar. >> see you tomorrow. good morning. i'm brianna kielar in washington and we start with breaking news. the trump administration striking a deal with chinese telecom giant zte, a company that has violated u.s. sanctions and one that the department of defense says poses a national security threat. now the company has to pay a hefty, hefty fine. cnn's christine romans joining me now. what else is in this deal, christine and why is it so controversial? >> reporter: good morning. wilbur ross just said this deal was struck at 6:00 a.m., just a few hours ago and he was hailing this as the first time a foreign
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company is going to have a u.s. chosen compliance team right there making sure that they are following export restrictions from the united states. there's a big fine here as well. $1 billion penalty for zte, $400 million has to go into he is kroe in case there are any violations to be a preventive measure that compliance team imbedded as zte to make sure they're not violating sanctions and within the next 30 days the board must completely change an entirely new executive team be appointed here. this company makes smartphones has become a flash point in the overall china trade debate. it was just a few weeks ago really that the white house and the commerce department said that they were not going to allow u.s. companies to sell parts to zte any more because of its bad behavior and lying about breaking sanctions. then the president backtracked
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and said he would give a life line to zte because there were so many chinese jobs at stake. marco rubio said, no, this is about national security and the pentagon. in april they banned the sale of zte phones because there were concerns they could be used to spy on american citizens. the president with this big team inside, the compliance team inside the company, a big fine is going to let zte stay afloat, brianna. >> christine romans, thank you so much for that report. the administration's new tariffs on america's closest allies and their new tariffs on the u.s. making for a tense g7 summit due to start tomorrow in canada. the country that president trump this week accused of torching the white house in the war of 1812. it wasn't canada. it was britain and actually since then, the u.s. and britain have patched things up. "the washington post" says the president seized the g7 as one big distraction from a big
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meeting that he has in just days with north korean dictator kim jong-un. cnn kaitlan collins is at the white house for us. what's up? >> reporter: the president does see it as a distraction. he often doesn't even enjoy going on trips like the g7 where he has to do these meetings with other world leaders especially not at a time when he's getting ready to sit down with kim jong-un and especially at a time when he's getting pushback over these trade deals and now he has to travel to canada and sit down face-to-face with some of these leaders that he's already had very testy conversations and phone calls with over these recent moves and these leaders have spoken out against him. not just from canada with johnson trudeau, the prime minister there, but also the french president, emmanuel macron as well, speaking out against these moves that the united states has made, because the president sees this as the world is tilted against the u.s. essentially as far as trade is concerned. that is something that we need
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to watch while he is in canada. sparks could certainly fly there. the president's main trade adviser larry kudlow saying yesterday it's more of a family dispute, these quarrels over this. certainly going to be a lot of tension there that's going on meanwhile the president is looking ahead to that north korea summit. some worry he's overlooking the g7. he's meeting with the japanese prime minister shinzo abe here at the white house. they'll have a working lunch and press conference. abe's main goal while he's here is to convince president trump to take a hard line when he does sit down with kim jong-un in singapore on tuesday. >> so, you know, one of the concerns of watchers of this summit with north korea has been that perhaps the president isn't going to be as prepared as he should be going into it, they're hoping that he's spending a
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whole lot of time preparing. do you know -- do we have a sense of what all he has been doing especially since there is a lot of diplomatic work that has not been done as per usual on the front end of this meeting. >> reporter: the president has been having several meetings with his national security adviser, the secretary of defense, secretary of state, all of that but that does not seem to compare to what past administrations have done to lead up to a summit that would be of a historic nature like this one that the president is going to sit down in on tuesday. that is the question of what his level of preparedness is and what he's going to go in there and ask for from him. this is a president who largely operates off the cuff in a situation where people do not encourage that. that's why critics are concerned about what the president is going to walk into that meeting looking for. is it going to be a denuclearization that the administration has repeated time and time again over the last few months or is it going to change his language as we saw him do
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whenever he said the summit was back on and he didn't want to use terms like maximum pressure any more. >> he is indeed not scripted. kaitlan collins at the white house. thank you. joining me now is jeff flake from arizona. he's a member of the foreign relations committee, also the judiciary committee. sir, thank you so much for being with us this morning. >> thank you for having me on. >> you have a big day on the senate floor. you are -- i do want to talk to you of course about a number of things, tariffs, zte, the north korea summit but i want to talk to you about what you're going to do this morning. you're going to speak on the senate floor. it's really -- it's a rebuke of these tariffs. it's a rebuke more largely of the president's protectionist policies and you are going to say, according to what you put out, quote, this is not grown up leadership. you're going to talk about, his, quote, incoherent policy utterances and you will warn that the u.s. is turning its
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backs on allies it has spent decades cultivating. why did you feel compelled to do this today? >> more recently the tariffs that the president has announce the have been not against our adversaries, that's problematic enough, they're against our allies. so you have canada asking how is it a national security issue with regard to the importation of steel or aluminum. mexico is asking the same thing. the president's use of 232, section 232, the trade act of the '60s to justify protectionist policies is simply not consistent with conservative or republican policy. more broadly on trade and security, we have had an incoherent strategy and our allies are left baffled and that's not the way to conduct foreign policy. >> what are the your substantive
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concerns? i hear you saying that. the administration is striking a deal with zte, a chinese telecom giant on one hand and then imposing tariffs on allies. we've heard the frustration from justin trudeau. >> yes. >> you talk about your long-term concerns, what are you worried gets undone by these actions? >> we do have significant national security concerns regarding zte. they actually confessed or agreed that they had violated the sanctions that -- i'm sorry the trade act that was there and sanctions were imposed and the president seems willing to set the president seems willing to set that aside to use that as a bargaining chip. on the other hand, you bring up a national security issue simply because that's an area of the act that you can go to without congressional approval and use that as a way to enact protectionist barriers to make
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goods more expensive for americans and spark a trade war that, although the president says trade wars are easily won, they're not. trade wars are only lost and this whole liberal international order in terms of rules based trade that we have helped establish over the past 70 years, we are now running away from and i think our allies are certainly scratching their heads and saying where are they going and in this case of, for example, the transpacific partnership, the president exited the negotiations on early on, those countries are not saying, oh, all right, we'll wait till they come back to the table. they're moving on and leaving us behind. that's no position we want to be in because if we want to have economic growth in the future, it involves trade and so we'll have to enter into many more multi-lateral and bilateral trade agreements. >> you're backing a bill that
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senator corker has put out that would curtail the president's abilities when it comes to tariffs. it would make him seek congressional approval. your republican leader mitch mcconnell is pretty much saying this is pointless. let's listen. >> i don't think we need to be trying to rein in the president through legislation, number one. it would be an exercise in futility because he wouldn't sign it. >> so you are speaking out, senator corker is speaking out in fairness you're retiring -- how effective can retiring members of congress who are unencumbered by re-election fights really be in taking on the president the way corker is and the way you are today. >> right. it's not just myself and bob corker, senator corker, obviously is also not running for re-election but i think there are about a dozen senators, some of whom are up for re-election this time or certainly will be in 2020 or who
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are standing up and saying, we are asserting our congressional prerogative. the constitution gives congress the primary role in regulating trade and certainly tariffs, not the president. the president is using an exemption that was never intended for that purpose. let me tell you how significant this is. this is the first time that a number of senators have actually stood up from the president's party and said, no, you can't do that and we're going to pass legislation to rein this in and so that is our prerogative. that's what we should be doing, that's what we should have been doing sooner than now -- >> but your leader poured cold water all over it and he controls the floor, so what do you? >> we'll see. we have an ndaa bill coming up. every senator has significant leverage because you have to have unanimous consent to move ahead to consider the bill. we'll see what happens in the next couple of days. there is significant momentum
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because -- something like trade and tariffs, if there has been any republican orthodoxy or something we have had consensus in this country on, is that we do better, the rest of the world does best with significant trade and investment and using the international organizations that we helped establish for this purpose as the arbiters between trade disputes, not the president simply acting at whim to punish this country or that one. that moves away from the rules based order on trade that we've had that has been so successful over the years. republicans have believed that and this now is a significant departure from conservatism and from what republicans have believed in. >> he's in a very different place than republican orthodoxy for sure. what time will we see you on the floor, senator. >> 11:15 eastern time. >> thank you so much. we'll be looking. >> thank you. so what is the north korea summit and airplane deals and
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coal have in common? they're all topics that the president brought up in a fema briefing. and the stunning interview with ex-fox news analyst ralph peters. with tripadvisor, finding your perfect hotel
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tell us that it is exhaustive and that it will not hold back. we expect that it will come down hard on former fbi director james comey, specifically assessing a variety of controversy moves that he made on the clinton email investigation including when he announced in july of 2016, without any justice department approval, all on his own that he was recommending no charges in the case against clinton but at the same time calling her extremely careless as well as his move as we all remember just days before the november election coming out telling lawmakers that they were essentially reopening the clinton investigation despite the fact the justice department officials had warned him that doing so would run counter to department investigations that say you can't make any public announcements before an election. he said in the past he welcomes this assessment. the big question is the extent to which the inspector general will assess the motives of all
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of these variety of officials. >> tell us about what we've learned about the doj getting ready to make an offer to the gang of eight when it comes to the fbi's confidential source that met with trump campaign advisers during the 2016 election? the president of course calls it spygate. what can you tell us about this? >> no evidence of that but this was a late breaking development last night. we learned that they will receive a briefing early next week but we also learned that the documents had actually already been on the table at that gang of eight briefing in may. so the ship had already sailed on that, essentially, even though we had believed that the justice department was resisting the effort to turn over the documents, but, of course this now comes on the heels of top gop leaders like paul ryan breaking with the president saying there's been no evidence of fbi wrongdoing and they did exactly what they should have done in the handling of this fbi source. >> laura jared, thank you so
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much. less than a week into this year's hurricane season, president trump paid a visit to fema headquarters. he was accompanied by the first lady in her first open press event in 27 days. but natural disasters were not necessarily top of mind for the president. "the washington post" obtained audio from a closed door briefing that followed a public session. and these are among the topics the president raised. his popularity, the summit with kim jong-un, his political endorsements, the gop's fortunes, airplane deals, defense department purchasing guidelines, launch equipment on aircraft carriers and coal. all of this bringing me to where else cnn senior political analyst david gergen and political commentator joel lockhart. my intro to you doesn't follow nor does what this briefing was supposed to be about and what the president actually ended up talking about, you guys. i wonder what you think, joe,
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especially considering the seriousness of what this should have been. the president did not address what is now believed to be the true death toll of hurricane maria in puerto rico as we understand it, it's almost 5,000 but the official toll is 64. what do you think about that? >> i think it gives you a window into the president's character. remember, when he first came into office he went to the intelligence community, the cia that he had criticized roundly during the campaign and went in as a moment where they could make peace and he talked about the electoral college and how many states he won and critiqued hillary clinton's campaign and strategy. so it's pure narcissism, so that isn't surprising. it really, though, underlines the scandal, though, of fema, the administration and our response to puerto rico. this is part of the united states, puerto ricans are americans. it's now months and months without power. they are hiding the number of
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people who have died. the president treated his trip down there as a joke by throwing away supplies and i think probably the most troubling because the president's the president. the republican leadership has totally abdicated their oversight role. we don't see the hearings or we don't see them holding their feet to the fire. they won't take on the president. >> what do you think, david? joe brings up the point of power. it is astonishing that this far past the storm you have thousands of people who still do not have power. i cannot imagine that in any place on the u.s. mainland flying. >> i agree with that and i agree with most of what joe just said. it's a national embarrassment and more than that, it's a sense of unfairness of injustice of racism implies here that we have paid so little attention to puerto rico, the gap between the official death count at 64 and
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some 5,000 is unbelievable. we've never had that. we've never encountered anything like that, and i know there are a lot of reasons why people -- officials give that they haven't been able to do more for puerto rico. there was so much devastation. you would think that a country that believes in being fair to all its citizens and puerto ricans are apart of the united states, that you would just think we would treat them with more respect and more urgency. i just can't get over the fact that it is -- we just seem to go from day-to-day to day as if -- as if it doesn't matter. it does matter. the tourism rate is terrible. they just don't have an economy. i think this is one of the sad chapter in american history. >> it is certainly when you look at the death toll. i do want to ask you, david,
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about the tariffs that have been put in place on u.s. allies. it seems like the president's version of the line from the godfather, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. keep your enemies close and your friends confused and angry. >> exactly. >> when you look at this, you know, what are your concerns about how he is treating u.s. allies? >> i have a deep concern about whether the west is going to hold together as a coherent group of nations with shared values. the way the united states is retreating from its leadership role and just as importantly now, starting to bully its best friends is driving us apart and one of the great strengths of the united states and its international position has been that the west was seen as a powerful bloc of nations with shared values with the belief in free markets and free people and
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to retreat from that and to have europe now go increasingly with country after country whether it's poland or now in italy where you find that -- that democracy is threatened -- we're going to find that democracy is threatened here too unless we begin to treat our allies with some respect and to go to canada -- these summits started between the president ford and prime minister trudeau way back in the mid-70s and every year, i've been to a number of them, i can tell you every year there is an effort to come together an issue a joint communication showing solidarity and this time around we're probably not going to have that because the other nations just don't want to sign on with president trump on this and that's a really damaging for the country's reputation. >> joe, while i have a former white house press secretary, i have to ask you about something sarah huckabee sanders said last night where she was talking about her initial denial that trump had dictated this
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response, this message about the trump tower meeting of his son, donald trump jr. listen to what she said. >> you seem to be in a position where you feel that you will be constrained to not -- >> we are purposefully walling ourselves off and allowing the outside counsel to do their job and we're doing ours. >> but you did initially answer it, right? >> i did and, again -- >> do you regret that? >> no, i don't. >> trump -- she said initially trump said he did not dictate the response, then trump's legal teams said oh, actually she did and she has shut down on the whole thing. she said, no, i don't regret that. you've been in her position. >> yeah. >> should she regret that? >> of course she should and it's a remarkable statement. i had that job 20 years ago and there's probably six or seven or eight women that have had that job since. i never entered a public
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criticism. this is very different. this is the kind of thing you see in authoritarian propaganda machines and their primary organ is fox news and they will tell you every morning the sun came up in the west if that's advantageous for them. and she is trying to have it both ways. she talks about we're walling off what the counsel is doing and then she goes and attacks the independent counsel and calls it a witch hunt in the next sentence. so i think ultimately it's bad for the office of the presidency for that job and bad for the country because, if you can't believe what you're being told, then you do get into a situation where you're in, you know, what people in russia and people in authoritarian states, you know, where they -- how they believe the news in their leaders.
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>> thank you to both. we're just moments away from the opening bell. futures up this morning on bank and tech stocks. wall street ignoring growing trade tensions. let's get started. show of hands. who wants customizable options chains? ones that make it fast and easy to analyze and take action? how about some of the lowest options fees? are you raising your hand? good then it's time for power e*trade the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. alright one quick game of rock, paper, scissors. 1, 2, 3, go. e*trade. the original place to invest online.
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president trump's lawyers want a judge to let them file challenges in the michael cohen case under seal that would keep them private. kara, tell us about that. >> that's right. so donald trump's lawyers filed a motion last night to asking a judge to allow them to file their challenges to the privileged documents under seal and exparte. they said in their letter that the government opposed any wholesale sealing of documents but would be okay, if any, portion of the substantial information, what exactly their arguing about is under seal was -- was redacted and not made public. the judge has not ruled on this but trump's team indicate that had they do intend to make this filing today if the judge allows them to do it as they have requested. >> all right. very interesting as they want to do this so that it is not
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transparent at all. we'll continue to follow that story. president trump's personal attorney, rudy giuliani, hitting back at growing criticism over scathing comments that he made about stormy daniels. >> when you look at stormy daniels, i know donald trump -- >> let's respect her. >> look at his three wives, right. beautiful women, classy women. women of great substance. stormy daniels? explain to me how she could be damaged. she has no reputation. if you're going to sell your body for money, you just don't have a reputation. >> cnn's chief political correspondent dana bash spoke to giuliani and she joins me now. what did he tell you. >> reporter: first of all, just on the broader question of what he is talking about vis-a-vis women who in his words, sell their body, but obviously stormy daniels is a porn film actress,
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don't have credibility, i asked him about the notion that might be an antiquated point of view about the credibility of women just because of what they do for a living, even if it is something like being in porn films and on that he said, the following. he said, if you're a feminist and you support the porn industry, you should turn in your credentials. that basically being about the fact that, you know, he said that in his day, feminists said that they believed that the porn industry was demeaning to women and he says he stands by that view. then there's the broader question about stormy daniels's credibility. he's not the president's lawyer on the stormy daniels' case. he was brought in to deal with russia on the stormy daniels' issue he was asked while he was in israel, he's still in israel
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at that forum about whether or not he thought stormy daniels has credibility and that is what got this whole ball rolling. on that issue he said the following to me, standing by the fact that he said she doesn't have credibility. if you're involved in a sort of slimy business that says something about you, says something about how far you'll go to make money. he went on to say, our real point about her is that she's not just generally uncredible, she's uncredible from the point of view of wanting to get money. she's a con artist. no change in what he said, didn't misspeak. doubled down on the points that he was making about stormy daniels and about the fact that he doesn't believe she has credibility because of what she does for a living. >> he is a lawyer i will point out as someone who doesn't really maybe have a leg to stand on. his profession isn't always smiled upon either, dana bash.
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very interesting conversation that you had with him. we do appreciate it. still ahead, no love lost here. an ex-fox news analyst unleashes on the network and sean hannity will have a stunning interview next. ♪ south l.a. is very medically underserved. when the old hospital closed people in the community lived with untreated health problems for years. so, with the county's help we built a new hospital from the ground up and having citi as an early investor worked as a signal to others to invest. with citi's help we built a wonderful maternity ward
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a place with 24-hour valet service... and upholstery classes. a place where seniors get the care they need in the comfort of home. home instead senior care. anderson cooper interviewing former fox news military analyst ralph peters. he quit his job with fox months ago calling it a propaganda machine citing a cozy relationship with president trump and here's his first on camera interview since leaving the network. >> this so-called spygate conspiracy theory, it wasn't just the president pushing the narrative and his allies, it was also fox news. they talk about a witch hunt. i know you believe the witch hunt is actually against robert mueller and it's being led by fox news. >> yes, indeed i do. robert mueller is as noble and i
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use that word carefully, as noble a public servant as you will find and the assaults upon his character and upon his practices, upon his investigation just betray our fundamental principals. >> in the email that you sent your colleagues at fox news back in march when you told them you weren't renewing your contract, you said and i quote, fox news is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. how much damage do you believe they've done to this country and the institutions that uphold the law? >> i think they're doing a great deal of damage still. we won't know how bad for years to come when we see the ultimate results. anderson, for years, i was glad to be associated with fox. it was a legitimate conservative and libertarian outlet. and a necessary one, but with the rise of donald trump, fox did become a destructive propaganda machine and i don't do propaganda for anyone.
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and frankly, as a former military officer, you took an oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states and i saw in my view, fox, particularly the primetime hosts attacking our constitutional order, the rule of law, the justice department, the fbi, robert mueller and the intelligence agencies and they're doing it for ratings and profit and they're doing it knowingly in my view, doing a grave, grave disservice to our country. >> do you think some of the hosts in primetime, do you think they believe the stuff they're saying about the deep state, what they're saying about the department of justice and the fbi? >> i suspect sean hannity really believes it. the others are smarter. they know what they're doing. it's -- i want to just cry out and say, how can you do this? how can you lie to our country? how can you knowingly attack our
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constitution, the bedrock of our system of government, the bedrock of our country and when you go after the constitution, you best beware, you are doing phenomenal immeasurable damage. >> do you think we're heading towards a constitutional crisis? >> i think we're in a constitutional crisis right now. barring unforeseen circumstances, either with impeachment or before the supreme court or both. but when you have a president who believes he is above the law, who does not understand our system of government, does not respect our system of government and willingly subverts or system of government, you've got a constitutional crisis. anderson, when the founding fathers in the declaration of independence wrote that all men are created equally, they knew they were not all born with the same good looks or the same intelligence or even the same privileges or strengths and
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talents. they meant we are all equal before the law, no man is above it, no man falls below it. our president seems to genuinely believe that he is above the law and that's -- this is a situation we haven't been faced with before this administration. even senator joseph mccarthy in his witch hunt days never directly attacked the constitution. this is utterly unprecedented. >> you've referred to it as a cult of trump. >> i lot of trump supporters are so embarrassed by how its all turned out that they just cling to him. they won't let any facts penetrate their reality. i've been startled by relatively well-educated people who still insisted that trump can do no wrong, that he's some sort of messiah and i part company with their views. >> you actually trained in russian studies and the russian language, you have first hand experience with how russia intelligence operates, do you
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believe that vladimir putin has some kind of grip on president trump? >> i am convinced that vladimir putin has a grip on president trump and anderson, when i first learned of the steele dossier, it just rang true to me because that's how the russians do things and before he became a presidential candidate, donald trump was the perfect target for russian intelligence. here's someone who has no self-control, a sense of sexual entitlement and intermittent financial crisis. that's made to order for seduction by russian intelligence. i may be wrong, i hope i'm wrong. i hope putin doesn't have a grip on him. the dossier rings true. i think in the future, will look back on the much maligned christopher steele who took that dossier to the fbi as somewhat of a hero. i hope i am wrong. when you look at trump's
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behavioral patterns, his unwillingness ever to criticize vladimir putin, his unwillingness to create problems with russia even though as he attacks nato, disrupts relations with the eu, how can you not draw the conclusions that donald trump, the president of the united states, is frightened of vladimir putin and his grip? >> so for you the mueller investigation is critical, it moving forward, it being allowed time to complete? >> without exaggeration, the mueller investigation is the most important of my lifetime and i am 66 years old. i lived through watergate. this -- anderson, it's about a fundamental assault on the constitution by the president of the united states and his pal dins. let's discuss this now with
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media correspondent brian stelter. you heard him say that fox is doing a great deal of damage to viewers, that its turned into a propaganda machine. is this different under a trump presidency than before as peter certainly feels it is? >> he certainly does. many other people who watch fox and see how the mueller probe is being attacked every day by hosts like hannity, they feel the way colonel peters does. what's extraordinary is he was actually an insider. he was someone there at fox for many years. he's not some liberal commentator. this is a staunch conservative analyst who worked at fox for years, he actually got in hot water in the past for being so harshly critical of president obama but he was also a critic of trump and he felt that he didn't fit in any more at trump. he felt he had to leave, so he left in march with a blistering letter now he's using even stronger language to describe
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fox and saying that its hurting the country. i think that's remarkable. you have some other people inside fox, inside the parent company, some of the folks that make tv shows for fox that have concerns about fox news. here's a guy that actually sat next to hannity and the other hosts and he's saying that fox is doing damage. >> and that their disingenuous, at least some of his former colleagues are. he said that fox is propagating claims of the mueller investigation being a witch hunt, but that actually most don't believe their own attacks on the doj and the fbi. >> i was really struck by that as well. i reached out to fox news for comment on this new interview. the network is sticking with what it says a couple months ago. peters is using his opinions as a weapon. they are proud of all the hosts in primetime, like sean hannity. peter's larger point is really important. it's something that's happening every single day. it's a daily attack against the mueller investigation and other attempts to get to the bottom of
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russia's attack on america. every single day the hannitys of the world are trying to tear down that probe and prop up trump. it's an alternative universe of information that the president benefits from and learns from and is informed by and >> brian stelter, thank you for that report. >> now that alice johnson is out of prison what are her plans? we hear from the woman who sentenced the president commuted next. hi, we're regular guys. and believe us; we don't want this-- or this for father's day. we want something awesome! (man) man crates has reinvented gifting with handpicked gear and diy projects guys will love. (second man) most gifts come sealed in a wooden crate with a crowbar. (third man) man crates! it's more than a gift; it's an experience you'll never forget. make his day this father's day. go to mancrates.com/tv for 10% off the perfect father's day gift.
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this morning, president trump is sending well wishes to alice johnson, the woman whose prison sentence he commuted.
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tweeting, good luck to alice johnson, have a wonderful life. johnson was in prison for 21 years, serving a life sentence as a first time nonviolent drug offender. kim kardashian of all people pleaded her case before her release, going to the white house for that. and cnn correspondent nick valencia is following this in memphis, tennessee. hi, nick. >> reporter: 24 hours ago alice johnson was in prison. today she's a free woman. she said she was looking out the window, looking at all the trees, she called it the best day of her leetcife. as happy as her family is, there is a serious effort by her family to fight for prison reform. it was a short time ago that alice johnson caught up with cnn talking about just that. >> thank you, president trump, for really seeing me. not just looking at some data about my crime, but actually looking at the person who i have
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become now and having faith that i deserved a second chance in life. my plan is also to work hard on helping to change some of these laws, something has to happen and i believe that what has already begun is a good first step with prison reform. so i'm happy to see that moving forward. >> reporter: now, johnson was convicted and sentenced to life without parole back in 1996 for facilitating communications in a cocaine operatin. she said she admits to making a mistake, she was hard up for cash and had a series of unfortunate events in her life that led her to getting involved with those people. i asked her what she would say to the skeptics in america now and across the world, that questioned the merits of her pardon. she told me that everyone deserves a second chance. brianna? >> all right, nick, thank you so much for that report. countdown to the showdown. the president meeting with some of our top allies after hitting them with tariffs and a new report the president is not looking forward to it.
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what all is in this deal, christine? and why is it so controversial? >> reporter: so the deal is to keep the chinese state-controlled zte in business. it was reached just hours ago between china and the u.s. with a big fine and american supervision. a billion dollar fine, $400 million in an escrow account as a deterrent and an entirely new board of directors and new management within 30 days. and then this, something i have never seen before, an american chosen compliance team embedded in the chinese company. the commerce secretary is hailing this as the first time a major foreign company will have on the ground oversight to make sure it stays in compliance with u.s. export control rules and doesn't cheat. so why does it need a baby-sitter? well, brianna, zte violated u.s. sanctions, sold products to iran and north korea, got caught, was fined, and then the company lied about punishing the violators. on top of that, you mentioned the national security concerns. experts in the u.s. and britain have warned zt

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