Zinke Says Konnichiwa At Hearing Using Wrong Phrase; No South or North Korea Envoys as Trump-Kim Jung-On Meeting Looms
BALDWIN: Interior Secretary Zinke up on Capitol Hill with these cringe worthy comments to this Congresswoman. The Hawaiian lawmaker was telling Zinke about her grandfather's detention in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. She wanted to make sure money would be set aside to preserve the historic site and this is how Secretary Zinke responded.</s>REP. COLLEEN HANABUSA, (D) HAWAII: I believe that it is essential that we, as a nation, recognize our darkest moments so that we don't have them repeat again. So, Mr. Secretary I would like to know, even with the President zeroing it out are you committed to continue the grant programs that are identified, I believe, as the Japanese- American Confinement Sites Grants Program which were funded in 2017, will we see it funded again in 2018?</s>RYAN ZINKE, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Oh, Konnichiwa.</s>HANABUSA: I think it's still Ohayogozaimasu but that's OK.</s>BALDWIN: There was a woman, but you couldn't see it, but her jaw just went what? Congresswoman Hanabusa corrected Zinke's greeting for good morning he gave the traditional greeting for good afternoon. Nevertheless, lawmakers, Japanese Americans view the timing of the comment as incredibly insensitive. So, let's chat this over with David Sanger and other issues. David singer is our CNN political and national security analyst, in the national security correspondent for the "New York Times." I what set clip over a couple times now and to me it's like file this under "what was he thinking."</s>DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. It is sort of hard to figure out, Brooke. I spent six years in Japan as a "Times" correspondent. And had he been in Japan in a Japanese context, it would have maybe made sense because he would've shown that he was trying to speak the language. But he's talking to Americans here. The fact that they're Japanese- Americans is probably less central to this conversation that they are Americans and raising a very critical question, which is, what is the commitment to building some memorials to what was one of the darkest moments, I think most people would agree, in the American civil liberties history, the decision to go confine and intern actual American citizens. And so, it did seem to me that it was flip, at best and maybe a little tone deaf at very worst.</s>BALDWIN: Yes. Let's move to your reporting in the "Times" about these cyber attacks plotted by Russians on the U.S. power grid and nuclear air and water facilities. How they could have sabotaged or shot power plants off at will. Reading your piece, how serious is this threat?</s>SANGER: It's a pretty serious threat. But what's really interesting here, Brooke, if you back off and look at the timing. So, the first intrusions into American power plants here of this particular attack -- obviously there have been other Russian attacks, was at the end of 2015. What else was going on at that time? Other Russian groups were going into the Democratic National Committee. We had different probably uncoordinated attacks underway simultaneously. Second, to go put these implants into American power systems and to do them in a way that the Russians would have access to basically the control panels of the systems remotely. Now they didn't do what they did in Ukraine. In Ukraine in 2015 around the same time they turned off the lights. Here, it wasn't used. And there are some experts I've spoken to who think that in fact, the Russians wanted to be discovered because what they wanted to do was send a message that if we ever got into a serious conflict with them, they were already inside our system and could flip the switch at will.</s>BALDWIN: They're big on sending a message, aren't they, with the nerve agent in England and we know the only place I could've made that. And in this case as well. What about North Korea? The news this week, Tillerson is out. We have an outgoing Secretary of State. You still don't have the South Korean ambassador. No North Korean special envoy and it is Ivanka Trump, David, who is meeting with the South Korean envoy. This is happening just a month or so-ish we're hearing now end of May for this potential Kim Jong-un/Trump meeting. How is the U.S. possibly ready for this meeting of two men?</s>ZINKE: I can't imagine that we are. Because Secretary of State Tillerson thought until last Sunday that he was conducting this negotiation himself. He was the one who was out putting the lines out as we used to put it, to the North Koreans in an effort to work toward a diplomatic solution. And three days after it looks like that is beginning to be set up, he gets fired. Mike Pompeo, designee for Secretary of State is not likely to be confirmed for another month, month and a half probably, if he gets confirmed. We assume that he will. As you say there is no ambassador to South Korea. There is no North Korea special envoy in the State Department. And this kind of meeting takes a lot of preparation unless the president believes that he is so confident here's all negotiating skills that he can just sort of going there and wing it with Kim Jong- un and try to set an agreement in principle. And leave it to others to sort out the details later on. My guess is given the history of North Korea negotiations, that's probably a prescription for something going wrong along the way.</s>BALDWIN: Let hope we never have to say the sentence winging it and Kim Jong-un in the same breath ever again, David Sanger. Thank you so much. We'll see when this happens, if this happens, according to the White House. Good to see you. Thank you.</s>SANGER: Thank you, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Coming up next here, he wrote an e-mail promising to engineer a Trump presidency. A now a Russian-born businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow deal is speaking out. What he says Trump once asked him to do and his response to that e-mail exchange with Trump attorney Michael Cohen just ahead.