Spending Bill Does Not Address DACA Dilemma; Ex-Playmate Speaks about Affair with Trump
HOWELL: Coast to coast and live around the world, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm George Howell.</s>ALLEN: I'm Natalie Allen. Thanks for saying with us. Here are our top stories.</s>HOWELL: The government has avoided a shutdown, at least until October, after President Donald Trump signed into law a massive spending bill to keep federal agencies up and running, emphasis on massive here because the bill is a 2,200-page monster.</s>ALLEN: You wonder how many in Washington read it. It details $1.3 trillion of government spending. Mr. Trump had threatened to veto it just before signing it the president made this promise.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It's only hours old. Some people don't even know what -- $1.3 trillion.</s>ALLEN: Despite the president's misgivings, a large increase in military spending won him over. He also received $1.6 billion for border security.</s>HOWELL: But the bill does not address the dilemma of so-called DREAMers. Their protection from deportation was taken away by President Trump last year leaving them in limbo. Yet the president said Democrats were to blame. Listen.</s>TRUMP: DACA recipients have been treated extremely badly by the Democrats. We wanted to include DACA. We wanted to have them in this bill. 800,000 people. And actually it could even be more. And we wanted to include DACA in this bill. The Democrats would not do it. They would not do it.</s>HOWELL: The Trump administration is once again trying to block transgender people from serving in the United States military. Last year an all-out ban against transgender persons was blocked in federal court. The new policy is directed at those who require surgery or medication specific to being transgender.</s>ALLEN: Here is part of the White House statement. "Transgender persons with a history of diagnosis of gender dysphoria, individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery, are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances."</s>HOWELL: No doubt, fair to say this is almost certain to spark another legal battle in the courts. The American Civil Liberties Union immediately denounced it as "reckless and unconstitutional."</s>ALLEN: Stormy Daniels' attorney says he has proof his client had a sexual affair with Donald Trump. He offered an intriguing hint at what that is. Daniels, a porn actress, is suing the president --</s>ALLEN: -- over a non-disclosure agreement she says is void. Mr. Trump denies an affair took place.</s>HOWELL: But then Daniels' attorney tweeted this image, an image of a disk. He didn't say what that disk contains. But read the tweet's caption, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is this worth?"</s>MICHAEL AVENATTI, STORMY DANIELS' ATTORNEY: That DVD contains evidence substantiating the relationship and the tweet is a warning shot. I want to be really clear about this. It is a warning shot. And it is a warning shot to Michael Cohen and anyone else associated with President Trump, that they'd better be very, very careful after Sunday night, relating to what they say about my client and what spin or lies they attempt to tell the American people.</s>HOWELL: That is the attorney for Stormy Daniels. And a former "Playboy" model is speaking out about her alleged 10-month affair with the president. He denies this as well.</s>ALLEN: Karen McDougal is suing the publisher of the "National Enquirer" tabloid, which she says bought her story just to kill it, thereby protecting the candidacy of Donald Trump. Her attorney calls it collusion.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to litigate and do what we need to do get to the bottom to the extent to which there was collusion between this quarter-billion dollar company that's owned by a personal friend of Mr. Trump, a lawyer that, not coincidentally, represented the players here, who are negotiating with Trump people and Michael Cohen.</s>ALLEN: Let's talk more about the developments in Washington, D.C., involving the president. Many things to discuss. Amy Greene is a researcher of U.S. political science and author of "America after Obama." She is live for us in Paris. Amy, good to see you, thanks for being with us. You're a political scientist. I don't know where this issue comes up in your professional career. But we'll talk about the two women, who say that they had affairs with Donald Trump many years ago and they are giving interviews on the record this week. Will this be an issue that catches up with him in any significant way, do you think?</s>AMY GREENE, SCIENCES PO: Stormy Daniels and now I think Karen McDougal is a slow-burning issue for the president. We've been talking about this for a week now, about the fact that this just won't go away for the president. Clearly Stormy Daniels is not going away. She is not threatened by the president. She is not threatened by this non-disclosure agreement, which many experts have questioned the authority of it, suggesting that it amounts effectively to a gag order. And so essentially you have this person, who is absolutely not afraid to persist, to continue to fight this battle in court, taking the risk that the judge might force her back into private arbitration but also with the potential victory from her of having this open to a public disclosure, you know, process. And so that could mean naming defendants, naming her that her party sees as responsible for this, potentially deposing the president. So this week has been a particularly whirlwind week in a series of whirlwind weeks for Washington. But this seems to be the slow-burning issue that isn't going away very quickly. At this point, I'm not sure that many people in the United States and public opinion actually doubt that this affair happened. But the legal ramifications of it are certainly not likely to go away anytime soon.</s>ALLEN: Right. He has been very quiet over it. No tweets, no comment, and that's not characteristic. But let's move on to the next issue and that is the revolving door inside this White House. He is bringing in John Bolton as the next national security adviser to the president. The reaction in Washington has been swift. He is considered a dangerous person for this job because of his positions he's had in the past on Iran and North Korea. What do you think about Bolton being seated next to this U.S. president?</s>GREENE: This is a person who was questioned by the Republican Party as far back ago as 2005, when George W. Bush was seeking to nominate him, and somebody who inspires a degree of fear in terms of the opinion and proximity he will have to the president. Obviously as national security adviser, he is supposed to be the fair broker, filtering information coming in from the different defense and intelligence agencies, presenting to the president a host of options and function of that intelligence. So really this has to be a firewall for the president and, again, someone who will give him the honest truth about any number of issues but pulling from, again, the expertise of different agencies. One of the doubts, even the Republican Party mentioned and wrote about this more than a decade ago, is John Bolton's tendency to distort facts in order to paint a more bellicose picture of reality so as to prepare either leadership or the American people for --</s>GREENE: -- military conflict. So essentially what you have is President Trump, you know, filling his foreign policy team -- and you can talk about Pompeo and Haspel as well, with people who really are going away from what President Trump mentioned during his candidacy, which was less American interventionism. And what you have is a purely hawkish team. So going into these talks with North Korea, you can ask yourself the question, who is the president bringing along with him? And if you have advisers who are particularly hawkish toward North Korea, John Bolton called for a strike against North Korea before it had the opportunity to develop fully its nuclear capacities, you can wonder what message the president is sending. But in any case, one thing that we might be able to conclude or to deduce is that the president is effectively beginning now to surround himself with like-minded people rather than going through the motions of surrounding himself with fair brokers. You can say that he has more ideological compatible advisers and secretaries around him.</s>ALLEN: You mentioned North Korea. What will this mean to the upcoming talks having Bolton in the picture? We'll wait and see. Amy Greene, we appreciate your analysis. Thank you for joining us.</s>GREENE: Thank you, Natalie.</s>HOWELL: CNN travels along with the U.S. Navy as they prepare for joint military exercises with South Korea. We'll have a look inside -- aboard, rather, the U.S.S. Wasp -- ahead.</s>ALLEN: Plus it's one of the most important ocean organisms you've never heard of. Why a tiny creature living in the waters off Antarctica is so vital to the environment. Our Arwa Damon reports -- coming up.