Trump Wraps Up U.K. Visit, Walks Back Comments on Trade; Thousands Protest Trump's Visit To London; GOP Lawmakers Oppose Trump's Tariffs on Mexico
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The curious world of Donald Trump. But these protests never happened, these protesters never existed but in their place thousands of flag-waving supporters no one else ever saw. Republican revolt: after more than two years of rolling over on almost every issue, Republican lawmakers may be willing to stand up to President Trump and block his plan to impose tariffs on Mexico. And George Pell in court in Melbourne, Australia, lawyers arguing the convicted child sex abuser didn't get a fair trial. Hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world. Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.</s>VAUSE: In Trumpian language, the U.S. president is promising a phenomenal post-Brexit trade deal with tremendous potential with Britain. But the reality may be quite different, especially after President Trump said Britain's National Health Service should be part of the deal, sparking an immediate backlash. He walked back those comments a few hours later. He was also offering praise for prime minister Theresa May and for her handling of Brexit, a notable reversal of previous criticisms.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would think that it will happen and it probably should happen. This is a great, great country and it wants its own identity. It wants to have its own borders. It wants to run its own affairs. This is a very, very special place and I think it deserves a special place. And I thought maybe for that reason and for others but that reason, it was going to happen. Yes, I think it will happen. And I believe the prime minister has brought it to a very good point where something will take place in the not too distant future.</s>VAUSE: But when Donald Trump met with the Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, he said he was concerned about how long it was taking Britain to leave the E.U. President Trump will head to Portsmouth in a few hours for D-Day commemorations. Phil Black joins us now. First, these comments about the National Health Service. If the U.S. president is having to emphasize the benefits of this free trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K., then these comments at a news conference probably did more harm than good. Listen to what the president said.</s>TRUMP: When you're dealing on trade, everything is on the table. So NHS or anything else, a lot more than that. But everything will be on the table, absolutely, OK?</s>THERESA MAY, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: But the point about making trade deals is of course that both sides negotiate and come to an agreement about what should or should not be in that trade deal for the future.</s>VAUSE: Notable Theresa May jumped in at the end there. But the president got a do-over when he said it was off the table. But despite the walkback, those comments raising fears that the U.S. is simply out there to screw over Britain in any trade deal.</s>PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is a real fear and one you're going to hear a lot more about as Britain enters its post-Brexit future. When Britain leaves the European Union, it's going to have to negotiate a whole lot of new individual trade agreements with individual countries. And it wants to do that but there are concerns because trade agreements are about give and take and the worry is that, particularly when Britain is negotiating with bigger, more economically powerful countries, such as the United States, it will be forced to grant market access to products and services that it otherwise would not like to do so and might be politically sensitive here. And certainly the status of the National Health Service is hugely politically sensitive. The concern is that Britain would be forced to open the NHS up to American health providers in ways that people here would not be comfortable with. The NHS isn't the only concern. You hear a lot of talk about other, particularly agricultural goods; American chlorinated chicken seems to be a politically sensitive issue there in that sense as well. So all of these is very real fears. That said, Britain accepts there's a necessity to negotiate these trade deals. It wants to do it and has these concerns but the desire to get the deal done is -- overwhelms all of the fears at the moment. And that's a big part of why you're seeing Donald Trump honored in this way and the close relationship of the U.S. and Britain stressed through every event that we're seeing.</s>VAUSE: There is a special relationship between the U.K. and the United States. It's different for the U.K. to be negotiating with the United States, compared with the U.S. negotiating with China. There is expectation that the U.S. would be --</s>VAUSE: -- more of a partner than an adversary.</s>BLACK: True. I think there's significant truth to that. That said, free trade agreements, each country is simply out to operate in their national interest and to get the best possible result for their local industries. And I think the concern is still it would simply be the disparity, the imbalance in that sort of negotiation. Britain is a substantial economy but, obviously, compared to the United States, the U.S. economy power, its influence -- and there's a perception here -- and this is something that some people would be prepared to acknowledge and that's that Britain ultimately, once it leaves the European Union, is no longer part of the much larger trading block. It is a significantly smaller economic power. It has less influence and less leverage and the concern is that Britain, under those circumstances, would be muscled into accepting things that otherwise would simply not like to do.</s>VAUSE: I guess which is why there have been constant, sometimes subtle reminders at President Trump on the history of the U.K. and the U.S. alliance which was built during and after World War II. Listen to Theresa May's welcoming to Donald Trump on Tuesday.</s>MAY: For the past 2.5 years the president and I have had the duty and privilege of being the latest guardians of this precious and profound friendship between our countries. As with our predecessors, when we have faced threats to the security of our citizens and our allies, we have stood together and acted together.</s>VAUSE: Later today ceremonies will begin to honor Allied forces that took part in the D- Day invasion. There were calls not necessarily on Donald Trump but on those that fought because Trump is seen as such a divisive character. He sucks all the oxygen out of the room and that's going to be a lot easier said than done.</s>BLACK: Today you'll see a huge commemorative event in Portsmouth marking the 7th anniversary of the D-Day landing, military operation from World War II that went so far as to playing such a key role in the eventual outcome of the war. You'll have leaders from 15 countries in addition to the royal family and the British prime minister here. And one focus will be the veterans, the people that fought, honoring their courage and sacrifice and those that fell that day as well. But the other thing that you'll hear a lot about, too, will be the extraordinary international cooperation and coordination it took to plan and execute that particular operation. Some 14 countries were involved and millions of servicemen came to the U.K. in the lead-up to the invasion of Nazi occupied continental Europe. A lot of talk about how important and crucial that cooperation was in carrying that off. The subtext being the importance of that sort of cooperation today, not just between the U.S. and the U.K. but the broader international community as well.</s>VAUSE: Phil, thank you. We'll catch up with you next hour. Well, day one for Donald Trump was all about the pageantry. Day two was all about the protests. Tens of thousands took to the streets of London to demonstrate against his state visit as well as his policies. Numbers were down compared to Trump's visit last year. We have details now from CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Donald Trump said he saw love and admiration, in so many words, in the protests here. Certainly when he saw his convoy drive past this Parliament Square -- we think he was probably in the vehicle -- he would've heard the intense booing of this small contingent of maybe about 10,000 or so protesters in total who gathered up in Trafalgar Square for the main protest. Significantly smaller numbers than a year ago, no doubt about that, but the same message; again, what they say is xenophobia, Islamophobia of Donald Trump. A message of unity, in fact, expressed by the leading U.K. opposition politician, Jeremy Corbyn, who addressed that particular crowd. They weren't allowed down the main street, close enough to Downing Street to be up against its gate but it was certainly audible inside there. But I have to say, then it was the rain that did much of the job in terms of lessening the embarrassment potentially for Theresa May, the British prime minister, of this kind of protest here at the very heart of government. The numbers radically dropped and, in fact, we've seen really slowly people go home here and then eventually one or two pro-Trump supporters end up surrounded by anti-Trump protests and, on two occasions, taken away by police, they said, for their own protection. A large group over there, too, in fact, left, surrounded by anti-Trump protesters as well. But essentially in this political climate, frankly, whether who shouts loudest feels that they've won, it was the anti-Trump protests today who made the most amount of noise. Those here in support of the American --</s>WALSH (voice-over): -- president, probably really dozens in their numbers at best -- Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Central London.</s>VAUSE: Let's bring in CNN European affairs commentator Dominic Thomas. Here is Donald Trump's answer when asked about the thousands of protesters that turned out. Listen to this.</s>TRUMP: There were thousands of people cheering and then I heard that there was a protest. I said where's the protest? I don't see any protest. I did see a small protest today when I came, very small. So a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say. But you saw people waving the American flag and waving your flag. It was tremendous spirit and love. There was great love. There was an alliance.</s>VAUSE: The president had earlier talked about thousands of supporters that lined the streets. He was not leapfrogging from event to event in Marine One; he was traveling by motorcade. Here's what that scene looked like; not a flag, not a MAGA hat to be seen anywhere, just this giant inflatable Trump Baby in the distance. So what is the big concern here? A president that cannot see what's in front of him? Or the president that sees that which does not exist? One who is delusional?</s>DOMINIC THOMAS, CNN EUROPEAN AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: The one thing he's not leapfrogging from is one media network to the other. So if he's watching us live from London, we should thank him. The word delusional is the one that works. What is at the core is that your beliefs contradict reality. This is something that has defined his presidency, going back to counting the numbers at the inauguration. His entourage either shield him from reality or mirror back this alternative reality. The news networks he watches mirror back a kind of alternative reality. And whenever anything happens -- in this case we have the cameras and the police reports and the photographs of the demonstrations -- whenever that doesn't match up with his particular beliefs, what he thinks he has seen, he simply dismisses it as fake news. And this is obviously a major problem here.</s>VAUSE: There have been Anti-American protests have been in London before. During the Iraq War, George W. Bush was incredibly unpopular but he acknowledged that. He acknowledged the war was unpopular and he didn't have to travel from event to event to avoid protests. He addressed it and moved on.</s>THOMAS: Absolutely right. President Trump could have said, in comparison to the demonstrations in 2003, when George W. Bush visited London, these are minute in relation to that. At the time, Bush was visiting a prime minister, Tony Blair, with whom he was on the same page when it came to the question of conflict in Iraq. But he also said that he understood people would have different opinions and that he valued free speech. And he left it at that and provided a space for people to express different opinions on the issue of the war. That's something that President Trump is simply unwilling to do or too acknowledge.</s>VAUSE: There's free speech in the United States and free speech in the U.K. and free speech in Baghdad as well. That's a fair point to make. After saying the medical services would be part of a trade deal, it seems maybe somebody had a word with the president and he got a chance to set the record straight during an interview on morning television. Here's what he said.</s>TRUMP: I don't see it being on the table. Somebody asked me a question today and I say everything's up for negotiation because everything is. But I don't see that being -- that's something that I would not consider part of trade. That's not trade.</s>VAUSE: Over the weekend, the U.S. ambassador caused a huge uproar when he said the NHS would be part of a trade deal, at least on the table. The White House knew this was a controversial issue and knew how people would react and yet the president stumbled on this anyway. How much preparation did this guy do?</s>THOMAS: Well, in this particular case, no preparation because this is an absolutely enormous and divisive issue, all the misinformation about the NHS and how much it would cost and so on and so forth. This is also -- and everybody recognizes it -- an incredible post-Second World War success story, providing universal and free health care through taxation to U.K. residents. The Brexiteers are terrified about the implications of this. All they want is to deliver Brexit. As far as they're concerned, the future of the new Conservative Party relies on them delivering Brexit. The last thing they want is this perception that this argument that they made that they would become this strong sovereign and independent nation will end up being the 51st state of the United States, in which, of course, everything to do with the health care system, the influence of pharmaceutical companies and so on, will shape this debate. And it's clear that, either in his conversation with Boris Johnson or the with Nigel Farage conversation yesterday afternoon, he was asked to keep very quiet on this and, in fact, even backed down on this extraordinarily divisive issue.</s>VAUSE: Because what we have seen is the opposition leader has jumped on those initial comments made by the U.S. president. He tweeted, "Theresa May stood next to @realDonaldTrump as he said the NHS will be 'on the table' in a U.S. trade deal. And that's what Tory leadership contenders and Farage are lining up for the No Deal disaster capitalism plans they have. They all need to understand: our NHS is not for sale." This really seems to be a case of, with friends like Donald Trump, do you really need enemies?</s>THOMAS: Yes. This is absolutely the case. And of course the opposition are thinking long-term. Right now, all of this internal election for a new Conservative leader is somebody that will deliver Brexit. The big question they face is, can that leader then take them to a general election? It is unlikely that the Conservative Party in its new form can win a majority in the U.K. today. So all these people want is to deliver Brexit and if they can get to that point and leave all the rest down the road, they'll feel better off. But it's clear that Donald Trump's visit to the U.S. -- it's hard to see how it has helped anyone in that particular quest for the leadership and I think they'll be happy when he moves on to Portsmouth and Normandy over the next few days.</s>VAUSE: Dominic Thomas, good to see you. Catch up next hour.</s>THOMAS: Thank you.</s>VAUSE: Take a short break. Next up, President Trump's plan to slap tariffs on Mexico is being met with resistance from lawmakers within his own party. Also ahead, that cruise to Cuba is cancelled. The Trump administration placing new restrictions on U.S. travel to the island. What the government in Washington hopes to get out of pressuring Havana.