Trump Says "Spygate" Could be One of Biggest Political Scandals Ever; Kilauea Gushing Lava and Toxic Gas Three Weeks On
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST: I am Becky Anderson. You are watching CONNECT THE WORLD. A very warm welcome. He is North Korea summit hangs in the balance in a promised trade deal with China is hitting major snags. But Donald Trump's big focus it seems this morning is an unproven conspiracy that he has now dubbed "Spygate." U.S. president firing off -- yes, new tweets. Accusing the criminal deep state, in his words. His own FBI of engineering and unprecedented spy scandal as it looked into his associates ties with Russia. Mr. Trump is essentially changing the headlines from the Russia investigation to the investigators themselves. Claiming the FBI's use of confidential informant during the campaign amounts to a political conspiracy. We're going to break this down with White House reporter Stephen Collinson. Standing by in Seoul on the will they/won't they meet summit is Ivan Watson. Coming to you shortly, Ivan. Now Stephen, a political conspiracy, says Trump. He calls it "Spygate." Explain what is going on and whether he has a point at this point.</s>STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Becky, for all the unusual and unconventional happenings that have taken place in this presidency, this is barely believable even for President Trump. What we have is a President of the United States who is picking up a conspiracy theory that's not based in fact from his cheerleaders and polemicists and conservative media that there was a spy implanted by the FBI in his election campaign to thwart his election and turning it into a tool to attack the judicial and intelligence institutions of his own government and to try and undermine the Mueller probe. The President has tried all along to discredit the eventual findings of special counsel, Robert Mueller, into the question of election interference and whether there was collusion with Russia from among his campaign, but I think this is reaching a new intensity right now and it's quite something to see, you know, in a country that is the most important nation in the liberal democratic world to see a President undertaking this kind of behavior.</s>ANDERSON: Let me get back to this story. Hold your thought, as it were. Because I do want to just get to Ivan on this summit. Maybe he will, maybe he won't meet Kim Jong-un, that is. As we listen to what is going on in Washington, the rest of the world's attention, perhaps, if they care at all, and one hopes they do, would likely be on a much wider story of the North Korea summit that is due to be held June the 12th. What do we know about that at present, Ivan, and from Seoul's perspective, just how important is it that that meeting goes ahead?</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we've heard from the U.S. side is that the preparations are still under way, that hotel ballrooms are being looked at in Singapore for June 12th for when this potentially very historic meeting is scheduled to take place. But we know that North Korea has threatened to pull out last week complaining about joint U.S./South Korean air defense drills. And then we heard President Trump speaking along the South Korean President in the White House saying there was a quite very substantial chance that it won't work out. His new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has been much more optimistic, Becky, and he's been speaking to lawmakers in Congress in front of the House foreign affairs committee, and revealing a little bit more insight about his most recent 90-minute face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un. During which he said that he made it unambiguous the U.S. is expecting denuclearization from North Korea. Take a listen to what more he had to say about that exchange with the North Korean leader.</s>MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: In return he made it clear it was important to him that when that time came, when those objectives have been achieved that he in return would receive economic help from America in the form of private sector businesses, knowledge now know from others perhaps, contributions, foreign assistance and the like. And that he wanted security assurances from the world, the end of the status that sits between the South and North Korea, with the eventual goal of there being a peace treaty. Those were the objectives we discussed.</s>WATSON: And worth noting that President Trump while saying the meeting might not take place, he also dangled security guarantees to the North Korean leader. Remarkable, considering the U.S. President promising to keep the North Korean dictator safe -- Becky.</s>ANDERSON: Yes, he's giving Kim Jong-un a personal guarantee if Donald Trump says an agreement is reached. Let's have a listen.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will guarantee his safety. Yes, we will guarantee his safety. And we've talked about that from the beginning. He will be safe. He will be happy. His country will be rich. His country will be hard-working and very prosperous. They're very great people. They are hard-working great people.</s>ANDERSON: Ivan, some taking that to mean guaranteeing his safety for life. Your analysis?</s>WATSON: Well, I mean, it's a pledge, and the problem is that this is the same administration where the national security adviser was floating the Libya model. Which angered the North Koreans last week and kind of put the bump in the road in the possible Singapore summit. The North Koreans very aware that Muammar Gadhafi made a deal with the U.S. government to hand over his weapons of mass destruction program. And a decade later the U.S. turned on him and supported the same rebels who dragged him out of a gutter and shot him dead. So, the North Koreans do not like that comparison. The Trump administration has had to backtrack a little bit from that while also pulling out of a nuclear deal with Iran. So, a guarantee of safety to a dictator might not last as long as one administration if the last example of President Obama's Iran nuclear deal is any example -- Becky.</s>ANDERSON: Stephen, same question to you before we move back to what is going on in Washington specifically today. What do you make of that Trump guarantee and its scope, as it were?</s>COLLINSON: I think what it shows is the perils of jumping directly into a face-to-face summit between Donald Trumps and Kim Jong-un, before the administration has got its ducks in a row in terms of policy, and before even the president is fully familiar with all the issues. It seems that often President Trump is learning the complexity and the intricacies of this North Korean face-off that the United States has been having over 70 years as he goes along. So, it looks like what he meant to say is that North Korea would get security guarantees after a nuclear deal. That's fairly conventional. That could be a peace treaty, for example. But the way that he speaks and the lack of precision that he uses, that sort of then aligned with his desire to get Kim Jong-un to the table, and he's saying things like, well, he's going to be very happy. He's going to be very rich. So, exactly what the U.S. position is on all of these issues is unclear. As Ivan said, you've got John Bolton, the national security advisor, talking about the Libya model. You've got the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who's basically arguing that Kim has made a strategic choice and is a new generation of North Korean leaders and the old difficulties of dealing with North Korea don't apply. And you have the President who comes out every few days and says contradictory things sometimes in the same press op. So, it's very difficult to really settle on what the U.S. position is, and that's probably something that the North Koreans are struggling with, too.</s>ANDERSON: To both of you, thank you.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>ANDERSON: Let me get you to this breaking news. The State Department in the U.S. issuing a health alert in China after an American government employee there, reported symptoms which indicate a mild brain injury. Well, these symptoms include, quote, abnormal sensations of sound and pressure. Matt Rivers joining us now from Beijing with more on what we are learning. The U.S. Secretary of State just offering comments on this. Seemingly, at least, to put it as part of an emerging pattern it seems. Explain.</s>MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well we first found out about this here in China when the U.S. embassy sent out an e-mail, a health warning to U.S. citizens all over the country. Basically, saying that a government employee based in Guangzhou, it had some of those symptoms that you just described for months. Starting in late last year and going through April. And just last week, that employee back in the United States was diagnosed with this mild traumatic brain injury. And that got us interested because we've heard this kind of thing before, the symptoms, the diagnosis, that's similar to what happened in Cuba last year. Something the State Department is still trying to figure out. But at the time what they were saying is around two dozen different U.S. diplomats and their family members experienced some of the same symptoms you just described. Hearing things, abnormal sensations of sounds and pressure, having certain traumatic brain injuries. And so now, it appears we are seeing something similar and the State Department apparently agrees that there are similarities there. Let's listen to the Secretary of State just a short time ago.</s>POMPEO: We had an incident in Guangzhou that was that the medical indications are very similar and entirely consistent with the medical indications that have taken place to Americans working in Cuba. We are working to figure out what took place both in Havana and now in China as well. We've asked the Chinese for their assistance in doing that.</s>RIVERS: And so, there's a ton of confusion here on both sides of the world, Becky, in China, in Cuba. The State Department doesn't really know what's going on. They're not accusing the Chinese of perpetrating this, at least publicly. They said they've asked the Chinese for their help here, but still this is concerning enough that they are going to investigate what is going on. And whether they can come up with any sort of answer that would be more satisfying and conclusive than what they have been able to do in Cuba, that remains to be seen.</s>ANDERSON: Matt Rivers is in Beijing for you. Thanks, Matt. To Hawaii's Big Island where Mount Kilauea is still spewing toxic gas and chunks of searing lava into the sky. Look at this. You are looking and hearing what is going on live. The fire-breathing monster, that's only one way to explain it really, exploded again on Tuesday. The lava flow now threatening a geothermal power plant we are told. Officials are trying to prevent possible explosions by filling underground wells with cold water. Scott McLean has been on the ground now for days. He joins us once again from Pahoa in Hawaii. Tell us, what are you hearing about the very latest on what we see in these images?</s>SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure, Becky. Between the gas, the earthquakes and, of course, the lava itself there's no shortage of danger here on the southern part of the Big Island. The latest, you touched on it, it's the geothermal plant. Officials held a meeting with the community yesterday to try to calm some of the fears in this community. Essentially, they are saying that it is not an immediate threat for two reasons. They've managed to cap or at least neutralize all of those geothermal wells at this point, and the lava is two or three kilometers away from any potential danger there. So, for right now there is no real danger. But some of these fissures they continue to bubble up shooting high into the sky, others are actually slowing down. Like one fissure that caused an injury here at Kilauea. It flung a lava bomb at a gentleman named Darryl Clinton. We actually met him before this happened and we spoke to him afterwards as well. That lava bomb seemed to shatter part of his leg. He's got a rod in there. He'll be off his feet for quite some time, he's already had two surgeries and he'll probably need a couple of more. But he is in remarkably good spirits probably because he knows he got lucky. Listen.</s>MCLEAN: I wonder if you recognize the fact that had this of hit you somewhere else you might be dead?</s>DARRYL CLINTON, RESIDENT: Yes, I have thought about it a couple times and it just scares me to think about it. It could have also missed me and went between my legs, too. I think about that more. Wouldn't that have been nice?</s>MCLEAN: Here's what is more amazing about this gentleman, Becky, and that he was there protecting two houses that were close to one of these fissures, but they weren't even his, they belonged to friends of his. I asked if he regretted being there. He said, he regrets getting hurt but he doesn't regret protecting those houses. And to his credit after more than a week of near sleepless nights trying to put out fires at that house from these incoming lava bombs, those houses are still standing, though pretty banged up.</s>ANDERSON: Our man on the ground there. Those images absolutely remarkable and the impact they are having on people's lives. Thank you. Before we move on, let's take a current look at current lava flow. The rivers of fire have engulfed wide areas since the Kilauea volcano began erupting three weeks ago. Still to come tonight, we're going to take you to Ireland, a country divided over the issue of abortion and whether to legalize it. That is up next.