Trump Posed As His Own Publicist; Russia Accused of State-Run Olympic Doping; Anti-Trump Dating Site.
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN HOST (voice-over): Ahead at the INTERNATIONAL DESK -- a new, nicer era for Trump and the Republican Party. Russian Olympic athletes under scrutiny again on charges of doping. And miners in South Africa say their work is costing them their lives.</s>CURNOW: Hi, there, everyone. Welcome, I'm Robyn Curnow. When you run for U.S. president, your past is put under the microscope and it's happening right now to Donald Trump. Today's "Washington Post" has an attention-grabbing headline that claims Trump once masqueraded as a publicist to brag about himself. The story says Trump used the names "John Miller" and "John Barron" in phone calls to reporters from the 1970s through the 1990s. Trump denied it this morning. But listen now to a recording of one of those phone calls and decide for yourself.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your position there? "</s>JOHN MILLER": Well, I'm sort of handling PR because he gets so much of it. And frankly, I mean, I could tell you off the record. Until I get to know you, off the record, I can tell you that he didn't care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What kind of comment is coming from, you know, your agency or from Donald? "</s>MILLER": Well, it just that he really decided that he wasn't, you know, he didn't want to make any commitment. He didn't want to make a commitment.</s>CURNOW: Well, I want to bring in Susan del Percio from our New York bureau. She's a Republican strategist. You've heard that. Mr. Trump says it's not him. Even if it is him, his argument is, is that it happened 20, 30 years ago. So what's -- why does that matter? But that's the point. He's constantly bringing up skeletons in the closets of the Clintons from decades ago.</s>SUSAN DEL PERCIO, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: That's a really good point. And what Donald Trump will say is I wasn't a politician then and that I shouldn't be judged on those things. But he has clearly said he has used the name "John Barron" under oath when he was brought into court. So we know he's used those names before.</s>CURNOW: We know his one youngest son is named as Barron as well.</s>DEL PERCIO: Yes. So there's been some talk if he has a little fascination with the name Barron. But putting that aside, it really won't matter too much to his supporters right now. That's just another thing Donald Trump did and he may even get more support for it because it was a way of deceiving the media, which he so often likes to attack.</s>CURNOW: Well, let's talk about that. We also know this is just one thing. We also know in the last 24 hours or so that his former butler has come out ranting about killing the president. I want to hopefully bring up the quote that he put on Facebook. "Obama should have been taken out by a military and shot as an enemy agent in his first term." Now Trump's former butler actually admits to CNN that he did write this but he clarified. He actually said the president should have been hanged. How does Mr. Trump and those associated with him get away with saying these kinds of things? I mean, anyone else would have been leveled, flattened if they were ever a candidate and came out with this kind of stuff.</s>DEL PERCIO: And that's a really good point. I mean I believe the butler worked for him last in 2009. So as long as Mr. Trump denounces what he said that's one thing. But Donald Trump as a candidate for president is not being judged the way other politicians are judged. He's being judged as a celebrity and a businessman. And that's how come he doesn't -- and he gets scrutiny but he doesn't respond to it the same way because he isn't a politician. And he just shrugs it off and he's actually happy people are talking about the fact that he had a butler or that, you know, what he had said, pretended to be his own PR person when it came to his lovelife.</s>CURNOW: And it's important to note here that Donald Trump's campaign have denied, disavowed themselves, was the word they used, from the comments made by his former butler. They did that very quickly and they used the word "disavow." Now if you remember, a few months ago, there was huge controversy when Mr. Trump really took a long time to disavow David Duke, who is aligned with the Ku Klux Klan. So again, these examples of how and when he chooses to support somebody and the language he doesn't or does use and the timing -- many, you know, who watch him would say that, you know, this -- there's a hypocrisy here. But as you say, his voters don't seem to mind.</s>DEL PERCIO: Right. And he did -- the statement with the Ku Klux Klan was very interesting at the timing of it, it was before the South Carolina primary, where I think he may have thought it wouldn't be the worst thing if people thought that about him, that he had that support. Then he slowly disavowed it. At least now it looks like Candidate --</s>DEL PERCIO: -- Trump is learning something and disavowed the statement immediately.</s>CURNOW: Learning something. Learning perhaps how to, you know, make the most of the message that needs to be put out at that very moment. And it seems like he's been honing the way to manipulate the media since the 1970s, since he allegedly, you know, campaigned and was PR for himself. Tell us about Paul Ryan. You were part of a movement that wanted the Speaker as an alternative --</s>DEL PERCIO: Yes.</s>CURNOW: -- to Mr. Trump. What do you make of Paul Ryan's position now? Do you think yesterday he conceded too much? Do you still think that the Republican Party needs to really push back harder against Mr. Trump?</s>DEL PERCIO: I think the meeting went very well for both parties, for Mr. Trump and Speaker Ryan. don't forget Speaker Ryan came into power under very difficult times. The Republican Party in the House of Representatives was already fractured. And he went in there saying I will bring everyone together. And now his conference is made up of Never Trump people, Always Trump people and Maybe Trump people. So he has to be able to go back to them after each of these meetings and say, this is what's come out of it. And I think he's trying to build a conciliatory group there that they can find some issues to get behind Mr. Trump on and others that they will be able to walk away from him on.</s>CURNOW: OK, Susan, thank you so much for your perspective. Thanks for joining us.</s>DEL PERCIO: Thank you.</s>CURNOW: Well, coming up in a few minutes I'll talk to "Washington Post" columnist Dana Milbank. Like a lot of pundits, he underestimated Donald Trump's political aspirations and had to eat his own words -- literally. You'll want to join us for that one. We're just weeks away from the opening of the Olympic Games in Rio and now shocking new allegations against Russia that could put more than a dozen medals from the Winter Games at risk. So just how far are athletes and even countries willing to go to bring home the gold? Let's turn to our team; Matthew Chance is in Moscow; Alex Thomas is in London. Coming to you, Alex, in just a moment. Matthew, tell us about these insider details that have been reported and the extent of this program, this alleged program?</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. So this is details that have emerged in "The New York Times," an interview with the former chief, the anti-doping chief here in Russia, Grigory Rodchenkov. He's been fired from his post after the allegations, after the details of doping first emerged. He fled to the United States. He did this interview with a documentary maker, in which he described a very detailed program during the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games, where dozens of athletes, including at least 15 medal winners, engaged in doping, actually during the games. And he gave great, specific detail as to how this was achieved. For their part, the Russians have so far categorically denied this. The sports minister has gone on the record, saying that this was a complete shock but also casting doubt on the credibility of Mr. Rodchenkov, saying that basically he was fired from his post and therefore he could have ulterior motives. But within the past hour, there's been a news conference as well by two of the -- given by two of the athletes who were implicated in the allegations. Alexander Legkov is a cross-country skier; he called these claims "nonsense" and "slanderous." Another athlete, Alexander Zubkov, who heads the bobsled team in Russia's Olympic team, also said that as well, basically denied these allegations, said they were all clean and they won their medals absolutely fairly. So, yes, the plot thickens yet more when it comes to Russia's dealings with illegal substances in athletics.</s>CURNOW: OK, Matthew, thanks for that. And, Alex, so what does this mean for the Summer Olympics coming up?</s>ALEX THOMAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We know that, as things stand, Russia's track and field athletes, Robyn, are already banned from competition. This is after Russia's anti-doping agency was disbanded last year, as Matthew hinted, Rodchenkov was the man whose job suffered because of that. This is all down to allegations going back more than a year about the state-sponsored doping program in Russia. Of course, Rodchenkov's allegations in "The New York Times" newspaper just makes it even more specific, Robyn, a generalized program with doping, it was specifically targeted, according to him, at those Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. But Russia's in the process of trying to prove that it can get its anti- doping program back on track and satisfy the IAAF, which is track and field's governing body, and get them to sign off on Russia competing at the Rio Olympics. If they don't, it will just be the track and field athletes not going; athletes from other sports in Russia --</s>THOMAS: -- will be able to compete in Rio, we believe. And a meeting to decide whether or not they are going to go at all will happen next month. The really worrying thing for Russia as well as "The New York Times" allegations is that in the meantime, since their own anti-doping agency was disbanded, anti-doping officers from the United Kingdom have been asked by the international sporting community to go and conduct the drug tests in Russia. And they say they've been having huge trouble. And the number of tests being conducted has plummeted massively. And if they can't conduct tests and prove that Russian athletes are clean, Russia's going to have a really tough time proving they should be allowed to compete at Rio 2016.</s>CURNOW: Yes. And you wonder what folks who won silver and bronze at the Sochi Olympics are feeling and how that is going to impact on discussions going forward. Thanks to both of you, Matt, Alex, appreciate it. Moving on, Hezbollah said its top commander fighting in Syria has been killed in an explosion near the airport in Damascus. The Lebanese militant group supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad and has dispatched thousands of its fighters to Syria. Meanwhile, peace talks are set to resume next week in Vienna. Our Fred Pleitgen has the latest from Syria.</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As these new Syria talks move ever closer, of course set to begin next Tuesday, it appears as though there are ever more obstacles in the way for trying to achieve any sort of headway toward a political solution. The Syrian government, in the form of its information minister, telling CNN that one of the key demands made by the opposition, which is that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have to step down at the end of any transitional process, the Syrian government now saying they not only think that will not happen but they flat-out reject those demands. There's not even going to be any sort of negotiations in that direction, so certainly another big obstacle there. At the same time, the fighting is flaring up here in Syria again as well especially in the Aleppo area, where there is renewed fighting after a cessation of hostility that was in place for several days now, at least brought some quiet to the people there, has not been renewed and the fighting beginning again there. Also a high-level loss for Hezbollah, which is fighting on the side of the Syrian government, of the pro-Assad forces. One of their key senior leaders here in this country, Mustafa Badreddine, was apparently killed last week near the Damascus airport. He played a key role in Hezbollah for years and in 2005 he was indicted by a U.N.-backed tribunal for his alleged role in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in Lebanon. He's also on a U.S. terrorism list for his role in getting Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon to right here into Syria to then fight on behalf of the Syrian government. Again, at this point in time, many Syrians are saying they want some sort of political solution to this crisis. Folks that we're speaking to say, of course, they're looking towards next Tuesday when those talks are set to resume and they also are quite critical of the international community because they feel that too little headway is being made, that there still are too many problems in the way and they don't believe that the partners who are involved are doing enough to solve them -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Damascus.</s>CURNOW: Thanks to Fred there in Syria. Coming up, South African court clears the way for thousands to sue the country's lucrative gold industry. We'll tell you why, live from Johannesburg. And a controversial auction begins: why the man who shot Trayvon Martin is now selling the gun he used to do it.