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CNN NEWSROOM

Kim Jong-un Vows to Shutter Nuclear Test Site; President Snubs Reporters, Holds Campaign Rally; New U.S. Secretary of State to Meet with Saudi King; White House Correspondents' Dinner; Stormy Daniels Lawsuit Delayed; Thousands Flee Conflict in Myanmar's Kachin State; How Do You Stop a Presidential Rant on Live TV? Aired 5-6a ET

Aired April 29, 2018 - 05:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A new era promising peace. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says he'll shut down his nuclear test site and talks of building trust with the United States.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Plus the U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo meets the Saudi king. Iran tops the agenda as the U.S. appears close to pulling out of the nuclear deal.

ALLEN (voice-over): Also this hour, comedian Michelle Wolf scorches President Trump for skipping out on the White House Correspondents' Dinner. While she did that, he was scorching the media as he likes to do.

Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Natalie Allen.

HOWELL (voice-over): And I'm George Howell. NEWSROOM starts right now.

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HOWELL: At 5:01 on the U.S. East Coast we start with these new developments on the Korean Peninsula, the North Korean leader putting forward a new timeline to denuclearize.

Kim Jong-un says his main nuclear test site will shut down next month and foreign experts and journalists will be invited to North Korea to ensure transparency of closure. All of this according to a South Korean official.

He was citing Mr. Kim from his landmark summit with the South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday.

ALLEN: The North Korean leader repeatedly had a lot more to say. For starters, he is literally pushing Pyongyang into the future. The time zone will be adjusted to sync with clocks in Seoul.

Also, despite all of the threats, Mr. Kim says he is not actually the kind of person to fire nuclear weapons at South Korea or the U.S. The overtures come ahead of another potential diplomatic breakthrough, Mr. Kim's summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. The U.S. president saying he's speaking with his South Korean counterpart about the meeting.

He also says talks with Mr. Kim could be just weeks away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll see how it goes. Again, whatever happens, happens. I may not work out. I leave. So we'll have hopeful a very successful negotiation and we'll be doing the world a big favor. Let's see how it goes. I think we'll do just fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: That is the president in the U.S. State of Michigan. Let's go live to South Korea, Paula Hancocks on the story this hour.

Paula, this news, these statements from the North Korean leader, walking back some of his past war rhetoric and a timeline to shut down the nuclear test site, this is in stark contrast to what we heard before.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: George, certainly the fact that he said he's not the sort of person to fire a nuclear weapon at the United States. To be fair, there were very few people that truly believed that, even if he had that complete capability, which most experts believe he is not quite there yet, that he wouldn't actually fire a nuclear weapon at the United States.

But the threats have certainly been there for many years. Just last year, he said he was going to annihilate Seoul and he talked about annihilating Washington. There have been extremely bellicose threats from the North Korean leader through state-run media.

Certainly this is a very different Kim Jong-un that we saw on Friday. And that's something I have heard from South Korea as well, how to reconcile the two Kim Jong-uns, the one you know from state-run media, from these threats, from insisting on the nuclear and missile testing, last year being the most intense level of testing we have seen in North Korea's history.

And then how do you reconcile that with the man you saw on Friday?

He was on smiles and embracing the leader of South Korea. So it's certainly a very new situation for many South Koreans. There is a certain level of relief that we are now talking about potential peace and denuclearization rather than the high threats on peninsula this time last year.

In fact, just about six months ago there were concerns about how high tensions were. But certainly there is a fair way to go beyond the headlines. The fact there's a timeline is more detail than we did have on Friday. The fact that this Punggye-ri nuclear site could be closed down and shut down, according to Kim Jong-un, through the Blue House, by May, that is something more specific than we have heard before -- George.

[05:05:00]

HOWELL: You mentioned reconciling the different Kim Jong-uns but also reconciling the many faces of the U.S. president Donald Trump.

How does the unpredictable nature of Mr. Trump play into these possible talks with the leader of North Korea?

HANCOCKS: Certainly what we have seen over the past few days and the reaction from Friday is there is a renewed sense of optimism. It is a cautious and skeptical optimism in the region but there is some optimism.

So I think there's hope among some experts that it would be difficult for the U.S. President Donald Trump not to own up to this meeting, as he has threatened over recent days. The U.S. president has given himself a get-out clause, saying if he doesn't like the way it's going, if it isn't fruitful, then he will leave politely but he will leave.

So there's an assumption this could be part of a strategy being played by the U.S. president. This could just be off the cuff remarks. It is very difficult to analyze exactly what it is.

But it would be difficult, according to most analysts that I spoke to over the past couple of days, for the U.S. President not to be taken along a little bit with this wave of optimism and with the fact that they are getting some kinds of concessions from the North Koreans, the fact that they will shut down Punggye-ri.

Of course, there are many more sites that would need to be considered, the nuclear reactors, for example. It's not just the place where they are testing these nuclear weapons. But we did hear from one close adviser to President Moon, that those kinds of details and that level of detail needs to go forward to the next summit. It needs to be dealt with by Washington.

So President Trump needs to talk to Kim Jong-un about specifically what they would like him to do.

HOWELL: Paula, just briefly here, if past is prologue, we have seen this sort of thing happen before, North Korea opening for dialogue but then an about-face and back to square one.

Is there a feeling among people that you've spoken to there, that somehow this time it is different?

HANCOCKS: Some have said to me it is different because Washington is on board this time. I mean, there is skepticism about Pyongyang. They have reneged on deals in the past. They have broken pledges; to be fair, both sides have broken pledges in the past.

But the fact that you Kim Jong-un, who appears to be willing to open up -- whether or not sincerely we won't know probably for a couple of years -- but you also have President Moon Jae-in, a liberal-leaning president on the Southern side of the DMZ.

And you have U.S. President Donald Trump, who, let's face it, is not a typical president. He is very different from his predecessors. So he is willing to sit down with Kim Jong-un, where previous presidents saw that as a prize at the end of intense and long negotiations for the North Korean leader. So potentially it could be different.

HOWELL: Paula Hancocks, on the story live in Seoul, South Korea, thanks for the reporting.

The U.S. president's newly confirmed secretary of state is talking about his meeting with Kim Jong-un. Mike Pompeo met secretly with the North Korean leader earlier this month while he was still head of the CIA.

ALLEN: These are pictures of the meeting, released by the White House. In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Jonathan Karl, Pompeo said Kim indicated that he is prepared to lay out a map that would help achieve denuclearization.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We talked about serious matters. He was very well prepared. I hope I matched that. We had a extensive conversation on the hardest issues that face our two countries.

I had a clear mission statement from President Trump when I left there. Kim Jong-un understood the mission as I've described it today. And he agreed that he was prepared to talk about that and to lay out a map that would help us achieving that objective.

Only time will tell if we can get that done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: This is the weekend that the nation's media comes together with politicians in Washington and everyone kind of lightens up a little bit. It's called the White House Correspondents' Dinner but the man who lives these days at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that would be Mr. Trump, skipped the event again this year.

HOWELL: And while the main attraction in Washington, D.C., targeted the president, Mr. Trump targeted the media, targeted Democrats, the typical fare as he did in Michigan. He touted his role in North Korea with diplomacy. He railed against Democrats and blasted the Russia investigation.

ALLEN: Boris Sanchez is traveling with the president.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The president kicked off his event here in Washington Township, Michigan, by noting that he was invited to another event in Washington, D.C., alluding to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, but saying that he would rather be here among his supporters.

The president calling that event "phony" and saying that he did not want to sit there and smile as he was being insulted.

The president also took aim at a number of his favorite targets, including the media and certain Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the governor of California, Jerry Brown, before targeting Montana senator Jon Tester.

Of course, Tester is the ranking Democrat --

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SANCHEZ: -- on the Veterans Affairs Committee and he had some role in sinking the president's nominee, Ronny Jackson, for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The president at one point seemed to threaten Tester. Listen to what he said during his speech. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Senator Jon Tester of a really great place, Montana, who voted by the way in favor of sanctuary cities, who's weak on the border, didn't vote for tax cuts.

He took a gentleman, who is a truly high-quality human being, and what they said about him, what they said about this great American doctor, Ronny Jackson, an admiral in the Navy and Tester started throwing out things that he's heard.

Well, I know things about Tester that I could say, too. And if I said them, he would never be elected again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: The president calling what Jon Tester did "a disgrace."

One other noteworthy moment, President Trump accusing Vladimir Putin of planting Natalia Veselnitskaya, that attorney that was in a meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016 with Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner among others, saying that Putin intentionally had her declare that she was an informant to the Kremlin this week in order to sow chaos within the United States.

One of a number of claims by President Trump during his speech here. He also talked about immigration and trade, a number of his favorite topics. And the crowd ate it all up to different chants of "Build the wall" and at one point also chanting, "Nobel, Nobel," suggesting that the president should win the Nobel Peace Prize for the ongoing talks between North and South Korea, moving toward denuclearization. The president also saying that he looks forward to the potential meeting between him and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un -- Boris Sanchez, CNN, traveling with the president in Washington Township, Michigan.

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HOWELL: Boris, thank you.

More now on the event the U.S. skipped, the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

ALLEN: White House officials may have not been amused with the jokes made at their expense. CNN's Kate Bennett was there.

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KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner is wrapping up here at the Washington Hilton Hotel. The annual Nerd Prom, as people like to call it, that mash-up of journalists who cover Washington and the White House, politicians and, although no president Donald Trump was here again, several members of his administration and his staff at the White House.

We were told the president personally encouraged members of his team to attend this year when last year they were told not to come.

Everyone seemed to be getting along fairly well. There was Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, chatting on the red carpet with people like Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Sanders. The dinner got underway. Scholarships were handed out. There was a lot of celebration about the First Amendment and the importance of journalism.

And then comedian Michelle Wolf took the stage. And that's when things got a little iffy. We always expected the comedians at this dinner to make fun of the president, to sort of joke and roast.

However, about midway through her routine, Wolf got a little personal specifically when it came to press secretary Sarah Sanders, who was also sitting at the main table just a few feet away from Wolf as she was giving her routine.

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MICHELLE WOLF, COMEDIAN: I actually really like Sarah. I think she is very resourceful. But she burns facts and then she uses that ash got to create a perfect smoky eye.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLF: Like maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's lies. It's probably lies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BENNETT: One topic Wolf didn't avoid was the controversy with Stormy Daniels and the president and the alleged affairs and the salacious headlines. She actually made a joke, saying if we wanted her to be quiet, she might accept a similar payment to the one Michael Cohen made the porn star.

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WOLF: I'm a woman so you cannot shut me up unless you have Michael Cohen wire me $130,000.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BENNETT: All in all, I have to say, toward the end of the jokes we watched the room go quiet. We watched people's faces get stony-faced. I'm not just talking about the members of the White House staff or the president, I'm talking about journalists, who also felt somewhat uncomfortable that the comedian might have gone a tad too far in her personal attacks on members of the president's administration, from Kellyanne Conway, again, to Sarah Sanders, Reince Priebus. She also made jokes about Ivanka Trump.

The evening, the reviews might come out a little bit differently than previous years. But still Nerd Prom 2018 is a wrap -- I'm Kate Bennett at the Washington Hilton for CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Let's talk about this and other things with Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics at the --

[05:15:00]

ALLEN: -- University of Birmingham and also founder and editor of EA Worldview and a frequent guest.

Hello to you, Scott.

SCOTT LUCAS, UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM: Good morning.

ALLEN: Well, first Mr. Trump, he is famously thin-skinned and hates the media, FOX News aside. Attended the rally with supporters and skipped the Washington Correspondents' Dinner.

And he made a comment regarding Russia at the rally. Let's talk about that first. For the first time made a district jab at Vladimir Putin. Mr. Trump speculates that Mr. Putin is behind a Russian lawyer, saying she worked with a Russia prosecutor in 2016. Here it is.

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TRUMP: Because Putin said this Trump is killing us. What do you say that you're involved with government so that we can go and make their life in the United States even more chaotic?

Look at what's happened. Look at how these politicians have fallen for this junk, Russian collusion. Give me a break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Of course he was referencing the lawyer who was in the meeting at Trump Tower with members of Trump's campaign, including his son.

What do you think of his attack on Putin, someone he has oddly only had good things to say about? LUCAS: Because Donald Trump is in a bit of a corner because what is now effectively confirmed after the Trump people denying it from months is that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is connected to the Kremlin. She works with the Kremlin.

So when she met Donald Trump Jr.; Paul Manafort, then the campaign manager; Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in June 2016, she was there not as a private attorney but representing Kremlin interests. And that meeting was to discuss, remember specifically, the dissemination of material that would damage Hillary Clinton in the election.

So what Trump tried to do last night is say, OK, OK. Maybe she's with the Kremlin but this is all part of a Kremlin plot not to work with me but because they are afraid of me. And then even more bizarrely, as he continued, just after the clip that you heard, say it was the Democrats who colluded with Russia.

So now Donald Trump is saying that someone who is working with the Kremlin met his closest advisers in June 2016 not to support his campaign but to somehow undermine that and somehow the Democrats were connected with it. That's pretty tangled to try to --

(CROSSTALK)

LUCAS: -- from the Trump-Russia investigation.

ALLEN: Yes, tangled is a good way to put that. Let's talk about North Korea, Scott, the very successful summit set lofty goals, to say the least. An official end to the Korean War and nukes out of North Korea.

How much credit might Donald Trump get for bringing Kim Jong-un to the table?

Let's listen to the credit his supporters at that rally gave him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: That's very nice, thank you. That's very nice. Nobel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Nobel -- as in the Peace Prize.

If peace comes to the Korean Peninsula, Scott, should Donald Trump be a contender?

LUCAS: Look, the rooster always says that it's his crowing that makes the sun rise. So Donald Trump saying that his tweets are what brought Kim Jong-un to the table (INAUDIBLE) his unpredictability was a part of North Korea's calculations.

But the reality here -- and it is an important reality -- is that it is part of a much wider gain with players who were there closer to the scene. North Korea, in other words, is feeling economic pressure. But they want to talk to South Korean about basically easing more than 60 years of conflict. That's a local concern.

North Korea's biggest economic lifeline is China. North Korea feels isolated. They want to renew that lifeline so they agreed to come to the table and the Chinese support that. Remember, that North Korea, as it tries to become part of the region, does so because it already has nuclear weapons. It already has missile capability.

So they can enter these talks. They can even say, thank you, Donald Trump, without having given much up. And that is really important, Natalie, because, long after Trump is gone (INAUDIBLE) really considering its political and economic future, not just following the United States and not just following a president but possibly separating itself from the U.S. And so Trump's noise is loud. It may have been heard a bit in North Korea but there are other people who much more quietly, I think, are more important in this story.

ALLEN: We'll have to wait and see how the Trump-Kim meeting goes now. Scott Lucas, as always, thanks for joining us.

LUCAS: Thank you.

HOWELL: Fresh off his meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong-un, the U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo is now on another mission in the Middle East, what he hopes to accomplish for President Trump there -- ahead.

ALLEN: Also new details in the case of the porn star suing the president Trump's attorney.

[05:20:00]

ALLEN: Next, what Stormy Daniels has in common with a Republican fundraiser and pro wrestler Hulk Hogan.

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ALLEN: The U.S. president's new secretary of state Mike Pompeo is getting a whirlwind start to his job just days after being confirmed he is in Saudi Arabia before continuing on to Israel and then Jordan in the coming hours. His visit to Saudi Arabia is intended to underscore U.S. commitment to the Saudis.

HOWELL: He met just minutes ago with the Saudi King Salman, topping their agenda, the Iran nuclear agreement, a deal the president is threatening to leave unless it is changed substantially.

The U.S. State Department official says the Trump administration also wants a resolution to the festering dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. CNN covering all angles of this story.

Our Ben Wedeman live in Amman, Jordan, and Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem. ALLEN: Ben, let's start with you. Among the issues we just mentioned, will be talked about will be the Iran nuclear deal. The E.U. has basically begged the U.S. president to stay in it and he keeps saying he probably won't.

What is expected from Pompeo?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly, if Pompeo brings the message to the Saudis that the United States will indeed pull out of the joint comprehensive plan of , the action nuclear deal between Iran, the United States, Germany, the U.K., France, China and Russia, it will be music to their ears because they were opposed to the agreement from the very beginning.

And therefore what we have seen is that this current administration in the United States has had really a love fest with the Saudis from the very beginning, despite their human rights record, despite their disastrous war in Yemen since 2013. In fact, Saudi Arabia has been the largest single recipient of weapons from the United States.

And certainly President Trump seems to revel in the increased arms sales by the United States to Saudi Arabia.

So if you take it altogether, the cancellation perhaps on the 12th of May of the nuclear deal plus all the weapons the United States is selling --

[05:25:00]

WEDEMAN: -- to the Saudis and promises to sell in the future, certainly it probably was a very warm and friendly meeting between Secretary Pompeo and the leaders in Riyadh.

HOWELL: All right. Bring in Oren Liebermann now in Jerusalem, where certainly any suggestion the U.S. may back out of the Iran nuclear deal must be music to the ears of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What more are you hearing ahead of Pompeo's visit?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It'll be an equally warm reception here as it is in Saudi Arabia for secretary of state Mike Pompeo. We just got a short readout of the weekly cabinet meeting statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And very much as we expected, a warm welcome for the secretary of state and a bit of a discussion on what they will be talking about. And that there also is no surprise. They will be focusing on Iran and the developments in the region.

For Israel that largely means Iran's presence in Syria. Israel has been lobbying against that almost as strongly as it has been lobbying against the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu has recently starting using the catchphrase, "Fix it or nix it."

And given how unlikely it is in the next few weeks that this deal will be fixed or changed in any significant way, especially because all the other signatories oppose that, it will be Netanyahu who has been and will be pushing for Trump to leave the deal.

That, very much as Netanyahu has vocally and in a very outspoken fashion lobbied for. So he'll get a very receptive audience there in secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who it seems sees the deal in much the same way.

HOWELL: And Oren, just to draw our viewers' attention to the video we just saw there, we were seeing the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, speaking alongside the Saudi foreign minister. So certainly we'll monitor that and bring you any news that might come from it.

But again, gentlemen, thank you so much for that report. We will stay in touch with you both.

Still ahead, a delay in the case of the porn star suing the president's personal attorney and we're learning how the nondisclosure agreement she signed is linked to a Republican fundraiser and a pro wrestler. Stay with us.

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HOWELL (voice-over): Good morning to you. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm George Howell.

ALLEN (voice-over): And I'm Natalie Allen with our top stories.

(HEADLINES)

ALLEN: U.S. President Trump holding a campaign style rally in Washington Township, Michigan, on Saturday night. He touted his work on North Korean diplomacy and, at one point, the crowd started chanting "Nobel, Nobel," saying Mr. Trump should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

HOWELL: He also blasted the Russian investigation, he also blasted Democrats, including the Montana senator, Jon Tester, blamed for the sinking of the nomination of his Veterans Secretary pick. And once again, of course, he railed against the media, pointing out the White House Correspondents' Dinner was being held back in Washington, D.C.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You may have heard I was invited to a White House Correspondents' Dinner. I would much rather be here than in Washington, D.C., that I can tell you.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HOWELL: The president at that dinner -- he skipped the dinner. He was certainly not there for many of the jokes that came at his expense by the comedian, Michelle Wolf. Her remarks ranged from humorous to raw and her jokes were met with laughs, grunts and, at times, awkward silence.

ALLEN: Wolf mocked Democrats and media outlets but her jokes on the president and White House officials led at least one Republican to call it a disgrace. Mr. Trump's net worth was among her targets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE WOLF, COMEDIAN: We're going to try a fun new thing, OK? I'm going to say, "Trump is so broke."

And you guys go, "How broke is he?"

All right?

Trump is so broke...

CROWD: How broke is he?

WOLF: -- he has to fly failed business class.

(LAUGHTER)

WOLF: Trump is so broke...

CROWD: How broke is he?

WOLF: -- he looked for foreign oil in Don Jr.'s hair.

Trump is so broke...

WOLF: How broke is he?

WOLF: -- he had to borrow money from the Russians and now he is compromised and now susceptible to blackmail and possibly responsible for a collapse of the republic.

Yay. It's a fun game.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: Beyond the punch lines, the White House Correspondents' Dinner supports student journalists, who, honoring the best of the White House press corps and defends a free press.

ALLEN: Maggie Haberman of "The New York Times" won a huge award for her reporting on the president.

Meanwhile, a delay in the case of Stormy Daniels. A federal judge has stopped her lawsuit against President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for 90 days. That delay granted because Cohen is under criminal investigation. HOWELL: And while that suit is on pause, we are learning more about the original nondisclosure agreement Daniels signed. CNN's Sara Sidner reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What do porn star, Stormy Daniels, former wrestler, Hulk Hogan, and former deputy finance chairman of the RNC, Elliott Broidy have in common?

CNN has learned they all signed almost identical confidentiality agreements, written --

[05:35:00]

SIDNER (voice-over): -- by the same Beverly Hills based attorney Keith Davidson.

In 2012 Davidson tried to broker a deal between Hulk Hogan and Davidson's client who was trying to make money off a sex tape showing Hogan having sex with his friend's wife.

Davidson wrote the confidential settlement agreement saying the sex video would be handed over if Hogan paid his client $300,000.

Hogan's attorney called the FBI and Davidson was caught up in an FBI raid accused of extortion. He was questioned but never charged.

Four years later Davidson became Stormy Daniels attorney. And he used the same document as a template for the Stormy Daniels deal, a source tells CNN, the wording in most of it identical. That means the President's attorney Michael Cohen did not write the hush agreement as previously believed.

JUDD BURSTEIN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: If Keith Davidson drafted this document for Stormy Daniels, that's an outrage, because this is such a one-sided agreement. SIDNER: Judd Burstein, a New York Lawyer who briefly represented Donald Trump said Davidson drafting the agreement is an unusual move for two reasons. The person demanding the silence usually drafts the deal to make sure it's air tight. They would want to be in control of writing the agreement. And the attorney for the person being silenced is already giving away a large amount of negotiating power by writing it, Burstein says.

BURSTEIN: If you're the lawyer representing the person who is being asked to provide confidentiality, your goal is to make -- to write an agreement that has as many holes as possible to protect your client. Your goal is not to lock up your client.

SIDNER: Part of the deal says Stormy Daniels who again was Davidson's client can be fined $1 million for each time she talks about the alleged affair with the President.

Davidson also wrote the hush agreement signed by a former playboy model he represented who accused a major GOP donor of getting her pregnant. Then RNC Deputy Finance Chairman Elliott Broidy, agreed to pay her $1.6 million his lawyer in the deal was Michael Cohen.

In a statement Broidy, revealed more about the situation saying the woman terminated the pregnancy. The woman's current attorney Peter Stris said none of this should have ever been exposed to the public.

SIDNER (on camera): Can you say definitively that this was not your client leaking this information?

PETER STRIS, PARNER, STRIS AND MAHER: My client did not leak this information. My client was no the involved in the leaking of this information. My client could not be more upset that her personal life in this regard has been made public in any way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOWELL: It is a complicated matter. Sara Sidner on that reporting, thank you.

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[05:40:00]

HOWELL: Still ahead, an old conflict back in the spotlight. Thousands forced to escape the violence between ethnic Kachin rebels and the military in Myanmar.

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ALLEN: There is another humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. A decades- old fight between ethnic Kachin rebels and the military in Myanmar's Kachin State escalated this month, forcing about 10,000 people to leave their homes. Reports say thousands are now trapped in a forest with no access to humanitarian aid.

HOWELL: The Kachin in Northern Myanmar are mostly Christian. They have been fighting for years now for more control over their lives in the predominantly Buddhist nation. This isn't the only minority conflict in Myanmar.

About 800 kilometers or nearly 500 miles to the south is Rakhine State. That's where violence has forced 670,000 Rohingya Muslims to escape to neighboring Bangladesh from attacks.

In the meantime, U.N. envoys are on a four-day mission to Bangladesh and Myanmar to see the aftermath of the military crackdown in Rakhine State. The United States, Britain and other nations denounced it as ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

But Myanmar denies that.

ALLEN: Some Rohingya refugees rallied as the U.N. delegation visited their camps. They want their Myanmar citizenship restored and the U.N. to protect them if they are sent back to Myanmar.

HOWELL: Let's discuss the violence in Myanmar with Richard Weir --

[05:45:00]

HOWELL: -- a researcher for Human Rights Watch, live in Yangon, Myanmar.

It's good to have you with us this hour to talk about the situation. Let's start with the fighting in Kachin State. Thousands have left but many civilian still trapped amid the fight between the Kachin independents army and the Myanmar army.

It is being called a forgotten humanitarian crisis.

RICHARD WEIR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Absolutely. And I think this is something that it is felt, particularly by the Kachin community, who has been under attack for decades but specifically since 2011.

One thing that's forgotten about the conflicts in Myanmar is that in Kachin State, in Kachin and Shan state alone, there are over 90,000 people who have been displaced since fighting began or re-erupted in 2011.

And they have been subjected to violations of human rights and violations of the laws of war, including crimes against humanity. And the current violence, we are again hearing reports of human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, the use of land mines and the denial of vital access and aid, including medical supplies, all of which are violations of the laws of war.

HOWELL: One leader, one voice that is certainly an authority is Myanmar state counselor Aung San Suu Kyi. She promised to usher in peace within the ethnic minority areas but has been widely criticized for her silence amid violent military crackdowns on the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State.

What do you make of her position now, supporting U.N. envoys to enter Myanmar ahead of the mass return of Rohingya Muslims?

WEIR: Well, she has now -- the government itself has now agreed to a request by the U.N. Security Council to visit months after it was requested. And in addition to that, following the continued blocking of the U.N. mandated fact-finding mission, the special rapporteur on human rights by the Myanmar government.

This is really just a small step for a government or Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been pursuing a policy of blocking U.N. agencies, independent investigators, media from finding out what the truth is and for seeing with their own eyes what has happened in Rakhine State, which is part of a broader policy that they believe allows them to maintain denials about the atrocities that occurred.

HOWELL: Does her support, though, for U.N. envoys, does it in any way restore a great deal of the criticism that she has faced in any way? WEIR: I think we'll have to see a lot more by the Myanmar government, by Aung San Suu Kyi, not just in allowing for a manicured, manufactured visit to these conflict areas in Rakhine by these U.N. members before this can be assessed as something that allows us to believe that there is any change in policy by the government.

HOWELL: All right. Another thing to keep in mind, and this is very important to point out, monsoon season just a couple of months away.

How does this factor into all of that?

WEIR: Monsoon season will bring heavy rain and potentially could bring cyclones to the camps in Bangladesh. These camps and encampments are densely populated and they are extraordinary vulnerable.

Most people in these camps are living in really rudimentary structures; the sanitation systems and the water systems that supply clean drinking water and cooking water are extraordinarily vulnerable to the inevitable flooding of many of those areas.

Now limited steps have been taken by the Bangladesh government and by aid agencies there but not enough has been done in order to safeguard this population from the damage that will ensue. And this is -- we are looking, really, at another crisis on the Bangladesh side, which will invariably cost the lives of more Rohingya who have fled.

ALLEN: From Kachin to Rakhine State, certainly stories we'll continue to watch. Richard Weir, thank you so much for your time today.

WEIR: Thanks for having me.

ALLEN: And coming up here, how do you stop someone from talking and talking and talking if that person is the President of the United States?

Next, how FOX News anchors dealt with that dilemma this week.

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HOWELL: The challenge of keeping up with the U.S. president's stream of consciousness on Twitter and his off-the-cuff remarks at rallies is one thing.

ALLEN: But do you get the president to stop talking when he goes off the rails on live TV?

Here's our Jeanne Moos. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Like a runaway train.

TRUMP: It's an absolute disgrace and I've been told I'm not involved. That's what came out in the news -- I say that at speeches, remember?

MOOS: The president's stream of consciousness went speeding down the track, but the president was unstoppable.

TRUMP: You know, a lot of people say, oh, it was close, but the unemployment picture is the best it's been. They're all fake news, I've heard that for so long at CNN. You keep your sanity and it works very well. But last night, I did watch -- I did watch a liar leaker.

MOOS: "The Daily Show" described it as when Grandpa's telling the same story again and you can't get him off the phone.

The co-hosts even tried to collectively interject.

TRUMP: Actually gave the questions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, but don't worry about them.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to ask you --

TRUMP: No, no, but think of. I think we're doing very well. Let's see what happens.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, we're running out of time.

MOOS: At least no one said.

TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.

MOOS: Though maybe the host should have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's talk about --

TRUMP: Do better than people think --

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --

TRUMP: You know, the economy is so strong.

MOOS: Finally, they resorted to the oldest trick in the book to get the president off the phone, telling him he's too busy to keep talking to them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We talked to you all day but it looks like you have a million things to do, but I hope you could join us again.

MOOS: The president had time to talk but not to shop on Melania's 48th birthday, he admitted --

BURNETT: Maybe I didn't get her so much.

MOOS: Flowers and a card.

BURNETT: You know, I'm very busy but to be going out looking for presents.

MOOS: But who needs to run out for flowers?

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MICHAEL DOUGLAS, ACTOR, "ANDREW SHEPHERD" Well, it turns out I've got a Rose Garden.

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MOOS: Still, maybe President Trump better ask his wife to --

TRUMP: Excuse me.

MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN --

TRUMP: Excuse me.

MOOS: -- New York.

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ALLEN: All right. We'll take a break now.

Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Natalie Allen.

HOWELL: And I'm George Howell.

For viewers in the United States, "NEW DAY" is next. For viewers around the world, "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" is ahead. Thanks for being with us.

ALLEN: See you later.