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CNN NEWSROOM

Report: UK Trying to Contain Concert Bomber's Network; Boehner Says Trump Presidency a Complete Disaster; May Says Discussed Leaks with Trump. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 26, 2017 - 15:30   ET

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


[15:30:00] MUBIN SHAIKH, FORMER JIHADIST: Of course. We have revulsion when we hear that children have been deliberately attacked. We're fighting the crusaders and foreign policy grievances, how do you even, like, twist the scriptures to where young teeny boppers at a concert are young crusaders? They know that we'll give it the media coverage and people are going to be revolted because of that. Look, Ariana Grande has said she's going to go back to Manchester and have another concert. This is the kind of resiliency and persistence that will make us win and not them.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Ariana is going to go back, we know world leaders have reacted, President Trump has been overseas, he reacted. This is President Trump how he called ISIS terrorists. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: So many young, beautiful, innocent people living and enjoying their lives murdered by evil losers in life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Evil losers. How does that resonate? Does that embolden terrorists? Are they laughing at it? Are they angered?

SHAIKH: You know, it depends on what kind of acolyte you're dealing with. In order to delegitimatize and demystify and this idea that they are anything but, these are the kind of phrases we need to use. Losers, low-life, scum bag, it all applies.

BALDWIN: Mubin, thank you for your time today. Ariana Grande has announced on twitter that she'll be returning soon. She didn't give a date. She'll be going back to Manchester to hold a benefit concert for the victims and the survivors. I'll quote her on twitter. She writes, the compassion, strength, and oneness that you've shown one another this week is the exact opposite of the heinous intentions it must take to pull off as something as evil as what happened on Monday. Ariana Grande there on twitter. She said the details will soon be out. 22 people were killed in that attack. And Ariana Grande says the proceeds from her show will go directly to victims' families. So, let's just take a moment to hear from some of these survivors.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: It was just chaos. There were at least 20, 30 people on the floor that you could see straight off were just dead.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: Everyone just went crazy and was running and screaming and trying to get out and jumping over seats. We managed to get through the doors and how we weren't crushed to death was a miracle.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: It was absolutely terror. We thought we were going to die because you were just running for your life.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: There were teenagers laying on the floor and covered in blood.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: One girl was covered in blood and her mama screamed and took a little girl's t-shirt off and she wasn't hurt and it was somebody else's blood.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: It was a big flash. There was a fire and debris and that's when it all hit us. That's how close we were. I just grabbed her and ran.

UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: We heard the explosion. It rattled my chest and you could feel it.

[15:35:00] UNIDENTIFIED CONCERTGOER: There were so many people on the floor just crying and asking for help.

UNIDENTIFIED PARENT OF CONCERTGOER: I can't thank you enough for what you've done to us. This is such a hard time for us. Please stay together. Don't let this beat any of us. Don't let my daughter be a victim.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:40:00] BALDWIN: Former House Speaker John Boehner singing with joy about his decision to leave Congress. Apparently, he's still singing because the former speaker says he wakes up every day singing hallelujah and while he may be out of politics, he still has a lot to say about President Donald Trump aside from getting the house to pass the health care bill, Speaker Boehner says everything else Trump has done, and I quote, a complete disaster. Errol louis is joining me, CNN political commentator. A complete disaster?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: A complete disaster on everything except foreign policy. He's making the distinction between trying to get tax reform enacted or health care reform and going out and talking tough to various trade partners and other foreign dignitaries.

BALDWIN: So, I have a list. He says he drinks wine, plays golf, irons his own clothes, mows his own lawn and says he will never give any of that up to become President of the United States. Do you believe him?

LOUIS: I do believe him. In fact, a lot of American men can identify with those priorities. So, John Boehner has his finger on the pulse of the American culture. Look, this is a guy who -- I'll tell you, Brooke --

BALDWIN: Smokes a lot of cigarettes.

LOUIS: Smokes a lot of cigarettes. I have six brother-in-laws and one of my favorite just had a birthday and he's around the same age of John Boehner and when you arrive at a certain age, 67, you get comfortable. You figure out what you like and don't like, what you're going to put up with, what you're not going to and on a human level, it's very interesting and gratifying to see somebody who has found where he wants to be age, 67, you get comfortable. You figure out what you like and don't like, what you're going to put up with, what you're not going to and on a human level, it's very interesting and gratifying to see somebody who has found where he wants to be in life and has no regrets or backward looks or anything like that.

BALDWIN: You know, as we cover the twists and turns in Washington and Paul Ryan with the issues that John Boehner struggled with, do you ever imagine what it would have been like with Trump in the oval office and John Boehner as speaker of the house?

LOUIS: I think honestly the structural problems that Paul Ryan faces are the same ones that drove John Boehner out of the speakership. The reality is, as long as you have a hard core, the house freedom caucus, maybe 15 members, 20 members, as long as you have a number of members who do not want to negotiate, don't respect the leadership, don't care if the government grinds to a halt, somebody who is like a John Boehner finds it impossible to operate. You've got to have give and take and some shared assumptions about the need to keep the government running. The most striking part of what has happened and those forces that drove him out of office is that there's an unprecedently high number of people who do not care if the debt limit doesn't get raised, if the credit standing of the United States goes down the toilet, if the budget doesn't get passed.

BALDWIN: I watched a speech this morning and because I have you here, I want to get your opinion about Hillary Clinton at Wellesley.

LOUIS: Another person who hit her stride once she got away from politics. It is interesting, it says something, about the broken state of politics, that somebody who spent their life if public service, John Boehner, Hillary Clinton, finds that there's no place for them or not the place that they wanted and they go out and feel like shackles have been removed.

BALDWIN: Michael Smerconish was saying, my gosh, where was Hillary Clinton some months ago?

[15:45:00] LOUIS: Very relaxed and in touch with herself. We should ask ourselves, why do people feel shackled by doing public service? What has gone wrong with our political culture that people can't be themselves, express themselves the way that they'd like to? We are really missing something here.

BALDWIN: She had a lot of inspirational notes for students and critics are saying, okay, this was all about her and she's still irked about the election and we've seen a little bit of her, we've seen President Obama this week and have heard from Joe Biden about how he felt about Hillary Clinton as a candidate. Are they creating room at all for other Democrats to come forward or are they hogging the stage?

LOUIS: Completely unclear. When you hear about the need for a political autopsy, the idea behind an autopsy is to find out what killed the patient. Until you know whether the patient died of a gunshot wound, a self-inflicted injury or a disease, you really don't know how to proceed. And so, to a certain extent I'm kind of curious. Every Democrat that I talked to has a theory of what went wrong. It's a generational problem or it's a problem of money and politics. Everybody has a different kind of take on this and until the party decides collectively what they think is the best path forward, I think we're going to see a lot of this kind of spinning around.

BALDWIN: OK. Enjoy the beach this weekend. Errol Louis, thank you very much.

Did Donald Trump just shove one of our NATO allies? Why this next video here -- wait for it. Maybe he already did the shove. Here you go. Why this is making Russian President Vladimir Putin very happy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May met amid tensions at the G-7 in Sicily. This ended a short ban on intel from the U.S. after leaked intel on the deadly terror attack in Manchester.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[16:50:00] THERESA MAY, PRIME MINISTER, BRITAIN: Yes, I did raise the issue of leaks of information that are being shared by the police with the FBI with President Trump. He has made clear that that was unacceptable. The Metropolitan police, as I understand it, received assurances from the FBI and are now -- have restarted the sharing process with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The President had a couple other memorable moments with world leaders this week. President Trump used his now power grip on Emmanuel Macron. President Trump apparently shoving the President of Montenegro aside in Brussels. There was an interesting op-ed written on the subject and joining me from Atlanta is Frida. You mentioned the alpha male greetings. But what is it about this Montenegro shove that you took note of?

FRIDA GHITIS, CNN.COM CONTRIBUTOR: The moment when Trump pushed him aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro really captured the essence of what happened in Brussels when a President of the United States goes to a summit of NATO, usually what we hear is how close the allies are, how they agree on important things and what Trump did was break with that tradition in a way that was very troubling to American allies and I'm sure it was very, very gratifying to Vladimir Putin. This man that we see here, where that Trump was pushing aside, the Prime Minister of Montenegro, he's the most recent addition to NATO and Montenegro was very opposed to NATO and it wasn't very long ago that the authorities there claimed that they found a plot sponsored by Russia to kill the previous prime minister in order to install a pro- Russian government in so I don't think Trump was deliberately choosing this as authorities there claimed that they found a plot sponsored by Russia to kill the previous prime minister in order to install a pro- Russian government in so I don't think Trump was deliberately choosing this as the target of the shove, but it really ended up being a metaphor that was really filled the meeting.

BALDWIN: You said it could not have made for a better metaphor as you pointed out in Vladimir Putin's eyes. Let me ask you though also about how, you know, President Trump did not mention Russia at all in his NATO speech. What did you make of that?

GHITIS: Well, the main thing that Trump did not do in his speech, and that's even more important than all the body language that we saw, every President of the United States since Harry Truman for almost 70 years who has gone to a meeting of NATO has started by reaffirming America's commitment to what is called Article 5 of NATO. Article 5 is a part of NATO that commits every country to the defense of all the others. It is the beating heart of the alliance. Trump did not do that, and in fact people at the white house had shade that he would do it, and everybody and all the European leaders, NATO leaders expecting that to happen, to clear the confusion and the doubts that Trump had injected into NATO as a candidate, but Trump did not say it. He did not reaffirm America's commitment to article 5 to the mutual defense of all the members of NATO by the United States.

BALDWIN: Thank you, and thank you for this on cnn.com.

Just in, police in Manchester making yet another arrest in connection with that concert bombing there this week. That makes now 11 arrests. Two of these people released without being charged. Next, more on our breaking news. New details on why the now fired FBI director went public to announce the investigation of Hillary Clinton's e-mails were over and how a fake Russian document played a huge part in his decision to come public in the first place.

[15:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The city of Chicago saw its highest homicide rate in nearly two decades, and this year's pace has hardly let up, leaving some young people on the south side simply afraid to go outside. This week's CNN hero is on front lines determined to give kids back their childhood. Meet Jennifer Maddox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER MADDOX, CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER: We are in a state of emergency here in the city of Chicago. The shooting, the killing. Five 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-olds are losing poem that the -- losing people that they care and love about. I'm a law enforcement official and I'm also a mother and member of this community. We can't arrest our way out of this. Once I saw that there was another side to policing, I thought that I could do more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: To see how officer Maddox gives children caught in the crossfire an escape go to cnnheros.com.

And in Atlanta, a rookie police officer responds to a shoplifting call only to find a 12-year-old suspect in tears, but instead of arresting this young girl he actually used officer discretion and put his heart before police procedure going beyond the call of duty. Here's that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[15:30:00]

CHE MILTON, POLICE OFFICER: You be in touch?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, OK. Thank you.

KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Officer Che Milton didn't know he would be changing Shamique Staple's life when he responded to a 911 call.

MILTON: Responded to a shoplifting call at the family dollar. We go there and get aside and a 12-year-old girl, she's crying and balling tears everywhere, you know. She's been upset she was caught stealing.

Shamique's oldest child of six got caught stealing a pair of shoes. She was stealing the shoes like her 5-year-old sister. Me being me, officer discretion, I can't put her in the system for that so would I rather take her on to see what's going on.

HARTUNG: He drove her half a mile back home.

MILTON: That's when I saw the conditions. It was very rough for them so I put on my heart strings and saw there was no food in the house, not much furniture. It wasn't -- they didn't have any beds.

HARTUNG: From a law enforcement family and only four days on the job with the Atlanta police department, Officer Milton returned to the staple's that night with dinner for the whole family, paid for with his own money.

MILTON: The mom got teary-eyed. Me, I get emotional as well.

HARTUNG: Milton then got a call from his supervisor with a commendation, officer of the month, in his first month on the job. As word of generosity spread through the community more support for the staples family followed.

What has Officer Milton meant to your family?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Definite lay blessing, a prayer was answered for him.

HARTUNG: And for her sixth great daughter back at school this turned into a positive learning experience. MILTON: She wants to volunteer somewhere. We have stuff that's too

little so she wants to give away so it's like a trickle effect.

HARTUNG: This was officer Milton's fourth trip to deliver donations, and he says it won't be his last.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Love that. Out of my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you so much and that officer. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thanks so much for being with us here on this Friday. Let's go to Washington. "The Lead" with Pamela Brown in for Jake Tapper starts right now.