Trump & Putin Speak for An Hour, Discuss Mueller Report, Ukraine; Otto Warmbier's Mother Speaks Out on North Korea, Calls it "A Cancer".
BROWN: And more on our breaking news. The president tweeting about his conversation with Vladimir Putin, his first since the Mueller report's release. He once again said it would be good for the U.S. to get along with Moscow. And we know that they spoke about the report, according to the U.S., but the White House refused to say whether the president pushed Putin on interference, which Mueller described as, quote, "sweeping and systematic" in the report. Susan Glasser is here with me. She's a staff writer for the "New Yorker." Susan, thanks for coming 0n. It's interesting reading the White House read youth phone call and reading the Russian readout of the phone call. The Russian one has no mention of the Mueller report. Sarah Sanders said that they spoke about the Mueller report briefly but wouldn't answer about interference. What do you make of this?</s>SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: That's right. I was just glancing over it. I lived in Russia for four years. I was looking at Russian language version, which makes a point of saying, first of all, it was the White House and President Trump that initiated the phone call with the Kremlin. And I think it's interesting that they went out of their way they pointed it out. They don't mention the Mueller report, as you suggested. Not only that, it seems like the White House's Sarah Sanders is saying that the president is even discussing whether or not Don McGahn, the White House counsel, should testify. It was a long conversation over an hour, according to both parties. And it looks like they covered a laundry list of issues, including Ukraine, where there's still essentially a fighting war going on in the middle of Europe. And Russian troops are fighting there alongside Ukrainian militias in a way that, you know, there's still no resolution of. Venezuela, earlier this week, the United States is practically accusing the Russians of shoring up the regime of Maduro, saying that they stopped him from fleeing the country. Did they discuss that or not? It's not really clear they did discuss Venezuela.</s>BROWN: Yes, because Sarah Sanders didn't make mention that have when she spoke to reporters. She talked about how it's important to give aid to the people of Venezuela and so forth. That was part of the discussion. But not what the secretary of state said on our air, that the Russians stopped Maduro from fleeing. And it's interesting that neither readout makes mention of any sort of warning from the president to the Russians on Venezuela and what the White House views as Russian interference in Venezuela on the U.S. efforts.</s>GLASER: Well, quite the contrary. You almost get the sense of a very chummy conversation in which two leaders covering the waterfront of global problems. You wonder if this post-Mueller phone call was actually the beginning of Trump's effort to begin his long-awaited reconciliation with Russia. It's very clear, both from the Mueller report and from everything else, that the president never really abandoned his hopes of having a closer relationship with Russia, having a reset, if you will, of relations but felt, politically, he was unable to do so, so the question I have is whether, in the post- Mueller moment, the president now sees an opening to engage in a much closer set of dealings with Russia, and was this the first step of doing that?</s>BROWN: And what's interesting though, is, yes, the Mueller investigation has ended and that creed a -- a certain dynamic for the president. But Russia still remains a threat on many fronts to the U.S. according to the president's own administration officials, with the FBI director saying it poses a significant counterintelligence threat on interference, but, again, I don't see any mention of that in the readout. Thank you so much.</s>GLASSER: Thank you.</s>BROWN: Appreciate it. All right. Emotional new comments from Otto Warmbier's mom. Why she says North Korea is a cancer that will kill us all. Plus, he plotted to blow up the New York City subway system, but soon he'll walk free. So how does he go into Witness Protection? We'll be back.</s>BROWN: Emotional new comments from Otto Warmbier's mom. It's the first time we're hearing from her since it was revealed that the U.S. agreed to pay North Korea $2 million for her son's release in 2017. Otto was 22 when he returned to the U.S. in a coma and died a few days later after serving more than a year in a North Korea prison. The president insists no payments were ever made to North Korea. But at an event today, Cindy Warmbier said she had known about the demand -- had she known about the demand, she would have paid it. Calling North Korea a cancer on earth and their attempt at diplomacy a charade. Take a listen.</s>CINDY WARMBIER, MOTHER OF OTTO WARMBIER: North Korea, to me, is a cancer on the earth. And if we ignore this cancer, it is not going to go away. It's going to kill all of us. And I know he was sorry he ever went into that God-forsaken place. Had I known that North Korea wanted money for Otto, I would have gladly given them money from day one. That isn't what they wanted from Otto in the beginning. First of all, they want everything they could get from anyone they take. My gorgeous boy, who every girl had an immediate crush on, looked like a monster. I swear the look in his eyes, which I didn't know he was blind at the time, was absolute horror. Horror. Like he'd seen the devil, and he had. He was with the devil.