kim jong-un's meeting with mr. president trump appears closer to being on again and a shadowy spy master is coming to the united states. how far will both sides to go to make the summit happen. lava to the sea. the red hot flow from hawaii's exploding volcano is oozing into the ocean creating a new level of danger. we're getting a new level on this spreading disaster. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room"." we're following breaking news on the cancellation of roseanne barr's highly rated tv series. the abc network taking a clear stand against the star's racist tweets as barr plays a price.

the president is heading to a rally as he's been busy peddalig a new conspiracy theory. i'll talk with democratic congressman and our correspondents are standing by. let's go with more on the roseanne drama. abc calls her tweets abhor rere repug nants and innsistent with o values. >> this exploded within matter of hours and in less than day one of their top show s in shambles and big stars on the ropes. muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby. vj. that's the tweet that sunk a racist empire. twitter erupted. she quickly took it down and say i apologize to valerie jerritt

and all americans. i'm truly sorry for making a bed joke about her politics and looks but the damage was done. sarah gilbert said the comments were abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew. wanda sykes, i will not be returning to roseanne. abc called it twits sayitweets abhorhent. >> you can't just stand on the front porch staring at your muslim neighbors prp. >> since its return earlier this year the show has engaged explosive topic, image, terrorism, religious and racial intoleraneranceranc intolerance. he loved it. >> look at roseanne. i called her yesterday. look at her ratings.

over 18 million people and it was about us. >> reporter: roseanne support for the far right went beyond the studio. with attack on gun control advocates, that's si comments about susan rice and president clinton's daughter calling her she chelsea soros clinton. when she corrected her while still complimenting soros, she apologized and repeated false climb that he was a nazi. >> frequently controversial but this time really became a wildfire because of just how racist and bizarre the comments were. >> reporter: the network pulled the plug. chief executive of disney tweeted there was only one thing to do here and that was the right thing. >> dealing with fall out of all

this may not be so simple. not just because there's millions of viewers and at stake but also many conservatives consider this to be one of new shows that reflected some of their more basic views about the country, society and politics and with that gone they will turn to abc say and if she's been fired, what else do you have? >> thanks. we're going to have much more on roseanne's rant and her show's cancellation later this hour. i want to get to president trump. we're standing by for his rally and the possibility he might say something about roseanne. he's been stirring up another controversy of his own wp a new conspiracy rant claiming the special counsel robert mueller will meddle in this year's midterm elections. let's go to our chief white house correspondent jim accoost.

what are you hear fing from the white house about the roseanne show being ax? >> reporter: sarah sanders said the president will not be commenting on the cancellation of roseanne's tv show saying he has more important work to do like the possible summit with north korea. president trump has spent less time on the issues and more time on his personal grudges lately. misleading the public over and over with tweets that seem to say more about the president than anything else. the president is not likely to let up at this rally where he may go back to ranting about the russia immigration as he did all weekend long. president trump was in no mood to take dquestions from report s reporters. he's posted more than three dozen tweets, many venting his frustration about the russia investigation. one of the more baffling tweets

alleges that robert mueller's team will be meddling with the midterm election especially now that republicans are taking the leads in polls. there's no proof of that. the president appears to be making it up. he's pedalldled this before. >> i'm afraid the election will be rigged. the system is rigged. it's a rigged election. >> reporter: president's top aids insist it's his adversaries that have the unhealthy relationship. >> talking about the 2016 election, every time people talk about this phony russia collusion. the word collusion doesn't have legal significance. >> reporter: democrats claim it's the white house that's hampering the investigation and the only solution is for voters to take action in the upcoming midterms. >> you need to throw the bumps

out. there's only one remedy. those who died for our great country will be happy and proud of his record on the economy and his handling of the military. ending the message by saying nice. the president tried to get away with spreading misleading information on immigration saying documents are separating undocumented immigrant children from their parents once they cross the border into the u.s. both parties have shaped policy for decades and his decision to divide up immigrant families. the president has said as much himself. >> the democrats gave up that law. it's a horrible thing we have to break up families. >> reporter: jeff sessions said separations will deter more migrant families are crossing the border.

>> if you're smul smggling a ch we may prosecute you and the child may be separated from you. sarah sanders the president was going after the times for misrepresenting that official's comments. if you go back to the original tweet, he was accusing the times of making up sources. this is a time of the white house asking the people to trust the president and not what they see with their own eyes. the question is whether the president will mention to controversy swirling around roseanne barr. sarah sanders said he has more important things to do but this would not be the first time hesitate undercut one of his aides and decides to talk about roseanne later on tonight. >> we'll see if he does. thanks very much. joining us now congressman on

the arms economy. thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> the president said the special counsel is meddling in midterm election coming up in november. democracy doesn't work if voters don't have confidence in the legitimacy of their votes. how damaging are these comments by the president? >> they could be damaging but it shows the president cares more about him and his career and the country and democracy in general. it's interesting he happens to avoid the fact there was russian meddling in the election of 2016 but is coming with conspiracy theories for the election of 2018. this is the president not acting like a president and coming up with straight up lies to confuse people and to basically rile up his base. >> should robert mueller consider the timing of the mid

text elections in november as he prepares to release his final report or should he release whatever he finds whn even ever finds it? >> in term of executing a proper report that he should do whatever it takes to make sure he's coming out with a report and if that's after the elections, that's fine. if it's tomorrow, that's fine provided that he has done the job properly, made sure he represents the united states well and investigated thoroughlily what he could but for us as politicians to try to put pressure on robert mueller, any prosecutor for that matter, for them to releaseny type findings especially when it inlves politics is very dangerous and it's a slippery slope we don't want to go down. >> only 17%, 17% of republicans approve of mueller's handling of the russia investigation. this is among republicans. rudy giuliani, the president's personal lawyer admitted he

wants to undermine the entire investigation because it will ultimately come down to whether or not you guys in the house of representatives decide to per sue -- pursue impeachment. has the president already succeeded? >> i think it's interesting that rudy giuliani is acting like a mob lawyer at this point just trying to sway the quote unquote jury. the assumption we'll go to impeachment is big. for all we know mueller could come out with a lot of indictments and not mention the president. there's guilty by the president and the people around him to the fact they're jumping to this. he's pruurposely doing it. he's throwing misleading and out right lies and he's being aided

by people like rudy giuliani who are making up boldfaced assumptions about what's going on in this investigation and being repeated in the press. >> let's turn to another important story we're reporting on today. c has cancelled roseanne barr highly rated show. what are your thoughts on the decision? >> number one, it's the right decision. they should have fired her a long time ago. she did tweet out or sent pictures out that were anti semitic. she made fun of several african-american women politician before. i'm glad this is done. this is a problem that's happening now because of the trump administration or donald trump, not the trump administration. we've seen increasing amounts of racist rhetoric being thrown out. other people claiming of using racist vile. after i'm done with this show, i

will get called some horrible latino slurs because i'm talk about the president. this president has brought it to be openly racist. that has given signal to some clo closet. racist. we need to punish these acts so people understand this is not acceptable. >> thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you for having me. will the cancellation of roseanne have any lasting impact on the conversation about racism and the political rhetoric in this country? our analysts will break down the bogus new claim about election meddling by robert mueller. -♪ he's got legs of lumber and arms of steel ♪ ♪ he eats a bowl of hammers at every meal ♪ ♪ he holds your house in the palm of his hand ♪ ♪ he's your home and auto man ♪ big jim, he's got you covered ♪

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president trump getting ready to hold a rally tonight as he ramps up his effort to undermine robert mueller and his russia investigation. let's get some more with our analysts. let me start with the president's tweet. the 13 angry democrats plus people who work eight years for obama working on the rigged russia witch hunt will be meddling with the midterm elections especially now that the republicans are taking the leads in polls. there was no collusion except by the democrats. he's trying to undermine this

entire russia investigation and take the battle to his republican base. >> also,.n i don't want to get o much into psycho babble but the concept of projection. here you have a man elected president because the fbi, james comey, intervened in his election on the eve of the election and in many respects probably won the election for him. here he is projecting that if he loses, if his party loses it will be because of the law enforcement intervention. there's no evidence for it. i think it's an interesting clue to how his mind works. >> your aour legal analyst, how do you see it? >> it's about trying to prevent the truth from coming out. he makes these theories to undermine political accountability. some of theories you have to ask what is secretary icarier.

that the president of the united states believes this or he american public. lying to the >> suggesting that mueller and his team are meddling in the election because if the republicans lose the house or the senate or both then he'll sayexcuse. >> right. this is a president who doesn't take responsibility for anything. you're always looking for someone to blame. as you pointed out before, in advance, of potential losses in the midterm election he's setting the stage for losses. say ing if we lose, don't blame me. it's up to robert mueller. the president's legal team has been negotiating with the special counsel and his team for months about whether the president will or will not testify. we reported last week that actually there was a date set at one point. january 27th potentially for president trump to testify.

that's not occurred. this has been going back and forth. if this is getti inting dangero close to the election, maybe the president ought to look at his own negotiations and say, what's been going on with this. we could get this over with a lot faster if we figured out what we were going to do with my testimony. >> these tweets that the president has been launching going after robert mueller, so called criminal deep state that's out there to get him. it's presumely intende to motivate that republican base and gethem out to the polls. >> we're book to 2016 where the polls and many people thought secretary clinton would win the 2016 election and then president trump was already priming everyone for the idea that the system is rigged. the election is rigged and we couldn't win. we couldn't go up against the entrenched establishment. now he's doing a 2016 lite in

2018 to get his voters motivated. his movoters do still seem motivated. in is motivational too. you don't want mueller -- mueller is not popular with the republican base he's got a 17% approval rating. this partly, this tweet is let's get you guys out to vote. don't let him take this election away from us. >> even mueller's of republican. the term collusion doesn't have

any legal significance. do you believe robert mueller sees it that way. >> one of the serious legal questions about the mueller investigation is what laws might have been violated. there are many laws that could have been violated if russia and the trump campaign were colluding. there are illegal campaign finance laws. there are hacking laws that could be violated. there's a law called conspiracy to defraud the united states which mueller used in prosecuting the 13 russians in the social media case. there's abundance of laws that could have been violated if there was collusion. collusion, as a word, is not mentioned. it's within mueller's legal right to bring a case or bring a criminal case if there was collusion between the russians and the trump campaign.

>> he said mueller's responsibility was to look into any links or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated withe campaign of president donald trump. the word collusion is not mentioned. >> right. i think the president sort of seizing on the language and rhetoric where he feels most confidentable. we see that rod rosenstein and robert mueller are scarily within the mandate in is what they were supposed to be investigating. there's clearly potential criminal activity embedded within this investigation. that's why there's an investigation in the first place. >> the president clearly and his allies are saying maybe some low level people were doing something but it never reached the senior level and never reached him. >> this is what the president has been saying and every time we have seen for example someone like george papadopoulos, well,

he was the coffee boy or someone like paul manafort. he was the campaign chairman but he only worked with us for three months. general flynn is another issue. the person that the president parentally to hold off on dealing with. he did. he was the national security advisor. they are trying to draw a line, obviously, between the president and what he knew and what else may have been going on in the campaign. they may be right. we just don't know the answers to those questions yet. it doesn't mean that the mueller investigation is a witch hunt or a fraud. >> ie stick around. there's more news. we're following the message of the cancellation of roseanne. how be trump supporters react. we're learning more about a

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i'm a small business, but i have... big dreams... and big plans. so how do i make the efforts of 8 employees... feel like 50? how can i share new plans virtually? how can i download an e-file? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes... just like that. like everything... the answer is simple. i'll do what i've always done... dream more, dream faster, and above all... now, i'll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. breaking tonight, the head of abc parent company disney is calling the cancellation of roseanne the right thing to do. we're following all the reaction to the racist tweets by the show star roseanne barr and the decision to yank her hit show

off the air. we're joined by cnn media correspondent, don lemon and any which he wi -- nichelle turner. let's talk about abc's decision to take this pretty drastic step, an important step. a very praise worthy step. what led to it? >> this happened within a matter of hours after roseanne barr was posting a number of both racist and anti-semitic and hateful tweets targeting african-americans, muslim and jews. she posted made of conspiracy theory about george soros and linked him to chelsea clinton. so much of what she shares on twitter is outlandish. abc felt today's tweet crossed a line. she was sharing racist beliefs after she had been repeatedly asked and begged to put the

twitter away. put the phone way. stop sharing on your twitter account. it seems she couldn't do that. she kept going back to twitter again and again over the past few months th. this time wads different because service to blatantly racist. that's why abc decided to pull the plug. the stars, producers didn't know until abc announced it. they were as surprised as the rest of us earlier today. >> this was a huge moneymaker for abc. were you surprised by this decision decision? >> maybe not surprised so much by the out come but how quick the decision came. you were talking about how much money this made for network. many first season the ad revenue it brought in was $45 million for abc which is a lot of money for nine especially codes. going into season duothey estimated it could have brought in $60 million and more to the network for advertising. this is a big gamable for them.

now they have to replace that and can they replace it with something to the level of roseanne in probab roseanne? probably not. they are scrambling trying to replace it. there's only one decision to make athis instance and it was the right one. they feel like they made right sdi decision and what she did crossed the line. abc has tried to become the network of diversity and inclustivety. when you have something going on like this even though they wanted to include show that linked to the right or shows that go to another audience like middle america that they hasn't gone after. when they try to include that and get something like this, they couldn't embrace it especially when you build the back of your network on women like shonda rimes. >> roseanne has a long history of racist tweets and conspiracy

theories i can't mention on the air. shouldn't they have known what they were getting whc inting wh decided to reboot her show. >> i give them credit for what they did but they should have known before. what are they saying? as long as you keep your racism hidden below the surface it's okay. roseanne, it's out there what she's done, what she said. what she believes. it's not first time she's done it. she's done it when it comes to j jews and the lgbt community. why was she given this opportunity to have this show again in first place when her reputation proceeds her. again, i commend abc for doing it. i was pleasantly surprised that they actually did it because i thought it was too much of a moneymaker. i thought they may not want to alienate some of the trump

voters who believe in what roseanne believes in. here we go. i think it's a good first step but need to address every day racism. she's a big star. powerful, money. she's going to be okay. what about the other folks. aves to deal with this with racism being normalized with people like roseanne and the president of the united states. >> as we look at all of this, i want to get your thoughts on what message abc is now trying to send? >> i think what they're trying to say by this decision today is that we're choosing people over profit. that we are choosing decency over hate. in a business where the bottom line is the bottom line so many times, i think a lot of people are pleasantly surprised to see this and a lot of people felt like don felt because green is

what talks a lot of times in hollywood. i think it became too much. we can't let it pass, get past us the fact that the president of abc entertainment, the person who makes this decision is a woman of color, is a black woman. i don't think she was able to push this aside or really rectify this situation and without really taking a look at herself. i think it became too much. >> truly important moment that we're watching unfold. let's see what follows. don will have much more on all of this later tonight. 10:00 p.m. eastern on this program. cnn tonight. we'll be watching don. thanks very, very much. there's more breaking news including new details of the plea deal offered to michael cohen's taxi business partner. dramatic developments in the volcano eruption on hawaii. we're going live. stay with us. (baby crying) ♪ fly

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new york prosecutor sweetened the plea deal for a ta taxi operator who partnered with michael choen. what are you learning? >> that's right. we have learned that after he pled guilty last week, we

learned there was an offer made much earlier. he was a business partner of michael cohen. he was working with him in the taxi medallion business. after his office were raided, there was a better offer. we can break it down pretty quickly in the time line. last year friedman was indicted on state tax fraud charges. he faced 25 years in prison and a $5 million fine. in march state prosecutors offered him a deal where he would serve between two and six years and pay $1 million. he rejected that offer on april 4th. at the time according to the court transcript we uncovered the prosecutor said they don't intend to make any offer and they were ready to go to trial. it's been five days later the fbi raids michael cohen's office, home, hotel room and safety deposit box. that was initiated by robert muell mueller's team. they made a referral to the u.s. attorney's office in manhattan. those prosecutors said they are

investigating komen's personal financial dealings and sources say they involves payments made to women to is up prez damaging information about donald trump before he became president and cohen's taxi medallion business. last week we saw fried man got this deal where he could avoid jail time and cooperate with investigators as the new york times first reported. since that deal cohen has sought to distance himself from friedman saying he was never a business partner of him and friedman through an attorney said that michael cohen is a good friend and wonderful client. >> we're learning about some of the documents from the fbi raid. over 200 marked privilege or highly personal by cohen trump organization and by the president. what does that tell you? >> this is the first big batch of documents being reviewed. it doesn't sound like michael

cho cohen or the trump organization have said a lot of these documents extend to privilege. the government has received 1.3 records antd items as part of this review. 252 is not a big chunk of that. we know the special master received new information from three computers, two cell phones and a video recorder that she has yet to review and that cohen and trump's lawyers and the trump organization have not yet made claims of privilege on. this feels like we might be at halfway mark but there's still much more to go. we'll hear more abouthis storm at court hearing in lower manhattan. >> thank you. let's get some more on the breaking news. what does all this men? we just heard for the investigation of michael cohen? >> with respect to the reporting this gentleman who is a business

associate of mime michael cohen, he was offered a plea deal and rejected it. that kind of thing happens all the time. it could mean that this person has a lot of information of which he can cooperate and information the prosecutors in the state really, really want. they are giving him more of a sweetheart deal. it could mean the caught they thought hay had against the defendant was not as strong as they first believed. he's agreed to coop raet not only with state authorities but with fall authorities because a few difference offices looking at the things swirling around michael cohen. you have bob mueller's team that made the referral. they are the ones who conducted the court authorized search of michael cohen's business and

property. you're able to exploit the information, testimony and documents that some other office is putting together. i suspect that's what's happening here. in direct answer to your first question, it's probably not great news for michael cohen. >> he will have day in court tomorrow in new york city as you just heard report from special mat master is reviewing court document. she's combing through special documents and marked 252 as personal or highly privileged. what does marking a document highly personal mean in case like this in. >> she was a judge in the certain district of new york. she's well respected by everyone

who ever appeared in front of her. she's well respected by the defense bar and the prosecutors who know her and have had cases in front of her. she's very methodical, meticulo meticulous. what we're seeing here in connection with the report that former judge jones full-tiiled is it's a methodical process. there's a lot of documents still to come. prosecutors will receive many materials. i think what it tells you is we don't have to worry so much about the attorney-client impressiprivilege being breache. with highly personal information that's not something you see. judge jones in her report outlined four different

categories of document. impressiprivilege privileges, partially privileged and highly personal. highly personal may relate to medical information about michael cohen or members of his family. i don't know in that's true or not. i think the prosecutors will not get the highly personal information. they get redacted information of partially privileged and will not get the privileged. the vast majority of materials being exploited from the laptops and cell phones will be in the hands of prosecutors. it's been my suspicion from the outside but having run the office that when they made the decision to engage in these searches, it was probably the case that they had very powerful evidence of crimes being committed by michael cohen and the likelihood of charges was fairly high. they want to see the results of the searches will yield.

the prosecutors are starting to get some of the yield from those searches and over time they will get more and more. i think the likelihood that michael cohen gets charged in the near future becomes higher because now they have the evidence. >> what's your reaction to the president's latest tweet accusing robert mueller and his russia team of investigators getting ready to meddle in the midterm elections? >> i stopped having the response of disbelief some time ago. i think the people who we should be concerned about meddling in the next election are the russians. the intel community has been warning us about that for some period of time. i've not heard the president or other people in the administration are in a position to care about meddling in the election. believed to be true by everyone in the intelligence community and law enforcement community. this is another one of those distractions of a president who is acting in this regard fairly politically to suggest the people who are investigating him and his associates and people

who are formerly his associates are the political actors, not him. it's a form of projection that a lot of people have been mentioning as well. i assume that bob mueller and his team are sensitive to the calendar. if they will bring any based on the experiences that i have and a lot of other people have. but the allegations their going to be meddling in the election seem silly to me. there's more breaking news ahead. we're going live to hawaii. plus we're getting details of a new study that says the doeeath toll of puerto rico from hurricane maria may have been hundreds time higher than the official count. polk county is one of the counties

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there's more breaking news tonight. take a look at this. we're getting live pictures of lava fontens coming from around one of the fissures of the kilauea volcano. the key island has been shutdown by fast moving lava from the volcano. cnn's scott mcclain is live in helo for us. what's the latest. >> reporter: today we got a different vantage point. there are boat restrictions in that area as you can imagine. we had to stay about 100 yards

from shore. when that lava mixes with the water it creates a potentially deadly mixture of gases. and today the wind was shifting around and at times that lava haze was heading back onto shore, really compounding an already poor situation when it comes to air quality for people who live in that area. geologists say the volume of lava entering the ocean has actually slowed down some, but that doesn't meerch it's doing any damage. for leilani estates some older fissures that had gone quiet reawakened in the last day or two. all of that lava, wolf, it has to go somewhere. so it's covering roads that have not been covered before. more than 40 homes have already be been destroyed in the three and

a half weeks since the kilauea erupted. there's a geothermal power plant in there. officials say at this point that site is secure. perhaps a bigger concern for people in that region is that the possibility the lava cou t o a major artery int tha highway, to the people who live to the east of those fissures are erupting constantly that would mean one less escape route for those people if this were to get any worse. >> meanwhile a new study out today estimates that the death toll from hurricane maria in puerto rico. leyla, this is huge, huge discrepancy. what are they saying over there? >> reporter: you know, wolf, when i asked the government

today if they had any reason to question the slulidivalidity of study they told me now. i talked to one of researchers. and he said they visited and spoke to more than 10,000 people. and based on the trends that they found from those interviews and their own research they believe that the death toll here related to hurricane maria should stand closer to 4,600. let me put that into perspective for you. that is 70 times from what the current government official death toll stands. the government says the death toll for maria is at 64. and remember we did our own investigation last year when we talked to funeral homes. we found at the time that the death toll could be nine times than what the government at the time was reporting. one of the cases we've followed

is the case of nutalio rodriguez. he died according to his family when he didn't have the machine to run what he needed at night. they said it's a shame it took an institution outside of puerto rico to shed light on what they've been saying all along. a case like rodriguez is what the harvard study takes into account but is not what is included in puerto rico's death toll. now, the government of puerto rico has commissioned its own report. they have asked george washington university to help them in understanding this. there have been delays with that study, so it is not available, verifying findings is not available yet. but today the governor did say he welcomes the study, he wants to use it. and the analysis and timing of all of this to really put into perspective is what i find most

interesting. we are just days away from the next hurricane season here on the island. june 1st is when that begins here. and still the government of puerto rico still does not officially, publicly have a clear understanding of who died when and why. wolf? >> leyla, thank you. that's it for me. erin burnett out front starts right now. out front next, rosanne fired. and trump's new conspiracy alleging robert mueller is meddling. good evening, everyone. out front tonight, abc pulling the plug on the comedian's show, the network's highest rated and