♪ welcome to "amanpour" on pbs. tonight the high school student who survived last month as mass shoot in parkland, florida, takes the fight for gun control all the way to washington. i'm joined by two of them, cameron caskey and alex wynn ahead of this saturday's big march for our lives. also ahead, president trump slaps new trade tariffs on china even as he might need president xi's help for upcoming negotiations with north korea. i speak to the former u.s. point man on pyongyang, ambassador christopher hill. ♪

"amanpour" on pbs was made possible by the generous support of roslyn p. walter. ♪ good evening, everyone. welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london. enough is enough, the cry of a generation of american students who've grown up amidst ongoing school shootings. this weekend survivors of the deadly attack on the school in parkland, florida, are preparing to take their fight for stricter gun control laws to washington. they'll take part in a march for our lives on saturday, which is the culmination of an effort to honor the 17 students and faculty members who were killed at the marjory stoneman douglas high school. they want to protect themselves since they feel the adults have so far so spectacularly failed. two of those students join me now. they survived the shooting and they're now leading the movement for change. cameron caskey and alex wynn are

with me in washington live. both of you, welcome to the program. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. >> so just in a nutshell, tell us how you hope this "march for our lives" builds on your activism over the last month and especially on the mass walkout that was so impressive a couple of weeks ago. >> well, the walkout was a great showing of how other students are seeking out the leadership positions into which we were thrust and it was great the see that this generation is stepping up, asking questions and leading our peers. but the march is only the beginning. the march is a visual representation of the fact that the american people are ready to not let our politicians off the hook. we have our demands. their job is to represent us. they have to. >> you know, i had said culmination and you say this is just the beginning. so that leads me into the next question, which is an obvious one because so many people -- and you know it so well, you two. you know, when certain things happen in the political space or the social/cultural space, often

they tend to fade away as people's attention gets turned to other things. alex, i mean i can see that you two and your cohort don't feel that that's going to happen this time, you're not going to let it fade away. >> we have the opportunity to notllow it to de away. in the end, this is t most important issue in this country. children are dng every day, and it is not just because of school violence. it is because of violence on the streets, in the movie theaters, in churches, in night krubs. we saw it with pulse, with columbine, in springs, in las vegas. it just shows that this issue needs to stay in the public light. we will show that come november. if it doesn't stay in the public light, we're going to force it there. >> we've seen it all before zbrim 'sor. >> i'm sorry. i don't mean to interrupt you. >> this happens to us and people forget about it instantly and that's because they let their politicians get away with not representing them. we're not letting them do that. >> how much pressure, cameron, do you feel -- and alex -- is on

your shoulders? i mean you're students after all. you have to pass final exams and go to college. >> well, it is easy to feel a lot of pressure until you see things like the walkout, but other students are supporting us. this isn't just us anymore. at first it was the stoneman douglas kids who spoke out, working together for this movement. but now we are part of something so much greater than ourselves, and i think you're going the see that in even a greater volume at the march for our lives this saturday. >> there are over 800 marches worldwide on this saturday, so it really shows it is not just stoneman douglas. we are a unified front with every student in the united states because every student in the united states has that fear that they're going to get shot in school, and we're here to say that fear can't happen anymore. >> and, you know, you say worldwide. well, obviously this program goes all over the world on cnni as well, and people around the world are really, you know, tra transfixed by your activism and your struggle, and they cannot understand it every time there's this kind of shooting in the

united states. so, you know, take me back to when you first started. obviously in the immediate aftermath of the terrible shooting, you did something unprecedented, got on buses and actually walked the walk to yr state capital. so that first experienc was not a happy or successful one, right? you didn't get and didn't hear what you wanted to from the tallahassee state legislature. >> you know, in the end neither of us were there in tallahassee but all we know is from our friends. they told us that whoever they met with was very helpful, you know. they spoke to them, but the people they didn't meet with are the ones we need to know about. the people that they didn't meet with are the ones that us as citizens need to know that they're not representing their constituents well enough. i was lucky enough to go to washington, d.c. and meet with fellow congressmen and senators as well. they're the ones we need to know about. we need to know which of our representatives are not doing their job and are not representing us. >> it was a good -- it showed us what we were going to have to

deal with, the fact that these people weren't meeting with us, the fact that they were trying to get out of this is further proof that we have put the wrong people in office in many situations. those who work with us, those who have a conversation with us, those are the people that we need to put back in office, and the politicians who are running away we need to make the message to them very clear, that they cannot run away from their constituents being killed everywhere. >> well, i want the play, given what you have just said, your confrontation or your respectful question, frankly, to your senator, marco rubio at the cnn town hall, which happened very soon after the shooting. let's just take a look again. >> senator rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the nra in the future? [ cheering ]. >> so, numbr one, the positions i hold on these issues of the second amendment, i have held since the day i entered office in the city of west miami as an elected official. number two -- no, the answer to the question is that people buy into my agenda, and i do support

the second amendment. i also support the right of you and everyone here to be able to go to school and be safe, and i do support any law that would keep guns out of the hands of a deranged killer. that's why i support the things that i have stood for. >> in the name of 17 people, you cannot ask the nra to keep their money out of your campaign? >> i think in the name of 17 people i can pledge to you that i will support any law that will prevent a killer like this -- >> no, but i'm talking about nra money. >> so that was really raw, really raw. it happened right after -- after the killing, and you put him on the spot. the nra is really angry at what you are doing and trying to influence your -- your lawmakers. >> yes. >> but i wonder how difficult that is for you to confront. >> well, it was difficult to face him because i was facing the person who got us into this mess.

he's a representation of the fact that the system we've been handed has failed us. he's corrupt. he is being given money by these lobbyists who care more about peddling weapons than our lives but i wasn't afraid, because senator rubio and those like us, they work for us. we put them in office, and their job when they mess up is to listen to us, is to listen to our critiques and to let us ask them questions. that's why i appreciate that senator rubio showed up. governor rick scott didn't even bother. president trump, not only did he not show up, he didn't even respond to the invitation, and we would have loved to hear from him. when confronting somebody whose job it is to serve you comes along, it is a very simple thing. you say, you failed, here's how you can do better, and then, of course, they try to sidestep with all of the things that rubio said, but that's just because he's -- >> okay. fast forward a little bit, and you went -- you have, you know, actually the legislature in florida, republicans and democrats, i think because they

say anyway, because of the impact of what you have had on them in the intervening weeks, there was an attempt to actually pass at least some different laws, right? i mean that did happen. >> it's -- it's not about the impact we have on them. it is about the impact we know that we're going to have on them come november, because they know that if they didn't do anything about this, in november they all would have been out of there. however, what they did still does not do nearly enough to fix the issue. all it is is a drop in the bucket. >> remind us again exactly what they did. >> well, what they passed mentioned background checks. it upped the age of 21 and they discussed guns, and that was very important and a step for florida. the problem is on a federal level they have the stop school violence act which doesn't say the word gun once, and at the end of the day the school shootings are not tied together by a specific mental disorder, they aren't tied together by anything but the weapon, that keeps appearing.

these aren't anomalies. something clear is going on here and the people are seeing past the facade that there isn't. >> the other issue is that the stop school violence act doesn't say anything about movie theaters or churches or nightclubs or concerts. this does not just happen in schools. it happens on the streets of our country, in cities like chicago, baltimore, boston, places like those. they deal with this gun violence every day. why are we not doing anything to help them? >> i heard that you were asked and you've been asked by some of the politicians who you've met, i suppose, or who contacted you, with their cause and you told them now. >> we're not here to endorse anybody. we are here to endorse ideas. we are here to support ideas that our politicians bring across, if there's a bill that makes any sense we will support it. but we are not in the business of endorsing people because we can't do that. that's just further proof that our system is a little messy in

that case. we will stand behind ideals and we will stand behind morals, but specific people, when you do that you forget the other things they stand for. how many elected officials is it that don't have an official position on gun control? >> there are over 200 representatives that still have not come out publicly to say, this is my stance on gun control and gun reform. >> it is ridiculous. >> you have your work cut out for you in the intervening months ahead of the midterms and beyond. but i wonder with everybody wanting a piece of you know, i mean you are on the media, you are marching, you are still in school, you have politicians after your endorsement, you're still 18 years old. have you -- >> 17 actually. >> 17, i'm sorry. that's even younger. have you been able to actually grieve? have you been able to act as young people in the last month? >> you know something i would like to do a lot is i like to go back to the school, especially during that time it was closed, and i like to go and sit outside the memorial and just look and

see, because i thought that the most powerful image was seeing those 17 crosses and stars, shadowed in the lights of the red and blue cops and shown by the glow of the candlelight, being the only lights there, with my school in the background. >> yeah. >> it doesn't feel real, and it is easy to forget that it is, especially when we've been moving so much. we've been trying to mobilize, because if we didn't mobilize quickly enough this would have just fallen into the two-week narrative that it always did. we had to thrust ourselves into this and put our own grieving aside, but it comes out and sometimes it comes out at the wrong time. sometimes i feel like everything is all right and then it is there. but we've had time, especially a little recently, to realize, wait, we are still the people we were before february 14th, and it is important to remember that and it is important to remember those we have ae loslost but al let their loss slow us down, only let it be our inspiration

to move for them. >> it grieves me. i don't want to ask you this question. even this week there was another shooting in the shadow of what you're going through, what's happened, the immense international and national awareness about this, en this week. that's 17 this year. >> yes, and it is -- until we do something, that's not the end. that's why we're taking these steps and mobilizing. we are expecting the see these slow down once our politicians step in the right direction and start addressing guns, which are quite clearly what started this. >> and, finally i guess, again, soon you will be thinking about going to college and maybe you've had, you know, your ideas of what you wanted to do. has this changed, altered what you think you might want to do with your lives once you leave high school? >> you know, the thing is that this came to us, this affected us. none of us -- neither of us asked for this. we had always been passionate about this issue, but we were

tlu thrust into this position of activist now. now that we're activist, right now that's the only thing on our minds right now. >> yes, and this has made us look differently at the future because the future looks brighter now than it ever has. before all these changes have been made and before everybody started moving the way they have, i looked at the future and i was incredibly pessimistic. now i look ten years from now and i'm excited, i'm excited to see what's going to be happening, i'm excited for the state of western politics at the time. i don't know what we're going to be doing with our futures, all i know is that alex and i both will not be happy unless we're doing something to positively affect people around us. >> amazing to listen to you. cameron, alex, thank you so much. good luck to you. now, as these young students fight for gun control legislation, president trump took on a different target today, china, signing trade tariffs on $50 billion worth of chinese goods and causing the dow to drop a few hundred points in the process. china has vowed to retaliate,

applying its own tariffs to u.s. imports like soybeans and airplanes. the move could also hurt the president's diplomatic efforts with north korea. mr. trump says he will meet kim jong un to try to defeuse his nuclear program, but surely he needs china to be on his side. i put that and many other questions and contradictions to a man with answers. he is former u.s. ambassador to south korea and north korea negotiator, christopher hill, who was in town this week. ambassador hill, welcome to the program. >> thank you very much. >> so everybody is trying to figure out, a, will a summit happen between president trump and the north korean leader kim jong un and, b, if it does, will that be good or bad. so let me first ask you, rex tillerson before he was fired said that the acceptance by president trump was done on his own, no advice or help from others around him. what do you make of that? >> well, by all accounts that's exactly what happen.

the south korean delegation was in seeing general mcmaster and the president said, oh, come on in, and they moved it over to the oval office. so the president went ahead and said, yeah, i'll go meet him. and, of course, the south koreans were kind of shocked. they thought it would take a week or two to come to that, if he was going to come to that. so i think ever since then it's been a question of his aides kind of scrambling to figure out what we ought to do. and, you know, washington is not functioning very well right now, so you don't have the sense of the usual people on the korea desk are able to work with the usual people on the national security council staff. so it is a very big stake summit. >> what does it mean if there's no actual secretary of state and the national security advisor, we don't know whether his job is secure or not? >> i suspicion is that the cia director, who is the designated candidate to be the secretary of

state, will play a big role. after all, he clearly has impressed the president with his morning briefings. he knows how to talk to the president. he knows how to kind of impart information to him. so i would hope that pompeo would have a real role in trying to prepare this president, who seems to want to go on his own instincts. >> in the mean team, pompeo is known to be quite hardline, more hawkish than tillerson was, and has said certain things that worrisome people looking at north korea and people worry that he and trump together could raise sort of potentially unrealistically hard conditions for talks or for an eventual settlement. does that worry you? >> it worries me, but actually something else worries me. we see that the president and the white house press spokesman, sarah sanders, has already talked about, well, we're trying to get moratorium on missiles. well, the moratorium on missile also is quite doable if you are prepared to sit down with the north koreans. i sat down with them for some

four years. they never fired a missile, they never had a nuclear explosion while we were talking. so i think that's quite doable, but i'm not sure that really -- >> that's not the end game, is it? >> that doesn't answer the mail here. so the south koreans are really front and center here. i mean we are basically saying, okay, south koreans, we're going to do this because of you. very interesting how that relationship is. we're kind of -- we better be confident in what they're doing. >> what the south koreans are doing. just now president moon of south korea has even posited the thought there could be a three-way summit between himself, kim jong un and president trump. >> yeah, it is very interesting. obviously the chinese will wonder what's going on. the japanese are going to be really worried about this because they've been kind of wrong-footed all the way on this. so the question is when the south koreans say they think that kim jong un is prepared to put his nuclear weapons on the table, is he? and if so, how is that going to

work? because right now there's -- we don't hear much from the north koreans on this. >> this is what one of your former colleagues, former negotiator, wendy sherman told me about kim jong un. >> i think his objectives are several. one, he is in the driver's seat at the moment. he has been able to get the president of the united states, the most powerful leader in the world, to sit in the same room with him as if he is an equal. so he has already achieved a major objective from his perspective. he ultimately wants to reunify the koreas but under north korean leadership, which is certainly not something the united states is going to agree to. i certainly hope not. and he wants to hold on to his nuclear weapons because he does not trust the united states. >> so is that a good recipe for an agreement? >> well, first of all, there's no question this is a big one for kim jong-un. if you look at this all as a competition between him and his father, between him and his grandfather, he's succeeded where neither his father nor his grandfather were ever able to have a meeting with a sitting u.s. president.

so that's a big step. he's got that. the question is, is he going to try to deliver? and if president trump has the idea that he needs to deliver a mr. tore y moratorium on missiles, game, set, match. i think he has already done that. >> an unprecedented summit might happen as you have said. what would success look like? >> i think success would be denuclearization. if kim jong-un is willing to give up weapons but he needs assurances and he is able to sit down with the americans on those assurances, that's probably something that we can sell. success would not be kim jong-un saying, you got to get those troops out of south korea and the president saying, good idea, we'll do that. that would be a disaster. >> you are very skeptical, and a lot of people are, rightly so. but isn't it also true that what kim jong-un is kind of unprecedented, freeze or halt ballistic missile, halt nuclear weapons test, and understand

america's military exercises with south korea. they've never really said that before. >> that is extraordinary. what he apparently said to the south koreans, if i were staffing this out i would want a lot of debriefs of the south koreans. i would want a u.s. team going to china, working out some kind of quiet u.s./north korean discussions. you know, if the president is going to pull a rabbit out of a hat, we need some diplomats who before that time, busy stuffing that rabbit down the hat. that's what diplomats do and presidents, you know, show the success of that. so we need some diplomatic effort here, and i think the idea that donald trump is going to rely on diplomats is just something new to him. >> and there aren't any anyway. i mean there are, of course, but there is not. you're a former ambassador to south korea. there's currently no u.s. ambassador to south korea. famously, the north korean envoy for the state department resigned, retired a couple of weeks ago. the infrastructure, the normal

diplomatic infrastructure is not in place for something so huge as this. >> it is huge. frankly, in a certain way, in terms of foreign policy, in terms of national security, he's betting his presidency on this. that would put it in the huge category. i would like to say though there are a lot of extremely talented people in the state department who are still there, working every day. i hope the president notices that because he can't -- this is not a one-man sport. he needs a whole team, and he needs to go to the state department. >> but he says that he has feelings, he works on his gut, and he says that his gut, his -- you know, these tweeted insults and then the return insults, all of that kind of stuff, the maximum pressure, the savsancti that has done what no other president has been able to do. >> what i would like him to do since he doesn't want to listen, have someone dress up as kim jong-un and kim jong-un says,

hey, we'll do this if you get rid of all of the troops in south korea. the president goes, that's a good idea. bong, wrong. not a good idea. try to prepare him the way they prepare candidates in this kind of debate. >> there's one agenda, which is to try to do something with north korea, but at the same time depending on your ally south korea, upon whom you may be slapping steel tariffs. >> yeah. >> how does that work in the real world? >> well, it doesn't work in the real world. somehow as the president found a way to deal with mexico and canada and is finding a way -- >> by exempting them apparently. >> and apparently finding a way to deal with some of the europeans, he's got to do that in south korea, because when you go after these kind of things you're going after citizens in south korea who are going to be very aware of what is happening to their jobs, and their government will be very aware. so i think there is an important need to try to get everyone marching in the same direction. >> i've asked you what success looks like. what would failure look like?

>> failure would look like a situation where there's no second act, there's no indication of where we're going. it would look like something like i've had a good discussion with mr. kim and i'm sure we will arrive at something. that wouldn't do it. or, we've agreed on moratorium and everyone would say, i thought we were talking about denuclearization. that also wouldn't do. so i'm looking for that keyword of denuclearization, and i want some notion of where we're going forward with that and in a time frame. you know, when the north koreans say, oh, we're willing to give up our nuclear weapons, that's when the lions lie down with the lambs and that situation. we need some concept of timing. >> how long, years, months? >> i think this would take a couple of years minimum. ultimately, the final step is bringing in international teams and securing those weapons. it is going to be a tall order, but if there can be a sense, if there's a process going forward with some kind of loose time

frame, i think president -- you know, not quite ready to work on his nobel peace prize speech, but certainly it would be a step forward -- >> legacy stuff. >> absolutely. given where we've been. >> just finally, failure, could it also mean, as you've said, there's no sort of second act, could failure mean if you say ere's no second act that the pendulum swings inevitably back to the military side? >> yes, yes. i think that would be failure because we would not be able to have a common language with our partner there, with our ally there, the south koreans, and i think it would be extremely problematic if we got back into that sort of track. so this is a hugely important meeting, so much so i guess the south korean president just recently said, "you know, i would like to be there too so maybe we can make this a three-way." he understands the importance of it. i have to give him a lot of credit. when he came in, a lot of people thought he would be turning away

from the americans. quite to the contrary. he's working closely with us. >> and, let's face it, donald trump is giving him space for his diplomacy. >> he's even made the south koreans his spokesman on these issues. so we have -- this is a tough one. this is a real tough one. >> it is so unbelievably important and challenging. chris hill, thank you so much, ambassador, for being here with us. >> thank you. >> so much riding on that relationship and on any upcoming summit. that's it for our program tonight. thanks for watching "amanpour" on pbs. join us again tomorrow night. ♪ "amanpour" on pbs was made possible by the generous support of roslyn p. walter. ♪ zblvlgts

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