good evening. today in his new york civil fraud trial, the former president swung a wrecking ball at a pillar of his defense, namely that he left the question of his business empire worth to his accountants. or in the words of his codefendant son, eric, i pour concrete. i don't focus on appraisals. between attacks of the judge and letitia james, his words suggest the opposite, that he was involved. these are appraisals that the judge has already ruled were fraudulent. i would look at them, the former president said on the stand, i would see them, and i would maybe on occasion have some suggestions, which is what the state of new york is claiming, that the appraisals were inflated on his behalf and at his behest. he went beyond those already court determined appraisals saying, quote, the net worth of me was far greater than the financial statements. the former president also admitted involvement in lowering evaluations in the case of his trump tower at the time forbes magazine outed him for claiming it was nearly three times larger than it is. the question is, this change in valuation came at his direction? probably, he said, i thought it was too high. he also seemed to have trouble with timelines, at one point testifying that a loan for chicago property was long since gone, only to be reminded it was paid off last month. or suggesting he was president through 2021, even though he left office in january of that year. his demeanor prompting this from judge engoron. i beseech you to control him, if you can. if you can't, i will. i will excuse him and draw every negative infor inerence that i . do you understand that? it was that kind of day. kara scannell joins us from outside the courthouse in lower manhattan. tell us more about what you saw. >> reporter: right, anderson. so, he was on the stand for nearly four hours of questioning. he did autonomic nervous system s -he did answer some of these questions substantively, he did make suggestions for values, and correcting the value for trump tower, calling it a mistake. i should also mention that in addition to placing blame on the accountants, they're saying it was their responsibility, he also acknowledged these statements went to the bank and he certified these statements were accurate. but he tried to down play that too, saying the banks did their own digging into the numbers and it didn't matter. they didn't really rely on them. this will all be up for the judge to ultimately decide. many of trump's answers today were long-winded. he was going off on tangents. and the judge from the start trying to set the tone telling trump right out of the gate that he wanted answers, not speeches. he said to trump's attorney, if you can't rein him in, i will, and threatened to remove him from the stand. the one point when trump got the most heated, losing patience, he raised his voice, was when the attorney general's office asked him about the main claim in this case that the statements were fraudulent and misleading. that is when we saw trump the most expressive. he got upset at that point saying, he called me a fraud and he didn't know anything about me. and calling the new york attorney general a political hack. anderson? >> the former president's lawyers also brought up a motion for mistrial. what was the judge es areaction? >> reporter: right. trump's attorney said they're going to file a motion for a mistrial. this all relates to the communication that the judge has had with this clerk. they say they believe it shows a sign of bias. so, they said they wanted to raise this motion. they wanted the judge to give them some direction in how to do it without tripping the gag order. and the judge was telling them, i don't think you should make this motion. so, they pushed back, both chris kise and alina habba. they could make it in writing so as not to violate the gag order in a sense. he said he will make a decision on that quickly. that motion won't come until the new york attorney general's office rests their case. that is expected to happen on thursday, after ivanka trump, their final witness, finishes testimony. anderson? >> kara scannell, thanks so much. with me now, former federal prosecutor, jessica roth, and cnn's kaitlan collins, host of "the source," who was outside the courthouse all day. what was your take away from today? >> well frrk, from what i listeo as an observer on the media was this was, as i think we would expect -- you expect, in one sense, to go into a courtroom and hear witnesses tell the truth. i think that's how we all got into this system and what we believe is the process. but i think we're dealing with someone who -- for whom that is a foreign concept and does not play by those rules. so, i think today the former president was faocused on his election. it was about his political audience. it also had legal ramifications, however. and that is his end game is to become president again. and only in that position will he be capable of controlling the decisions that will affect his future and his liberty. i think there is a legal aspect to what he did today. but i thought the way he testified and his answers had little to do really with trying to convince the judge of anything. first given the judge's prior rulings of the finding of fraud, and secondly because i think it was clear that the judge had little patience for his explanations. >> kaitlan, there certainly was a lot of messaging, campaign messaging, going on. >> i mean, he walked into that courtroom, i think, with no plans to ingratiate himself with this judge, even though it is the judge who is the decision maker here and who is going to be deciding what he pays in penalties after he found him liable for fraud. i was reading over the court transcript. it's the remarkable moment in the first 40 minutes where the judge is so frustrated with trump that he's instructing his attorney to go have a conversation with his client. and chris kise, the attorney, is saying, can we take a ten-minute break. and the judge says, are you going to explain the rules to him during that ten-minute break? he was very testy back and forth with trump's attorneys, so frustrated with trump doing what trump does, answering questions in lengthy ways without a yes or no. it didn't help him, i don't think, anyone would agree, in maybe trying to ingratiate himself with the judge here. >> jessica, just in terms of from a legal perspective, did the judge hurt himself in any way or bring up possible reasons for some sort of an appeal? >> trump and his attorneys, i think, were trying to provoke the judge into reacting in a way that would create a record that would help trump in making an appellate argument that trump was biased against him. if there was any legal strategy of the trump side going into today's preceding, it was that was it to generate some reaction from the judge. i don't think the judge took the bait. at the beginning of the morning where it looked like the judge was castigating trump and saying i'm going to draw an adverse inference from your testimony because you're being so uncooperative, i was getting concerned that the judge was playing into their strategy a little bit. but the judge reined it back after the break. i don't think there's any basis for the motion for a mistrial that the judge is biased. >> jessica, trump admitting that he altered or at least was involved in preparing the financial statements, is that very damning for him? >> i think that was damaging to trump. he could have simply said, i really had nothing to do with the documents. it may not have been all that credible, but that was a strategy his sons pursued. trump, at times, said he wasn't really involved. but there were times he said he said valuations should be lowered. so, you could also be giving instructions that the values should be increased. i think that was an important concession that he may not have realized he was making. he also acknowledged being aware that some of the loan documents that required his personal guarantee were likely -- that that was significant, which of course goes to the question of materiality, which the judge has to find here. so, i do think on the substance, which was hard to find in what happened today. but there was a little bit of substance, and that was bad for trump. >> for somebody who's been sued as much as he has and been involved in as many lawsuits, he seems to be a pretty bad witness. i mean, do you agree with that? >> yes, i do. and i don't have an explanation as to why that's the strategy you would pursue in a lifetime of business except to infuriate your opponents and your judge that sits and hears in front of you, sits and listens to your case. undisciplined, not easy to educate, doesn't listen to, no doubt, i think, to his lawyers' advice. so, as someone who's been a defense lawyer for 20 years and a prosecutor for the other 20, i think he is probably one of the difficult -- most difficult clients any of these lawyers have ever had. and a challenge. >> i mean, you've seen the judge's summary judgment. do you think a criminal prosecution on this would be warranted? >> well, we certainly looked at that when i was the district attorney after we indicted the trump organization on tax fraud. i think the current d.a. and his office will, no doubt, pay very close attention to the testimony in this trial. and i believe, at the end of this trial, they will review that investigation into -- which we were working on, which is essentially a mirror image of what the attorney general is doing. although from a criminal standpoint -- and look to see whether the evidence in this trial has given them what they believe is the extra evidence that they want in order to proceed. >> and what would that -- what would a criminal charge be? >> well, the criminal charge would -- the criminal charge would be, among other things, to make false statements in connection with big business records. not the most serious crime in the world. if done in furtherance of another crime, it can be elevated to a felony. there are simply fraudulent statements under state law, i think, are the principle crimes. under federal law, i think there's a much broader range of crimes that could have been charged. and it was under investigation by the federal authorities. >> and one thing that's interesting about the causes of action that remain in this case is that if the judge finds for the attorney general on those, the judge is essentially making a finding that trump and the other defendants violated criminal statutes that are essentially incorporated by reference into this very interesting new york civil statute. so, you'd have a finding by a preponderance of the evidence by a judge that there were violations of criminal statutes. and that's a very powerful message, if in fact that is the judge's finding. whether the d.a. pursues it as a criminal case would be a different matter. >> kaitlan, we are in this bus bizarro world where the former president antagonizing the judge helps him politically. it plays among the people who follow him well. >> right. i don't know if it boosts him. that support is pretty solid. he doesn't really go down. he doesn't really go up. you can see that in the polling that he cited multiple times. it's funny to hear you say he's one of the worst clients these attorneys have ever had because chris kise came out and declared into the microphones that trump was one of the best witnesses he's ever represented in the 30 years he's been in office -- been as a lawyer. that's not what i've heard behind the scenes. i think there's a real issue that this legal team is having to deal with, and it's their client sitting right next to them in court telling them how they should be lawyering inside the courtroom. i don't think it's typically how a chris kise would act. i don't think typically he and the other attorneys would say it's brilliant the way trump was acting on the witness stand or saying he's the future president of the united states, immaterial to the facts of the case at hand here. but i think it's what the presence of trump being in that courtroom does to them. >> thanks so much. kaitlan will be back at 9:00 at the top of the hour. coming up next, what "art of the deal" author tony shore makes of the testimony. also the latest on the fighting in gaza and the father whose 8-year-old daughter, who he thought had been killed by hamas, may now actually be alive but held h hostage. cnn's kara scannell pointed out the former president pointed at the judge and said, he called me a fraud and he doesn't know anything about me. tony, good to have you. the former president was combative with the judge, certainly reprimanded for giving rambling responses on the witness stand. what did you make of his testimony? >> you know, it's a blend of performance for the base and an absolute lack of impulse control. it's about half rational and half totally nuts. i truly think he has the capacity of a 7-year-old when it comes to mastering his own emotions. but he's also clearly playing a role. it's a role he played, you know, from the start when he started running for president back for the last 40 years. and what he did really was to attack the judicial system, which is a precursor to what we know we can expect, should he be re-elected again. >> you know, his admission on, you know, certainly look at financial statements and the idea that he couldn't look at financial statements about his own valuations -- i mean, it's impossible to imagine, given his ego, given what we know about him. >> well, first of all, only trump could come up with the valuations that he did and maintain a straight face. you know, he knows that in every single case, i am quite certain he was intimately involved and made the final call. i'm sure that when they called it a 30,000 foot pent house, if he had any other argument than it was 30,000 feet when it was really 10,000 square feet, that was that it's 60,000 square feet if you count the elevator shafts. you know, his attitude is -- and always has been -- just say it bigger and people will buy it if you say it often enough. and god knows he says it often enough. >> how did he appear to you? i mean, does he look -- how does he look to you? >> you know, he looks -- first of all, he looks -- and this is ironic given all the flak joe biden takes about his age. but he looked old. he looked old. he looked tired. he looked -- you know, he was rambling is a nice way of saying, incoherent, unable to stay on point. he looks, to me, like someone who's under, you know, tremendous pressure. look, he's facing all of these criminal counts. he's terrified of being found guilty. i don't think he really believes that being found guilty will serve -- forget that it won't serve him well personally. but i don't think he thinks it will help him politically. he's not going to get more supporters because he's found guilty of one of these crimes. this is obviously not one where he'd end up in jail. but it's still, in my mind, he can't possibly help him. what i think, though, is he's setting up -- he's giving us a picture of what an authoritarian, an american authoritarian president, a dictator, will look like. he'll say whatever he wants. he'll do whatever he wants. he'll go after his enemies. he'll do it in ways that defy imagination. and he believes, as was so clear in the court today, that he'll get away with it. >> he said today that his net worth was far greater than the financial statements, that he could have added brand value to those figures. what do you think when you hear him talk about his brand, whether it's "the art of the deal," or maga, or some hybrid of the two at this point? >> no, i think his brand is maga now. his brand is right wing fanaticism, the willingness to say anything about anybody, the desire to stir up anger and hatred and polarization. i think that's his brand. and remarkably, that brand is being bought by people who stand to lose the most. if you're a young, black man and you're supportive of donald trump, you are supporting someone who is going to come after you because he's a racist and because he is -- because he's a man who inclined to violence. so, i think -- look. you get to a point where you said something so many times that you feel like the man who was crying wolf. but the people out there -- and there are, i do believe, nearly half the country, maybe half the country -- who are prepared to vote for trump, are so desperately missing what the experience is going to be like for them. it's going to be horrific. i only hope that, you know, that doesn't occur. >> tony swartz, thank you for being with us. >> thank you. just ahead, more breaking news. new explosions in gaza tonight, as israel's military says it has completely encircled gaza city. plus the father of an 8-year-old israeli girl was told she was dead after the murders on october 7th. the slaughter that happened at his kibbutz. he told clarissa ward that death was a far better fate than being held hostage by hamas. almost a month later, that father has been told his daughter may be alive and a hostage. the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. it is already november 7th in israel and gaza, and a few hours from now will mark one month since hamas gunmen executed more than 1,400 men, women, and children and kidnapped more than 240 people. this is gaza just a short time ago, flares in the night sky along with explosions that could be heard from our cnn ground team along the border. israel's military says it has now encircled gaza city, which it called the, quote, fortress of hamas activities. prime minister benjamin netanyahu says israel will have security for gaza after the war ends. he also said it will last for indefinite period. clarissa ward met with thomas hand, who was told his 8-year-old daughter had been killed. emily had been visiting a friend, when thomas heard the sirens, which didn't worry him until he heard it was gunfire. this was his response to clarissa about hearing his daughter was dead. >> they just said, we found emily, and she's dead. and i went, yes! i went, yes and smiled. because that is the best news of the possibilities that i knew. >> he called that the best news because it was better, he said, from the horrors he believed awaited her as a hostage in gaza. we have an update to that story tonight. it turns out his daughter, emily, may be alive. ed lavandera has details. >> from the morning of the 7th until now is a nightmare roller coaster, tragedy. >> reporter: the anguished thomas hand is about to describe has left him trembling for weeks. it's a journey of death and a hope of resurrection, he says is impossible to imagine. >> on the day, it was russian roulette whether you made it or not. >> reporter: on october 7th, hamas fighters stormed the kibbutz be'eri, killing 130 people and ravaging the community of 1,100 residents. that morning, thomas' 8-year-old daughter emily was sleeping at a friend's house. thomas could not reach her, as hamas fighters took over the kibbutz. days after the attack, the irish born father spoke with cnn's clarissa ward about the moment he was told his daughter had been killed. >> thomas waited two agonizing days before getting the news. >> they just said, we found emily, and she's dead. and i went, yes! i went, yes and smiled. because that is the best news of the possibilities that i knew. she'd be in a dark room filled with christ knows how many people and terrified every minute, hour, day, and possible years to come. so, death was a bl