later. are you worried about the russians hacking us? no, i m not worried at all. russian espionage on the streets of new york city. i take the post of the people in street justice. and even find a little love. you re getting married? why question it. when you fall in love, what you do? you run. justice starts now i will speak with press secretary spicer. first, my opening statement. politics get get in the way a lot. sometimes, even in the way of dying kids. i wanted to start tonight with all the enthusiasm of the first children s foundation. permit a few differences. eric trump was not penniless or in debt when he started the eric trump foundation. he did not start that foundation to make money, and he certainly did not become rich because of it. here is what his own wife told me in florida. he started the eric trump foundation to help kids with cancer. in fact, he such a humble guy, i didn t i didn t even know about it. he started at the year before we met and it was almost like he didn t want to toot his own horn to say look what i did. on the show, i remember him saying that 100% of the proceeds go to the kids. it s very important to eric. this is something he has always worked so hard for. he works his hardest at the eric trump foundation, and i have seen him negotiate pennies off accomplishments like the intensive care unit at st. jude s opened in february 2015 before his dad was ever a candidate for anything. all the monies raised, almost 100%, given to the charity for the foundation. millions, almost 20 million operated with one employee. eric shouldering operating costs himself. so this past christmas eve, those children not dreaming of toys or sugarplum fairies, but the ones praying there next chemo or lead transfusion wouldn t hurt so much. some even praying that death wouldn t visit their rooms that night, hoping maybe, just maybe, an angel would come with a gift. not a gift of toys, but the gift of life all because of a young man named eric. they lost that night. yes, it was the unluckiest of them all who suffered that night because a young man who did nothing but good for all the right reasons could not continue to do good, because evil was assumed to be the norm as scrooge and the ghost of the clintons past visited the eric trump foundation and the children who benefited. that is my (tell me what you think of my facebook page or twitter. hashtag judge janine. joining me me now by phone, president-elect trump son, and executive director of the trump organization and founder of the eric trump foundation, eric trump aired this is his first television interview since expense ratio for charities in the world. we are so fortunate. it s one of the great benefits or perks of having a great organization with great assets that you can use practically for free. we raised so much money for st. jude s. the second someone is elected into public office, you re you re no longer given the benefit of the doubt. no matter how good your track record was or how much great you ve done, you re no longer given the elephant of the doubt and sadly, at the the end of the day, the only people who lose as you said so wellin your opening, the only people who lose are some of the sickest kids in the world and those are the kids at saint jude. jeanine: the new york times originally question how much you gave and said there wasn t any evidence to support it and just yesterday, apparently they seem to indicate that clearly you had given well over $16 million. was there any satisfaction from that. i thought it was very nice that they came around and actually admitted how much they donated to the hospital and they said very nice things which was very vindicating. i think there are some people who have said nasty things over the years and that s the political world that we as a family now live in. it s the reality. there will be people who go out and make statements to sensationalize whatever they can and sell newspapers and we will deal with that for the next four or eight years. jeanine: but you know, eric, that must frustrate you because you re not in office, you re not, you re not in the government. we haven t seen you pretty much of since the election because you and your brother that we saw so often are now back in the business. your father is getting ready to run the business of the country, and he has been, actually, since he was elected. does this frustrate you? yes it s frustrating and it s a narrative they will try to keep up for the next four or eight years and it will be a narrative of harassment. sadly again, it s too long. it s millions and millions of dollars going to the best pediatric research hospital anywhere in the world and that s sad. that is the game that gets played with politics. even if you said there is something to do with the administration, it will be the quagmire that we as a family live in for a long period of time. did you expect it would be this difficult, eric? it s been amazing. when i see my father save jobs all over the place, when you see what happened with ford. jeanine: but for you personally eric. i think we all knew when he jeanine: america is were ready to welcome a new president in less than two weeks, but not everybody s onboard. in fact, some, some people on the left are doing their best to subvert democracy and the american way by encouraging people to not even give the incoming president a chance to lead. the chance that he earned, fair and square, back in november. here is left-wing movie director michael moore right after the election talking about what he and his followers are going to be doing in the days up to and beyond the inauguration while donald trump is working tirelessly to fix the country. we are going to resist, we were going to oppose pratt this will be a massive resistance. there is already, women are calling for 1 million women march. jeanine: okay so it s indicative of a movement on the left to delegitimize the new president. joining me now to talk about that and more is white house press secretary sean slicer. jeanine: it was really an emotional piece. his foundation that he is forced to separate himself from from because nothing that he has done, he s not even in the government, but because of the behavior, i believe the clintons and all of the attacks on that foundation that i believe were legitimate, but now we have people saying, let s stop president trump before he even gets there. the man hasn t stopped working. how are you going to convince these people that donald trump was elected fair and square and let s give the man a chance. there s a couple things, judge. first, it is sad that eric trump worked so hard for st. jude s because the only people who lose are those children are the children of st. jude. it is sad because the losers are the people they worked so hard to help. getting to your question, look, on november 8, donald trump 130 straight trump 130 states. nine of 13 battleground states, over 2600 counties and flipped counties that barack obama carried in 2012. i m not sure how much more resounding of a win win you can get. the movement that he led spoke loud and clearly on election day more portly, to your point, since he took that stage at 2:50 am and talked about uniting all americans, he has worked tirelessly, not only to put together probably the most amazing cabinet ever seen, but to get results whether it s carrier or sprint and talking about thousands of jobs that he is personally working to bring back to this country, or saving the american taxpayers millions and billions of dollars through his work to lower the cost of on of air force one. a guy who is still 13 days from office still has a track record as president elect that most would like to have as president. jeanine: but sean, the positive that the president-elect can talk about are clear. i think that most people are blown away by the fact that the man is even working 247, but more importantly, it s not just democrat or progressive or left, it s almost anarchist or communist, revolutionary communists taking out ads thing we ve got to stop this man. is there concern for the inauguration? they re talking about protest, do whatever they can to stop donald trump. look, i think more more of these individuals are finding themselves in the minority. there will be a historic record of people because the movement that donald trump has led is a movement of change, a movement that finally taps into the frustration that so many american workers are finally saying thank you for in understanding what i ve been saying for so long and been so forgotten. i think that inauguration is going to be a historic one in that it won t just be an amazing day, but it will be the beginning of an amazing eight years for donald trump. at some point the facts will become overwhelming because the number of successes he has both domestically and internationally. at some point, you have to say wow, he has saved the job of a friend or family member. he has lifted up the wages, my healthcare has gone down and i can see the doctor i talked about. i have more educational choices. the inner cities are better. the roads and bridges and infrastructure are getting repaired the way they should of. jeanine: democrats, right now, are being so obstructionist that they re saying we ve got all of these ethical hurdles, before we even get to the confirmation hearing spread i ve never heard of these ethical procedures or hurdles that they have to overcome first. have you? no, you didn t didn t hear about him in 2008 when she chuck schumer voted 42 times to look the other way on democrats that will weren t seeking appointment in the obama administration. you didn t see them when the republicans voted seven of those nominees their confirmation votes on day one and five more the next time and 13 by voice well. republicans acted professionally and responsibly in 2008 and recognize that the president has an opportunity to have the people that are qualified to be in the cabinet. donald trump, as president elect has selected the most qualified cabinet in modern history, if not ever. i think they re getting split by schumer because he s trying to play a political game, but most democrats recognize that the movement wasn t just about republicans but it was about democrats and independents and many of their own constituents. you take a state like missouri where president electra carried it by 19 points but i don t think claire mccaskill is going to want to vote against that kind of overwhelming message when it comes to confirmation pics. not only are they qualified but she has to recognize that she has the answer to her constituents if she doesn t understand the change they voted for in missouri and other states around the country. jeanine: donald trump has an opportunity to continue to change the landscape of those elections going forward. sean, thanks so much for being with us. thank you. jeanine: i m joined by someone calling for protest against president-elect trump. this is a debate you are not going to want to miss. then the congressman is here to talk about the incoming administration as well as his home state of california and their curious move involving attorney general eric holder. are you worried about the russians hacking us? no i m not worried at all. i asked america about the russia hacking hearing. street justice is still ahead and it ends with a big surprise as justice rolls on on health probiotic caps daily. .with three types of good bacteria. 400 likes? wow! phillips. be good to your gut. i need to promote my new busi can make that happen.et. business cards? business cards, brochures, banners. pens? pens, magnets, luggage tags, bumper stickers. how about foam fingers? like these? now, get 15% off making your company stand out. staples. make more happen. i mess around in the garage. i want to pay more to file my taxes. i want my tax software to charge me at the last second. paying $60 to file my taxes was the highlight of my day. and you just saw footage of me flipping burgers. want to charge me extra to itemize my deductions? no problem. i literally have too much money. said no one ever. file for free with credit karma tax. free to start, free to finish. creditkarma.com/tax. a big tax company needs that $50 way more than me. we our noses are similarings that we have in common. and our cheeks. people say we sit the same way. (laughter) i decided to go on ancestry to get my dna tested so i could find out more about my heritage. and i also found that i had a sister that i didn t know about because i m adopted. that was me. it was really exciting to find myself in someone else. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com countdown to inauguration day is still on, but some still refuse to accept the reality. my next guest is one of many attempting to delegitimize trump s presidency before it even begins. at the national spokesperson for the communist party in the united states. he joined me now. carl thanks for being on tonight. i was fascinated like many, with the ad in the new york times that said something like know in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist america. i m not wondering the read the whole thing but it pretty much says we have to stop the trump pens regime before it starts. we don t have a lot of time so i asked some direct questions. call, how are you going to stop the trump hands regime. he was elected fair and square. the electoral college has been certified. were getting ready to roll. what are you going to do to stop them. look, no election, fair or foul should legitimize a fascist regime, and that is what the trump pants regime is. donald trump campaigned as a fascist, he has assembled a team to carry out that fascist agenda, we ve seen this before. the demon nation. he spent the christmas holidays, a time that supposed to be peace on earth and will toward men talked tweeting about a new nuclear arms race. this is what he campaigned on, this is . jeanine: what about, you want to talk about delegitimizing. i have to be honest, donald trump is something i believe in. let me just say this. aren t you delegitimizing the election in the constitution because you don t like the guy. i don t like the guy, but what i don t like like is the agenda he campaigned on. jeanine: but he won. host: but that s what millions and millions of people don t like and they are right not to like it. we have seen this before. hitler came to power through legitimate means. jeanine: you re not comparing donald trump to hitler are you. right, he s different than hitler. he doesn t have that little black mustache, he has the orange squirrel on his head, but he has the agenda of a hitler. jeanine: carl we have to talk about the fascist quality of this regime. jeanine: why don t they have anxiety and fear before donald trump and he hasn t done anything. where is the ink anxiety and fear. it s based upon what he campaigned on. muslim registry. people who burn the flag should have citizenship taken away. this is illegitimate, and it also will be a form of rule that suppresses the civil liberty to fight against these. people have a right to be fearful and that is why we took out this ad and why we are calling on people. refuse fascism.org is calling on people to take to the streets, to display and manifest their refusal to accept jeanine: let s assume they do. what if people come into the streets and do what. come to the streets in washington d.c. where i will be and everywhere else and do everything to show their refusal to accept this regime. nonviolent civil disobedience. protesting in other ways. candlelight vigils. however people want to do it but business as usual in this society has got to be stopped to prevent the trump pence regime. jeanine: are you an anarchist or a communist. it s real clear. i told you i was a communist and i will come and talk too about communism. bring me on another show. jeanine: okay, alright. i wish we had more time. i will bring you on again. tonight i want to talk about stomping this fascist regime. jeanine: i m worried about how far you re willing to go. refuse fascism.org. jeanine: thank you. darrell darrell issa still ahead my friend is getting engaged today. that s so sweet. why would anyone get married but i want to serve justice on russian hacking. at judge justice like you ve never seen. justice is rolling on. you can even set boundaries for so if she should be here, but instead goes here, here, or here. you ll know. so don t worry, mom. because you put this, in here. hum by verizon. the technology designed to make your car smarter, safer and more connected. put some smarts in your car. jeanine: good evening i am jackie vonya senior. a deadly explosion a row along the syrian turkish border claims nearly 50 lives injuring 100 others. there has been no claim of responsibility but local leaders are joining isis for the blast at this point it is a fuel truck parked in front of the busy area was rigged to explode. the town opposition buyers to move between syria and turkey. meeting in easter muzzle to discuss progress in taking the second-largest city from isis. the army defensive is in his 12th week in gaining momentum. iraqi forces are getting back to u.s. led coalition s iraqi forces cleared of several neighborhoods in eastern mosul over the past week. isis has held mosul from within two years. i am jackie yvonne yes and now back justice with judge jeanine. jeanine: as busy as we close in on just 12 days until the inauguration of our 45th president. joining me now is my political panel are old friends chairman republican strategist david allen and making his debut tonight democratic strategist and former consultant to the department of homeland security. thanks for joining us a gentleman. i want to start with the russian hacking issue and i will start with you david on the issue of whether or not their russian hacking issue is one that has given president-elect donald trump s decision to say you know there was some russian influence over the hacking. did he make a turnaround on this and was it enough? judge, america and did need vladimir putin to know that hillary clinton was corrupt and lying and believed she was above the law. it didn t ultimately impact the election just as in 1960 nikita khrushchev believed he influenced the election when he held you too pilots against his power and wouldn t release him. he believed that hurt nixon. he didn t hurt nixon s chances of getting elected and putin didn t hurt quentin s chances of getting elected. it s a lot about nothing. jeanine: hasn t everybody been spying on everybody for decades? isn t this what looks to read about all of a sudden we are so shocked? judge, you are right. we been spying on them and they been spying on us and this is done all the time but to actually weapon eyes the information, to put it out there to change the election results, to actually create fake news to hack into the system. jeanine: i have to stop you. there is nothing in those e-mails that was never contested c it s not just the e-mails that they put out. actually have russian tv which is television it networks that claimed the united states created neck a chamber to put fakeness information as well as e-mails. election staff. they talked about that the elections are rigged. they kept on putting information out there. that is a documented fact from both the fbi, the nsa and the cia who put out a detailed report. judge, let me jump in here second. jeanine: there s no discussion of any election machines or any numbers being impacted. c absolutely. a bigger impact here for want to talk about how a hack impacted the election although the opm records that got taken by some foreign government is now hundreds of thousands of government employees now have all of their records out there. we had a series of breaches of government servers that release personal data on people. the if it came to a point where americans to just started questioning was their personal safety secured and did this administration do enough and ultimately they decided no. they decided their economic security in their personal security were being taken care by this administration and that s why they said it s time to go in a different direction. look a bit at some point we are going to have to start putting our country head of our party. someone hacking into e-mails and releasing information, someone coming into our country to undermine our elections? we have crossed the line. had hillary clinton not have a server. president-elect donald trump, i will even say he s got a chance but the fact that the russians came in packs into our system and try to undermine elections, he s got to admit to that and you have to admit that and we have got to go on and start making them pay a price for that. jeanine: mustafa, didn t hillary clinton choose putin accuse putin of doing something like that and i hear he was giving even with her. david from are you familiar with that? vaguely. jeanine: go ahead. judge, look putin basically had a vendetta against her because she tried to expose him. she went to the u.n. and made a speech exposing the fact that he was rigging the election so she did her job as secretary of state showing the fact that putin was doing all sorts of underhanded things in terms of breaking their elections. he took it personal offense to it. he then came into the united states to undermine our elections not only to spy on us but to basically create a news channel in our country to use social media. c what voting machines at rates that impacted the results? what voting machine got rates that truly jeanine: thank you for being with us. street justice still ahead and congressman darryl issa, next. something wrong? so when it comes to pain relievers, why put up with just part of a day? you want the whole thing? yes, yes! live whole. not part. aleve. that newly listed ranch and wait will be gone.ed for a mortgage, or, you could push that button. sfx: rocket launching. skip the bank. get approved in minutes. lift the burden of getting a home loan with rocket mortgage by quicken loans. (whisper) rocket joining me to talk about that a more republican congressmen darryl issa senior member of the house foreign affairs committee. do they even know what they are hiring him to fight with trump about? no, they really don t judge. i can t believe i said that. long long story and i will tell you later but judge cometh one of those amazing things. they are hiring him for the same reason when i became chairman of the oversight committee they increase their staff at the white house in a way of lawyers even before i had asked for the first piece of information. for whatever reason the left-leaning, far left legislature in california wants to fight this administration on anything and everything so they can keep doing what they are doing. jeanine: is in california broke? they are certainly upside down. they have the highest income tax the nation, 13.3%, 8.5 plus% sales tax and they have a budget deficit and businesses are leaving california. one of the greatest states to work and live in except for the government we have. jeanine: you question whether eric holder should even be practicing law, congressman. well it s the only constitutional officer ever held in contempt by congress. he lied to congress and in fact withheld information. we haven t missed him since he left because in fact he was somebody that had no respect for the law they were sworn to defend. jeanine: this retainer into law firm firm that he is in washington d.c. do we have any idea how big it is? well i suspect it s in the seven figures. jeanine: seven s. in millions? in the millions. air colder doesn t come cheap. he is quite a name and he s a rainmaker there but again this is somebody who lying to congress should have lost his bar license. jeanine: interesting that he didn t. let s move onto donald trump and what he s done even before the white house. the latest this week s ford and we heard about carrier a few weeks ago and now ford. you have got mark fields mark fields was talking about the ford plant in what they are doing. i had dinner with mark fields in las vegas at the consumer electronics electronic show just last night. he s excited about a better business climate one in which ford can make investments in the united states and have them pay off and that s a result of this election. you are going to see other companies do that as you say even before president trump is sworn in the part of that is the same reason the stock market has gone up more than 1000 points. they are things you do in anticipation of a good market in their things you do it in anticipation of a government that s not going to be friendly. right now the stock market and ford motor company are gearing up for a better economy one in which we have lower taxes, lower government spending and a pro-business environment that creates jobs in america. jeanine: there would be no subsidies or anything offered? this was a good business decision made by one of the great industrial companies of the world. jeanine: people in michigan even if they didn t vote for him i guess they would benefit, those union s? the rank-and-file workers at or motor company a great many of them voted for donald trump even though the union was saying not to. tonight i think they are very happy that they did. jeanine: congressman i think we are going to see a lot more americans happy with donald trump. anyway congressman darryl issa even though you didn t get my name right, thanks for being with us tonight. thank you, judge. jeanine: the first justice of 2017 straight ahead. stay with us. want powerful relief. only new alka-seltzer plus free of artificial dyes and preservatives liquid gels delivers the powerful cold symptom relief you need without the unnecessary additives you don t. loudspeaker: clean up, aisle 4. alka-seltzer plus liquid gels. wheyou wantve somto protect it.e, at legalzoom, our network of attorneys can help you every step of the way. with an estate plan including wills or a living trust that grows along with you and your family. legalzoom. legal help is here. still trying to find how ara good site.going? they all.want.to. charge me. have you tried credit karma? credit karma doesn t do taxes. does credit karma do taxes? yeah, and they re totally free, so they ll never take any of your refund. oooh, credit karma.huh? we. probably still want those. yeah, good call. file your taxes for free with credit karma tax. jeanine: it s finally time for the first street justice of 2017 that i wanted to find out what people thought about those russian hacking hearings in washington and whether anyone really c when i stumble upon them at the construction site i found true love. take a look. i very much doubt it. or the russians hacking us? i can t hear. you think the redskins are hacking? are the russians hacking us? do we care? not really. what s the deal? is putin hacking us? i believe he is. do you think that we hack him too? no. really? don t you watch the movie s? you are pretty lady. don t foreign countries spy on each other over time? i don t know. do you watch the movie s? are you worried about anything? no, i m not. are you on your break? do you want me to leave? are the russians hacking us? i don t know. do you care? not really. why is congress having hearings on the? they want to distract the public i guess. what are you focused on? money. do you remember the hunt for red october? do remember sean connery do you think we do that kind of thing? no. no, of course not so why is congress having a hearing about hacking? democrats are not happy about trump and they have to do whatever they can. are you worried about the russians hacking us? i m not worried at all. all of a sudden russia is a big enemy of the united states of america. what s the problem? the reason is the democrats lost and they are trying to come up with a reason. that s so sweet. why would anyone get married? are you married? 16 lovely years. i had 16 lovely years too. you were getting married? why? why? are you getting married? do you know someone is getting engaged to your? today? they are putting a sign up. they just told me. i m not lying. you are getting married. why? you fall in love you brian. i m only kidding. what is the banners they? what is she going to say? i hope she says yes. would have she says not today? then we will see what tomorrow brings. let me look at the ring in i will tell you what she will say. who is calling? tell him you are talking to me. now listen, show me the ring. oh my god it s gorgeous. thank you maam. marriage is wonderful, it is. and guess what, he asked her, he raised a giant banner in times square and she said yes. congratulations from all of us. see you at the wedding. back in a moment with a final thought on a man i know all too well. stay tuned. a heart attack can happen without warning. a bayer aspirin regimen can help prevent another heart attack. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. bayer aspirin. we are available 24/7. if a new symptom occurs in the middle of the night, we are there to help. the care manager coordinates all of the patient s appointments, scans, chemotherapy. the last thing any patient really needs to worry about is how am i going to get here, how is insurance going to handle this? 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so there s no training behind this. there s no standard attack in any of this. so, actually, we can see it going any way. but i think the i think the longer it goes on without violence the more likely there won t be any. welcome back, everybody. i m john vause at the cnn center. i m natalie allen. thank you for joining us. we ve been here several hours with this breaking news out of australia. and we will continue to bring you the latest now. and we d like to welcome our viewers in the united states and all around the world. we d like to give you the update now. a gunman is still holding an unknown number of people at a lindt coffee shop in sydney s main business district. sky news australia reports that the hostage taker, seen here, is calling himself the brother. he has forced hostages to speak with three media outlets over the phone. he apparently has two demands. he wants an isis flag. he also wants a conversation with australia s prime minister. we also have video of five hostages who managed to get out. we still don t know how they did it. but they got out. that was the first one we saw in the blue jacket. then the man in the white shirt. and then there was one more that burst out of another door, a door that police aren t standing behind. that was about four hours ago. when that happened. and then two women, two workers ran out a short time later still wearing their aprons from the coffee shop. that woman. and then right behind her this one. all five hostages reportedly escaped from the cafe. they were not released. that is the information that we have at least. and they are now of course speaking to police. one was being observed at a hospital. it has been now more than ten hours since the gunman walked into that cafe. a flag with an islamic phrase was held up to the cafe s window. later hostages were forced to stand at that window with their hands up against it. australia s prime minister has spoken about the hostage taker. we don t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. we don t know whether this is politically motivated. although obviously there are some indications that it could be. we have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours there are people who would wish to do us harm. well, our anna coren has been with us pretty much from the start of this, and she s now live there in sydney, and you ve been describing a lot of things going on today, anna. but the good news is that you haven t had to report on anyone getting hurt. and as far as you know, is the situation ongoing, hostages still inside that cafe and no one at this point hurt? reporter: yeah, that s right, natalie. certainly according to the deputy police commissioner. she wants this resolved peacefully. the siege now into its ninth hour. we know that the hostage taker, who is armed, has a number of hostages. we still don t have specifics. it s rather frustrating. i have to admit that we don t have the details that we would hope. but certainly police remajor extremely tight-lipped. they say they have the situation under control, that they are talking to the gunman, who is armed. we don t know if he just has a gun or if he has explosives or bombs. but certainly the cbd, the central business district of the city here in sydney, has been evacuated. all those buildings. the banks. the law courts. the commercial area has been evacuated. and there was a stream of people leaving the officers, telling me that authorities have told them to keep away from the window. they were kept in their building for hours until police could get to them and get them out safely. but certainly now we know that five hostages have managed to get away from the cafe. still here on the ground we don t know if they escaped or if they were released. but certainly according to the police commissioner, the deputy police commissioner, catherine burn, she wants this resolved peacefully. and if this is going to go into the night, and now it s gone, 7:00 p.m. local time, then they are prepared to do that. they don t want there to be any bloodshed and any violence. so anna, you and i, both stranl australians, we ve both reported in australia. never before has there been anything like this on the australian mainland. we had the bali bombing in 2002. this is an unprecedented situation. how are people reacting to it? because it s been going on for a number of hours now. we re getting a lot more information. is it all starting to sink in? reporter: yeah, definitely. and i think you re absolutely right. australia s real taste of terrorism back in 2002, when 88 australians were killed in bali, we haven t had anything like that since then. and really for this to be taking place now, still obviously these gunmen wanting an isis flag, holding up, or forcing these hostages to hold up a sign in arabic writing, it would certainly suggest that he is a sympathizer of islamic extremists, but we don t know that for sure. but yes, it s startling for people here. talking to tourists, talking to people who live, who work here, they say it is seriously offputting, it s scary. they are fearful that there could be other people out there who want to harm australians, who want to harm our way of life. which is a very open society. a tolerant and democratic society, an open society. we know that there are people here in this country who have ties to isis, who are sympathizers of isis. we know that there are 100 citizens who go on and join the fight in iraq and syria and that there are many people still here who are supporters of those fighters. certainly australia became a target for them ever since they got involved in this fight against isis. we know we have hundreds of troops helping out, you know, advising and training the peshmerga, the kurdish forces, the iraqi forces on the ground there. and certainly, you know, fighter jets, part of the air campaign that is aggressively attacking isis. so australia very much a target. but certainly we haven t seen anything like this on our home soil. yes, i m curious, anna, this is natalie. what is that all around you? we re seeing a long line of police cars, ambulances. kind of describe the situation that you re seeing around you. reporter: for sure. so just to give you an idea, we re about a block from where that cafe is, the lindt cafe. and along here, this is mcquarry street, all these ambulances are parked. they ve been coming here over the past several hours, obviously on standby in case the situation turns violent, turns ugly. we haven t seen any sign the five hostages who have managed to get away. we know that they re with police. there are hundreds of police in the area. but certainly this area is cordoned off. we cannot go any further. we were closer to the cafe. we had a visual of the cafe several hours ago, but police have since moved us on. i am now here with all the rest of the media. australian media and also international media. there s a huge contingency of media here now focuses very much on this story and what it means. for australia and the threat of course of terrorism. and as it s emerged what the gbman demands-r the two demands, he wants an isis flag-e also wants to talk to the australian prime minister tony abbott, the authorities there have been reluctant to release that information. why is that? it seems kind of benign really in the scheme of things. so why was there concern that this information was getting out there? reporter: yeah, it does seem very strange, and it s certainly frustrating for us in the media trying to disseminate information to the public, to not have access to that, to not know how many hostages are still in the building, to not know if it s only one gunman or if there are more involved. police have been extremely tight-lipped. that is the way that australian authorities operate. it always has been that way, as you would know, john, having reported here in australia for many years. it just is the culture. they want to contain it. they want to focus on resolving this situation. they don t want the media involved. we have to remember that that gunman you would have to presume chose that site. it was located opposite the 7 network australia. perfect vantage point to get the world s attention. so clearly he had an objective. now his demands, they seem a bit bizarre. they seem very strange, that he now wants an isis flag and he wants a phone conversation with the australian prime minister tony abbott. but certainly i think what we can assure you is that negotiators are talking to him, hoping that the situation will be resolved peacefully. okay. all right. anna coren for us there in sydney. we thank you again. and it s interesting, isn t it, john, that police aren t saying much at all, but this man, whoever he is, has reached out to the media and maybe this is the point. sorry. didn t mean to interrupt. but maybe this is the point, that the police don t want him getting his message out and they ve managed to stop him at every turn. he contacted a radio station, two tv stations, and it s only now, nine hours into this that really his demands, his message is actually getting out there. well, hopefully they do have a plan, they re working on this to figure out how to bring it to a successful conclusion. but so far, again, no one has been hurt. so thank goodness for that. we want to talk now on the phone with tiffany gender. she s a police reporter with 2gb radio. several of the hostages called into that radio station. so tiffany, what more can you add as far as what these hostages were relaying? what was their demeanor? what information did they give you about their situation? well, basically, that line of communication opened up quite early is this morning. one of the men from inside the building, the lindt cafe, actually called one of our announcers on air, and they took a conversation off air. it was decided it was not really appropriate for that conversation to be going on air, a lot of sensitive information. and basically, it was identified that he was a hostage inside and that he wanted to speak to prime minister tony abbott live on air, a live on-air interview. now, of course that demand was not met. negotiators have been to that 2gb radio station all day. we ve been fielding a lot of calls from people inside the building, from family members of people inside the building. who are just listening to this ordeal i guess play out on the radio. so let s get this straight. so people inside that cafe, inside that coffee shop, have had the ability to get on their cell phones and just call in whenever they want? that s exactly right. many of them have been on social media. one hostage in particular has posted a very horrifying message on social media with a list of the demands. and they have also been texting family and friends from the inside to say look, i am inside, i am okay at the moment, these are the demands, and if they re not met, you know, threats to kill and, you know, some other very horrible threats have been made against the group. interesting, isn t it, that this gunman didn t take their phones away. they re sitting there texting whomever they want, it seems, and presumably they could reach out to the police or be texting with the police. we just don t know, do we? you re right. it is bizarre. this whole thing is playing out on facebook, twitter, you know, through radio announcers. it is a very bizarre situation. and police have actually mobilized a special task force which is only mobilized during an act of terrorism. so basically, that allows i guess mobilizes the huge amount of resources that they have. it allows police to share more information with authorities, with azo and the federal government. police have just held a press conference and have said they are actively trolling through facebook and twitter to get information, you know. a lot of these the hostages are posting information on their facebook pages. that is one avenue that police are actually getting their information from. i guess the assumption could be this is a deliberate ploy maybe this gunman has taken to get the word out because what we ve been talking about for many, many hours now is what they want here is publicity. they want the megaphone so they can have their voice heard, their demands met. and one lady much like the 9/11 hijackers allowed the people on the plane to call their loved ones to tell them the plane had been hijacked. they weren t worried about that because they knew the plane was going to crash. so in a similar way this guy with the gun is letting people get this same horrific message out. that s exactly right. and that is fueling the fear and that is fueling their message. and police actually asked us to stop reporting those demands because it is really fueling hysteria and it is putting their message out there. and that was their objective. and what more have you been able to learn about the gunman, tiffiny, through these conversations? as your reporter mentioned earlier, police are keeping very tight-lipped on the operational information. they have not even been able to confirm how many hostages are inside. from what i understand personally, and that s speaking to sources, that police know who the gunman-s they know who they re dealing with and they are aware of his identity. but as far as any publicly released details about that gunman, nothing is being released. well, we can understand that because now at least we know they know who they re dealing with and they ve got a tactic to try to figure out how to deal with this person. but it is really bizarre that hostages are sitting there posting pictures making telephone calls and posting on social media. tiffiny gender the police reporter with radio 2gb giving us some very valuable information about what has actually been happening there all day long. she works at the same radio station as ray hadley. he has spoken to the suspect as well via at least one of the hostages, a 23-year-old man who actually managed to call on his cell phone into ray s radio show, and a short time ago we spoke with ray. i ve just come off a nine-hour shift. i normally do nine till midday. and we kept going because i made contact with the hostages. they found my program. obviously i didn t want to put them to air, so i took their calls off air. and at the same time could hear the hostage taker giving the young man who spoke to me, a 23-year-old, instructions on what he wanted to do. what s now been revealed by your reporter and others, that he wanted the i.c.e. flag, he wanted a conversation with the prime minister or he d start to dispose of hostages. i spoke to our police commissioner, our police chief, the equivalent here in new south wales where sydney is the capital, and spoke to him, spoke to our premier, which is a bit like your governor. and they told me off air it would be best if we didn t report those matters. i kept in contact with the young man. he gave me his mobile. and we had four conversations off air. between about midday and 3:00. and then i felt troubled by his tone. so i asked the police to supply me with a negotiator. i didn t feel equipped to keep talking with him because i m not a trained negotiator. i m a radio broadcaster. so the negotiator arrived here and i went off air about 20 minutes ago, about quarter past 6:00 at night our time on monday night, and the negotiators are still dealing with him. as you ve been told, five people have escaped. they weren t released. three gentlemen, one of them a worker from inside the lindt cafe, and then two young ladies who are also workers escaped as well. and police continue their negotiations. they re dealing with a lunatic. they re dealing way person who s making outrageous claims. he wants to be he wants the government to acknowledge that this is a terrorist operation, that he s doing this on behalf of isis or isil. and the government at this particular stage are treating terrorists as you d treat any terrorist in any part of the world, they re doing their best to secure the safety of the hostages without meeting his demands. just explain how the process works. you got this phone call from this 23-year-old man, this hostage which was being who was being held inside the cafe there. and then he relayed what the guy with the gun was saying. he told you and you responded and he said it to the gunman? i could hear the gunman. well, first of all, we were a bit skeptical, as you would be, getting a phone call to your open line saying i m a hostage. can i talk to ray on air. and so i made an editorial decision that i wouldn t talk to him on air because i was fearful that i may have been duped or that i might put people at risk. so i came off air during a three-minute commercial break and spoke to the young man. i thn rang him back and confirmed he was in fact a hostage. i spoke to police and they had a list of some hostages and his name was one of the hostages. his name was given to me by the young man. i was talking to him and in the background i could hear the hostage taker issue instructions about wanting to talk to the prime minister, calling me a scumbag, calling the media generally scumbags for incorrectly reporting isil as being a group of people who are murderous bastards who have no regard for human life. so i heard all this in the background. i went back on air. i didn t report what i d been told. i just said i had a phone call from a hostage and i contacted police which i did do. then he called me again and left his numbers and asked me to call him. i went to a news break and rang him again 37 this happened three times. and as i say, at the end of three or four conversations, these demands were still being made, that he wanted to talk to the the hostage taker wanted to talk to the prime minister, mr. abbott. i then said to police i need someone over here with a bit of expertise. a negotiator came over and started to take the calls. and since then he s had conversations with another four or five hostages through the course of the last two hours. ray, you said you could hear the gunman in the background making these demands. can you describe what he sounded like? yeah. that s what i was wondering. weighs he unhinged? was he yelling? what kind of accent he had. he had a middle eastern accent with an australian tinge. he was obviously someone originally from that part of the world, be it iran or syria or somewhere else over there. and you know, we have been a country like your country very welcoming of people from that part of the world. we have a long tradition of lebanese christians coming to australia, particularly of the maronite variety, over a long period of time and more recently people of the muslim faith coming here. and the vast majority of them are peaceful, hard-working, decent people who want to mac a better life for themselves. but we have these radicals highlighted by this lunatic who still has somewhere between 12 and 25 people being held hostage. the police know, john, how many people are in there but they won t release details to the media. five have escaped, but we know originally there was somewhere between 15 and perhaps 30. sow take a guess, it s either 10 people in there or 25 people. we don t know. you say he threatened to dispose of hostages. i m making the assumption he threatened to kill them. well, that s what he was saying. police negotiators told me the fact that we are now into the ninth hour and no one s been hurt or injured would indicate that this is someone they can deal with, if you know what i mean. ray hadley there, a radio host on radio 3gb in sydney. he is one of the most listened to programs in the country. he s a very popular radio announcer. for the number one talk station in sydney. and i believe across australia, really. and he had a number of conversations with a hostage in there which he s detailing to us. but it is now appearing to be a very bizarre situation, that we re learning more details, that many of the hostages in there have been able to use their telephones to call out, to post on social media, to tweet, to post photographs or demands, whatever, on facebook as well. all of this apparently being allowed by the gunman. right. and all the while, according to the radio, the same radio station, he alleges he has two bombs. that s right. inside the cafe. inside the cafe. and another two bombs hidden somewhere in the area. the police have had nothing to say about that. but a short while ago we did hear from the deputy commissioner of the new south wales police and she updated the situation, but she stayed clear. she continues to stay clear of confirming any specific numbers on how many people are still inside. here she is. i put out that plea and that message. if anybody does have information, please let us know. it s really important that you pass it on. because even the smallest snippet of information might be vital. there are hostages inside who are posting on facebook and social media some of the demands that the gunman s making. how are you responding to that? i know operationally that you need to keep some things under wrap, but it s out there for everybody to see. look, absolutely right. and we are monitoring what is happening on facebook clearly. we are monitoring what is happening on twitter. and that is forming a part of our tactical response in how to handle this. yes, that is out there. and we are aware of that. what has he told negotiators? that s not something i can talk about, what he might be telling negotiators. but the contact that we have will be ongoing. and it will be based on our best assessment about how to get those people out safely, which is what does count most. some of the hostages are talking about is he making the same demands to police or is he trying to use the media to make those demands? i think that there s probably a number of mediums that are being used at the moment. but we all have to be very careful not to completely overreact at this time because it is still ongoing. but it is important to reiterate that we are aware of that. we are monitoring it. and we are using that as a part of our strategy. why couldn t he have said how many are still inside? it s not something i can confirm at the moment, and it s not particularly useful to actually confirm potential numbe numbers. for people who we might be dealing with who might have concerns that a friend or a relative or a loved one might be in that building, we have set up our nb[ inaudible ]. how many maybe inside. that is a tactical, operational imperative. why is that so sensitive? because at this point everything has to be about the safety of the people in the location. so it s important we don t confirm at this point. that s catherine burn, the deputy police commissioner for new south wales speaking a short time ago, give us a little bit of new information, which was essentially what we ve heard from a number of people of the demands being listed on twitter and facebook by the hostages inside. what was interesting was she couldn t bring herself to call the people being held hostages. he had stopped herself from saying that. we should note it s coming up on 7:25 p.m. local time in sydney. all of this has been going on for nine hours and 40 minutes. we re coming up to our tenth hour. and want to point out this video we re seeing right here, that is the gunman and we ve also should h. video as you know of the hostages putting their haunds on the glass. that was much earlier. that was hours ago before police cleared off a wider area and had the media pulled back and not even sure how we got this picture. and the few details that we do know, again, coming from our afwilts who have been working their sources in sydney. apparently, the gunman inside there likes to be known as the brother. that s what we know about him. and that he is in his 40s. ray hadley, the radio host who actually heard him speaking, says the gunman speaks with a middle eastern accent. with an australian with an australian tinge. that s what we know. and we ve also been told police know who they re dealing with, but they re not letting us know that. earlier we spoke with roger shanahan. he s a former australian army colonel. he s a middle east expert and a fellow at the middle east center for policy. he thinks the hostage taker chose his location for maximum international impact. here s his comments. it s going to be very difficult obviously to determine what the whole purpose of this was until we find out more about the hostage taker, but i think the fact that the cafe in question is directly opposite one of the major television stations in sydney, it s done right in nearly the dead center of australia s largest city in the central business district, all of these point to the fact that the person in question wanted maximum exposure not only nationally but internationally. and putting up that flag with sh shahada on it even though it s not specifically the same as any islamist organization s flags, it s certainly a replica or a variation on a theme. so i think all of these together indicate the person in question wants a great deal of media attention placed on this. whether that s because he holds these beliefs or he has some kind of mental issue we won t know until the siege is over. what if that is in fact the case, that this is just a guy who is essentially suffering from some kind of mental derangement and he s grabbed this flag to try to get this attention and he has very little to do with isis? well, it s going to be the fact that either way he s got little to do with isis 37 but the kernel is that isis in the past has called for these kind of individual attacks against people. they said it in the past. and also in australia. so the concern is that this kind of flag in concert with the fact that he appears to be an individual doing it in such a public way. you think that might be his expression of his belief in what isis stands for. but as you pointed out, it could also well be possible that he s somebody with mental issues. should we have heard any kind of statement from i.c.e. at tsi point? they re very active on twitter, social media, they love to get their memorandum out. has there been any kind of support support for this guy? claim of responsibility is probably a stretch. but any kind of message that this guy is one of ours? you pronl wouldn t expect to see something like that until after the situation is resolved. you would assume if he s done this he s done this off his own bat, so it s not quite a limited degree of professionalism in what he s doing, so you would assume he s doing it off his own bat, and you would assume therefore the media branch of isis is probably playing catch-up on this issue and they d wait to see how it resolves itself before they make some kind of proclamation as to whether they support it or what they want to spin out of this situation. is it possible to know how many other people like this guy are actually in australia right now? no, it s very difficult. police and security forces for obvious reasons are quite cagey about what they say. what we do know is that in terms of figures there s been about 20 australians killed as foreign fighters overseas. it s believed there are about 70 over there currently active. about 20 have returned after having fought. and there s been approximately 60 or more passports of people of concern that have been canceled by the australian government, stopping them from leaving the country. how many people have concern like this if that s what this person is? that kind of information is only known at the highest levels of the security services. and hello to everyone, to our viewers in the u.s. and around the world, we continue to bring you breaking news out of australia. i m natalie allen. and i m john vause. thank you for staying with us. it s now 3:30 in the morning on the east coast, 7:30 in the evening on a monday night in sydney where a gunman is still holding a number of hostages at the lindt coffee shop in the very heart of sydney s business district. sky news australia has reported that the hostage taker has identified himself as the brother. he s reportedly used his hostages to contact three media outlets. the government has three demands. phone call with australia s prime minister. he also wants an isis flag. that s according to media reports. throughout this ordeal five hostages, you re about to see the first three, managed to get out. three men running out right there. two people who were just visiting the coffee shop and then an employee of the coffee shop comes out of another door. not the one that police that you see there standing behind. suddenly the door just bangs open and he comes out running. we believe the guy who comes out is in fact one of the workers because there s a combination of workers and customers who are being held hostage. and there he is. that was many, many hours ago. and of course they were debriefed by police after they got out. two women, here s the first one. also ran out a short time later. all five hostages reportedly escaped. that s not coming from the police. that s coming from other reports from the cafe. they were not released. what is not clear, almost ten hours after this all this began, how many hostages remain inside. let s go to cnn s anna coren. she s been with us for many hours. she s standing out near just a block or so away from the scene. anna, anything new? reporter: no, natalie. we re just waiting for more information from police. at this stage this is as far as we can go. we re on mcquarry street. anybody who s been to the city here in sydney before would have aware this is a very busy street. we re about a block from that lindt cafe where the gunman is holding up several hostages. we don t know how many. we know as you ve reported that five have managed to get away. we don t know if they have escaped or if they were released. however, we do know that police negotiators are in touch with him. that is being confirmed. that dialogue ongoing. and hopefully this will be resolved peacefully. but certainly for now the entire area like blocks in all directions are cordoned off. hundreds of police here on the scene. and then there have also been a number of police snipers who we have seen as well. as you can see behind me, a row of ambulances lined up. obviously on standby in case anything were to go wrong. but certainly an unfolding situation. a tense situation has people very much on high alert and very concerned that this could happen here in sydney. anna, just for our viewers who are outside of australia who are not familiar with martin place. i think the best way to describe it, this is an ongoing siege in an area of sydney which would be like times square in new york, for instance. this is pretty much in the heart of the city. reporter: yeah, absolutely in the heart of the city. there in martin place you have the reserve bank of australia. you have other financial institutions. you have the u.s. consulate. yove the 7 network australia located opposite this lindt cafe. so you d have to assume that the gunman chose his target very carefully. he wanted that exposure. he wanted the world to watch. police have now evacuated the entire area. hundreds of staff. we spoke to some of them a little earlier. streams were coming out from beneath the police tape. asking how it all unfolded this morning. they were told they had to keep away from the glass, from the windows, in case there were any bombs, any explosions, if the gunman started firing. and then they waited for police to escort and evacuate them from these buildings. but as i say, people are fearful that this could take place. obviously, there have been many raids anywhere australia over the past few months. terror-related raids. police trying to get on top of the situations. doing a great deal of intelligence gathering and foiling many attacks. but there have been many arrests. we know australia has been atarget. but it s another thing for it to actually be happening. yes, and it s been interesting to hear both of you since you re australian talk about the fact that this does not happen in australia. you can even hardly find a gun in australia, anna. and this person was able to do this. and the people in australia have now been caught up in a situation that sadly in the united states we see almost on any day, some sort of hostage situation with a gunman. yeah, that s absolutely right, natalie. australia s gun laws are just so strict here. and to think that somebody could actually walk into a cafe in the middle of the city armed with a gun with other weapons is frightening because it doesn t happen, as you say. and the last time that we really, you know, i guess felt the impact of terrorism other than it happening to australians overseas was in bali back in 2002, when there were the bombings and there were 88 australians that were killed in that attack. but it s another thing for it to be unfolding here on the streets of sydney. australia clearly involved in the war against isis. hundreds of troops over in iraq helping to train the kurdish and iraqi forces. we have australian fighter jets involved in the aggressive air campaign. threats have been made against australia. threats have been made against martin place in recent weeks. but as i say, for this to be happening, unfolding on the streets of sydney here in the heart of sydney is certainly very unnerving. yes. i can imagine unnerving for the people inside that coffee shop right now. so many hours. they are still in there. we don t even know how many. with this man. thank you so much, anna coren for us live there in sydney. miles godfrey is a political reporter for the daily telegraph. and he joins us now. he s been at the hostage scene all day, and he is now on the phone. miles, most of the information we re getting has been coming from reporters who talked with hostages in there, who ve been been contacted. we re not getting a lot of information at all from police. what do you know? what have you heard as far as who this person is, his demands, and how many people might still be in that coffee shop? yeah, good evening, guys. and good evening to your viewers. the latest information that we have is there are still a number of hostages obviously involved that are still in this cafe. the initial reports we got this morning were there were around 13 hostages being held. that number has crept up very slightly. and we think the latest information we have is there might be around 15. in terms of the perpetrator here, i don t think it s too helpful to speculate at moment as to who he is or where he s actually from. we don t actually yet know his motives apart from the obvious banner that he has put in the cafe. that would hint at a sort of background as to where he s coming from. nevertheless, it pears he s acting alone and he is acting in terms of sort of his mental state perhaps not from a very good place. but the thing you have to remember with all of this is that it is not actually it s not actually come as a huge surprise to many here in sydney. you may or may not know that we had a series of terrorism raids across the western area of sydney just a few months ago in september. and that actually led to a raising of the terror level threat here across australia from medium to high. the central part of that raid in september was an allegation that was later reported that there was a plot to kidnap someone from this very spot, from martin place. the allegation that was widely reported was that once that person was kidnapped they were going to be beheaded. now, the washout from that was a lot of people actually cast doubt on these claims and said was that really a reality, was that something that really could happen here in central sydney? and i think what we ve seen today is very much it is. we are living very much with the threat of terrorism on our doorstep. and miles, my understanding is one of the demands that the gunman has made is essentially he wants the world to know that australia is under attack by isis. and it seems that one of the reasons why police will not declare this a terrorist incident is because they don t want to give in to that demand. is that a fair reading? i think it is. and we re seeing right now at this very moment actually reports coming through that the hostages who are being held in this cafe have throughout the day been contacting a number of organizations, not to mention the national broadcaster. my understanding is they ve been ringing these organizations under the demands of the hostage taker and making a number of not least to bring an isis flag to the cafe and also a demand for the hostage taker to be allowed to speak to the prime minister perhaps on the national radio station, something like that. now, a lot of the media organizations that have received these demands are refusing to air them. some have, and that s how we know how they ve come about. but some of the broadcasters are actually refusing to pass on that information. and that is a direct result because they don t want to be seen to be assisting this guy, this madman, i guess, who s taken people hostage and is holding them under a siege. do you have any indication, miles, at this point as evening sets on in australia how long police are willing to wait this out. have there been any changes in the scene there? have you heard anything about are they allowing anything in, anything out? food, electricity ongoing. is there any kind of informat n information? i know it s very hard to get. but anything like that you re hearing. actually the assistant police commissioner here, catherine burn, who heads up the sort of terrorism side i guess of the new south wales police 230rss, just in a press conference in the last few minutes actually and they said they will be there for as long as they need be. and you wouldn t expect any less of any police force anywhere in the world. not least of all the new south wales police force, which is incredibly professional and incredibly capable as well. they ll thereby as long as they need to be. we ve got lives on the line here. they re not going to be taking any shortcuts. they re not going to be trying to end this quickly, by sort of pushing the situation or anything like that. in terms of food and that sort of thing being passed into the cafe, i ve not actually seen any going in there. by the very nature of the premises it s a cafe, you would think there would be some adequate splierksz food and water at the very least, to keep these people going. it s a very interesting point because it raises the question how long will this actually go on? and now we re in the 10th or perhaps the 11th hour of the siege that began around sort of 9:45, 10:00 a.m. sydney time. it s a very interesting question. all of australia and probably all of the world is surrounding their tvs this evening or whatever time of day it is in your part of the world and watching this unfold and we re all asking that question. when will this end? how long will it go for? and praying there is a speedy resolution and a safe resolution. and we certainly hope negotiators are talking with this person to try to talk him out of whatever else he wants. we do not know how long it will go but we know how long it has gone. almost ten hours now since that gunman first walked into that coffee shop. that chocolate coffee shop. the lindt coffee shop there in martin place in sydney armed with at least some dined of shotgun and took everybody inside hostage. and in the past few hours we ve seen at least five people manage to escape. there s also been communication with the hostages inside by a number of media organizations. but the police rin sifting the area is secure and they ll wait him out. and of course it is now turning into night in sydney. all this happening in the very heart of the city. chris reason be a reporter with 7 news australia was at the scene for hours. his newsroom is across from the cafe. listen to how he can describe what he can see from his position. let s start with what we can see of the gunman. he has been clearly identifiable through these last few hours as he paces his way back and forth affront of the four plate glass windows that link cafe. he s wearing a white shirt, a black cap, he s unshaven and he s carrying what appears to be a pump action shotgun. that gun almost coming into the frame of the windows, often close and menacingly close to the hostages themselves. let s talk about them, mel. we ve counted so far 15 different faces being forced up against the windows over these last eight, nine hours. not the 50 that had been speculated earlier. i think that number is wildly inaccurate. we re talking about that number, 15 people, combination of men and women and young people but thankfully no children involved as far as we can tell from our vantage point up here. now, you can the ghan seems to be rotating these people through the positions at the windows with their hands and faces up against the glass. one woman we counted was there for at least two hours. an extraordinary, agonizing time for her surely, having to stand on her feet for that long. some of them have got their heads in their hands like this as they re standing in the windows, mel. others look so vibly upset. one whom whose eyes were bloodshot red, obviously been crying her eyes out for some time, who knows what s been going through their minds these last few hours? just a terrifying ordeal for them. and i ve got to speculate here but would have been even more terrifying two hours ago when we saw the rush of escapees. we saw at this vantage point the gunman got extremely agitated as he realized those five had got out. he started screaming orders at the people inside. the hostages remain behind extremely agitated. we didn t see anything more than that. and we can t swing our camera around from this position to show you those windows directly live, mel. the police have been good enough let us get up here. we re not going into the fehr with their tactical operations by doing that. but there s a little bit of detail about what can be seen at this time in the siege. that was before they evacuated the network and well, actually, what they have done is i think the timing on that is that they did evacuate the network and the police took over that building because it is line of sight directly across from the coffee shop. chris mentioned right at the end they did allow them back in to make that report. i see. but hundreds of people who work at channel 7 in that building. most of those people, pretty much all of them had in fact been evacuated. we saw earlier tonight we were broadcasting from their melbourne studios because they had to leave their sydney studios. and they were the first network to give us these pictures you re seeing here of people in the windows and also of the suspected gunman. reporter glenn conley describes what he saw. reporter: our camera was trained on the front door of the lindt cafe, and we had quite a long lens on the color. we were able to see right 234. what we saw is nothing short of terrifying. he was using one of the employees of the lindt cafe as a human shield as he moved between what appeared to be two groups of hostages. the first group in the front window that we had seen looking across from the 7 newsroom from the very moment this began but also another group further into the cafe which led to speculation perhaps there was more than one gunman. at various times he was going backwards and forwards with his hand on the back or back of the neck of this lindt cafe employee as he moved the hostages around. we did see other hostages there. in particular a middle-aged woman in a white top who was very, very distressed. she was wiping her eyes, wiping her nose, and at one stage went to wipe her eyes and was obviously yeltd at by the gunman, her hands went straight back up in the air. she was visibly upset. we ve seen that. particularly with the faces of those who escaped. the terror in their eyes as they reached the moment of safety was something unforgettable. certainly agree with that. glenn conley there with channel 7 australia giving? good details of what happened in the last couple hours or so. and you ve been saying, and anna coren is from australia as well, our reporter there, that this is the first time australia has seen a hostage situation like this. it s the terrorism dimension as well which makes this so different. earlier we heard from david mallen, associate director of the melbourne school of government. he told us the government has been ramping up security in the country for quite some time. here he is. it has been a very big concern for the past few months. at least for the government. i m not sure it s been the case for the general public. there was a planned attack in the same part of sydney martin place a couple months ago. it led haveto very tough anti-stror laws being passed. tougher in some ways than in the u.s. you can go to prison for an extended period simply for traveling to iraq and syria without permission. a lot like the patriot act after.95 pv. there s been a threat here but like some of the people you had the interviews for a few minutes ago, a lot of australians feel this is a safe country, nothing happens, the police are on it. and the threat comes with these lone wolves that don t necessarily have chatter that can be picked up and eventually luck runs out because the police have to be right every single time. ? very true. very hard to stop someone who walks into a coffee shop with a shotgun. it s a low technology, high-impact attack and they re the hardest ones to stop. americans in sydney, meantime-v been warned about the ongoing situation there in market place. the consulate, which has been evacuated, issued this statement a short time ago. u.s. citizens are strongly encouraged to review your personal security plan, remain aware of your surroundings including local events, and monitor local news stations for updates. maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to enhance your personal security. good advice, not just for u.s. citizens who happen to be in sydney for pretty much for everyone who is there. concerning this situation ongoing in the world. witnesses to what s going on there at the cafe say australians are wandering around the streets with looks of disbelief. listen to what some people had to say near the scene. kind of a bit weird. like i ve never seen anything like this happen. like it s probably the first time in australian history that something this major in regards to a terrorist threat has happened. it is worrying me, actually. as you know, as me as a muslim i feel because it don t represent me. and if he think that he s a muslim he s doing the right thing, then he s very bad. because that s not us. that s not the muslims doing this. that s why i m worrying. if he think that he is what he s doing is islam then he s definitely wrong and everyone has to stand against him. people in australia shocked about what s going on. we ve been reporting that the hostages have been able to use their cell phones and they ve been involved in social media throughout this deal. people on social media throughout the world have been reacting to the hostage situation for hours. many tweeting about it using the #sydney siege. many hoping for a peaceful resolution. one person writing hope that sydney siege at martin place will end peacefully. please remember that islam is not a crime, extremism is. they aren t the same. another tweeting more innocent lives at stake spilling of innocent blood is not what allah taught us. pray for those captured in the sydney siege. the prime minister a few hours after this began addressed the nation. he encouraged everyone to stay calm. he said this is an ongoing operation and that australians should go about their business, not to be interfered with if you like by what is happening in martin place, not to be affected by it. this is some of what tony abbott had to say. i just want to make a short statement on the hostage incident in martin place in sydney. new south wales police responding. they are being strongly supported by commonwealth agencies. we don t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator. we don t know whether this is politically motivated. although obviously there are some indications that this could be. we have to appreciate that even in a society such as ours there are people who would wish to do us arm. that s why we have police and security organizations of the utmost professionalism that are ready and able to respond to our whole range of situations and contingencies including the situation that we are now seeing in sydney. the whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. australia is a peaceful, open, and generous society. nothing should ever change that. and that s why i would urge all australians today to go about their business as usual. of course if anyone does have any suspicions of untoward activity there is the national security hotline, 1-800-123-400. which i would urge them to call. i can let you know that the national security committee of the cabinet has been briefed on this incident. i ve been in regular contact with premier baird over the course of the last couple of hours. i ve been briefed by commissioner schipione of the new south wales police and by commissioner calvin of the australian federal police. this is an unfolding situation, and as the situation unfolds there will be operational updates provided by the new south wales police. i want to assure people that the ordinary business of government must go on and it will go on and that s why treasurer hawkey and finance minister corman will shortly be releasing the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook as planned. finally, this is a very disturbing incident. i can understand the concerns and anxieties of the australian people at a time like this. but our thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. i can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation. and our hearts go out to those people. [ inaudible ]. i m going to leave it to the new south wales police, who are in operational charge of this incident, to provide those kinds of details. obviously, in a situation like this all sorts of reports fly around. all sorts of claims are made. so i do urge everyone to exercise caution in their reporting, but i will leave all the operational details to the new south wales police, who as i understand it will begin providing operational updates shortly. thank you. australia s prime minister tony abbott speaking a number of hours ago when this situation was first unfolding. and as he did say there, the new south wales police would be providing some operational details. we have learned a lot more about what has been going on in sydney over the last ten hours or so. we understand there s more than a dozen people being held hostage inside this cafe, that the guy with the gun has made contact with three media organizations, making a number of demands. among them he wants an isis flag, he wants contact with the man you just saw there, tony abbott, the australian prime minister. he s also making these claims that there are two explosive devices, two bombs inside the cafe none of that confirmed. yeah. somewhere in the cbd. we ve also seen over the course of the last few hours five people managing to escape from inside this cafe. yeah, we have. and we have the compelling pictures of the women who left the building with the lindt apron. five total. we still don t know how they were able to get out. most reports are they escaped. it wasn t a negotiation release. we don t know. although tony abbott said the police would bring us an update, they are not forthcoming. they like to control the situation as best they can. all is taking place in the lindt chocolate coffee shop. it is a popular place in the morning, especially when the siege began. the company put a statement out on facebook and addressed the situation. it read in part we would like to thank everyone for this kind support for the situation at the lindt chocolate cafe at martin place. we are deeply concerned over this serious incident and our thoughts and prayers are with the staff and customers involved and all of their friends and families. we don t know how many people left in the coffee shop are workers or employees of the lindt company or people who were just stopping to get coffee. we know it is a mixture of both staff and customers who are still being held hostage. we did get some details from the police that negotiators had made contact with the gunman. those negotiations are continuing. they are working out who this guy is. we have been told by our affiliates in australia they know who this man is, but not releasing details. this guy is an aspirational jihadist who wants to be linked to isis in some way. there have been messages of support from the canadian prime minister and the u.s. president barack obama has been briefed. we will continue to report on the interesting aspect that the gunman has had reach out to the media. the hostages reached out to the media. we will continue our coverage
that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election. let s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. he s denigrating, he s talking down our democracy and i for one am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position. donald trump s comments tonight have already been condemned by jeff flake of arizona, lindsey graham of south carolyn a. will they reverberate by voters? we ll see. i m joined by chris of host all in with msnbc, and former chairman of the national committee, michael steal, and msnbc everybody s a political analyst any way, i shouldn t base that, everything is. he s the host of the how hewitt show, and also msnbc political analyst. who i can start with? chris we ll just go across here. this you know, there is the i m alfred hitchcoc. he was given the third world of idea, the sort of banana republican idea heads i win, and you get prosecuted, and tales you lose and i m going to say the election is legitimate. he refused and said he ll keep us in suspense. it s not showmanship, it s dangerous his former campaign chair, paul manafort, this is the game they played in the ukraine and this is the game people who work around donald trump, played with it is election, claiming it wass was illegitimate. it s kind of frightening. michael, you re laughing. i m not laughing, chris. this is the party of abraham lincoln, the grand old party who won t accept the results of the election. it s not the party i led. this is not representative of any nominee we ve ever had in media then you re going to he turnout in great numbers. the two hot ticks as to what michael said, if i were some enterprising reporter, din dino rossi, both of whom lost, in contested elections i think norm coleman was cheated, and din orossi. how was he cheated? they manufactured ballots after the election by the dozens. and washington state they kep kept counting, and counting, and counting until they got the number. both of them conceded at the end of the legal recount. they wanted to make the point, if it was so close this a particular state, i will fight like al gore did. he could have done that. he did not do that. he used language outside the norm. i can say that applies more broadly. it was so striking him talking about the supreme court justices and pro life, right? most republican candidates don t just say i will point pro life justices because everyone understands that s a subtext. they say i will appoint justices who will up told the constitution, because he s basically reading austin decoff cards, he accepts the top line, i ll appoint pro life justices. i watched republican candidate after can. they don t come out and say that. in fact, hillary clinton did the same thing. that s right, but the republicans she said i had a litmus test. it is the republicans and judicial conservatives a litmus test is ipso facto,il legitimate. who said they there s no one left. he is so unembedded in any sort of fluency is he gives you the top line off the index card. everything was airplane mode until a certain point. all the sudden, trump s language on the life issue, on late term, certain the idea of aborting a baby a few days before birth, he didn t talk about spina bifida, he didn t talk about the concerns people have when they have tests in the fifth month. he didn t talk about the clinicalcasions th clinical argument that it s bad, first of all, about this particular procedure, it s not just late term, it s a procedure. he i think he rang the bell for the pro lifers today. that s why he did it. the delivery, that procedure describing the nineth month of pregnancy is called a cesarian. it is true, he i think donald trump demonstrated that he has absolutely 0 fluency with anything to do with what happens to a woman. let s everybody judge for themselves. in pregnancy and hillary did the opposite. was he talking about partial birth? let s take a look. if you go with what hillary is saying in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. now, you can say that that s okay and hillary can say that that s okay, but it s not okay with me. because based on what she s saying and where she s going and she s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day, and that s not acceptable. that is not what happens in these cases and using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. you should meet with some of the women that i ve met with, women i ve known over the course of my life. this is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make, and i do not believe the government should be making it. okay. i think hillary clinton, apart from the values question, it was surreal, the differences between pro life and pro-choice, the real values differences and sometimes there s conflict and we have to deal with it. hillary clinton never lost focus on who she was going after, women in the suburbs. she talked about the need for gun regulation to protect toddlers. right. she s not talking about the work of marianne wright edelman. trump was working his base. he was working his base and not understanding the human bases of ideology, the idea they re going to rip a fetus at nine months before birth that is a cesarian section. he didn t understand the issue he s talking about. to chris point, he hasn t thought about it enough, to have a conversant point on it. he did that all night tonight, where hillary clinton gave her the oosition to understand empathynd talk about specific women and demonstrate the basic knowledge of what women in the fact and what they deal with. donald trump has no empathy for women, that s the basic reason he s so far behind. he lacks basic empathy for women. including sexual assault, obviously. i m curious what you guys thought of the heller discussion. chris wallace eye w i was gla started with the court. i m impressed donald trump knows heller. i thought that s a crazy thing to be surprised by. this is the single biggest second amendment case. i heard pennsylvania when he was talking about. that s the one thing he remembered. yeah, yeah. pennsylvania, indiana. what he was talking about on the late-term abortion, the gossnell horror factory, when he was talking about very explicitly to second amendment people, what she considers reasonable and what her court considers reasonable is not what the court considers reasonable accident and t, and the pivot to chicago made the point. it rang every bell for republican voters. the gossnell horror story, off the book, illegal illegal. completely illegal, horrific murder chamber. the guy in philly. if he would used gossnell, the way he used heller, it would have been very effective. and he did well reminding people the rigged media needs to confront the project veritas tapes. and what s that? that the dnc contractors insighti encited violence in chicago. if they are not talked about and debunked they will play into the media. do you think any credible media outlet is going to use james o keefe who dressed up as a pretend pimp who was somebody james o keefe he may as well as be from the national inquirer. we ve seen this before. the whole thing was garbage. i want to get the contention out. if they re right if this is legitimate, what does it establish? it establishes that democratic party nominated donald trump and effectively dis that s absurd. delegitimized him early. how would they get 14 million republicans to vote for donald trump? you have to own the people who voted for this guy. in your party, your voter chose him. joy, this goes to that s the end of it. what you heard throughout the campaign particularly members of the 168, the leadership of the rnc who were concerned about the open primary process. the cross over of a lot of voters who have never voted in the republican primary, showed up miraculously in certain states at certain times. you can look at it and dismiss it, but when you start putting together the story timeline, ju juxopposed to what s coming out let s talk about what s being stipulated. is the stipulation the democratic party engineered donald trump to be the nominee of the republican party? no, it s not. they worked actively to frame him as an extremist by provoking violence at his rallies and if you want to debunk that, you will debunk the rigged media. if you don t talk about it, you played into rigged media. are you going to try to blame democrats for people who behaved incredibly violently at trump rallies? the guy who sucker punched the black guy, you re saying democrats caused them to take those actions? i will tell them to watch the veritas videos. this is a special edition of hard ball live from las vegas for the final presidential debate. i sat in my apartment today in a very beautiful hotel known as trump made with chinese steal. sprint? i m hearing good things about the network. all the networks are great now. we re talking within a 1% difference in reliability of each other. and, sprint saves you 50% on most current national carrier rates. save money on your phone bill, invest it in your small business. wouldn t you love more customers? i would definitely love some new customers. sprint will help you add customers and cut your costs. switch your business to sprint and save 50% on most current verizon, at&t and t-mobile rates. don t let a 1% difference cost you twice as much. whoooo! for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com. well, just put on a breathe right strip and . pow! it instantly opens your nose up to 38% more than cold medicine alone. so you can breathe . and sleep. shut your mouth and say goodnight mouthbreathers. breathe right. i m here with my colleges. hillary clinton had a short retort tonight with donald trump after responding about putin. i don t know putin. he said nice things about me. if we got along well, that would be good. if united states and russia got along well, and went after isis that would be good. he has no respect for her, he has no respect for our president, from everything i see, has no respect for this person. that s because he d rather have a pupper as presidet as pr the united states. you re the puppet. it s pretty clear the russians have engaged in cyber attacks against the united states of america that you encourag encourag encouraged espionage against our people, and you are willing to spout the putin line, sign up for his wish list, breakup nato, do whatever he wants to do and that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race. i don t know about motive. i hate motive in politics. it s just a stupid argument, but trump makes an argument we d be better off sharing responsibilities in the middle east with russia. and putin will play a role in the assad regime, we ll be better off than this endless war, we re in the middle of with the sunni and shia. i did understand trump tonight, i believe i understood him when he said if we take back mosul, that s the shia-led government of iraq. here we have the wonderful support of and the thing king abdulla has been afraid of all the time, and the sunis don t have isis, they re going to have some other organization. when are we going to stop believing we can take sides on the shia, who have been moraning itnist more antagonistic. is that how i heard it? it is how i heard it. hillary is just doing the usual. we re going to have no-fly zones. you can t have a flono fly zone you can t put planes in the air that s the problem. there s no full exploration of what the no-fly zone process would look like. where are these airplanes going to be based? where are they going to be based and how do they enforce it, particularly if they re russian planes involved in all of they. here s the other thing i was thinking about. how about any of the other aircraft fire? we have planes flying around over there. who are we shooting at. the enemy of my enemy is my enemy and my friend. i think it s amazing you were able to take that melage and assembly them into an order where you could understand any i thought it was meandering. they understand trump-ism. he sort of meandered around he was trying to remember whatever the last thing he was told by kellyanne conway. he demonstrated no conversant of the issue. i was thinking back to the 2008 campaign and candidate barack obama talking about how he wanted to have a different relationship with our enemies, that he was going to be the president to sit down with our enemies and negiate a deal, to because george bush, that bad bush, didn t know how to negotiate a good deal that got us into this war and i m sitting there thinking that this is now sort of a flash back to that point. here you have trump and a lot of republicans are talking about opening up a reproach if you will with russia, recognizing their growth and their expansion in the region. they re now a player, you ve got to play with them, and wanting to sit down and develop the relationship with them, and then you have this new establishment that s been created by obama and hillary, they re like how dare you, how dare you talk to russia. so it s just an interesting- i want to interesting. let me finish my point and i ll shut up. i m not saying that that is the right necessarily the right approach to take, but i just find that our policy in the middle east has changed to such a degree that it is 180 degrees from where it was when barack obama was talking about sitting down with the russians. let me say this and i want to start with this agreement, which is i do think the rhetoric on russia from hillary clinton is probably tactically smart, but i m worried about what it all amounts to after the election. i agree. i think we all don t want to head down the road towards another code war ld war or war nuclear power. aren t you afraid, chris, joy, that hillary s just nestling up to a war with assad s regime? for talks in the middle east, we are 100% agreement on that. my problem with trump is his greatest passion and his most passionate answer tonight again was in his defense of vladimir putin. i think you can want what you talked about, which is a realignment, a reset, where we take seriously the idea of where putin can be helpful to us in the middle east and not have the passion to defend him and the passion to defend his government and his efficacy let me just finish this point. the other thing is, there are 17 u.s. intelligences agencies that believe in political espionage, attempting to put their thumb on the scale for the election. it s not crazy that hillary clinton and the clinton campaign are not super psyche body that in this moment. why does he deny what s been established? why does trump lose credibility by saying this didn t come from russia? it was inexplicable. it was russia and the u.s. intelligence agencies say it was russia. it is fact checkable. the active measures by the ffb, otherwise known as wikileaks is a very dangerous cyber a pack on the united states. the argument to be made by republicans is cyber attacks against opm, cyber attacks against the department of defense, which occur every day, cyber attacks against sony pictures v n pictu pictures have not been responded to, from the meddle in tiddle ef he proposes and i think he s very wrong that we will right this mess by dealing with russia as a great power from the zarast area, as opposed from the soviet union, it is an argument to be made and i think democrats have to deal with the fact for eight years we have not defended the infrastructure or resem believing to allow us to respond to national security. i think we re having a good debate here. thank you, hugh, and joy. you guys have to leave. we re doing a little rotation. any way, you re bringing defense and offense. we re platooning. up next, much more republican reaction, the big news donald trump made here tonight, his refusal to say he would accept the election. he s going to keep us in suspense, again, alfred hitchco hitchcock. live from las vegas for the final presidential debate. every time donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him. trump university gets sued for fraud and racketeering, he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. there was even a time when he didn t get an emmy for his tv program three years in a row and he started tweeting that emmys were rigged against him. should have gotten. every time i travel, it s the moments that are most rewarding. because if you let yourself embrace them, you ll never forget them. the new marriott portfolio of hotels now has 30 brands in over 110 countries. so no matter where you go, you are here. join or link accounts at members.marriott.com. sureor put themhave ston a rack.e tires. but the specialists at ford like to show off their strengths: 13 name brands. all backed by our low price tire guarantee. yeah, we re strong when it comes to tires. right now during the big tire event, get a $140 rebate by mail on four select tires. 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(1940s aqua music) (burke) and we covered it, february third, twenty-sixteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum i want to ask you here on the stage tonight, do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely sir, that i will absolutely accept the result of this election? i will look at it at the time. i m not looking at anything now. i ll look at it at the time. what i ve seen what i ve seen is so bad first of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pylon is so amazing that new york times actually wrote an article about it but they don t even care. it s so dishonest and they ve poisoned the minds of the voters, but unfortunately for them, i think the voters are seeing through it. i think they re going to see through it. we ll find out on november 8th, but i think they re going to see through it. welcome back to hardball on the most stunning moment of tonight s debate, donald trump refused commitment to accept the results of the november election and here s what he said when moderator chris wallace pressed him further. sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact one of the prides of this country, is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner not saying you re necessarily going to be the loser or the winner but the loser concedes to the winner and that country comes together in part for the good of the country, are you saying you re not prepared now to commit to that principle? what i m saying is i ll tell you at the time, i ll keep you in suspense. let me respond to that because that s horrifying trump s refusal in spat of wh spite of what his own running mate and daughter have said. here s mike pence. will you accept the results of the election? we will absolutely accept the results of the election. the american people will speak in an election that ll cucullm election legitimate, on the basis of 08, when they said in both of those times, president obama was an illegitimate candidate for president, so there s elections in arrow, he s threatening to delegitimize. it is a pattern, and leads to the suggestion that robert costa will not value the election results. pretty scary stuff. it wasn t just what he said that was shocking, it was the way he said it. there was a casual contempt in donald trump s voice for 225 years of american political tradition. donald trump is a force for chaos. he always has been. if he can t taking some and win something himself, he will destroy that thing and make it impossible for other people to have it. what he s what he s really doing tonight among other things, in addition to challenging the whole system, is saying that if i can t have the presidency, i m going to make it nate worth hillary s time to have it. that s what he s doing. and this will have global i am the global editor. this is top news around the world already. the legitimacy of the american election is something that is not only prized in america, it s prized around the world, because it s a symbol of stability and strength of the world s super power and the light of light of nations. and he s putting that under threat. let s talk about the washington post yesterday, he s a very hawkish guy. he laid out a whole speculative theory this is what vladimir putin wants. yep. he wants to have sort of a mood in this country in the various parts of the old soviet union and to break this thing up and blame the government for a corrupt election and say we were secur secured out of it he wants to get even because he thinks we did that in the part of the of the soviet union against him. he has this dream of restoring and to blame us. you have to realize what putin s government has been doing is stoking these right-wing movements what s that group? you kip the sort of the new version of kgb, so new kgb, fsb in russia has been using all of these sort of undermining tactics to try to stoke right-wing movements all across europe and it s had a really detabd destabilizing across the continent. they did it in ukraine. i think they re trying to find democratic equality equivalence across the globes. we have problems with our elections, and their elections are joy and i were discussing this actually before, and when i came on, chris, i stand corrected. i was right that this is about something bigger. i was wrong that it is something so small as a television network. they have much grander ambitions. who s they? steve bannon, the people behind donald trump. why do you see nijel farage, at all the spin rooms? i think they see potential for a movement that in some ways transsends our borders. how they keep it a lie by denying the results of the election? it s multipronged. this is a moment a critical moment of educated republicans who care about our democracy to put aside party and to start speaking out and i think we re starting to see the seeds of that tonight on twitter. i think we re starting to see the seeds of that with responsible republicans like marco rubio saying of course the election is not rigged and we need to stand together something that began as a reality show spec ctacle we all a mused by it has mo morphed. arizona senator jeff flake tweeted donald trump tweeted he might not accept the election results is beyond the pail. south carolina republican senator lindsey graham, like most americans vicon fiddence in our democracy and election system, during this debate mr. trump is doing the party a great disservice. if he loses it will not be because the system is rigged, but because he failed as a candidate. ben, you wanted to correct something about we talked about earlier with regard to the rnc s position. first of all a real politic observation is what donald trump s remarks will do. we ll ha will have the exact opposite of what he s intended. he s given the democrats a terrific get out the vote mechanism to make more democrats who are not enthusiastic about hillary clinton and will increase democratic turnout. but in terms of what we talked about earlier on the air, the rnc doing a voter fraud program, that is not true. i ve been told by the top council for both the campaign and the rnc, that rnc is abiding by the decent decrease and it is not the least bit involved in poll-watching programs. what do you think reince priebus will say, because i don t think he s spoken out yet, about trump nonaccepting? i talked to him. i caught him afterwards. he was trying to beat it out of the spin room, if you can imagine, and he was trying to convince us that this is nothing more than just a preemptive positioning that in case the difference happens to be by about one electoral vote or something minor this is a hair-race, you know, that donald trump wants to reserve that option and he said trust me, that s all this is. then i got kellyanne conway and it was a different what i want to see is is not just reince priebus not trying to get out of the room, and lindsey graham, the usual suspects on matters trump, i want to hear fromimi mitch mcconnell, especially mitch mcconnell who considers himself a states man and somebody who respects the integrity of the system. i want to hear from them tonight. mitch mcconnell, these other going to be looking at 2018, and if donald trump, looks as if he ll be defeated, his voters, this fashion he s whipped up on the republicans, they ll still be there in their districts and their states and the fear of them is where i think mcconnell is silent, the fear of them is why rubio and reince howard, look, the point is, is that it s important for mitch mcconnell and paul ryan to have the legitimacy of the votes accepted because they re candidates to the u.s. senate and the u.s. house in and tight races need the results. let s hear him saying. i m going to watch the and see when they do. i said that tonight i hope they do. if toomy wins a squeaker in our state, it s likely to say he one. that s right. sticking around with us for a little more, you re watching hardball live in las vegas for the final presidential debate. we thought fibers that help you stay regular then we switched to mirafiber. only mirafiber supports regularity with dailycomfort fiber. and is less likely to cause. unwanted gas. finally. switch to mirafiber. from the makers of miralax. [chains dragging] [eerie music playing] [crickets chirping] [owl hoots] announcer: if you don t fix them, sparks from dragging tow chains can cause a wildfire. and that could be scary. bye, smokey! only you can prevent wildfires. fight heartburn fast. with tums chewy delights. the mouthwatering soft chew that goes to work in seconds to conquer heartburn fast. tum tum tum tum. chewy delights. only from tums. i will stand up for families against powerful interests, against corporations, i will do everything that i can to make sure that you have good jobs with rising incomes, that your kids have good educations from preschool through college. i hope you will give me a chance to serve as your president. that was like a candidate s night in a regular debate, as if we had a regular debate tonight. welcome back to hardball live in las vegas for what was the final debate. tonight, donald trump again denied all the accounts of numerous women who have accused-im sexual misconduct and he said the clinton campaign was to blame for those women coming forward. here s trump and clinton s response. the stories are all totally false. i have to say that. and i didn t even apologize to my wife, who is sitting right here, because i didn t do anything. i didn t know any of these women. i didn t see these women. these women, the woman on the plane, the woman i think they want either fame or her campaign did it. donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. he goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and i don t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn t know what that feels like. so we now know what donald thinks and what he says and how he acts towards women. that s who donald is. richard nixon in the old days i gave them the sword. hillary knows how to do this, she s a woman, and she just says we now know who this guy is, his soul has captured this election. we don t give hillary clinton enough credit for her expert way that she bates donald trump, calling him donald, reminding him about the things he said about women. why does it irritate donald trump? that rich people in manhattan looked down on him, when he was a rich kid for queens he wasn t up to their snuff. i ve heard the same story of people who lived him in palm beach and makes people call him mr. trump, and this idea that he can call you by your first name, but you c t dot to him. look at chris christie, who he debates by making him call him mr. trump. and needling him. you re making he like him. there s always a group of finding a way of rejecting anybody coming up. george wallace did the same thing. it s not about race. it s about groups social circles, catillions, the palm beach crowd. george wallace said the same thing. whenever somebody said you re not you up to snuff it bothers them. he dismissed them on the topic of women, the very top of republican strategists told me earlier today on the way in here, that thing that really damaged donald trump ultimately was not just the accusations credible accusations from all the women, but donald trump s answer, when donald trump said, essentially those women aren t good enough looking for me to want to hit on them, and this republican said that that response was what really, really damaged him damaged him and hillary baited him into it and hillary went after it tonight. they must have poll tested it because that response was as bad as the original accusation. it sounds like he s saying if you can t contest for miss universe, you re not really he was also in directly admitting it. i think one of the most notable moments for women s perspective was that that off the cuff remark that you re a nasty woman. because it s moments like that when all american women have flashbacks to their own moments of being dismissed or insulted simply for asserting yourself or stating a position that is not controversial or even personal and it invites that kind of misogynistic response. his history s doing just that. she did but they trade a lot of stuff like that in the debate. it wasn t anything nasty woman, that was nasty woman. and the keyword, excuse my ignorance, but the keyword is woman. he s not saying you re a nasty person by saying you re a nasty woman, he s tying it to jegende and it res resinated with wo these are first-time moments. chris, there are more of them in this election by a factor of several hundred than any we ve ever covered. there s are moments in history we wish never happened. thank you. we ll give you more next time. when we come back, what happens in vegas, doesn t stay in vegas. we re going to find out what a top vegas odds maker is saying about his presidential race, and this is hardball live from unlv with the final presidential debate. i hope you like eating frozen dinners. alone. let s try this again. smart move. because buzzed driving is drunk driving. geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides. for one late night edition of hardball. we ve got a couple more minutes. since we re in sin city, if you will, why don t we look at the odds in this presidential election. jimmy vacaro joins me now to go over both hillary clinton and donald trump s chances. can you make any money betting on hillary now? no, you can t make it here obviously because you can t we can t take bets here. an ex-caliber. a few of the offshore places and the european places are offering insurance money to buy back half the bet if you bet on hillary because they think she s going to be the winner. right now she s a 6 to 1 favorite. when you wake up tomorrow, she ll be at the same odds everywhere. the needle didn t move anywhere. i want to give somebody some help here. you can get some money if you bet a different spread on hillary, 0 to 5, it s got to be above 0. if you go for the spread you can make some money here. you can go for the spread if you have a lot of money because if you put up a lot of money. 6 to 1, you d have to put up $6,000 to win $1,000. say it s hillary by 10%, are you going to make some money? no, chris, it s been fluctuating greatly since the beginning of summer when the republican convention in july was, he had such a good convenience, the odds went way down. now naturally since mr. trump has stepped into some potholes in the last 30 days that has shot up at 8 to 1 in some of the books in english. ov money was bet on hillary clinton. when people make a bet that s 4 to 1 or 5 to 1, 5 1/2 to 1, what are they thinking, god s going do this for me? why does somebody think they re going to win a 6 in 1? i m the only person who booked tyson on a 27 to 1 favorite. thousands of dollars came in on tyson and went up 42 to 1. we made a mint at the mirage that time, but remember he lost the fight. a 42 to 1 favorite lost the fight so we don t know who is going to win this election, trust me, no one knows donald needs a double off the wall to keep the game going. why don t they allow political betting? federal law, it s been that way forever and even the gaming commission, we can t even do local or state elections. it s going to be a long time after we re gone. i had one bet, that s crazy that may go either way. that does it for the live coverage tonight from las vegas. if you missed the debate, stick around, you can catch the whole final debate in its entirety right now. good night. you need without the unnecessary additives you don t. store manager: clean up, aisle 4. alka-seltzer plus liquid gels. the image on the surface book, transports you into the world which is our main goal as animators and you can actually touch the screen. you can t do that on a mac. even if you re trying your best. along with diet and exercise, once-daily toujeo® may help you control your blood sugar. get into a daily groove. let s groove tonight. share the spice of life. baby, from the makers of lantus®, slice it right. toujeo® provides blood sugar-lowering activity for 24 hours and beyond, we re gonna groove tonight. proven blood sugar control all day and all night, and significant a1c reduction. toujeo® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. it contains 3 times as much insulin in 1 milliliter as standard insulin. don t use toujeo® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar or if you re allergic to insulin. allergic reaction may occur and may be life threatening. don t reuse needles or share insulin pens, even if the needle has been changed. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which can be serious and life threatening. it may cause shaking, sweating, fast heartbeat, and blurred vision. check your blood sugar levels daily. injection site reactions may occur. don t change your dose of insulin without talking to your doctor. tell your doctor about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins, like toujeo®, may cause heart failure that can lead to death, even if you ve never had heart failure before. don t dilute or mix toujeo® with other insulins or solutions as it may not work as intended and you may lose blood sugar control, which could be serious. find your rhythm and keep on grooving. let s groove tonight. ask your doctor about toujeo®. share the spice of life.
house. this is picture for that meeting. and for the second straight day the dow bounced on wall street. truly an unprecedented thick and it runs completely counter to many of the prognostications out there before. yet another record today after donald trump s win. michelle kosinski is outfront at the white house. michelle, the moment today of this meeting so many people thought 24e8d never see barack obama and donald trump meet, never mind as president and president elect at the white house. maybe even not the two people at the meeting. and tonight outside the white house more protests but inside today it was all about reassurance and everybody on their best behavior. what was so fascinating about this, on the one hand you have this incredibly organized transition process with handshakes and good wishes on all sides. but then on the other, you have this intense bitterness from the campaign trail. and today the white house didn t really hold back in saying that i have great respect. the meeting lasted for almost an hour and a half. and it could have as far as i m concerned it could have gone on for a lot longer. we really we discussed a lot of different situations. some wonderful and some difficulties. i very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel. when asked the white house press secretary said all those warnings from president obama on the campaign trail about trump, that he s dangerous, unqualified, still hold. does the president now have any reason to believe that donald trump is fit to be president of the united states? again, i m not gonna if two men did not relitigate their differences in the oval office. trump s next stop, capitol hill. meetings with leadership. the tone here equally welcoming, putting deep differences aside, for now. more affordable and better. reporter: an impending rolling back of as many of president obama s policies as possible. but the white house couldn t talk about that today, saying essentially what will be will be. america has chosen. my number one priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president elect is successfulal. ending it all with a joking reminder with one leader to the next, not to take question interests the press. thank you guys. we re not going to be taking any questions. that s good rule. don t answer any questions when their [indiscernible] very good man. well the not only how these two feel about each other but also the fact that donald trump has vowed many times to roll back president obama s policies. is a key job as chief of staff. the other person is a reince priebus. he s also been very integral in trump s world. running the ground population that got donald trump elected. he s been also very personally involved. i m told their bond isn t necessarily as close but certainly much closer than people think. and i m also told by people around washington erin that he would be a consensus choice. knows washington and the republicans on the hill. helping get many of them elected. so that is a choice. and probably the first and most important choings because it is the most personal. dana, thank you very much. and outfront tonight. reince priebus. chairman of the republican national committee. thank you for being with us tonight. i know you are doing this on very little sleep if any. we re told you have spoken to trump about a position in his administration. how did that conversation go? no that is not the case. we don t i m not involved in that. nobody is talking about those things. and so our focus right now is just making sure we re wrapping up the committee work and then, you know, making sure that the transition goes smoothly and so that he can be well equipped come january. and he will be. donald trump does give you a lot of credit for his win. at that moment when the world was watching him give his victory speech. he talked about you. here is what he said. i ll tell you, reince is really a star. and he s the hardest working guy we understand and i know you are saying you haven t talked about it with him. but you are on the list. steve bannon is on the list for trump s chief of staff. if offered would you take that job? do you even want it? i don t i don t to even talk achbbout it. the truth is i m in my job right now, erin. i m chairman of the rnc. it is an important role we play at the national party. and it was a great victory. but those great victories only happen with a great candidate. i m proud of her mechanics and data and i think it is unprecedented. i think it is unbelievable what this committee did. but none of those unbelievable things work if you have a bad candidate. so it always starts with a great candidate. and the other thing it starts with is you have to have a candidate that is flowing with the river. in other words the momentum, the mood of the electorate has to flow with the candidate. all of those things lined up, which is why, you know, i think the media narrative was just so far off on what americans were thinking about the choices they had in front of them. president obama and president elect trump were supposed to meet today for ten minutes. as, you know, that was the schedule. were you surprised after all the and let s just be honest here, frankly horrible things they said about each other that that meeting lasted han hour and a half? no i m not surprised and i ll tell you why. i ve seen president trump in meetings one on one or meetings and things had to be patched up. and people have to get to know each other. he didn t get to where he is. and now he s president elect in the united states. in his business deals, i guarantee you there are all kind of problems he s dealt with. blowout arguments permits or buildings or whatever. he ll walk into a meeting. and people will say this is a gracious personable guy. he s a hard guy not to like, especially in meetings like that. so i m not surprised. do you know what they talked about? have you had a chance to talk to donald trump about it? i talked to him briefly today when he swung through the rnc. but we obviously i wasn t downloading on details with him. but i m sure it was very positive and the reports are indicative of that. you know, bernie sanders today talked about donald trump on cnn. i wanted to play for you part of what e said. the election is over. donald trump won. i intend to work with president trump. i will vigorously oppose him if he appeals to racism or sexism or some of the other discriminatory measures that he brought up during his campaign. reince you have seen the protests. they are out there again on the streets tonight protests against trump s presidency. does he need to. does he feel he should reach out to these people explicitly and assuage their fears? well erin yesterday morning keep in mind donald trump spoke to the american people, just yesterday morning. and when he was getting ready for that speech, it was nothing about bragging about the election, nothing about continuing the rhetoric, the political rhetoric that was that was indicative of a political campaign. it was all about coming together, leading all americans no matter battleground, race, ethnicity, gender, whatever the case is. and it was donald trump that led. and it was him that decided this is the direction to go. let s bring people together. let s cool the water. so this is how it is going to be from now. that is what he did. it wasn t a speech nartd wloer said read this speech. no he sat down and made sure it was the right speech at the right time. and just yesterday morning, his sitting down with 90 minutes with the president. is another indicator. people should look at. here is a person who just won the presidency. and he s sitting down having a 90 minute conversation should have been 10 with the president and she s working hard and showing the country he s working hard to move the country forward. but i would say the agenda americans were in favor of was an agenda that the republican party, meaning our candidate, including president elect trump, house and senate candidates put on the table. the other part of this is that we have an obligation then to pursue the promises that we made in t in the campaign that people voted for. they voted and said yes we with want those things to be done in washington. so those things will be done. we don t have a mandate to water down our promises. we have a mandate to perform the things that we promised. so a wall banni, banning mus immigration from that s not the promise that is not the position he laid out. and this has now been since june that he gave that speech. i believe to either the american leagues or vfw. in june he said his position is if the country is harbor b terrorists in the risk of the security of the united states that he would take member to suspend those immigration visas until a better vetting system is in place. that is consistent with many bills in the house and senate. and it is what donald trump s position is. so if the media wants to go back now. not you in particular erin, but if if media wants to go back now and stir the pot and now claim he want this is muslim ban that he s made it clear through a three disabilities through june that this was not his position. it would do us all a favor if the media would get together and quit stirring the pot he did say it originally. and i donald trump and then it is going to be certain countries. and then countries that harbor terrorists. those what are those countries? is that nothing to do with being muslim at all? he s got to iron out very completely what he meant because he made it very clearly about religion. he said repeatedly that there is no religious test. and for you all to be coming back and relitigating something that was that is now five months old is what the problem is in our country. the problem is we ve got to fill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week of cable stations that create these issues that don t exist, and then turn people against each other. if the media is so interested in america coming together, then they ought to do their job and quit stirring the pot where it should belong. do you think reince that he also carry answer obligation? you have muslims in this country who are worried. they are afraid. they are afraid of what will happen and they are afraid of what erin i ve talked to ceos in other countries who are worried about this. isn t this incumbent on donald trump to come out and be very clear and the leader e rrin, listen. i think you are very good but i m very surprised that this is the conversation we re having. yesterday morning, yesterday morning, he just gave a speech about americans coming together. and you are asking me now on thursday whether he needs to do another i mean, i m not sure what you are asking for. he s the president for all americans. he s made that very clear. we re making it clear. and to go back to, you know, old issues when they have been asked over and over again and have been answer by president elect trump, people need to understand that he understands. i promise you. i know where his head and heart is at. and he said it. so just trust his own words. he ll be a president for all american, republican, democrat, independent, any religion, any faith. he s your president and he s going do the he s going to do a fantastic job and he understands the gravity and the seriousness of the position. reince priebus. thank you very much. appreciate your time tonight. thank you erin. and new tonight donald and melania trump are back in new york tonight. melania trump spent the morning with the first lady, michelle obama and this is a picture of the first meeting, the two having tea, after one of the ugliest presidential campaigns in recent history. suzanne malveaux is out fror ou at the white house. reporter: one thing to talk about your kids. safe territory. a good ice breaker. that is exactly what michelle obama as well as melania trump did. you might recall, sasha and malia were quite young. and it is melania trump whose concerned. very protective of her 10-year-old son baron. so that is something they share. this is very different than what their husbands experienced today. no cameras not. press. we have one photo from the white house press office. all smiles. we are told that it started off with a tour of the residence. and went to the truman balcony. that as you know erin the place where the first lady and barack obama, the president, spending a lot of quality time there. so it is a special place for them. they took them there. and also melania was shown taken to the state floor in the white house to meet with the curator of the white house. that is bill almond. and he really is a human encyclopedia for all things inside of the building. and so she got a tour and she also got a lot of ideas about the white house looks like. the public space as well as the private space. and all of this as you know really meant to give them an opportunity, a chance to break the ice here in light of a very bitter campaign. this was with michelle obama saying quite publicly, quite forcefully making her case that she did not believe melania s husband was fit for the office and also followed the rnc convention where we saw melania introduce her husband but also seemingly take a portion from her speech very similar to michelle obama s in 2008. so there is a lot of fodder there for both of they want. but the white house says this is just the first of many meetings, erin. all right. thank you very much suzanne. a meeting would have been great to be a fly on the wall in both meetings. joining us now our panel. we ll see who ends up being the chief of staff. let s start with what you just saw. the michelle obama and melania trump meeting. symbolic moment but obviously very cordial. both of these meetings between donald trump and the president and melania trump and michelle obama. this is good for the american people to see. because it does represent i turning the page. going away from this nasty campaign where everyone said mean things about each other. now we re moving forward. it is the hallmark of the united states t peaceful transition of power. and it is heartening no see them talking to each other like civil humans. and let s because if anybody wouldn t be able to talk to each other likes civil human, it might be these two people given what they have said in the past. and yet they were so gracious to each other today. here are some of the things they had to say about each other. my priority is my son barron our son barron. i m a full time mother to our son barron. at the end of the day my most important title is still mom in chief. actually that wasn t the sound bite i was looking for. but phillip, you know they do have obviously having in common. michelle and melania trump. but let me play what i wanted to play which is president obama and president elect donald trump saying such nice things about each other today. i have been very encouraged by the, i think, interest in president elect trump s wanting to work with my team. mr. president, it was a great honor being with you. and i look forward to being with you many, many more times in the future. very good man. thank you guys. heartening things to hear. heartening image and hopefully healing for americans who are so divided right now. amazing picture because donald trump sitting in front of a bust of martin luther king j.r. it is a peaceful transition of power. i do think it seemed like he was a little nervous and understandably so. the weight of this job is going to be tremendous. and i think in that 90 minute time period donald trump got an understanding of just how important this road is going to be. i want to ask on the issue that came up in reince priebus and my conversation about the in this case it was about how donald trump would treat muslims. but there are other groups in this country who are also concerned. does donald trump need to speak to these people? some of whom are protesting now. and say if his policies have changed, how and why? does he need to talk to them david? yes i think he does. i don t think he needs do it immediately. and you have to say both he and president obama have given an excellent tone for the transition. gives us many you have more assurance about how the transition itself will be conducted. there are going to be issues that come up in the next few days. if trump names steve bannon as his chief of staff you are going to hear a lot of flurry about that one. but beyond that, i think that over time he does need to reach out. he ll have a couple of speeches coming up i m sure public remarks where he can say some of those things. but ify if he were more proactive and call people in and talk to them. that is the kind of smart thing. you sometimes needs to do things that are a little daring in order to get attention and people say yeah okay i get it. should he do that jeffrey? call? have a meeting with whatever group it may be. muslim americans. muslim leaders in this country. zrump a good leader. he s a good executive. the donald trump you saw there is the donald trump that i know and so many of his friends and the people who work for him now. skpoi totally expect him to be doing this. that said i want to say something about the protests here. i have the gray hair for a reason. and it is because at my age i have seen i ve grown up. and in my lifetime i have seen. and i m sure some of these are the same people in the streets over vietnam. there were a million people in the streets protesting ronald reagan s nuclear policy. they are demanding nuclear free. carrying paper ma shay heads and saying it is not a movie ron. they do the this all the time. they are going to do this to donald trump. they did it to poor hubert humphrey in chicago. some of these people are not going to change because it is their profession. this is not vanity. that is reaction to real concerns. we may not remember exactly everything donald trump said during the course of the campaign but we ll remember how we felt. whether it is the muslim community, whether it is african americans being concerned about the reintroduction of stop and frisk. whether it is the immigrant community broadly. i think there is real anger and concern. look, the tone on tuesday night and told have been great. so the question then becomes is he going to be the person that is welcoming to all these communities and let people know that he is going to be the president for everyone? i was in the protests last nights. i was watching your twitter feed. it was young people. promptly young women who are concerned about donald trump not because they are concerned about donald trump s policies. they are concerned about donald trump as donald trump. and donald trump cannot sit down with a woman and make that go away. he needs to demonstrate other the next four years he s doing significant outreach and not doing the things people are worried about with women. not doing the things people are worried with the african american community and tot doing the things people worried about with the african american community. hillary clinton seen for the first time since her concession speech. my guest, hillary clinton support wloer randomly spotted her in the woods alone on a hike today. guess who took the pitcher. and the gop waging war on president obama s signature achievement. just rhetoric? or is obamacare a goner? when it comes to heartburn. trust the brand doctors trust. nexium 24hr is the #1 choice of doctors and pharmacists for their own frequent heartburn. for all day and all night protection. banish the burn. with nexium 24hr. when you find something worth waiting for, we ll help you invest to protect it for the future. financial guidance while you re mastering life. from chase, so you can. what? is he gone?? finally, i thought he d never leave. tv character: why are you texting my man at 2 a.m.? no. if you want someone to leave you alone, you pretend like you re sleeping. it s what you do. if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to geico. it s what you do. tv character: taking selfies in the kitchen does not make you a model. people saw an incredibly painful moment for her. how did she seem to you? honestly i think she seemed as well as anybody could be expected after, you know, such a crazy, crazy experience. i can t speak to how she was feeling on the inside. but she couldn t have seemed any nicer or kinder and gracious to me. you know, i think it was a very dark day for a lot of people yesterday. so this was a very hopeful encouraging moment for me. and that is really why i posted the picture at all. and bill clinton i know was there margo. he s not in the picture. he took the picture actually. all right. thank you so much. i appreciate you taking the time margo. and there are many who were very eager to see this picture. and thank you for sharing it. thank you. i hope it makes people feel hopeful and comforted. that is really why i posted it. thank you. thank you so much. we re learning more tonight about what the clinton campaign thinks went so wrong versus what they expected. obviously she was out in the woods with bill taking a walk today. and she posed for that pitcher. life goes on. it has to. and the fact they are hiking in the woods. but i think, you know, to that woman s point, seeing a lot of hillary clinton supporters in my facebook feed and on twitter, i think a lot of women especially just wanted to give her a hug. so hearing that, that this women did that, i think she spoke for a lot of folks out there who are upset. and there are. there are tens of millions of them when you look at the vote here. that is how this country s split. and better the donald trump loss. and the other way around as well. and the new york times is reporting that hillary clinton privately is admitting she stepped in when he did something that . she said deplorables. let me just play exactly what she said. to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of trump s supporters into what i call the basket of deplorables. right? the racists, sexists, homophobic, zxenophobic, islamophobic, you name it. and unfortunately there are people like that. is that something a lot of people heard. pollsters didn t pick it up and that over the summer could have started to turn that rust belt away from her. i don t know if that is the issue. i do think she believes it was a m misbecause she said so right afterwards. i don t think that in and itself was the issue. i do believe that the way in which she characterized some of donald trump s comments, i think that those are things over the course of time we ve seen and i ve rashed about it. and others have remarked about it. but i think she was particularly contrite o about that and admitted it off the bat. i think the e-mails themselves and the stories about the e-mails that have been fed into the narrative was difficult to over come be. do you think that this actually influenced people. i think it did. and i want to in a partial sense defend hillary clinton here. i think she really believes that but she is not alone right and the things she added. i went back a looked at the speech she had at wesley when she graduated and it has similarities. when i was a wanna beliberal in college. and i began to pick up this the contempt which i believe american liberalism has come to exemplify. and that little statement from her is a snapshot. i totally convinced she really believes it. and more to the point t people that were in the room laughing all agree. ed think you take it a lit too far. they say that liberals have a contempt with the working class which so many of us and to be able to say that she herself has that kind of contempt i think is stretching that comment moral of the story is talk about the candidate. don t talk about their voters. consistently for weeks now. this contrast between the elites hillary clinton represented and donald trump despite where he lives and all his money what he represented to folks and i they that does reinforce but i don t think it made a huge difference in the campaign. and next the gop threatening to rip obama s signature issue to shreds. can he just get rid of obamacare just like that. and taylor swift and barron and donald driving. to help prevent another one. a bayer aspirin regimen is one of those steps in helping prevent another stroke. be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any symptoms of an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use. many men aren t aware their health insurance may cover cialis. contact your health plan for the latest information. afoot and light-hearted i take to the open road. healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever i choose. the east and the west are mine. the north and the south are mine. all seems beautiful to me. my name is jamir dixon and i m a locafor pg&e.rk fieldman most people in the community recognize the blue trucks as pg&e. my truck is something new. it s an 811 truck. when you call 811, i come out to your house and i mark out our gas lines and our electric lines to make sure that you don t hit them when you re digging. 811 is a free service. i m passionate about it because every time i go on the street i think about my own kids. they re the reason that i want to protect our community and our environment, and if me driving a that truck means that somebody gets to go home safer, then i ll drive it every day of the week. together, we re building a better california. been a gop rallying cry since the law was enacted more than six years ago. real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing obamacare. reporter: but they have failed repeatedly to overcome democratic resistance over repealing the law. with trump now headed to the oval office and the gop controlling both chambers of congress, the law appears to be on life support. when donald trump said he wants a special session to repeal and replace obamacare, let me tell you, as a speaker of the house. not only yes, but he cck yes. we re ready do that too. reporter: republicans are likely to hold fifty senate seats in the senate. and they only need 51. so subsidies and taxes expansion of medicaid could be on the chopping block. yet there are limits. it would require 60 votes to repeal other provrgss such as allowing people to have preexisting conditions to get health insurance. and republicans would need democratic support on a bill to replace obamacare. a difficult task over such a polarizing issue. obama making an appeal to voters while campaigning for hillary clinton. 20 million americans have health insurance that didn t visit before. but make no mistake, all that progress goes down the drain if we don t win tomorrow. democrats in congress plan to fight tooth and nail to save the sweeping law. if we re going to repeal and replace we need to replace with something that doesn t take healthcare away or insurance away from 20 million people. but goppers say voters expect them to do away with healthcare. let s say every single republican thought obamacare was a mistake. without exception. that s still our view. and you can expect us with a new president who has the same view to address that issue. reporter: passing a replacement bill could take up to two years erin. the entire during of congress. that is if they get democratic support. and in the meantime as the obama administration leaves office they are redoubling efforts to get people to sign up through the healthcare.gov website. a hundred thousand people signed up, the day after the election. the best day yet in open enrollment. so shows how difficult to be to simply gut the law. a fascinating one to watch. but i think it can go in a category of the promise that trump will keep not. matter up. i outfront next, isis threatening to bring disaster to america. what is president elect trump going to do about it? plus the other side of the melania trump. look at this donald trump driving. barron in the front seat. and the melania filming in the back. introducing the new turbocharged volkswagen alltrack with 4motion all-wheel drive. soon to be. everywhere. and it s empowering anyone to stop a job if something doesn t seem right. at bp, safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. at bp, safety is never being satisfied. big day? ah, the usual. moved some new cars. hauled a bunch of steel. kept the supermarket shelves stocked. made sure everyone got their latest gadgets. what s up for the next shift? ah, nothing much. just keeping the lights on. (laugh) nice. doing the big things that move an economy. see you tomorrow, mac. see you tomorrow, sam. just another day at norfolk southern. break news. we re watching anti-trump protests again across the country. as anti-trump protesters. meeting with his transition team tomorrow and the top priority is the 800 jobs that require security clearance. outfront tonight a man who has been working since long before election day on trump s national security team. former chairman of the house select on intelligence and the more. it s been about 41 hours since the seismic event that so few expected. donald trump is the next president of the united states. you have been working with the trump team for a long time before election day but take me inside the room for these 41 hours. what has this been like for you. well can t take it too far into the room erin. but what i can tell you is this. this is very professionally run. i saw earlier reports that oh no they don t have a transition team. weren t engaged in it. this was very separate from the campaign. if trump was up 50 or down 7, it never mattered. the election came. i think there were some surprises for the folks on the transition team thinking it was a day that we were going to hand in our gear. instead it turned ourt. here is the good news. all of that preparation had already happened up to election day. so the surprise in the election didn t change that. president elect trump is going to get a full and robust package. everything from national security to economics, to all of it. including prevetting of individuals they believed could be could phil some on these important jobs so he could get up and running and make sure that the country has been taken care of. and i ll tell you the obama administration has been very professional and took the model from george w. bush and said we want to duplicate it and they have lived occupy that. a very commendable transition insuring that the handoff of the baton is good for america at the end of the day. so that part has been really refreshing and gives you faith i think in the country. an area i think you know too well. it s al qaeda terrorists, have been celebrating says it will bring disasters to the united states on the social media. what is your rookieaction to th fill in a candidate who would have won. either one they were going to do this. i would discard it pretty much immediately. there will be a change. i m sure there is going to be a strange in strategy for sure and for certain when it comes to targeting isis. but that effort is really try to get into america s head and our allies in europe. so i think you got to shrug that off like you would anything else. and remember they have a goal. they are trying to disrupt and cause a little disruption. we ought not to let them do it. and quickly, barbara starr is saying if trump gave the illegal order of water boarding to some generals. so purely speculation and so early. he s going to get in. he s going to get lots of briefs. he s going to understand what his options are. . i have no indication not even a outside of the bounds of his - legal boundaries. i dismiss it. this is a president who s come in and said i want professionals in all of these places. they have done that. there is professional transition. he s going to get professional advice. i think he s going to take it. and very quickly before we go, fbi special agent for five years. you are respected on both sides of the aisle. a lot of people are saying you could be up for a top job. say cia director. would you take it if offered congressman? i can t even. wouldn t even hesitate to bother to speculate. the whole focus is on the transition and honestly nothing more. thank you. appreciate your time. good to talk to you tonight. thank you. and next melania trump embracing her new title. crohn s disease.te to se i didn t think there was anything else to talk about. but then i realized there was. so, i finally broke the silence with my doctor about what i was experiencing. he said humira is for people like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, talk with your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. i use what s already inside me to reach my goals. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what s within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps activate my body to do what it s supposed to do release its own insulin. trulicity responds when my blood sugar rises. i take it once a week, and it works 24/7. it comes in an easy-to-use pen and i may even lose a little weight. trulicity is a once-weekly injectable prescription medicine to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. it should be used along with diet and exercise. trulicity is not recommended as the first medicine to treat diabetes and should not be used by people with severe stomach or intestinal problems or people with type i diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. trulicity is not insulin and has not been studied with long-acting insulin. do not take trulicity if you or anyone in your family has had medullary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2 or if you are allergic to trulicity or its ingredients. stop using trulicity and call your doctor right away if you have symptoms of an allergic reaction, such as itching, rash, or difficulty breathing; if you have signs of pancreatitis such as severe stomach pain that will not go away and may move to your back, with or without vomiting or if you have symptoms of thyroid cancer, which may include a lump or swelling in your neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. medicines like trulicity may cause stomach problems, which could be severe. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and any medicines you take. taking trulicity with a sulfonylurea or insulin may increase your risk for low blood sugar. common side effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney failure. with trulicity, i click to activate what s within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar numbers with a non-insulin option, click to activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. will melania trump be a model first lady? here is jeanne moos. she s been a model. she s done commercials. she may seem like an odd duck for a first lady. but melania trump is just like us. at least on first glance at her facebook where she posts videos of beautiful beaches. and that great aero smith concert she ae tended, as well as the fun night with her two boys, the donald and her son barron. the donald the driving. and barron is riding shotgun. and some of her older photos of fun. bat womanen for halloween. wearing a the cat suit. and then this photo. the okay maybe she s not just like us. not everyone has fans. and not everyone goes to galas in the designer gowns. and think christian, beautiful job. fantastic job. reporter: you can t say melania hasn t had plenty of training for all of those dinners she and president trump will be hosting. and updating her instagram became first lady melania trump. and writing such an honor to strit white house. little did she know this would end up being her home when she tweeted this photo captioned at home with my husband. don t worry melania. there is a piano in the white house should you feel the urge to recline. jeanne moos cnn new york. thanks for watching. don t forget you can watch
. raul castro, the president of cuba will also give a news conference in his country that will happen at noon eastern time. of course cnn will continue to follow this breaking news throughout the day. thank you for joining me today, i m carol kos toll low. @this hour with berman and michaela starts now. hello, everyone. i m john berman. and. and i m michaela pereira. history is being made at this hour after more than a half century of tension and diplomat diplomatic silence between the u.s. it s releasing alan gross from prison after five years. a series of genuinely breathtaking developments. cuba is also releasing a u.s. intelligence asset, a spy, who s been locked up in cuba for more than 20 years. in return washington is freeing three cuban spies convicted in 2001 of espionage. that is big in and of itself. it all seems part now of something much, much bigger. president obama will announce major changes in u.s. policy toward cuba. officials calling them the most sweeping changes since the embargo began more than 50 years ago. cuban president raul castro is planning a similar announcement next hour on cuban tv. the big question at this hour, does this foreshadow a return to normal relations with the island nation, a country that has been a thorn in washington s side since fidel castro took power back in 1959. cnn is covering this from all angles. we should mention we re the only u.s. network on the ground in cuba. patrick oppman is in havana. michelle kosinski joins us from the white house. and justice reporter evan perez and global affairs correspondent elise in washington. elise, i want to begin with you because you have the details of this series of remarkable developments here and at the top of that list we ll have an embassy. the white house wants to open up an embassy in havana. that s right, john, and the u.s. and cuba having these talks for some time. not only about alan gross and the cuban five and u.s. intelligence asset but how the u.s. and cuba can normalize relations. you ve seen talks with u.s. and cuban officials over the last years and the u.s. sees reform on the island. so the u.s. will be opening up an embassy in havana. right now there s an intrasection. the u.s. will also see about getting cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list which has really been a thorn in cuba s side because it was more of a political move. cuba hasn t been seen as having any terrorist activity for years. president obama set to announce with these wide ranging initiatives, really everything he can do outside of the existing legislation. so we re talking about a relaxing of travel restrictions for americans that means a general license to travel practically anything of terrorism, a resumption of banking between the u.s. and cuban banks, americans k use credit cards on the island. the president also going to announce expanded commercial and export of sales and goods to cuba. and officials say this is not a reward to the cuban regime, the regime of the castros but more an acknowledgement that the embargo is not working and that if the u.s. wants to encourage further reforms on the island it needs to engage more with the cuban government and people. they say they will not let up on human rights and actually as part of this deal cuba has agreed to release some 53 political prisoners from a list provided by by the united states, allow more access to the internet for cuban people and allow more access to political prisoners by the international cross-examination and united nationss so as we said for a president that said he wanted to come to office to engage cuba many years ago, that s happened in fits and starts, certainly alan gross has been an impediment to that this will be a landmark deal for president obama that will shape his foreign policy. so many pieces and parts to this. elise labott, thank you so much. not only will our president be speaking about this announcement today around noon, cuban president raul castro is expected to make an announcement on the relations with the united states. that s expected to be at noon as well on cuban tv but is this the beginning of some mending between cuban u.s. relations. we just learned that president himself spoke with the cuban lead era wul castro yesterday to finalize this arrangement is is coming into playwright now. we want to go live to patrick oppman in havana, cnn is the only u.s. network with presence in cuba. patrick, a wul castro, the president, the leader of cuba is expected to speak in just a little while. what is he expected to say? we ll probably hear more details about this historic agreement came through. just came through in the last 24 hours. i understand from a pr company that works for alan gross s attorney, some of the ticktock of what happened here. alan gross was only in formed yesterday that he would be freed and i m told that he didn t know what to respond. there was just stunned silence when his attorney scott gilbert called him on the line to tell him he would be leaving cuban prison after five years. then this morning a u.s. government plane arrived here at a military base in cuba to pick up alan gross. on board is his wife judy, his attorney scott gilbert and as well three u.s. congressman senator jeff flake from arizona, patrick leahy from vermont and congressman van holland from alan gross s home district in maryland. these are three congressmen who have been very much involved in winning his release. then they take off after 8:00 a.m. and we re told at 8:45, the pilot gets on the intercom to tell alan gross that they are now out of cuban airspace. alan gross stands up and is i m told unable to talk he s so overwhelmed by emotion then he calls his daughters and his first words to his daughters are i m free. you can only imagine their reaction at this long nightmare concluded for their father. where do u.s. cuban relations go next. i m joined by a long time diplomat here in havana. they restored semi relations and you are the chief of the u.s. intersection, what do you think looking at the future of the relations between these two countries? i would con garage late this administration. this was the right thing to do at this critical moment. why critical? because the torture report had just come out damaging the image of the united states. now we re going into the hemispheric sum mid-in april. the united states is the only country now that does not have full diplomatic relations with cuba. time to change that. one of the marks, i think, in the hemisphere against the united states is its outdated cuban policy. so we are now moving, the administration is indicating we will move to change our cuba policy to engage with cuba. that s exactly right thing to do. thank you so much. this policy obviously will affect thousands of people s lives as u.s. and cuba who move closer together. of course it s obviously have a major impact on the life of alan gross returning to the united states and the lives of three cuban intelligence agents who are also flying back to the united states. alan gross we re told will land at andrews air force base at 11:30 a.m. this morning, will have some words to the media and then will go back to being with his family trying to get his health better. i m sure that s causing such a good sigh of relief from every family member knowing he s on his way. thanks so much patrick. we appreciate it. i want to turn to somebody on the phone from madrid tud, spain, former governor bill richardson is on the phone with us. your reaction to the news that this deal is being made for the return of an american to american soil but also about the potential for new relations with cuba. well, this is very personal for me because in 2011 i went to cuba to try to get alan gross out and i was unable to. they wanted the five cuban political prisoners, the five spies in the u.s. and the u.s. neither country was ready to do it. so this is huge. alan gross was the impediment for the u.s./cuba relationship improving. so now that that has been cleared away i think president obama is looking at his legacy and saying in lat tip america getting rid of this irritant of the u.s.-cuba relationship where we re not dialoguing or speaking is going to happen and it s going to result in the resumption of diplomatic relations. it won t do much with the trade embargo because congress has to improve softening of the trade embargo. this was the helms-burton act several years ago that basically said the president doesn t have the executive authority to do this without going to the congress. but this is huge. this is the legacy stuff for president obama and my hope is that we zero in on this is good but cuba needs to improve its human rights position, needs to release political prisoners, allow the internet in, allow more freedoms there. hopefully this is going to happen with this release, but this was the linchpin, the release of alan gross for the u.s. that s the news we were hoping to get so the relationship with cuba would improve. you brought up congress here and, governor, you ve had just about every job imaginable, both political and diplomatic so you know the complications here. people say it doesn t seem likely, the congress itself will lift the embargo. there are democrats who oppose this move today. the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, bob menend menendez, put out a statement that said president obama s actions have vindicate it had brutal behavior of the cuban government. what s your reaction to that? there s going to be opposition in the congress. i don t think there s any tway congress will relax the embargo in any way so what the president is doing is taking executive action that he can take on his own. like opening up an embassy in cuba. he can do that i think the exchange of ambassadors is very big and i think senator menendez and a lot of cuban americans rightfully are saying, hey, you know, let s make sure that there are significant human rights improvements not just in the treatment of political prisoners but tourism, transit of cuban american families between havana and the united states. that has improved but for the american people if they open up travel to cuba you re going to see a real travel tourism bonanza because a lot of americans want to go to cuba. i think you ll see a lot of cubans wanting to come to the u.s. so i think this is a very good legacy foreign policy initiative for president obama. it would be interesting to be among cuban americans right now. the old generation, the newer generation. while we still have you, one of the things we have from u.s. officials are trying to stress that this move was not to in any way seem as though it was propping up the castro regime but if we want change in cuba we have to try a different approach. i m curious what your thoughts are there. well i agree. the cuban trade embargo is not working. it didn t improve relations and the cubans were using it to solidify their own leadership. it was also major american relations with the u.s. so this is a good foreign policy move also. the cubans wanted to get off the terrorism list, that didn t make sense because they were cooperating with us on homeland security issues. but i think on a lot of other matters like environmental issues, coastal issues relating to protection of climate change and the seas, it opens up enormous areas, potential areas of cooperation. i think again the congress isn t going to take much action. i think the administration should open it with senator menendez, with senator rubio, with the cuban americans that have really stood up for human rights issues and see if there s a way that there can be a dialogue on americans deciding and being key players in how the relationship with cuba improves because they re patriotic americans and i m for this move and for this relationship improving but it s going to cause a lot of anxious in the cuban american community in miami and new jersey where senator menendez is from. this is a time to reach a dialogue and have a discussion about what human rights initiatives, what openness of privatization of the cuban economy. but this is good and i hope president obama and president castro have a chance to meet in panama in april and maybe this can be expanded, the improvement in the relationship. all right, governor bill richardson, former ambassador, former secretary, thank you so much for being with us to provide your vast insight to what s going on here, this momentous day. president barack obama in less than an hour set to deliver a statement on u.s. relations with cuba. a sea change, really, in u.s. relations with cuba. he ll deliver that from the cabinet room. let s go to the white house now. michelle kosinski 1 there. do do you have a sense of what the president will say and any sense at all of why now? this is momentous. you used that word. the fact that this will open things after such a long period of time. the fact that the white house is calling this the beginning of full diplomatic relations with cuba. a debate. anyone who spent time in miami and has been a part of that community knows that this is a debate to that goes on everyday. something will come up in the news and people will debate whether the current policy is working and castro needs to be punished versus it s not working and something more needs to be done, a modernization of regulation relations. that s the tack the white house is taking here. so we haven t heard from the president yet but we heard a background grieving from seen your white house officials who laid out the entire scope of this. they say the focus is very much still on human rights and democracy but the past policy wasn t doing it. they feel like this will be a more efficient way to press those needs in cuba. it s shocking. the fact that cuba just convicted an sentenced alan gross to 15 years in prison for fomenting dissent, in 2011 and now today we re seeing this sea change as you called it. i was going ask you very quickly in terms of what we re expecting in terms of backlash, because we know the last time we saw a prisoner was lease was suggest bergdahl being released and the white house faced criticism for that. this is not just a prisoner release, there s a humanitarian release, there s also a change, a call for change in policy in a long standing 50 year battle, if you will, or at least a freezeout there will be backlash. it s fascinating. we re hearing from members of congress, some cuban americans. we re hearing from people within the state department who said they felt shut out of these negotiations that started last spring. the question is why weren t they involved more? so the white house did answer that question in this background briefing saying the focus for now is not on what congress can do in the future. although they would like congress to take action. possibly lifting the embargo fully ultimately but they said for now the focus is on what the president can do and this is something he s wanted to do for a long time. and kriept some bipartisan support, the fact that there are members of congress on a plane with alan gross, one a republican, that doesn t seem like much in the grand scope of things but that s what the white house is citing as an example of some bipartisan support it s interesting to see what this will do because when you talk about the backlash, what is expected with cuba in this. they just convicted an sentenced alan gross, how are things going to change so much on their end to satisfy the united states right now? the white house is saying there is an open there. there is talk of reform and this is really the beginning of reform. what they laid out is what s expected of cuba for now is they ll release 53 political prisoners and the white house said many of them have been released. they need to open up communications including internet connectivity, telecoms and include the red cross. there s much, much more to this in terms of what s going to be done. there is so much to this p, including a life altering moment for one man alan gross. we believe this is the plane carrying alan gross right now on the ground from our affiliate wjla. alan gross left cuba this morning. what s remarkable is we were listening to here from our correspondents. he learned of his imminent release yesterday. he has been over time very frustrated with the hopes of being released he is said to have said his good-byes. so the fact that this happened today i m sure he had no words. on board this plane with him democrats and a republican. patrick lahey. chris van hollen, a democrat from maryland alan gross s home state and also jeff flake, republican senator from arizona who is really been supportive of more normal relations with cuba. it shows the bipartisan support but there was also bipartisan opposition to this. we are waiting to get our first look at alan gross. he s 65 years old. he s been in prison for five years. he lost a tremendous amount of weight and as mikhail la was saying, over time he s been angry not just at cubans but there were period of times where he was not happy with the united states for the efforts to get him back. on board the plane was his wife and i can t imagine what that conversation would have been like. consider that for a moment. the man thought he was going spend the last of his days separated from his family. to know that today he is sitting behind the woman he chose to marry, the woman he loves headed back to american soil, i can t imagine the range of emotions he s feeling. one of our producers had a chance to speak with his attorney, scott gilbert. this is what he told our producer. alan gross was planning on enjoying a good scotch. he hasn t had a drink in five years. he wants to spend some time with his family and enjoy a little private time with them. also said he wants to have a good cigar which there will be plenty of americans will tell you is plenty of ironic. but it shows you these were not easy days for alan gross in prison in cuba. there are 50 years of history, 50 years plus of history at play with what s happening today and that s all changing, it seem, today, not just for alan gross but also in the relationship between the united states and cuba. it s filled with complicated tumultuous history. i want to bring in alfredo duran. he bought in the bay of pigs alongside u.s. interests there. he was captured, he was jailed in cuba for 18 months. alfredo joins us live from miami. as you look at this today, not just alan gross being returned to the united states but also what is apparently a change in the relationship between the united states and cuba, what are your thoughts? well, first of all, i m very happy for mr. alan gross. the cuban government released alan gross because he was very ill and alan gross they certainly didn t want to have the responsibility of having alan gross become very, very ill in cuba or pass away in cuba. and so that s why they basically released him. i don t think that there s really very many very much of a meaningful negotiation that had to do with any future relationship between the united states and cuba. there s very it will that will the president can do by executive order in relations to cubaor than possibly start full diplomatic relations. most of the relationship between cuba and the united states has it goes to foreign policy is in the congress hands in the helms-burton bill. unfortunately, the case of cuba is no longer has to do anything with foreign policy, it has to do with political elections in the state of florida and new jersey, electoral politics, presidential politics because of the amount of electoral votes that the cuban american vote in a close election can make the difference. alfredo, i don t want to interrupt you but we re looking at live pictures from joint base andrews, andrews air force base as many people know it outside washington, d.c. we believe that was just the plane carrying alan gross that landed. it does seem likely perhaps this camera is following him. we can t get a good look at it that he may be in that group of people stepping on to u.s. soil for the first time in five years. is. we wanted to stay with the this picture, alfredo, we ll get back to you in just a moment. this is significant. five years of imprisonment in cuba, not expecting to be released home. many people had tried in vain. we heard from form er governor bill richardson had added his voice to the calls to be released. and this happened in very short order, today an exchange. that was humanitarian release but we know there was another u.s. spy that had been held in cuba for 20 years. he has been released as well. there were political prisoners within cuba released as well in this deal today. alfredo, if you re still with us, you were a prisoner in cuba many, many years ago. alan gross, who we believe we just saw land on american soil, he was just released from a cuban prison after five years. there are critics today of this deal who say that the obama administration just made a deal with a repressive regime. a regime that is not changing. how do you react to that? i think that the obama administration, what they did is what every administration of the united states has an obligation to do and that is to try to get whatever person is imprisoned outside of the united states for political reasons to get them back here to the country. the obama white house did the right thing by protecting an american citizen. especially one who seems to be ill. so i congratulate the obama administration for having the courage to do what they re obligated to do and he s done it very well. but you say it s going to take more to see substantive change within cuba. what is it going to take? you know, the only thing that i can forecast for cuba is that nothing is going to change until we have a generational change in cuba. while we have the four or five historical figures of the mountains in cuba still walking around in havana you re not going to see any significant change. you re going to see a generational change, the young cubans, if you take a look at the central committee of the communist party, about 80% of them are under 55 years of age, that ear the ones who will change the future of cuba. they want a better life, they want a more stable government, they want political freedom, they want human rights and that you don t have in cuba right now. alfredo, thank you so much for being with us. we just saw some live pictures right now from andrews air force base of alan gross returning to the united states after five years in a prison in cuba. he was flown back this morning, just told yesterday that he was coming back. he was said when the airplane made it up in the u.s. airspace he was said to have stood up and was at a loss for words, he then called his daughters and had an emotional conversation with them. it s amazings to man this man s first taste of freedom. whatever you have to say about what is happening today, an historic moment today. the change in the relationship between the united states and cuba for one man today life just changed do dramatically. he is home safely. he did not think this was going to happen. one man who met with him in prison, in cuba, congressman sam farr, a democrat from california. he joins us by phone now. congressman, you met with alan gross back in may. when you spoke to him then, do you think he ever saw this day coming? no, in fact, he said that he would not spend his next birthday incarcerated. so it was obvious that he was either going to kind of do something really drastic. he was very upset with both countries. sort of felt let down by our country and certainly upset with the cuban government. he knew that this was a political move by the cubans to arrest him even though he didn t break the cuban law. but to hold him for 15 years in prison, i don t think he ever thought this was going to happen. you can see by the excitement i mean, everybody s excited about this. this is a failed policy, diplomatic relations allow you to negotiate, all the things that people are concerned about about cuba, their violations of human rights and lack of freedom in the press, these are things that can be donor mall channels just like they have been done with vietnam and china and so on. so i m really excited that our policy is becoming mature. becoming mature. it sounds like in order to broker this deal it sounds as though it sort of took an international effort. we ve been giving word from some of our reporters that the canadians and the vatican, pope francis, have been involved in facilitating and brokering this deal. pope francis encouraging president obama in a letter and in their meeting this year to renew talks with cuba. we re just showing once again the moment so many people have been watching and the family was waiting for, the moment when alan gross, his plane touched down on u.s. soil at andrews air force base with his wife and several elected officials on board the plane, people who had been working to secure his release. a tremendous moment there. we know the president has been active in this, congressman farr. i m curious what you re expecting and hoping to hear from the president when he makes his comments at noon today. well, i hope he ll also point out that we re the only country in the hemisphere that hasn t had normal relations and that we ve been isolating ourselves in the world, it s been an embarrassment. we have a summit of all the presidents meeting in panama in march. all of the other countries insisted cuba be invited to the next summit. we had to take some action and i m really proud that he did. i think this is a step in the right direction. as i said, it s mature and all the other concerns that we have now can be dealt with during normal channels and i think it will really allow the american people to interact with cuban people and what better way to build democracy. congressman, though, you served in the u.s. house of representatives the u.s. congress does not seem likely to reverse m t embargo. the president will try to normalize some relations, there will be an exchange of embassy. we ll have an embassy in the united states and cuba will have an embassy in washington, d.c. which is remarkable in and of itself. do you see the politics inside zmong there s bipartisan opposition in some quarters. the strongest opposition in congress is a few members who are cuban americans who have made it their political mission to block any progressive action. they re going to have to stand between the american people and the president on this one because i think american people and the faith-based communities in this country, the trading groups, the business groups will all be behind normalizing relations and so if congress members can t get reelected, they ll listen to the people and i think the american people will respond overwhelmingly in favor of the president s action. we re seeing a closeup picture of alan gross on the side of your screen. there s an image that was taken there of him disembarking from the plane. a lot of people have noted that he has lost a substantial amount of weight during his time in prison in cuba. losing some 100 pounds. there was talk of some medical issues that he was having. it really is something to see, john, when you see this happening. we ve seen a few returns home in the last little while of americans. we saw some other home comings of people and you try to imagine what you would be feeling in a moment like this. we just got a statement from senator jeff flake who was on the plane as he was coming home with alan gross right now. let me read you this statement outloud. it says this is a wonderful day for alan gross, for his wife judy and their family. the manner in which they have endured this nightmare is worthy of praise and admiration. it was an honor to be with alan as he touched down on u.s. soil. you can see the still image of that. after more than five years in a cuban prison. when i visited alan last month, he expressed the hope his ordeal might somehow lead to positive changes between the united states and cuba with today s significant and far-reaching announcements i think it already has. indeed, the life of this man, alan gross, changing drastically today. in just a few minutes 30, minutes from now, president obama will announce major changes in the u.s. relationship with cuba as well. we want to turn to justice reporter evan perez who covered the relationship extensively when he was a reporter for the wall street journal and ana navarro who is, we should point out, a resident of miami, great perspective to get perspective from both of you. evan, you have been covering this issue, this ongoing issue for some time. i m curious about your thoughts and what it will feel like big picture wise. michaela, i ll tell you one example of how bad the relationship between cuba and the united states was in 2009 when president obama took office. i remember meeting the head of the cuban intrasection here in washington and we were talking about hented to get good chinese food and i suggested going to a restaurant in northern virginia in one of the suburbs and he told me he couldn t go because he s not allowed to travel outside the beltway they had restrictions on how far cuban diplomats, cuban intersection is the de facto embassy, at least until now when the president changes this with his executive action. so that gives you a sense of how bad this relationship was. the diplomats couldn t even travel to get chinese food outside the belt way. they couldn t travel 25 miles outside of new york city. beginning last year those restrictions started end iing. we ve come a long way and what is driving this, i think, is demographics, frankly. the fact that you vent v younger cubans that don t feel the embargo has worked. you have older cubans who still support it but younger cubans don t. also since 1980 and the demographic population of students who have come here, they re economic migrants, not because they re fleeing political oppression, i think ana and i would disagree on this but that is also driving this. this is why the obama administration feels that it s safe to do something like this. ana, evan was mentioning where the support for this move today will come from but there is also fierce opposition as well you are living in miami right now. what reaction are you hearing there? well, i have been communicating since the early morning with cuban american leaders, with the cuban american congressional delegation, both democrat and republican and evan is right. he and i do disagree on some of this. i disagree that the demographics have changed as much as some would like us to believe they ve changed. they ve changed some and after this recent election there were mistaken reports that cuban americans had voted majority for charlie crist and they haven t. in fact, if you take a look at florida, there s not one, one statewide elected official that does not support the embargo. the one congressman, democrat cuban american who did support the embargo just got beat like a drum, his name was joe garcia, by a new generation of cubans, carlos corbello who is in his 30s and supports sanctions on cuba. so i think you won t see any change on the congressional opposition from the cuban american front. and though they are they can be very partisan at times on other issues, when it comes to the cuba issue, bob ben thmenen ted cruz, ileana ros-lehtinen, mario diaz-balart, they are one front, they are a solid wall. what you can see here is there s still a fierce discussion and a fierce debate about u.s. relations with cuba. all i have to say is think about when the u.s. senate needs to confirm the president s nominee to be the first ambassador cuba. that will be fascinating. ana navarro, evan perez, thank you so much. in just a few minutes, the president of the united states will speak in the cabinet room and announce these major changes in the relationship between the united states and cuba. the biggest changes, i think, that we have seen in well over 50 years since the embargo and a series of other measures were imposed over time. joining us is wolf blitzer. wolf is going to cover the president s speech when it takes place just after noon. i wonder if you can put this in context, wolf. the historical impact of this in this country and in cuba and what this means? it s an historic moment. this is a most significant development in u.s./cuban relations going back to the revolution and cuba back in 1961. it s been clear to me from the very start of the obama administration this is precisely what the president wanted to do. he wanted to normalize relations, establish full diplomatic relations between the united states and cuba. as cuba, by the way, has with i think all of the countries in north and south america right now. but there were several problems along the way, certainly political problems as ana navarro just pointed out. a lot of domestic opposition not only from republicans but from some democrats as well. at the same time, there s been growing political support for an improved relationship between the u.s. and cuba and that is about to happen with the full normalization of relations, diplomatic embassies, not just an intrasection, there s a cuban interest section here in washington, a u.s. interest section in havana but now there will be ambassadors in both countries. there will be an opening of tourism, of trade. this is really a significant change. the president has wanted to do it but the imprisonment of alan gross was a serious impediment. now that he has been released, obviously that opens the door to what s going on. notwithstanding in the, way certainly, john and michaela, the final two years of his administration. he doesn t have to worry about politics anymore, getting reelected right after the midterms. he thought this was a good time to normalize the relationship. that s what he s going to announce at the top of the hour. wolf, stand by for a second. we want to bring in senator marco rubio who joins us and get his reaction to all of this going on. obviously this is going to have a deep impact, a very personal way this is going to affect you as a cuban american and also as a lawmaker in the state of florida which is has a very, very large cuban american population. give me your reaction, personal and professional. on the issue of mr. gross, i m happy he ll be back with his family. he never should have been in a cuban prison. he wasn t a spy. he was trying to provide a telecommunication equipment to a small jewish community there and he s been a hostage for five years and the cuban government almost allowed him to die in captivity. but these other measures are truly outrageous and counterproduct i have. here s why. the president will increase the amount of remittances to the island, open up the banking sector and open up the telecommunications sector. what are the cubans going to do? they ll release 53 political prisoners who can go to jail tomorrow if they decide to take up the cause of freedom and democracy and allow the united nations to monitor conditions on the ground a little bit more closely. that s it. no democratic opening. no freedom of the press. no freedom of organization or assembly. no elections, no political parties. no democratic opening at all. for me you talk about personally, the issue that i care about in cuba is democracy. i want the cuban people to have freedom and democracy and then they can choose any economic model they want. nothing that has s happening here will further that cause. on the contrary, it will set it back. it s a lifeline for the castro regime that allows them to become more profitable because they control every sector of the economy and allow them to become a more permanent fixture for decades to come now and the cuban people are further away from democracy today because of this. senator, as we re speaking we see pictures on the other side of the screen of alan gross returning to the united states. we saw a picture of him seeing his wife in cuba before he got on the plan to come back to the united states. there are two obviously very relieved people right there. i want to pick up on your point about u.s.-cuba relations. because there are people, senator, who will argue with you. if the goal of all the measures that have been in place for so long, the united states measures against cuba, have been regime change, have been to change what s going on in cuba, fidel castro well t-cas trows have been in power for more than 50 years now. so whatever efforts to change things didn t seem to work. well, first of all i would say that you talk about the economic conditions in cuba being so miserable, cuba trades with every country in the world. the reason why they have an economic disaster because their leaders are incompetent and their model of economics doesn t work. we don t have economic sanctions on venezuela and their economy is almost as bad as the cuban economy because they follow the same model. as far as it not working, it s the fundamental misunderstanding of why the embargo still matters. the embargo is leverage. the sanctions are leverage. raul castro is 80 something years old. from a biological standpoint his days are numbered and that there will be a change in government in cuba and i think that will be precipitated by the continuing response of their sponsors in caracas. the question now is what kind of government takes over. for us the embargoes serve as leverage to go to that new government or whoever their leaders are and say we are prepared as the law says in writing to open up economic relationships and diplomatic relationships with cuba but you have to move on democratic changes. and that s not been done here. we ve just lost a significant part of our privilege to make that happen here in the foreseeable future. not a single democratic concession. and by the way, this idea that the fact that there will now be more american products available in cuba will bring about democracy is absurd. you can t point a single example in human history or recent history especially where more economic trade has led to a democratic opening. china is as repressive as any government in the world and they ve got full economic relations with the united states. i m curious what you re hearing from people in your state. you ve obviously been on the phone hearing from folks in your state, leaders there, freedom the cuban american community. what are you hearing from folks? well, look, i mean, the among many of the exiles there s a resistance to any sort of change whatsoever in policy. they would share many of the concerns i ve just outlined. there are people in the cuban community who share our goals of bringing about democracy and they believe that if somehow there was more economic trade with cuba that that would somehow create the conditions for an uprising or a dramatic change. i just don t know where there s ever happened when has tourism ever brought about democracy in this government controls every aspect of life in cuba, every aspect of life. every single poisy change that the u.s. has ever made towards cuba. whether it s more travel, more person to person contact, more remittences, they have manipulated every single one of them and thelma nip lapt this as well. this is a small island of 13 million people with an apparatus in place for over 50 years. it controls every aspect of life in cuba and it will control this as well. they will use all of these changes to their advantage. they will never allow any of these changes to undermine their grip on the island. senator, you obviously have a personal and professional interest in what is happening in cuba. quickly, were you briefed at all before this morning that this was happening? no, i was aware of it last night but not from the administration. i chose not to divulge what i knew because i didn t want to endanger mr. gross release. obviously there s a human element to it. i was briefed this morning at around 10:00 a.m. by secretary kerry but i had already known about many of these chings and, quite frankly, i was expecting them. for weeks i ve been asking tony blinken who s been confirmed by the senate specifically about these topics and and his answers nebulous at best led me to believe that something was in the works and i think, of course, it s par for the course for this administration to announce it the day that congress finally recesses. i think that was not by accident, either. senator, i want to ask you one question about your opinion about policy toward cuba because you seem to say to me two things that are a little bit in opposition. you say the embargo and sanctions in our measures towards cuba haven t worked because everyone else has been trading with cuba all along but then you say it s leverage in how we deal with cuba in the future. can you have both things at once? can you have it be leverage and can you have it not working at the same time? i think you misunderstood my first point. my first point was people often say the cuban embargo is hurting the cuban people and my answer is that s absurd. the cuban people get theoretically by-products from any nation on earth. the reason they don t have those products is not because of the cuban embargo, it s because of their government being incompetent. now, the u.s. embargo is leverage because cuba cares. we re the united states. we re not some small country halfway around the world we re the most powerful country on the planet, we re their closest neighbor. their number one priority of the cuban government is to affect u.s. foreign policy towards cuba and you see this consistently reflected in the people they try to influence in academia and the editorials that have now been a steady stream of editorials in the new york times and the folks that are walking around the cabal here and the members and colleagues of mine that are constantly being reached out to by the regime. -to-try to get them on their side for these changes there s a reason for that. they know if they can open up u.s. markets they will have american companies investment in the status quo in cuba. and what you re going to have now is american companies doing business in cuba advocating here for us not to do anything to disrupt the status quo because it s good for their bottom line. and i know that to be true because last week we passed a bill here that supported the democratic aspirations of people in hong kong and my office got multiple calls from companies that do business in china asking us not to do it because they have an interest in the status quo. the same was true with ukrainian sanctions and people that have business deals with moscow. they want this not to do too much on the sanctions front. now you ll see that with cuba as well. senator marco rubio, we appreciate your time. we know this is very, very close to home. i guess we have here in studio rabbi eli abadi. he visited alan gross when gross was in prison in cuba. great to have you. first of all, your reaction to knowing mr. gross is now back home on american soil? well, i m thrilled and very excited to hear that he s freed and what a wonderful time and occasion for him to be free as we celebrate the holiday of chanukah where we celebrate the miracle of the oil and this is truly a miracle that alan gross has been freed. you spoke to him, you met with him in cuba, correct? yes. what were his frustrations while he was in prison there? i m sure he was shocked and infuriated at the cuban regime but did he feel like he was getting the support he wanted and needed from the american government all along? i tell you, when i visited him almost two years ago together with a cuban american loyal he was frustrated at the cuban government but he was more frustrated at the american government at that time. at that time he was trying to refuse to meet with any american official because he felt that the united states has abandoned him. he felt that he was laying in a prison in cuba without much support for from the united states. what is your sense about what changed then? because this all seemed to happen fairly quickly. yes. well we have been myself, james barren that will and a few other people, we have been pressing the united states government to sit down and negotiate with cuba his release. whatever the price cuba was asking for, that is for the politicians, really to decide but for us it was really to pressure the u.s. government to sit down and negotiate. there were so many ways that the united states could really extend a hand to cuba for the release of alan gross and i sensed in the last few weeks that something might be happening and so this morning when i heard i was really very thrilled about it. how is his health now? we know he had threatened not to eat. at one point last may he said he didn t think he d have another birthday in cuba. well, if you remember when i was there, i m a physician also and there was a claim he had cancer and he wasn t feeling well and he lost weight and i examined him as a physician, the cuban government allowed me to do so, i read and saw all of his medical records. at that time he was quite healthy. he had lost 100 pounds but then he lost it not only because he did exercise and was on a diet that he himself imposed. now i don t know exactly how he feels except what i hear, that his arthritic pain is preventing him from walking well, that he only sees from one eye. i just saw him going down the airplane, he seemed to be walking fine so i m happy about that. but i think it was more importantly depressed, more emotionally than physically sick and that is because he could not see any light at the end of the tunnel. rabbi, we appreciate you coming in and telling us about your experience meeting with alan gross who is home back on american soil with his wife judith and will be heading to his home i m we know the president will be speaking a short time from now. raul castro, the president of cuba will be speaking. alan gross, we expect, will be speaking. this is a day that a lot of people thought they would not see for a long, long time, if ever. we re going to turn it over to wolf blitzer who s going to take us to the president s big speech. wolf? hello, i m wolf blitzer in washington. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. only minutes away from a major announcement from the white house. president obama about to declare an historic thaw in u.s. relations with cuba. and it begins with a prisoner swap. you ve probably been watching cnn live right now of the american contractor, alan gross. he has just arrived outside washington, d.c., joint base andrews after five years of captivity in the communist neighbor only 90 miles away from the southern tip of florida. alan gross was escorted on the flight to andrews by his wife, judy, two u.s. senators and a united states congressman. we understand cuba has also freed an unnamed u.s. intelligence source who s been held in cuban prisons for more than 20 years. the u.s. has released the three remaining members of what were called the cuban five, they were convicted in 2001 of espionage. the other convicts are back in cuba already. they ve served most of their sentences, all of the cuban five are now back in cuba. the policy changes, by far the biggest and most dramatic changes since washington clamped an embargo on cuba way back in 1961. they include right now more travel for american passport holders, greater opportunities to visit cuba, tourism, greater export of american goods and services. americans will be allowed to bring cuban goods home in limited quantities. cuban expatriots will be able to send more money back home, all leading to a full restoration of full diplomatic relations. the u.s. announcing there will be full-fledged embassies, an american ambassador in havana, a cuban ambassador here in washington. not just diplomatic interest sections but embassies and all that means a normalization of diplomatic relations, in other words. cnn is covering these seismic developments as only cnn can. our patrick ottman is the only reporter there. elise labott is standing by live. alina machado, jim sciutto, evan perez and our white house correspondent, jim acosta. let s go to havana first. patrick is on the scene, the only u.s. television correspondent in havana. tell us, patrick, what s going on right now because clearly this is such a dramatic development and we have learned for the first time in about 50 years there was a major phone conversation between president obama and raul castro, the president of cuba. reporter: yes, that s absolutely unprecedented. the two leaders would not only speak but talk for 45 minutes and hammer out the last details of this exchange of prisoners. we re told this morning that alan gross was picked up by u.s. government plane carrying u.s. congressmen, his wife, judy, his attorney, scott gilbert. alan gross was only told yesterday that he was going to be freed. after his attorney told him by phone the news that he was going to be freed, alan gross was speechless. he couldn t believe it. he left havana this afternoon around 8:a.m. when he was told they had cleared cuban airspace. he rose from his seat and was unable to talk he was so emotional. then he phoned his two daughters. his first words were, i m free. he landed at andrews air force base a little while ago. he s going on now to try to recover the health that was so badly damaged by five years in cuban prison. but there s a much bigger story here, which is a loosening of decades-long restrictions. cubans are still finding out about this basically from u.s. media that s here. they don t have easy access to the internet or regular access to channels like cnn. and raul castro is due to address the nation here any moment now. the cubans still haven t been told by the official state media that this very important change is taking place. they have to let this change sink in, something most people here never thought was going to happen, which is the u.s. if not lifting the embargo, finally loosening some important restrictions that have kept these two countries divided for so long, wolf. the president of cuba, raul castro, i take it he s about to make a statement on television to the cuban people, the president of the united states, president obama, he s about to make a statement. only moments away from both of those statements. this is pretty extraordinary for raul castro to be going out and announcing to the cuban people probably almost exactly the same time that president obama is announcing to the american people and the entire world what s going on. set the scene for the raul castro announcement. reporter: well, i don t think anything has happened like this probably since the cuban missile crisis where basically you have a u.s. leader and a cuban leader addressing their people at the same time. raul castro does not make regular addresses to the cuban people or spontaneous addresses. usually when he talks about the united states, it s very combative terms. so he ll have to really explain this in a way that will line up with some of the hardline rhetoric that we re so used to hearing here. the loosening of restrictions, the u.s. returning these three intelligence agents. they re not people you ve ever heard of very often in the united states but they re famous here in cuba. after gonzalez, there s been no greater government campaign to return a cuban citizen from the united states than these jailed cuban spies. so they will be greeted as victorious heroes who have come back. of course, many of them faced years more in u.s. prison. that s been raul castro s number one priority. now he ll have to explain to people who are used to hearing u.s. talked to in terms of enemy, exactly how this is going to work, what the new relationship will be and as well, this is a country the cubans blame everything, its terrible economy now the cubans will have to soften that hard line a little bit. as well probably take more ownership of the disastrous state of their economy. as some of these restrictions are lifted, increasingly the cubans will no longer be able to blame the u.s. for the problems here in cuba. a dramatic and historic moment in the u.s./cuban relationship, the most dramatic moment in improved relations going back r50 years. patrick oppmann, the only u.s. television correspondent reporting for us from havana. we ll be anxious to hear what the cuban president, raul castro, has to say. yesterday, the president of the united states and the president of cuba had what was described as about a 45-minute to a one-hour conversation. that was the first direct presidential communication between the united states and cuba going back probably 50 years, a major discussion. they choreographed, they worked out all of the details that are about to take place beginning with the president s statement, president obama s statement only a few moments away. elise labott is joining us, our global affairs correspondent. you brought the story earlier this morning here on cnn. i think for those of us who have watched u.s./cuban relations over the years, this is historic. it s a great, great moment if you want to see this improvement in the relationship. it opens up the doors. but there will be severe criticism. reporter: that s right. certainly members of congress, die-hard anti-cuba lawmakers who think this is not the time, that certainly while the castros are in power that there s no way that the u.s. could open up to cuba. what the administration is saying here with all these landmark remarks the president will be making is, listen, the embargo isn t working. if we wanted a regime change in cuba, that s not happening. and they notice there have been some modest reforms in cuba, such as allowing more freedom of expression, more political dissidents are being freed from jail. the cubans are releasing 53 prisoners from a list provided from the u.s. there s more economic opportunities for cubans to own property and things like that. so what the u.s. is saying is this is not a reward for the cuban government. but if you want to increase those changes, if you want to open up cuba, that means you need to engage more with the cuban government and the cuban people. so to that end, the u.s. will be opening an embassy in havana and cuba will be opening up a formal embassy here. this is really the most sweeping overhaul in u.s. policy towards cuba since the embargo was imposed. easing of full diplomatic relations, including embassies and ambassadors between the united states and cuba, a sea change, as we say. alina machado is in little havana in miami for us. how are cuban americans there reacting? reporter: we ve seen a mixture of the reactions. the one thing that everybody agrees on is the fact that it s a good thing that al gan gross was released. there s no debating that. where things get dicey here,