difference of opinion on immigration legislation that we ve put forward. you ve had different ideas. i have no doubt that as attorney general, you ll faithfully execute the office. i appreciate the answers that you have given today. unanimous consent to submit a column written by our own attorney general in arizona, mark burnovich for the hill . without objection it will be included. supporting your nomination. let me talk to you about an aspect of immigration that s important in arizona. as you know, we have a large border with mexico. we have a program called operation streamline that has over the years been tremendously effective in cutting down recidivism in terms of border crossers. it s intended to reduce border crossing by expeditiously prosecuting those who enter the country illegally over a no tolerance or zero tolerance policy. it s credited with being instrumental in achieving better border security specifically in the yuma sector along the western side of arizona s border with mexico. nevertheless, in recent years, the u.s. attorney s office for the district of arizona adopted a policy that he wanted prosecutions for those that cross but for, well, without criminal history other than simply crossing the border. i have asked attorney general holder and attorney general lynch as well as secretary johnson at homeland security on what is being done here, and i haven t gotten a straight answer. no matter how many times i ask the question, so i m looking forward to a little more candor here as attorney general if you are confirmed what steps will you take to restore operation streamline to a zero tolerance approach that s been so successful in arizona? a portion of arizona s border. zoo thank you. senator flank, i have enjoyed working with you, and i know the integrity with which you bring your views on the immigration system. like you, i believe that streamline was very effective, and it was really a surprise that it s been undermined and significantly. the reports i got initially some years ago, maybe a decade or so ago is it was dramatically effective. i would absolutely review that, and my inclination would be at least at this stage is it should be restored and made sure it s lawful and effective, but i think it has great positive potential to improve legality at the border. well, thank you. it s been effective at yuma,and i can tell you there s concern there on the sheriff s office, sheriffs will dumont and others concerned that we re seeing an increase in border crossings simply because of cartels understand very well what where there s a zero tolerance policy and where there is not. word spreads. we can quickly get to the is there any reason why we haven t expanded this program to the tucson sector if it s been successful elsewhere? i don t know what reason that might be. it seems to me that we should examine the successes and see if they can t be replicated throughout the border. all right. well, thank you. look forward to working with you on that. i appreciate that opportunity to work with you on that because i have long felt it s the right direction for us to go. thank you. we have a successful program, then it s difficult to see it scrapped and to see the progress that s been made in certain parts of the border done away with. let me get to another subject here. victims rights. this is an area of the law that you have shown particularly interest in over your time as a senator. i have with me letters of support for your nomination from various victims groups and advocates. the victims of crime and leniency. victims and friends united op ed by professors paul cassel and steve twist all in support of your nomination. i would ask that these documents be placed for the record. as attorney general, what steps will you take to insure that victims rights are protected? cannot forget victims rights. we have a victim witness legislation that creates within each united states attorney s office a victim witness coordinator and the job of that person is to make sure that concern of the victims are he d prosecutors and law enforcement officers, but also the bureau of you will lead not only department of prosecutors and law enforcement officials, but also the bureau of prisons. you ll be responsible for 190,000 federal inmates currently in custody. this is an often overlooked part of the attorney general s role, but it s important part of the position that you ll be nominated for. i believe one of the highlights in your record in the senate is your leadership in passing the prison rape elimination act of 2003, it or pria, which passed both chambers without objection and was signed into law by george w. bush. this was a bipartisan bill. you worked across the aisle with the late senator kennedy as well as with republican representative frank wolf, democrat representative bobby scott in the house. i have letters of support from anti-prisonrate rape activists that i would also like to be part of the record without objection if i could. thank you. the prison actually do get prosecuted was a real step forward. we do not need to subject prisoners to any more punishment than the law requires. thank you. just remaining seconds i have let me say there s another area that we have worked on and hopefully can continue to work on, and that s the area of duplicative doj grants. as you know, department awarded approximately $17 billion in grants over the years brrn oij reports, have all shown there s duplication and waste. sometimes fraud and abuse. we continue to commit to work to root out this kind of duplicative action there. well, i know you have had a history of being a staunch defender of the treasury and those that abuse it. i believe it s the same way. it s the taxpayer s money. every dlaer that s extracted from an american sit zblin that goes into the government needs to get to productive valuable activities. it is a cause of great concern. i will make it a priority of mine to make sure that the dollars we have are actually getting to the purposes they re supposed to go for. it s one thing to say i did a great thing. i got more money for this good purpose, but did it really efficiently and effectively go there. did it really make a positive difference? i think the department of justice can utilize the grant programs to help valuable activities and it needs to guard against improper activities. thank you, senator sessions. we ll break for about 30 minutes and reconvene at 1:40. senator comens would be next up, and he has indicated he will be here on time. adjourn, recess for now. the senate judiciary committee now in recess. 30 minute lurchl we just heard from the chairman chuck grassley make that announcement. hel hello. i m wolf blitzer. i m jake tapper. it s 1:00 p.m. here in washington d.c. thank you for joining us. it s been a very, very intriguing, important several hours, jake, that we ve been listening to jeff sessions, the senator from alabama who has been nominated to become the attorney general of the united states. i want to start off quickly and play this little clip. he announce reasonable doubt that if there were any legal proceedings to go against, the former democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton, he would recuse himself. in light of those comments that you made, some have expressed concern about whether you can approach the clinton matter impartially in both fact and appearance. how do you plan to address those concerns? i do believe that that could place my objectivity in question. i have given that thought. i believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve secretary clinton that were raised during the campaign. or could be otherwise connected to it. this country does not punish its political enemies, but this country insures that no one is bottom of the law. very intriguing the way he said that. it was a bold moment. he said he would recuse himself. some of the other things that he tried to make clear were that even if he opposed laws that had been passed, he would abide by them. whatever his personal feelings, he thinks that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. president trump has said and talked about how he would protect the rights of lgbt americans going forward. roe v. wade he said also is staging little mock confirmation hearings at the trump transition office. we ve got an excellent panel here that s going to help us better appreciate what we just heard. associate editor of real clear politics, a.b. stoddard. justice correspondent pamela brown, april ryan, white house correspondent washington bureau chief for american urban radio networks, cnn political comme commentators chuck hyde and simone sanders. pamela brown, you cover the justice department for us. your immediate thoughts? first, when it comes to torture, he was asked about waterboarding, which, of course, we heard trump talk about on the trail saying he wanted to bring that back, and sessions did not mince words. he said it s illegal. it is improper. that is the way the congress has voted. that presents an interesting situation there depending on what trump wants to do when he takes the white house and his top law enforcement officer views it that way. we talked about the muslim ban. again, something that trump talked about on the trail. he says that he opposes that, and it s clear that he is taking i am not naive. i know the threat that our rising crime and addiction rates pose to the health and safety of our country. i know the threat of terrorism. i deeply understand the history of civil rights in our country and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our african-american brothers and sisters. i have witnessed it. that was in his opening statement. he clearly came prepared to try to diffuse what had hurt him so badly in 1986. what s so interesting is that was initially not in his opening statements. we re told from a source that this morning he woke up, and he felt very compelled to confront what happened in 1986 with the failed judgeship. he felt like it was important to make it clear to the people and to the people there in that room that he is not a racist, that this was a characterure of him and that it was false and so he added those comments and those comments about that back in this morning, wolf. jeff, when you take a look at the bottom line, it s very, very hard for a united states senator sitting colleague of senator sessions to come out against them, but some will. some will, without a doubt, and i would not be surprised at the end of the day if this is maybe largely on party lines, but i think one of the biggest differences here is if he was not a sitting united states senator, this hearing would be entirely different. the proceedings would be different. senator dianne feinstein, of course, the ranking democrat on the committee, pointed out that, you know, he is the candidate for attorney general. we re not talking about his senate record here, but the reality here is that those strong relationships that he has with republicans and some democrats is going to play a key role in virtually all of this. they are giving him the benefit of the doubt. you saw susan collins introducing him and basically saying what happened 30 years ago isn t as relevant as right now. yes, he is going to have tough questions. more tomorrow probably than today. one other people are giving their sides of this, but he is a u.s. senator, and that helps him immensely. senator al franken, the one non-lawyer on the senate judiciary committee, basically accused senator sessions of inflating his pro-civil rights record, suggesting that desegregation school desegregation cases that he had claimed to have been in charge of, that he first overstated how many there were and then basically he was taking credit for work that he really didn t have much to do with other than he was the u.s. attorney or the attorney general of the state of alabama. it was kind of a strong charge to make. yes, it was interesting. sessions actually did back down a bit. he said that he wasn t as involved, and their number wasn t as high as it was originally stated, but that he didn t do anything wrong. i think what s interesting as franken went after his character, most everyone else was sticking to policy differences. democrats have huge policy contrasts with senator sessions and the department of justice will change radically from the obama department of justice. i think it was strong of him to so strongly defend himself against the 1986 event when he was passed over for the judgeship to defend himself against charges of being racially insensitive so that they can move on to policy differences and not be in so that he is not vulnerable to character attacks. i think democrats waste their time if they go after him on this. there s so much on sentencing, on immigration, on voting rights and civil rights for them to actually question him about and create contrast with him about that they should probably stay away from the issues of 30 years ago. you saw just as jeff was saying, you saw the senators just in such a defer he shall crouch, they would the democrats would start by saying, well, we talked about this in our meeting together. i ll just throw that question out there first. he had done a great job of talking them through these issues long before the lights were on. stro i don t think he is getting dick durbin s vote. he made it clear that the casm between the two when it came to immigration reform, specifically what you do with the so-called dreamers, the 800,000 people brought here illegally when they were children through the no fault of their own, durbin wants them to be given citizenship ultimately, and sessions, it sounded like, has a fairly hard line position on it. it shows how well prepared he is, and it s not just in trump tower where they ve been practicing for this. it s in the senate buildings. it s also at the republican national committee, private organizations like america rising. they are all preparing not just jeff sessions for this, but a team to move his nomination forward. democrats are obviously doing the same on the opposite side. what we re seeing is the tip of the iceberg on this. it looked as if he was prepared anticipating almost every question that came up where. he was anticipating every question, but the issue is he is giving answers, but there s more to get into the weeds about. particularly when it came to issues of voting rights. 30 years ago does matter where, to hear some people in congress, in and some senators wanting to testify against him about things that he said that naacp is unamerican, that is a real issue. he denies that. he denies it and he said he abhors the kkk. he said he does abhor the kkk. he said that. he did put to death under his watch leader of the kkk. right. now, let s go into this piece. the voting rights piece, which is interesting. his state right now is in the middle of this voting rights issue. many of the alabama motor vehicle offices were moved out of urban areas. people had to go to driver s licenses to get to the polls. here he is saying, oh, he plooefz in voter id, and then they just came up with an agreement with the department of transportation to fix this problem, and this is the devil is in the details. this is the first time in 15 years that people have not seen the full enforcement of the voting rights act, and there is still a problem. if they get into that piece, that is a big piece. then criminal justice. it almost sounds like he was in a different stand than president-elect donald trump. donald trump says he is putting more of a focus on supporting the police, but now we heard sessions say, yes, we support police but also he supports kplooint community policing, which is a big piece in the urban community to help stop much of this tension, which is considered once the tension happens, it s considered a national security issue from jay johnson, the head of homeland security. the issue is donald trump really has put a focus on supporting police and now he is talking about community policing and also making police more responsible if there is something that happened. it s an interesting dynamic today. when you watch this hearing and obviously jeff pointed out if this were just alabama attorney general jeff sessions or u.s. attorney jeff sessions, there would probably be more hostility and aggressiveness towards him. what s your response? how do you think he hangdsed himself understanding that you disagree with a lot of his positions? i mean, i think he handled himself well. i think some of the questioning was soft. if you will, in a lot of instances. this was just the first half. we have a whole other afternoon of this, and then tomorrow we ll see testimony from folks like cornell brooks, the current president of the naacp, the oldest and boldest civil rights organization in america. we will hear testimony from senator booker. lots of folks who will offer some color and additional details to what we heard senator sessions say today. i was shocked when senator sessions said that he basically thought that voter id was okay if the laws were written well, but also noted that, oh, but as attorney general if he was to be confirmed as attorney general, he would have to look at all the legal aspects, but personally that s how he feels. i am shocked that no one pressed him to allude that he is saying that he wouldn t take his personal feelings about voter id into the office as attorney general. again, i think he had some soft questioning. i think folks really like jeff sessions, and they this is their colleague. if he is not confirmed, guess what, he is coming back to the senate, and nobody wants to make an enemy. he has co-sponsored lots of helpful legislation, but the fact of the matter is we have to question on the merits of his policy and, you know, what he stands for and what kind of department he would put together. i don t think that s all the way broken through. here s an exchange. senator sessions had with senator dianne feinstein, who says the new ranking democrat on the judiciary committee. the issue of abortion and same-sex marriage. listen to this. i think we have that clip ready to go right now. you have referred to roe v. wade as one of the worst colossally erroneous supreme court decisions of all time. is that still your view? it is. i believe it s it violated the constitution and really attempted to set policy and not follow law. it is the law of the land. it has been so established and settled for quite a long time. it deserves respect, and i would respect it and follow it. five justices on the supreme court, the majority of the court, has established the definition of marriage for the entire united states of america, and i will follow that decision. jeffrey tubbin, our senior legal analyst. someone who is opposed to roe v. wade, very strongly, jeff, says roe v. wade, it is the law of the land. it has been so established. it has been settled for quite a long time, and then he said it deserves respect. similar words as far as same-sex marriage are concerned. that was significant coming from senator sessions. it is significant, but it also leaves a lot of room for the justice department to take and support steps that restrict the right to abortion. the obama administration justice department was very aggressive in saying to states that we do not believe under the constitution you can establish barriers to abortion rights in setting up rules for clinics, rules for doctors that make it difficult. this administration is going to be very different. it is true that the ultimate decision will not be challenged yet by this administration, but, remember, there is already one supreme court vacancy. one of the leading candidates for this vacancy is the attorney general of arizona of alabama, who followed jeff sessions as attorney general of alabama. now a federal judge, bill pryor. he, too, thinks roe v. wade was a terrible decision, and if he is nominated and confirmed, he can actually do something about it. yes, this attorney general if he is confirmed will not directly attack it, but the federal government can do a lot to restrict abortion rights and president-elect trump has made clear that s a priority for his administration. we have more analysis coming up from jeffrey tubbin. i want you to stand by. our senior political reporter manu raju is just outside. room where senator sessions has been testifying in this confirmation hearing. he has a special guest with him. manu. thanks. i m here with senator chris goose from delaware. about to ask. what do you want to hear from senator sessions? what i want to hear from senator sessions, clear and concise answers to a number of questions i ve got about his actions as alabama s attorney general, about his actions as u.s. senator. blocking bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts, blocking bipartisan efforts to outlaw the use of torture, and some of his historic involvement in the civil rights movement both in his home state of alabama and what he has done as a senator and what he might or might not do as attorney general. we ve had a very full morning. it s been many hours since we started at 9:30. he has answered a lot of questions. in my view the american people deserve a really full and fair hearing for their next potential next attorney general. this morning he also said that his critics, especially back in the 1980s, were trying to paint a characterure of him on the issue of race. do you buy that? do you think his critics were trying to paint a characterure of him back in the 1980s, and do you believe that he has a strong civil rights record? what matters to me is his voting record as a senator and the things i have been able to work with him and not been able to work with him on in the six years we ve served together in the senate. there were two issues we worked well together on. i appreciate that. there were many, many others where we weren t and where our values and priorities are quite different. you ve heard many different senators ask questions about immigration, about civil liberties, about civil rights, about russian cyber hacking, and about some of the claims made in the trump campaign. i look forward to continuing that line of questioning. before i let you go, are you leaning yes or no on jeff sessions right now if you were to vote for him, yes or no? the whole point of skrg a hearing that s going to last all day today and another hearing that will last all day tomorrow is to make up my mind after i have heard all the evidence. i have a number of questions based on his record and based on some of the things he said today. i have more questions, not fewer. senator, thanks for talking with us. back to you. all right. manu and senator chris kuhns. still to come, we re going to have much more on the confirmation hearing of senator jeff sessions. thoughts on a potential ban on muslims entering the u.s. also we re keeping a close eye on another hearing on capitol hill. this one regards the intel regarding the russia hack and we are just a few hours away from president obama s last big speech as president of the united states. we re live from chicago with a preview coming up next. you do all this research on a perfect car, then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises your rates. maybe you should ve done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your first accident. and if you do have an accident, our claims centers are available to assist you 24/7. call for a free quote today. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. welcome back. we re awaiting the turn of the confirmation hearing for senator jefferson boregard session iii, nominee for u.s. attorney general. we re keeping an eye on the intel briefing regarding the russia hacking. we ll update ow that throughout the hour. first, president obama, he is set to give his farewell address to the nation later on tonight in chicago. our white house correspondent michelle kazinski is joining us from the site in chicago. give us a preview, michelle. yeah, this is a good-bye as well as a homecoming. he is coming back to this city, his hometown, you could say, where his political career began. this is important to him, obviously. some people will line up 14 hours before this speech will begin. there s an anticipatory thing right now. this is something that he has been working on now for at least a week or so. it s been through several drafts. he wants to get this right. he doesn t want to focus on listing his accomplishments. whenever he makes the public address, but they want this to be different. they want it to be forward-looking and optimistic. when you look back to past presidents, farewell addresses, they always give a sort of cautionary advice to the next administration. george w. bush talked about continuing to fight for truth and justice. to keep up fiscal responsibility in the world. the white house says that president obama is going to follow that theme. he is going to look challenges that america faces moving forward, and he is going to give his share of advice on how best to face. they say that he is going to focus on american values, on fairness, justice, and diversity. still ahead, we re getting ready for the return of the confirmation hearings for senator jeff sessions. take a look at these live pictures coming in from the room. the senators will be going back in there momentarily. our special coverage continues right after this. of a trip to athens, greece. you accidentally booked a flight to athens, georgia. with travelocity, there s no fee to cancel or rebook most flights within 24 hours. travelocity® wander wisely™ it s set to resume momentarily. once it resumes, we ll, of course, resume our own live coverage. also ahead, our retired marine corps general john kelly is due before the senate homeland security committee and his nomination to become the next secretary of homeland security. that s scheduled to begin at 3:30 p.m. eastern. less than two hours from now. we ll have live coverage of that as well. and another key hearing is underway right now as well. the heads of the fbi, the cia, and the nsa. the national security agency. also the director of national intelligence. they are testifying before the senate intelligence committee on russian interference in the u.s. presidential election. right now i would like you to hear some of the sounds, some of the arguments that were made, the legal points from the hearing on the attorney general nominee, jeff sessions. let s begin with this. [ yelling ] wow. for the clan and what it represents and its hateful ideology. i insisted on maurice of the southern poverty law center, his lawsuit that led to the successful collapse of the klan, at least in alabama, the seizure of their building, at least for that period of time. i am not naive. i know the threat that our rising crime and addiction rates pose to the health and safety of our country. i know the threat of terrorism. i deeply understand the history of civil rights in our country and the horrendous impact that relentless and systemic discrimination and the denial of voting rights has had on our african-american brothers and sisters. i have witnessed it. we must continue to move forward and never back. during the course of the presidential campaign, you made a number of statements about the investigation of former secretary of state hillary clinton relating to her handling of sensitive emails and regarding certain actions of the clinton foundation. mr. chairman, it was a highly contentious campaign. i, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign with regard to secretary clinton and some of the comments i made. i do believe that that could place my objectivity in question. i ve given that thought. i believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve secretary clinton that were raised during the campaign. we can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute. that s not in any way that would suggest anything other than absolute objectivity. this country does not punish its political enemies, but this country insures that no one is above the law. do you agree that the issue of same-sex marriage is settled law? supreme court has ruled on that. the disents disented vigorously, but it was 5-4, and five justices on the supreme court, a majority of the court, has established the definition of marriage for the entire united states of america and i will follow that decision. you have referred to roe v. wade as one of the worst colossally erroneous supreme court decisions of all time. is that still your view? it is. i believe it s it violated the constitution and really attempted to set policy and not follow law. it is the law of the land. it has been so established and settled for quite a long time. it zebs respect and i would follow it. april ryan, the white house correspondent in washington bureau chief for american urban radio networks and cnn political commentators doug high and simone sanders, where pamela, let me start with you. i think there are probably a lot of viewers out there who heard senator sessions say that he, if attorney general, if he is confirmed, he would recuse himself from any matter regarding hillary clinton. a lot of people might have thought i thought this was all settings settled. i thought the case was closed regarding hillary clinton. what could he be talking about theoretically? we know the fbi director both came out and said they didn t find probable cause to prosecute. i think what he was referring to is the ongoing probe into the clinton foundation. we had previously reported that there was a preliminary inquiry into the clinton foundation that s been going on over the last several months, and doj did not give the authorization for a morrow bust investigation. it was sort of at a stand still before the election. we ll have to see what happens now under the new administration. i think that s what he was referring to. . i said he had not studied the hacking situation and was not necessarily up to speed on that. it seemed like to me he was trying to get that issue off the table as soon as possible in case donald trump was potentially watching this hearing. then he went on and as the hearing went on and said that he was aware of it, but i was struck by that, but, again, i was just struck by his he was utterly prepared for this. 20 years is a long time to prepare. he wanted right out of the gate to exactly go back to that moment from the 1980s. a very painful moment. he talked about a race much more openly than i thought. again, talking to just a few staffers up there. you know, this may be a party line confirmation. important to remember he needs only 50 votes, 51 votes, and republicans have those votes. you can bet at least a few democrats unless we learn something else may support him as well. and maybe presumably he is up to speed at least a little bit on the russian hacking. this theoretically could become part of his job if he is confirmed because the fbi is part of the investigation into whatever hacking took place, the intelligence community part of which is the fbi plays a role, and if there are any criminal charges that take place. this would be under attorney general jeff sessions. right. he was asked if these probes lead to further russian connections that even go to trump or his staff, you know. is he willing to follow there, and he said that he would. senator graham after learning that he had not really studied the briefing or had the . he asked you like the fbi and laid the trap that sessions would say of course i respect the fbi and they do a good job so that not only because the fbi has determined that the russians have hacked into this, but the hornet s nest he s backing up the full department. this hearing has resumed. let s listen in. i won t know unless you tell me that there s any sort of 15-minute break or anything, you let me know. thank you, mr. chairman. senator kulens. well kwom senatcome senator koch gra congratulations to you. the next attorney general of the united states will assume leadership of the justice department ton the he lels. cause for muslim ban, patrols, issues of a potential russian cyberattack, calls for mass deportations and chants at some rallies to lock her up and given the divisiveness of this election i think it is critical that the next attorney general be well-suited for this position and this time and as such i think a successful nominee has to be able to persuade this committee that he will act fairly and impartially and share in this. we ve worked well on state and local law enforcement issues, on the reauthorization of the child abuse act. i appreciate that partnership, but there s also been many issues on which we have disagreed. issues from immigration, civil liberties, criminal justice, voting rieghts and torture, andi am concerned on a number of these issues when we met last week so i am grateful to the committee and chairman that we are going to have a full hearing on all of these issues today. let me start with the time you were alabama attorney general and how you received direction from the department of justice. it was the only that handcuffed criminals to hitching posts. it was used for miprisoners bei perceived to being unwilling to participate whether serving on a chain gang and cuffed at both wrists at chest height sometimes at eight or nine hours without access to water or even a bathroom and you and the attorney general received letters telling you the alabama lea s use in both men s and women s prisons was unjustified, but as i understand the hitching posts continued to be used. and was not acted on to terminate it. the state of alabama was sued not just about hitching posts but chain gangs. the a man could be put on a chain gang for not making his bed, being shaved, shackled between eight chain of men and the case brought demonstrated were disproportionally affecting african-americans. in later litigation the practice of using the hitching post was called by an alabama judge the most painful and torture rous short of execution. and the united states supreme court said the hitching post was clearly unconstitutional when it was used in alabama. can you please tell me your view of using the hitching post in corrections and what action you would take today if these practices were restored? thank you very much, senator. that was an issue of the governor who campaigned and promised that prisoners should work and he was determined to make that happen. i believe the litigation occurred after my time as attorney general but i could be wrong and i will supplement the record for you. i believe the cases were after leaving, but the issue is what we have dealt with by congress and state legislatures. i think good employment of a prisoner is a healthy thing. i do not favor personally this kind of work, i think it should be more productive work, work to help the individual develop a discipline to use when they go on to private life after they leave prison. after the supreme court ruling i think it s crystal clear what the law is, that was disapproved and disallowed and found to be unconstitutional and i would absolutely follow that as attorney general. in your view, did it take a ruling by the u.s. supreme court to clarify this constituted torture, that it was not just bad corrections policy but substantively torture of prisoners? senator, i don t recall ever personally being engaged in the studying of the congressional issues at stake. it s legitimate for prisoners to work but they should be on decent conditions and i think it should be the kind of work that s productive and could actually lead to developing good habits. i ve heard some evidence on that subject, so i do not have a legal opinion about the case. have not studied the details of it. just to be clear what i was pressing you on there was the use of the hitching post which is a disciplinary measure that has been abandoned by every state but alabama it was used by the stocks centuries ago and tr struggling to me that it continued without challenge. and to address ways in which our criminal justice system is broken and the disparagement of incarceration that has happened over the last 30 years. we wrote about the importance of balance of criminal judge, senators cornyn, lee and flake have all addressed mandatory prison sentences and incarceration, and in my years you have opposed all of these buy partisan sentencing reforms, help me understand why you are against the revisitation of sentences that may have been overly harsh when initially imposed and help me understand whether you think it is ever proper for a prosecutor to charge anything less than the most serious charge possible. a lot of questions, so the sentencing act has one foundational requirement now and that s the minimum mandatories. the guidelines have been either made voluntary by the sentencing commission and the courts and the policies of the attorney general, so the thing that does stand in place are the min numb minimum mandatories, the minimums for sentencing offense, in 2001 it was opposed by the bush administration, a number of years later could have been done in 2001 when i made a speech in favor of it. made a speech saying what you are saying that it was disproportionally impacting our african-american community and we needed to fix it and eventually it was passed, so i have a record of doing that, number one. number two the guidelines were reduced the justice department has reduced its requirements, the justice department allows a prosecutor to present a case to the judge that doesn t fully reflect the evidence that they have in their files about a
and we experienced turbulence coming in and when we landed a pretty hard landing and the self-perceived back of the plane starts fish tails and you could feel the plane do things that wasn t straight on the run way like a normal landing would go. the plane continues to proceed down the runway in that way sorry i m being moved on the tarmac right now. and then we came to a very, very, sort of quick and harsh halt there on the runway. and everyone is fine on the airplane. there are no injuries. governor pence and his staff are fine. and there are a lot of rescue crews here. i m not sure if you are seeing the poll shoot. yes we are. reporter: there appear to be police and fire rescue here. and there is significant damage to the run way here as well. it looks like you can see divots where the wheels of the plane dug into the runway and damaged the runway. they are going to have to do reconstruction for this part of the runway. everyone is fine but liz, how long from the moment you touched down and started to feel the tail of the aircraft moving oddly? how long did it last for until you came to a complete stop? reporter: it was probably 20 or 30 seconds. it wasn t that long. but it was long enough to feel that this is not a straight, smooth landing on the runway. and judging by what i m seeing here on the runway, which is it looks like cement that s been torn up by the wheels of the plane, you can see that the wheels and the plane moved off the run what before we slammed to a halt. and just to be clear new york city injuries from anyone that you know of on the plane. reporter: correct. yes. absolutely no injuries and in fact governor pence immediately came back once it was fully stopped and made sure that everybody, including the press was okay. and he said that he saw mud on his window up at the front of the airplane. at that point we could definitely tell we were off the runway. we weren t exactly sure in the back what we were seeing out the windows. and so he came back and said that he saw that we were you have to runway. so the plane itself to your understanding stopped off the side of a runway in grass or in mud. yes. exactly. the plane is off the runway, yes. do you know how far off the runway it is? let me look. we re still here. we re getting moved out of the area. if you got to leave you got to leave. don t worry about it. the plane is in the grass. one of the wheels is fully in the grass. one of the wheels is completely in actually the entire plane is on the grass at the tarmac the reverse thrust we probably used in excess. you know, reverse thrust is used on most planes but it appears to that they went into a skid situation that took them off the runway just looking at the pictures. les this, may be a dumb question but having flown into laguardia throughout my life, there is water all around and in some it seems like at least to my memory in some of the landings you are flying over water in the last minute when the runway is right there, right? reporter: you are referring to landing in runway two to the southwest. you land on part of the bay. rikers island is on the right-hand side. yeah. reporter: but that is hard for me to tell if that was the runway they were landing on. that is not really a factor. the surface beneath the wings makes no real difference. the it is surface beneath the wheels that makes the difference, you know, in the cockpit we would be judging what type of situation that we have. we might have got breaking action reports. there were probably good breaking action reports why this happened. you know, at this point it is hard to say. it is possible it could have been a mechanical failure anderson with a reverse thrust not being deployed appropriately and giving an asymmetrical thrust which would have forced it off the runway possibly. it is hard to say at this point. we don t need to speculate in that regard. we re certainly just glad everyone is okay. we re getting word donald trump has called governor pence and has expressed relief that everybody is going okay. les, in a situation like this our producer was saying that looks like some of the runway is torn up. again, may be a dumb question. but is that something wheels of an aircraft would actually do to a run way. absolutely. it looks like they might have blown only tires, which could be a failure of the anti-skid system, which is supposed to prevent that. but i think we re seeing governor pence there right now. yeah. continue, sorry continue les. reporter: yeah it s possible if you blew out some tires,arounds, you are basically on the wheel hubs that could tear up the concrete like that. but once the airplane goes into the grass, you know, it is a tough situation. and it really could tear up indefinitely. governor pence thanking some of the firefighters outside of the aircraft. our producer was saying seems to be fully off the grass the plane. and joined on the phone, michaels, y miles. you know this airport well. how surprising is this to you? reporter: anderson, this is varsity flying. you don t go into laguardia in a 737 without being on your toes and in a driving rain you really wanted to make sure you get everything just right. miles, i m being told there is a ground stop now at laguardia for flights. so again, sorry, continue miles. reporter: as would be suspected in this case. expected. that broken concrete you have been talking about anderson is engineered material arrester system which is installed at laguardia and o a few other airports that i i would put in the same varsity category. midway being one o ever them. short runways with fast aircraft coming in. and it is designed to break apart on the weight of the landing gear. and stops the aircraft from going any further. if it were not there in this case it is very likely this aircraft would be in the east river and that would be an entirely different situation. so it worked. and that is a good thing and that is a good thing for everybody on board there. how does that actually work? how does that kind of a runway work? reporter: basically it is a thin veneer of concrete. and it is just like going into, you know, quick sand, if you will. it is a break away concrete that collapses under the weight of the aircraft. and stops it. it is an aarrester system. and very useful in this case certainly prevented injuries and maybe saved some lives. o who knows. i want to bring in our safety analyst david soucie. and i think in some of those shots you can actually in the background see some of the broken up runway. the broken up concrete. david, again, i guess the obvious question is what do you make of this? how surprised are you? reporter: very surprising as miles said this is a varsity runway. something you just don t fly into if you don t know what you are doing. so obviously something went wrong to make him go through that. as miles said there is also a break away. what happens there is it is designed, kind of like foaming the runway. a way to slow down the aircraft. it is something they could have used in the train accidentes of late as well to slow it down as it goes forward. so it is a safety mechanism to say the airplane loses control in anyway, it stops the aircraft before it goes off into the runway, turns off the runway, turns over, rolls over, anything long that nature. and those were put in in designs in airports about 20 years ago in denver actually an aircraft had come off the runway and slid off and didn t stop and continued and rolled over and got into some houses alongside the runway. so some of that safety improvement as we see now actually is very effective. and we have people walking away without losing lives. our producer liz landers is still with us. she s actually she was on the flight. she is on the runway. i believe she s still on the runway. liz do you know which runway you were flying into? liz? reporter: i do not know that right now. i can try to figure that out for you guys. but just to give you an update, governor pence is now off the airplane and i can see him on the tarmac speaking with law enforcement officers. there is a lot of police and fire department presence here. i would say i see probably one two three four i see four fire department trucks and lots of other vehicles right now. and liz, we re a also i know you can t tell with the cameras on. we are also looking at the governor pence shaking hands. that s actually recorded just minutes ago. him shaking hands with firefighters after he got off the aircraft. soliz, for those viewers just joining us. could you describe what you felt? first there had been a delay so you knew it was bad weather coming in. but explain what you felt when you realized something as you started to land. so like young say we knew it was going to be in bad weather. we had been in iowa earlier today chain iampaigning. and so we came into laguardia. you could feel the turbulence. low clouds. couldn t see much out the windows. and as soon as we landed on the runway here, it was a pretty hard landing. and then you could feel the plane fish-tailing which is where the governor and you could feel the plane fish tailing in the back and then probably after 20 or 30 seconds they slammed on the brakes of the airplane and we all sort of sat there in silence and were wondering what was going on. member of the secret service came back and said that there was no structural damage to the airplane that but that we were off the runway. and at that point governor pence came back to make sure that everybody was okay. he just checked in with the press and said are you guys doing okay? he said there was mud on his window. that indicated to us that we had run off the runway. and as i sort of told you a minute ago, the plane is fully off the tarmac. and it is in the grass here. it looks like the tarmac and the concrete was pretty dug up and pretty badly damaged upon landing. and you said it felt like it was skidding from the rear of the aircraft like the rear of the aircraft was kind of moving towards the front. it felt like the back of the airplane was fish tailing and didn t have as much control, i guess as the front of the airplane did. and you could tell it just was not a straight landing on a straight runway. we re also joined by our safety analyst david soucie. david, why would the rear of the aircraft move like that and not the front? well because of the mass a what s happening as far as the slowing. if you had a flat tire in the front then the aircraft in the back is going to try to accelerate past it. like a jack knifing of a truck. also the front landing clear could have collapsed driving it down and giving you the feeling that the back is trying to out run the front. we re also joined by mary schialvo for the department of transportation. mary, what happens now in a case like this? reporter: well it falls on the purview of the national transportation safety board. and they have a lot of experience with accidents like this. everything from there was one in little rock american airlines and what happens when the wheels, when they do not get good traction with the runway when there is a layer of water on it it is very much like hydroplaning with your car. there is a scrubbing action between the wheels and runway and sometimes it leaves characteristic marks so the ntsb will investigate. fortunately known was hurt bthe will have to come to the airport and look at it before they move the plane. ao i will slow everything down in new york. and laguardia has had this very thing happen before with i think southwest not long ago and other aircraft. soo they are accustomed to doing these investigations at laguardia. so it would an ntsb investigation. and we re getting a good look at the aircraft. we ve seen some of that runway. really does look like it s been torn up. yes it does anderson. it is most likely one ray 13. that signifies the compass heading. meaning they were headed off to the southeast. the wind was coming out of that direction, pretty gusty. and what you are looking at is the aircraft on the cusp of flushing bay. and if it weren t for those arresters the break away material there is a good clans that aircraft would be there. one thing that would be interesting to understand here is if the trust reversers were working. that sense of the engine sort of operating in reverse. and that is essentially a mechanical device that turns the thrust in the opposite direction to slow the aircraft down. were they using the brakes or just the thrust reversers or if the thrust reversers were deployed they work completely symmetrically which is important in all this. david soucie, our safety analyst. and planes take off and lane in rain seems like all the time. why would tonight be different? is it because the temperature was low? well kit. it can actually get into a situation where it create this is ice barrier. but it is more about hydroplaning than it is ice anderson. miles had said. i was looking at the photographs about the thrust reversal deployment. it appears as though the right thrust reverser is still diploid which is uncharacteristic so it could be possibly an unparalleled thrust reverse which could put planes off. in chicago i experienced that once before in an accident i did where one of the thrust reversers comes out and bufferibufferin burns out a break. but the brakes are all the option you have when it starts to pull off one side. so that can be complicated when you have water on the runway. because it comes a hydroplane. and your brakes aren t nearly as effective if that water is lifting your tires up off of the runway. and liz, liz landers, our producer who was on board the aircraft. is governor pence still there? looked like we had a camera in a car. i wonder if thafrs him leaving. reporter: yes that s right. we are now leaving the airport right now. the governor is going to his hotel. i spoke with his press secretary. he said that the fundraiser he was supposed to be having in new york tonight has been called off, understandably so and he ll be going to his hotel, probably to relax and sort of unwind with his family there tonight. tomorrow everything else is on schedule. the governor will be be going to events in pennsylvania and later in the afternoon in north carolina. this has got to be a really kind of tricky situation for the secret service. if they are on the aircraft realizing something is going wrong with the aircraft. obviously their job is to protect to protect the vice president, to protect his family to protect the nominee. but i assume they they are strapped in as well. they can t get up either. absolutely. as soon as we landed. like i said the plain came to a really kind of short halt there. and the secret service immediately popped out of their seats once the airplane had come to a complete stop. i m sure they could tell that something had gone wrong with the landing so they popped up and were checking on the governor and then they came back. it looks like woucht the secret service agents spoke with the pilot. because one of the agents came back and said there is no structural damage. and there is a rescue team on the way. so at that point we knew we had come off the runway and that this would not be your regular deplaning that we do. and liz, just in terms of getting off the aircraft, was a chute deployed? or did they bring stairs? they brought stairs. they were able to bring stairs to the back of the airplane. we deplaned after the secret service. the secret service got off the plane first in the back and then the press gathered our gear and belongs and scrambled off the back of the plane. and then the governor and his staff came off after that. liz, it is a little hard to tell from the picture. is the bay in front of the plane? or is it the highway? we see lights but i can t tell if there is a body of water in front of those lights. reporter: i was not able to see whether we were on water there or not. miles, based on where you think this was, can you tell? reporter: well it is hard to see. i see what you are saying about the traffic but i think there might be a body of water in between. as you well know with laguardia, it is kind of there is water kind of all around it. and most likely that is the end of runway one-three. which would put it towards flushing bay, sort of at the southeast corner of the airport. and pretty much any runway you go into there you are facing water at the end. and that is why that material is installed there. this is not a lot of overrun space there. you know, you go to a place like dallas or atlanta there is a lot of buffer zones between the runway and traffic or whatever. in this case, laguardia is you know, it is basically a stationary aircraft carrier. it is sitting there on the water and there is not a lot of i over run spasmce. and that is there is this material so crucial in this case to keep the aircraft from getting in the water and preventing a devastating situation. how long would they keep an airport ground stop going for? and the ground stop because of specifically what happened with this aircraft? there are other runways, do they just need to check all the runways? check all the conditions? reporter: i m sorry i didn t hear the very first part of the question. the question is how long would the arptd have a ground stop? and is is the reason simply to investigate what happened with this aircraft or to check all runways and conditions? two fold. the first part is is there anything on that runway. they shut down that runway. the ground stop has to do with the fact that faa has nine responsibilities during an accident and that is to ensure there is not something wrong with the facilities themselves o. so that is the first thing they will check and make sure nothing going on or make sure nothing on the runway or damage to the runway or maybe there was someone who intentionally damaged the runway. that needs to all be determined and inspect the rest of the airport, runways and taxi ways and make sure there is nothing else going on than just this one accident. and david, obviously when it snows out they clear the runway of snow. when it is raining do they go around the airport clearing the any water built up? or does that sort of naturally drain off a runway? it is not natural but they do design it for that. and they design it for very high rainfall to be able to get the rain off the airport immediately. but there are also tests that are done to make sure that the runways are prepared and they have a truck they can drive out and check whether the ice for example is causing a runway to be non responsive as far as braking goes. so you have a braking reading that can tell you the activity of the aircraft and they will do that occasionally in super heavy rainfall but this i don t think would have qualified for that. and miles, they would reroute planes to what? to newark? to jfk? yeah. if the runway braking action were not satisfactory, no sane pilot would come in in this situation with a 737. but as the dynamic situation. and you can make a call on few minutes on final to go and things can change. and these runways are in fact engineered to shed water. they have got kind of a turtle back to them and they have grooves in them. all of it is designed to channel water off the runway to the edge. and anybody who s driven a car has occasionally gone through a puddle, hydroplaned and no one what it is all about. you can imagine the aircraft coming in and wheels hitting and getting no traction whatsoever. the thrust reverses can help in that situation but did they do their job exactly right? everything has to work just perfectly at laguardia on a good day. on a bad day you really can t. there is just no margin for error. and david soucie, how long would they keep the aircraft in the position that it s in as part of the investigation? or is there a premium put on getting that aircraft, moving it off so they can get that runway working again. well first of all it is a matter of getting the people off and away in the aircraft. which they have already done it appears. second looks like they just turned off the lights on the aircraft inside. right. the second is securing the aircraft and area. then they have to investigate. they have to figure what happened as much as can on sight site. they continue to want to disturb any evidence. and that is priority. i kept an airport down in hawaii when pan airlines had a very similar accident. the brakes were locked up and didn t release so the aircraft pulled off to the left side. it was a 747. we had that airport closed for more than two days. although we could have moved it. we kept it down for go days in hawaii which is a big deal. you can imagine how many people were upset about that. in oahu. not too popular. not at all for sure. so you do what you have to do to make sure you are not destroying evidence and trying to figure out what happened. because the utmost important thing is to make sure it doesn t happen. so if there is something you can learn from it that is the first priority as long as everybody else is off the aircraft and safe. second priority is clearing the airport. and for those just joining us, no reports of any injuries who was on board the vice presidential nominee s plane. for the republican party. it has left the airport with the press corps who was olli also on the plane. the governor is heading to his hotel. there was a fundraising event tonight in new york. that s been canceled but apparently his schedule will resume tomorrow. i want to bring in our political director. how disruptive is something like this? well, what you just said is the most disruptive part which is the fundraiser got canceled. which is part of mike pence s core mission right now because donald trump is no longer doing fundraisers personally. neither is hillary clinton. but anderson, you got to remember what liz landers and her colleagues and the pence staff s life has been like for the last couple of months. they move in this bubble. motorcade to plane, next rally, back again. this is a jolt obviously because it is so unusual for something like this to halftime you saw that donald trump and kellyanne conway the campaign manager immediately called mike pence to check in to make sure everything is okay. and as you said the best news is that there were no injuries. so up ending a vice presidential nominee s scheduled is no easy thing. so whether or not that fundraiser gets rescheduled or not. and we know he s heading to pennsylvania next. depending how long this investigation is with the plane, will this plane be able to move mike pence, his secret service and the press corps tomorrow first thing to pennsylvania? if not they need to deal with that. and at this stage of the race how important is one fundraiser on one night in new york? how much? potentially a couple million dollars? i don t know what the total the haul he was going to take in tonight. obviously the whole reason he was here tonight was primely to attend that fundraiser. now his schedule t schedule of everybody on republican and democrat is now very tightly orchestrated. they are in a tough battle. they are critical battleground states that we re going to look at later on. the map is changing for the electoral, the path to 270 electoral votes so this thing is scheduled by the hour. yes but i would say by the quarter hour really. and because hillary clinton and donald trump have stood down on personally attending fundraisers from here on out and just focus on the campaign travel. tim kaine and mike pence are still out there trying. because remember they didn t take matching funds. they are raising money all the way through november 8th to try to spend, get on the air, make sure they have the ground game in place. they still need to bring that cash? it s 8:30 here on the east coast. i want to bring in liz landers to just bring you up to date on what has happened. the plane that governor pence was on coming to a fundraiser in new york skidded off the runway at laguardia airport. there s been bad weather all day. it is and you see the plane now in that video from moments ago. it s ended up in the grass off the runway. our producer liz lands are was on board the aircraft when it happened. for our viewers again at the half hour mark just explain. you knew coming into new york there was bad weather. you know there had been issues on the ground. it was delayed as it was. where were you going tonight and then wlapd? so we were coming from iowa earlier today. governor pence had a rally in fort dodge. we actually had about an hour long delay sitting on the tarmac in iowa and he threw the football around because there was enough time that we could get off the plane there. and then we reboarded and flew here to new york city. we were flying to laguardia airport. and the governor was supposed to have a fundraiser scheduled around 6:30, 7:00 tonight in downtown manhattan. and when we came in, you could feel turbulence. it was not it was not smooth descent into new york. hit the runway pretty hard and the plane proceeded down the runway for 20 or 30 seconds and the plane was not in control on the runway. it felt like the back of the plane, which is where the thrust is, sort of fish-tailing, like maybe the back wheels not working. i m not sure. but it did nod feel like a smooth straight landing and after 20 or 30 seconds the plane came to a bankrupt halt. and governor pence came back after the plane stopped and made sure everybody was okay and he said there was mud on his window. and upon deplaning the press saw that the plane ran completely off of the runway there. and liz what was the event tonight that the governor was going to? i know it was a fundraiser. any idea how much it was going to mean for the campaign? and kuhn whdo you know what his schedule is tomorrow? reporter: i don t have any details on the fundraiser tonight other than it was going to be another closed door fundraiser. and he s been continuing to fundraise. he had a fundraiser yesterday in utah. a small group of people. and i think this is probably going to be another small event in manhattan today. this evening. and tonight excuse me. tomorrow his schedule according to his advisors who i spoke to on the tarmac there remains the same. he s scheduled to go to of pennsylvania where he has a rally. and then later on to north carolina. for an evening event. and right now his schedule remains the same and the governor s fundraiser was called off tonight and he s going back to the hotel with his family in new york. and we should point out that donald trump is in ohio. the campaign of course obviously continues. there he is right now speaking in ohio. we know that he called the governor pence shortly after the incident and expressed his relief that everybody is fine that there were no injuries. our political director david chalian is also joining us. such an interesting juxtaposition on the left-hand side the governor s plane off in the grass off the runway at laguardia. and yet the politics have to continue. no doubt. we re only 12 days away anderson. especially since everybody is okay. if there were injuries or anything like that maybe this would not have happened this way but thankfully erveryone is oka. but yeah dramatically different evenings for the republican ticket. and you can hear as ms. lander says the aides of mike pence say all systems go for tomorrow. we ll see if that is possible or how they move around. moving around the candidate t press corps, the secret service is a big operation. it is logistically quite challenge. so how they do that in light of the fact their plane looks out of commission at the moment is worth noting as well. and in terms of the investigation, mary schiavo, that can take how long? david soucie? the outside investigation won t take too long at all with this. but then after that the find out what happened. to figure out if it is mechanical of o some kind and then interviews and investigation like this at least on site would only take a day or two. but then after the faa will tell you it is up to two years. but in this type of thing it could take more than a month twor unless there is something very different about it. it is just a reminder. p, you know, we all take flying at this point for granted. it just seems like nothing taking off in the rain, landing in the rain. this is just a reminder everything s got to go right. there is a lot of things that can go wrong and it goes wrong very very quickly. it does especially at an airport like this anderson. 7,000 feet of runway is not a lot of margin for error. with obviously no overrun space. fortunately they have engineered a solution here and that aircraft is not in the water. but we do all take it for grant. and i got to tell you on those dark, stormy nights in the front flying or in the back i m paying very close attention to how things are going. because aviation is very unforgiving of even the smallest of errors in a situation like this. yeah. really just a reminder of the respect we should all keep in mind for all those who work in aviation. the pilots, flight attendants. who makes flying as safe as it is in this country. we re going to take a short break. coverage of this and also a lot of politics talk about in polling and around the states. the race is getting tightener a number of states. more ahead ee everyone. i just wish it had been for a better reason. me, too, but the eulogy that frank s daughter gave was beautiful. i just feel bad knowing they struggled to pay for the funeral, especially without life insurance. i wish they would ve let us help. but, it did make me think, though. about what? 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man: vote yes on proposition 55. woman: prop 55 doesn t raise taxes on anyone. man: not on working californians, not small businesses. no one. woman: instead, prop 55 simply maintains the current tax rate on the wealthiest californians. man: so those who can most afford it continue paying their fair share. woman: .to prevent new education cuts. man: .and keep improving california s schools. woman: vote yes on prop 55 to help our children thrive. teachers, nurses and firefightes support prop 51. prop 51 will upgrade libraries, science labs, and classroom technology and relieve school overcrowding creating more opportunity . . . and better learning for students help students succeed vote yes on 51. welcome back. if you are just joining us the breaking news, the plane carrying republican vice presidential p candidate mike pence has skidded off the runway on landing at new york s laguardia airport. happened in rainy windy weather. apparently skidded into a concrete suppressionable bed at the end of the runway. that is the reason no one is hurt. the plane is you have to runway in the crasgrass. the governor has moved on to his hotel in new york. donald trump is in ohio are holding an vent tonight. mean while the polls are tightening. we re going bring both sides. florida and nevada are back in play. signs as well that truly deeply red states are acting almost blue. david chalian is here with the latest on all of it. he joins us now. let s talk the road to 270. that is the most important thing. it is. as you noted we made a couple of changes in our battleground map. you see that nevada is back in battleground status and florida back in battleground status. just last week we moved them leaning clinton. what we look at is advertising budgets of the candidate. the most precious resource the campaign can commit is the time. so we look at travel schedules and of course the most recent polls. before hillary clinton even wrapped up her two day florida swing yesterday her campaign announced she ll be back saturday. and that won t be the last time. nevada they are tied. so those states have snapped back to their battleground status. and i just want to remind you, that is good news for donald trump. hey, they are no longer leaning clinton. but i want to remind everyone how tough this map is. look where we are. 281 to 179. she s already over the threshold with states leaning in her direction solidly. if you were to give him every remaining battleground state he still doesn t get to 270. he only gets to 264. what would he have to do? a few new polls out today. starting in north carolina, where hillary clinton was today. she s showing a four point edge. 47-43%. this is where she was with michelle obama. this is the state they want to recreate the obama commission in. she looks to have an edge. here is one of the states that might be acting downright blue. we ve not seen georgia go democratic since bill clinton s race. he wasn t even able to hold it in his reelect. and can clinton campaign has not yet committed surrogate travel. hillary clinton is not going there yet. we don t a see a ton of spending going on in georgia. the clinton campaign is not treating that like a really winnable race for them. and then iowa, which we also have leaning towards donald trump, a dead heat. i was just looking at early voting numbers there and hillary clinton does have an edge, democrats have an edge in terms of return ballots but it is not as big of app edge as barack obama at this point years ago. good news for the clinton campaign but also important good news for the trump campaign, particularly in florida and nova. without a doubt. let s bring in the rest of the panel. van jones is with us. david chalian. trump supporters kayleigh mcenany and andre bower. so kayleigh, you see that s got to be good news for you, nevada and florida in particular. absolutely. what it shows me is that there is some momentum coming in trump s direction. and i think that is because, you know, we woke up monday to news about obamacare premiums hiking. we wake up today to news of wikileaks. more clinton krumgs or what appears to be clinton corruption with the foundation. finally some of these things that andre and i have been talking about are kind of breaking through the news cycle because trump s not saying anything that is stepping on his message. he s giving it breathing room to get out there. this momentum is important and if donald trump can stay on message and emphasize things coming out i think he can move that momentum to the point of winning the election. carlos, do you believe nevada and florida are tightening because of the drip drip of wikileaks and other things like she s talking about? i think she s right that there s been a shift in conversation what. she s pointing to is the early voting and what kayleigh and andre would tell you is there are a little worried about the 7 or 8 million votes cast so far. because in many states hibbert is doing better than barack obama in 2012 did. and in north carolina and arizona, places you normally would have seen meaningful republican lead there is iegt a slight democratic lead or narrow are republican gap. andre are you worried? lot of volatility there but i read today that in fact the republicans have turned out more people to vote early than the democrats hat. a substantial margin in florida. so that is good news if you are pulling for trump but again all along i talked about brexit and how people showed up and took their country back. and i think you are going to see the same folks that don t normally get out and vote. they are not showing it on polls. i got in a congress race this same way. popping everybody. i won 13 ways but in the runoff i got beat because we only polled people that 140ed up the first time and the whole new group of folks came out in the runoff. that is what s going to happen. do where he have data on polling who s actually coming out. the early voting. their votes aren t counted until election day but we can tell in some states where it is by party breakdown that democrats do van edge in early and absentee vote. what s most important is we look at state by state and see are they overapproximate mperformin or under performing what obama and romney did in 2012. it is important to remember as we talk about states tightening more. momentum that kayleigh is talking about. it is stale very daunting map for donald trump. we can t forget the past to 270, as i showed he has to sweep every battleground state and then so a little bit to in order to get to 270. van are you worried? i m sorry, what did you say? [ laughter ] no i m not particularly worried though i will say this. if it is not zero percent chance, it is a chance. and i think andre is right. there is i was just in pennsylvania. i was in indiana. i was talking to a lot of red state voters. a lot of trump voters. and there are people who feel like this is do or die for their country. and when you have that level of passion. whether we agree with it or not. people will do extraordinary things. and so it is not 0% chance, which means there is a chance. so i think democrats should be less happy. less complacent and i m struggling to get there. do you really believe these polls? because andre is bringing up brexit. those polls showed they weren t going to vote break away. i think that is a false reality there with the brexit. you think u.s. polls are better than the british polls? well it is just different. uk and u.s. are two different electorally it is two different. uk is majority white. we are much more diverse country and i mean there is just so many things so you have confidence in the polls showing clinton. well here and what i want to say. florida and the two states that we re talk about. florida, public polling unfortunately misses the demographics where african american numbers skyrocketed and latino and caribbean as well. the early voting in florida latinos are voting at high record numbers and what s going to decide this race is going to be the i-4 corridor. early voting i should say. i-4 corridor and puerto ricaric. donald trump . i think that is the kind of the breakdown of florida. nevada on the other side is at voter registration for democrats we are at 90,000 which is at par with 2012. and also another advantage is the latino vote a well. we got to take a break. i want to thank everybody on the panel. michelle obama s groundbreaking role. one of hillary clinton s most potent surrogates no doubt about it. we ll show you what happened on the road today. z i m here in bristol, virginia. and now.i m in bristol, tennessee. on this side of the road is virginia. and on this side it s tennessee. no matter which state in the country you live in, you could save hundreds on car insurance by switching to geico. look, i m in virginia. i m in tennessee. virginia. tennessee. and now i m in virginessee. see how much you could save on car insurance. or am i in tennaginia? hmmm. what a night, what a day. no matter your politics, safe to say mshl msichelle obama knows make a speech. no one is a better advocate than the current first lady. until today they have not shared the stage together. that changed this afternoon in north carolina and so did american political history. michelle obama is making the case for clinton clinton but tonight she s making it with her. that s right, hillary doesn t play. she has more experience and exposure, more than ba rack, more than bill, so she is ready to be commander in chief in day one and yes she happens to be a woman. for the first time a first laid ye and a former one on stage together, rallying democrats in north carolina. seriously is there anyone more inspiring than michelle obama? . reporter: a first lady tag team going hard after trmp trmp. we want a president who values and honors women who teaches our daughters and sons that full are equal human beings worthy, deserving of love and respect. we want a president who takes this job seriously and has the temperaments and maturity to do it well. the clinton campaign calls her their not so secret clinton. no one knows more about what s at stake in this election than our first lady. reporter: 16 years ago in the closing month of mrs. clinton s time as first lady she was running for senate in new york. mrs. obama has no interest being on the ballot or ever but she is content on protecting the obama legacy. if hillary doesn t win that election, that will be on us. it will be because we did not stand with her. do not let yourself get tired for frustrated or discouraged by the negativity of this election. as you are out there working your hearts out for my girl reporter: clinton is hoping the popularity of both obamas rubs off. the president s approval rating and 54% believe things in the country are going well. the clinton campaign s new balancing act projecting confidence and warding off complacency, a cnn poll of polls an average of the five latest national surveys shows clinton with a six-point edge over trump. tonight the campaign bracing for hacked emails. after the new york times first reported clinton s private email server in march 2015, john podesta sounded the alarm within hours. did you have any of the depth of this story? he replied, nope, we brought up the existence of emails in research this summer but were told everything was taken care of. since then clinton and her campaign have tried to downplay it, yet confidants privately knew it was a problem as a former aide made clear last year, do we know who told hillary she could use a private email,s that has person been drawn and quartered? jeff zelaney joins us now. they have rogd the inside of the campaign showing dysfunction and disgust and disagreement. the campaign never verified the authenticity but they are not arguing they are their words. one adviser told me it s taken the joy away from the end of the campaign here and also thankful it s coming now and they were not released earlier this summer when it could have more of an impact. but democrats wonder if hillary clinton learned any lessons from any of this at all going back to the private email server. that is the lingering question going on with 12 days remaining in this state. thanks very much. up next breaking news, governor mike pence s plane skidding off the runway at laguardia react. we ll get his reaction when 360 continues. when you re close to the people you love, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? 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disparaging intelligence community. he clowned democrats lead by head clown chuck schumer. he called people enemies. happy new years to all including enemies who have fought me so bad they don t know what to do. former deputy campaign manager, stephanie cutter. clad to have you back. i have to ask about the behavior of the new president. he calling me who disagree his enemy, enemies. he is come piling a list. intel community, reporters. he is aking as if he running a campaign, there s a big different between being a candidate and being the president-elect and ultimately the president of the united states. we heard intelligence community of foreign entities voicing concern of what they re hearing from the president-elect. we rely on other communities to work with our intelligence communities to protect us. same thing with check schumer who does he thinks he going to work with. he s going to need chuck schumer. yes. he is not a clown nor should he be called a clown. you haveeat with him man or woman. you have to negotiate everything. that s the next morning. first office we have to get used to it because this new landscape we re going to be in. donald trump has way of identifying pegging. if he calls kim jong-un a clown and the guy starts looking for a button to push. i think that s something that has to be dealt with. he is a clown. sometimes he maybe right. i think we need to get this new hat on our head. who is going to give us the roy rogers button. there s nothing to change his behavior. this is political weapon for him and political tool and he uses it expertly. there s a reason why he calls chuck schumer a clown. give me a reason. because chuck it doesn t work with chuck, because he is not a clown. he is down running against donald trump for elected office. he is running the united states senate and can complete donald trump s there s one person you should not underestimate is schumer. they are both were york th are aboboth from the sam playground. during the campaign, donald trump labeled his little opponents and as enemies. who know who says don t use twitter, you re enemies. look at the press, among the most dishonest people in the world. even my enemies in the media agree with me and lots of changes are being made. i started out liking everyone now they re enemies, we ll see what happened. i don t like to use same thing twice because i consider them enemies. we review this as war, it s war. here s the problem. i m not going to get used to it. the thing is i do believe that he convincing with 34% of the count that voted for him. so when the moon is made of blue cheese, are they going to believe him. if he say the movie start at 8:30 and it starts at 7:00, they are going to be mad at him. also a limit to this. in donald trump in his universe given this that a new phrase for you. now we re in this new place, it s 1600 pennsylvania avenue. you take the oath, you re not you have a foot on the ayground and that s part of the game, tactics, strategy, that s how you execute. you re finding deef yentcy downward. who is going to change him? you personally, not you personally, folks in politics, since the beginning of the campaign, now we re two weeks from the inauguration, what in the last two months will change anything that s what happened in 18 months. i m going to keep squatting the flies. i have work for two different presidents, and there s a big difference between running for president and being president. and when you are president, regardless of the 34% of people he is convining you are responsible for a hundred% of the people they blame you. i stand with you. one other point, i think what s important that we never get used to a president of the united states calling people clowns or intelligence community is lying or one of the resolution is not to interrupt women, have you to wait. remember the fight he got in dan rathers, are you running for something. at some point the fourth wall you stop being the president, you get down to the playground. doesn t he have to he has to deal with solve having in the middle east, he has to make deals with friends in the world, doesn t he have to be reliable at some point? i agree with you. how is he going to make a deal. the hope is that office shakes the man into presidency. we have been hopping for this great change in donald trump for 18 months to start acting presidential. i m saying this is our new reality. i think life is going to be different for him. it will be. join the white house focusing on public outrage that s republican outrage. am rose sa responded that senator graham did not sproet for trump clear so that when we get into the white house, we know where they stand. let me tell you, mr. trump has a long memory and he keeping a list. every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to president trump. everyone who doubted donald trump, whoever challenged him, it is ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe. oh, my god. this is lie emperor describes, we have to bow down. what do you think is she credible? no. i never blame a staffer because i been there. he wants her to talk like that. he wants to have that heard. he backed off that as well. it didn t go down inside the tent. if she s running engagement for the white house when you start a conversation the. the word clown has to be taken back. you can make fun of the guy for having too many bottle of water on television, but you re finish with trump watch. tonight. this is hardball. place for politics. , every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be with customer contracts, agreements to lease a space or protecting your work. legalzoom s network of attorneys can help you, every step of the way. so you can focus on what you do and we ll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. americans skepticism. welcome toll hardball. mike pence echoing donald trump expressed about the conclusions of the intelligence community on russia. testimony before national director james clapper skepticism as something worse. i think there s a difference between skepticism and disparagement. i have received about the disparagement of the u.s. intelligence community or what has been interrupted as disparagement of the intelligence community. the president dig in his heels russia was responsible for the cyber attacks of the 2016 election. this is what we have seen before who feel birther conspiracy for years promising but never delivering evidence to back it up. i have people that have studying it they cannot believe what they are finding. you have people in hawaii. absolutely. they cannot believe what they are finding. confessed the facts. barack obama was born in the united stes period. now we all want to get back to making america strong and great again. now, once again mr. trump promise to deliver information to back up defense of russia. sheer what he said on saturday. hack hard thing to i know things people doesn t know. what do you know that other people don t know. you ll find out tuesday or he said to receive a full review on russia s hacking. i m joined by senator there s something bizarre about this president-elect. he says for years barack obama was illegal immigrant, undocumented worker from somewhere else in the world then he says won day on friday when opening hotel inwashington, yes, he was born here. with their hacking. yet, i sense tomorrow le may not be able to say that once he hears from the intelligence folks. what s going on here? it was concluive as to the involvement of the russians in the election, general clapper, admiral rogers, career professionals concluded that those are the facts and those are the facts we have to operate from not anything else. is there anybody in the world you have to study in armed service is there anybody in the intelligence world, cia, dia disbelieve that the russians did this. is there anybody saying, no this isn t that way. no i have not hrd anything to say anything different than the conclusion they presented today. on bipartisan basis, everyone has concluded based on the facts that the russian involved was there and come prehennive social media, fake news media, a host of things. this is something that should be no longer debated. how do we respond and do it effectively. he intends to trump spokesperson denies that. spokesperson telling nbc there something behind the move. fired outgoing director james clapper. we saw testifying. you think trump has it in for clapper. general clapper is retiring within days. this is about the institutional or intelligence community, how it functions, how it ren ders advise to decision makers. it s irrelevant. is there admit he helped him within is there any motive why he can deny the clearly established facts? i do not have an idea where he would not accept the facts. they have been accepted by everyone else on bipartisan basis. i think it s something that will cloud his presidency unless he is first one to call for aspects of this, by the way this is going on today in other countries that have having democratic collections, this is not something to personalize or trivialize, it s something serious. do you think russians elections? there was russia involvement, the question is what are the consequences that s something that s hat not been determined. when the report is released it may shed light on that. thank you, senator. meanwhile president-elect donald trump trying to julian assange. wrong i state what he states. it is for the people to make up their minds to the truth. you decide. in today s hearing he did not hesitate to say assange would not be trusted. mr. assange has popped up do you think there s credible we should attach to this individual given his record of not in my view. joined now senator ran paul. you re smiling. this most bizarre things in the world, why does trump keep denying the obvious to the facts. he looks the fact in the face says i don t believe it. russia doesn t have anything to do with me winning. russias did not change any votes. 70% of the people voted for donald trump. i would say this, nobody naive enough to say the russian do not hack into anything they bont don t to. everybody is hacking into everybody. we should protect ourselves. understand how people get information, how they steal it, get into our e-mails and we must protect ourselves. we can beat a dead horse and try to blame had has to do with different policy incht. the horse ain t dead yet because donald trump won t agree that the russians have helped. under oath lied to us. do i have skepticism toward people like julian assange, sure. i take it all with a grain of salt. james clapper slide under oath. that is without question. we can go back to the iraq war. people were using and distorting sbelg to get us involved in a war. dick cheney came on the air said there was weapons, he made is up. it was politician and the state defense department we know special office over there, the people like scoot around the vice president, they sold us the iran war it wasn t the experts. i think we have had way too much public conversation from people in the half the country thought jam comey should have indicted clinton and others thought he went too far in talking about it. neither republicans or democrats thought he did dishones tohe public they were collecting all of our phone data. so there s, has been a severe lessoning of the intelligence community. let ask you about you. you re hard to figure, i m reading the fountain head, let ask you about vote to get rid of obamacare. i didn t vote against it, i voted against a budget that never balances and ads $9 trillion to the debt. it is a budget. the title is al budget. there s numbers in it and they mean something. my point is as a conservative i stand tor balancing the budget and i can t in one hand explain about president obama and then say it s okay for republicans to do the same thing. and i think we are hypocritical but not putting forward a budget that balances. i would replace it at the same time i think it s a mistake without having something to replace it at the same time. coming up a story about a mental young man beating by young teens. this is hardball, s place for politics. file your taxes for free with credit karma tax. debbie reynolds. two will be buried tomorrow back to hardball. chicago police have charged four people with hate crimes in alleged kidnapping and beating of a plan who mentally challenged. the actions in the video are reprehensible. that along with racism have no place in the city of chicago or an where else for that matters against anyone regardless of race, gender, state of mental health or any other identifying factor. it was never a question of whether or not this incident qualified to be investigated as a hate crime. it was live streamled on facebook. the video is difficult to watch. the 18-year-old victim bound, gagged, and slashed, and shouted anti-trump. white house press secretary called video disturbing. they do demonstrate aevel of deprafty that is an outrage to a lot of americans. i have not spoken to the president about it but i m confident he would be angered by the what s on the video. raum eman el weighed in. given there s now being charged i m not going to say more about it. ron mott out in chicago, what do we know two days later. there s some racial component to the stories. one young white man is the victim. mental capacity that s why they filed hate charge because the victim knows one of the defendant, they are friends. they went to school together. this started on saturday fight, the two were meeting up, the victim told his parents he was going to have a overnight with the friend. he slept in the van. his family was expecting him home on sunday, they got in touch with police and filed a missing person s report. we dorn don t know at what point he became kidnapped. oldest female 24 years old, all 18 year old. it s hard to watch this video. is terrible story, nbc ron mott out in chicago. democrats blocking donald trump hardball, your place for politics. with asthma not well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. breo won t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden breathing problems. breo is specifically designed to open up airways to improve breathing for a full 24 hours. breo contains a type of medicine that increases the risk of death from asthma problems and may increase the risk of hospitalization in children and adolescents. breo is not for people whose asthma is well controlled on a long-term asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop breo and prescribe a different asthma control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor 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moment? cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. fbi director james comey says he stands by his controversial decisions in 2016, including coming forward at that time to congress with that cryptic message about hillary clinton s e-mails just before the election. in a new year s message to fbi employees, comey says he s bothered by the criticism. anyway, comey has faced kbl blistering attacks from democrats including bill clinton who blames the fbi director for costing his wife the election. we ll be right back. 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. trust number one doctor recommended dulcolax constipated? use dulcolax tablets for gentle overnight relief suppositories for relief in minutes and stool softeners for comfortable relief of hard stools. dulcolax, designed for dependable relief we re back with the habl round table, tell me something i don t know. rex tillerson is on a charm offensive on capitol hill this week meeting with members of the senate foreign relations committee and others. he s saying a lot of the right things to democrats ears in his meeting with senate democrats, but i m hearing some considerable frustration that the questions stop at the point of, yes, but does your boss agree with you? will donald trump do the things that you is he going to be the foreign minister. and there s now sort of a thought they could potentially make tillerson an example, say here s a guy who understands not only how to produce a financial disclosure form and some tax information but how to say the right things on russia. 180,000 $180 million golden parachute. what do the stockholders say about that stuff? 180 million. he gave up $7 million. don t you feel bad for him? well, tomorrow night president barack obama and michelle obama are having a big party at the white house, their last one. reportedly oprah is going to be there, jay-z, beyonce. who s the guest of honor? them. i think president obama is the guest of honor at his own party tomorrow night. my colleague jill bernstein has a great story out right now about donald trump s twitter account and it s not very secure and there s a lot of concern that some hacker could get into it and wreak havoc on the world. you mean pretend to be him? for instance, look at his tweet today about toyota building the plant in mexico, that came out and immediately toyota s stock dropped and if someone wanted to they could go in and take control of his account and the tweet something about the economy or a particular company and play the stock market to make money or tank someone s company. they could pick a fight with north korea. there are all these concerns and no one really knows what they ll do about it because the white house people don t know what to do. look me in the eye, do you want me to worry about this? i wouldn t worry about this if i were you. it is fascinating. when we return, trump watch. you re watching hardball, the place for politics. when you ve been making delicious natural cheese for over 100 years like kraft has, you learn a lot about people s tastes. honey, what do you want for dinner tonight? oh, whatever you re making. cheesy chipotle pork quesadillas? mmmm. ravioli lasagna bake? yeah, i don t know. grilled white chicken. grab something rich, sharp andc. triple cheddar stuffed sliders. sold! we aim to cheese! kraft natural cheese: we make cheese for how you love cheese. i m phil mickelson, pro golfer. my psoriatic arthritis caused joint pain. just like my moderate to severe rheumatoid 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president s friends and enemies are. let s start with the enemies, it s a longer list. he doesn t like the media, we re his enemies. he doesn t like the intelligence community. you know, the cia, people like that. notice the pattern? the new man doesn t like anyone, anything that reports facts. i m not talking about columnists and commentators. the people on trump s list are those who report the news you know, reporters, correspondents, the wires, associated press, reuters, the people who bring us the facts like when the movie starts, what day of the week something is scheduled for, facts like that like tokyo is the capital of japan. this is the stuff trump tends to attack, facts. same with the intel boys. he doesn t like them because they tell us things like it s the russians who helped him win the election by throwing out those e-mails from the democratic national committee. now we ve got someone coming to town, not st. nick, keeping a list and checking it twice, wants to find out who s naughty or nice.
we ll break it down and president obama s spirited farewell speech included a forceful defense of his record, an emotional thank you to the first family. it falls to each of those to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy, to embrace the joyous task that we ve been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. i will be right there with you as a citizen all my remaining days. tonight, as i m sure you heard, there s a stunning report that s surfaced regarding what donald trump was told last week in his briefing of russia s roll in the u.s. election. the materials prepared for trump s briefing last friday included information that made damaging allegations about trump s deelgts with the russians. the officials say that the material initially circulated among opponents of donald trump and was passed to u.s. intelligence agency. the information has not been verified and the sources would not comment on the nature of the allegations. neither of the officials said that the fbi was actively investigating the information. but according to reports by cnn and the washington post, the material summarized allegations that the russians have compromising material on trump s personal life and financial dealings. donald trump tweeted this all-capped response tonight, fake news-a total witch hunt. tomorrow donald trump is supposed to be holding his first press conference since july. in an interview with lester holt, president obama had this to say. mr. president before we sat down there was a word from source that is the intel report on russian hacking had this work will continue after i leave. congress in possession of both the classified and unclassified reports that the president-elect and his administration in possession of the classified and unclassified reports will take it seriously and now get to work reinforcing those mechanisms that we can use to protect our democracy. and we will see more of lester s exclusive interview with president obama throughout the week on msnbc and nbc news. joining us, david corn and malcolm. i want to start with you malcolm. we got a little bit of back and forth about it with senator ron white and got a chance to question james comey about a possible investigation by the fbi. take a listen. there is, however, extensive press reporting on relationships between the russians and the individuals associated with both the trump campaign and the incoming administration. my question for you, director comey is has the fbi investigated these reported relationships and, if so, what are the agency s findings? thank you, senator. i wouldle never comment on investigations whether we have one or not in an open forum like this. so i can t answer one way or another. will you provide an unclassified response to the question i asked and release it to the american people prior to january 20? sir, i ll answer any question that i ask but the answer will likely be the same as i just gave you, i can t talk about it. one said he found that ironic. would you find it surprising malcolm as an intelligence professional if the fbi were not investigating this? yes. i find it very surprising. there s the regular field offices of the fbi and the main part. but there is a counterintelligence center. these are the spy hunters. these are the people who actually have to run down when american citizens are having liaisons with foreign nations and the activities of the foreign intelligence service ises. if they were operating optimally, if there were real risks, if some of these reports out there even though they may be unsubstantiated and in the political realm a good director would be trying to make sure this is not true. the worst thing that could happen to this nation is if someone using the political process is an actual agent of a foreign intelligence agencyaged infiltrates their way into government. or if they had enough on him, they could sort of make the president of the united states do what they want him to do. a letter to comey was released and up ended the election. he said that he believed in a the fbi had explosive info on the trump team s ties to russia. he said eats become clear that you possess scloif information between trump and the russian government. he wanted that information made public. do you have any reason to believe as a journalistic matter is that that explosive information is this explosive information? not necessarily. there are several angles into what harry reid or others might have been referring to. we talk about trump and russia. these memos were put together by the operatives of another nation, which i wrote about before the election, show that or allege that moscow has an ongoing project to cultivate a co on, donald trump for years writing back and that there had been communication between the trump campaign and russians and that russia had developed compromising information of a personal nature about donald trump. the allegations of the reports that came out during the campaign of ties between trump s inner circle, carter page, who may or may not have been close to the trump campaign but also the campaign manager and connections they had to russian business interests or russian individuals who were close to putin. there are indications that the fbi looked at both those people and maybe others. we just don t know. we know a lot about the fbi investigation of the e-mail server. we know very little about the investigation of the memos and those other associations. yeah. malcolm and i m glad david brought up that before the election, mother jones was reporting on that, sorts of waving a red flag about the ties and whether or not intelligence officials were aware of it. you, sir, were on with me on my weekend program dating back to maybe august and you were saying with a high degree of confidence that there was a likelihood that there was something compromising going on or that the russians had some reason that donald trump was being so slolies tus o them. is this the kind of thing you were warning about going back to the republican convention? yeah. actually, the date was july 27 that we first talked about the potential compromise by russian intelligence due to his past. that being said, i think that some of the things that were in david corn s reporting have been corroborated by u.s. intelligence and that is what showed up in the two-page pdb. it s a neat way for the intelligence community to actually show information they have confidence in without actually having to show their cards of the sources and the methods of highly classified sources. sure. for the exact same information. so first, really quickly, could this be being leaked as retaliation for donald trump being so disdainful of the intelligence community? o i m not sure the intelligence community is going to make that kind of leak. this is most probably coming from the political world. democrats, republicans, congressional staffers, people within various levels of the administration could have done this. this could have come from a lot of different sources. i don t think you ll see cia handing off documents. they have a lot of allies handling this for them. an important thing to note is that these memos were sent in from a counterintelligence professional who had a track record helping with u.s. government agencies and whether they were fully investigated or not, at the end of the day when the intelligence community was preparing these memos or assessments for druch and barack obama, they thought it was important enough to include this material and i would hope that they don t give trash to the president or the president-elect, but i do think that it s incumbent i know james comey, as he said today in the hearing i covered, doesn t want to say if an investigation has happened yet or not it s getting pretty close to the line. he has to tell the public whether this stuff was looked at or not. i think the american public has a righto know. he s very selective with the information he gives out. malcolm, david, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. thank you. thank you. the promise ed 11:00 a.m. ne conference went way, way up. i m about to start the nature s bounty hair, skin and nails challenge to help with lustrous hair, vibrant skin and healthy nails. so in 30 days, my future self will thank me. thank you. wait, i become a model?!? 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say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet that s over 6 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. say hello to internet speeds up to 250 mbps. and add phone and tv for only $34.90 more a month. call today. comcast business. built for business. . in less than 12 hours donald trump is expected to appear at trump tower. he has been promising to explain how he ll deal with potential conflicts of interest related to his real estate holdings. the stakes for this morning s press conference, if it happens, are now higher than ever after new reporting on russia s interference in the presidential election. here s a reminder of what happened the last time donald trump answered questions about russia at a press conference. i will tell you this. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. and joining us now is former u.s. ambassador to russia michael mcfall and rick wilson, a republican strategist and contributor to the daily beast. thank you for staying up late and being here. sure. ambassador mcfall, when you heard this news today, we want we don t know that any of the information is accurate, obviously. we can t confirm any of it. does at least the idea that donald trump was in russia during the contrary s time period ring true to you? yes, it does. when i was ambassador he came to moscow to host the miss universe pageant. i think i got the name right. he was there. he traveled to russia frequently, so the idea that he would be exposed to gathering of intelligence on him, of course, is a plausible hypothesis. i also want to underscore, there s a lot we don t know here. i ve got a thousand questions. yes. we need to keep asking these questions. it s just a matter of the way the fsb, the russians operate. if you re staying in the ritz-carlton hotel, do the russians regularly bug those hotels? there s things i can t talk about. ok. let me tell you when i stayed at that hotel in 2009 with the president of the united states we went to extraordinary efforts to keep our conversations confidential. yeah. all kinds of things that we did to make sure that we could have private ways to communicate. yeah. this is a country that is good at gathering intelligence. sure. this is a country that does that well and one needs to take those kinds of precautions, therefore, whenle traveling to countries like russia. we should make the point, rick, that at the time, 2013, 2012, donald trump wasn t president of the united states, president-elect or even running for president. if you travel as an individual, i guess you take more chances than somebody who is a politician. however, we do now have this as something we have to deal with. it came up today when senator chuck grassley and his committee were interviewg members of the incoming president s team and members of the current government. let s listen to chuck grassley asking about these new reports. sure. tonight that russians may have actually gotten some personal or financial information about the president-elect that actually compromise the president-elect. one, have you ever been briefed about t the information about this? i have not. do you have any concerns about that? well, of course. if what you described is accurate, i don t question that it is accurate, but if it is accurate, yes. i think the best thing we can do is in the area of sanctions. what do you make of this whole thing, rick? these accusations and rumors have been swirling around the intelligence and diplomatic community for well over a year now. they were certainly certain to reach a fever pitch over the summer in june and july as david corn s reporting and others reporting has indicated. the fact of the matter is donald trump has deliberately of skated his relationships with russia, not only about his travel there and his business dealings there but about whether or not many of his companies such as bay rock were involved in what essentially looks to be a set of business partnerships and entanglements with russian ol garks and crime families. there s been a lot of reporting about that. i think what you re seeing is the natural blossoming of this. for two reasons, one, the intelligence community is increasingly upset and angry that trump has insulted them repeatedly, tried to put off their investigations repeatedly. i think donald trump has also v and will be more transpampt about it but he won t. there will be many variations on the stories that are floating around. the fact of the matter is his supporters are making a big bet tonight that the cia and british intelligence and others are lying or making something up just to hurt drurp politically that had been circulating for quite some time way before the election reached its fever pitch in november. they re saying everyone is simply wrong. what if they re right? as a former diplomat what could be the risk to the united states if you have a president that a foreign intelligence services have personal information on? all intelligence agencies gather intelligence on major political figures, including billionaires in the year 2013. so that they were trying to gather intelligence about donald trump, i have no doubt. what i don t know, of course, is what they have and of course i have no idea if what they have could be used in some kind of blackmail way. i don t want to speculate. we need to know more answers and i fear what i really fear is come next friday, we re going to forget about this. we re going to say it s time to move on. my belief is that we need a bipartisan investigation of russian interference in the most sovereign act that we do as american citizens, vote for our president. and if we don t have that, we re going to be speculating like we were right now. do you have any yfdconfidence that the republican party is going to do that? i have especially folks in the senate on the intelligence committee who have been kurmgs of this kind of information for a long time and have a more granular understanding than donald trump of the importance of the intelligence community and the validity of their reporting and i think there s a rising sense of anxiety among a lot of members of the senate particularly. i think this little honeymoon trump will have after the inauguration is going to rapi y collide with some of those concerns. there are some stories coming out and the intelligence community is starting to look at is not going to go away. you can t trust leaked information that could be wronged, that s what the clinton campaign was saying about the wikileaks. so thank you both for joining us. thanks, joy. thank you. will donald trump start his presidency in crisis? some lawmakers are calling for a new information. that s coming up. first, president obama s farewell address at the end of his historic presidency. just like the people who own them, every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be help starting your business, vendor contracts or employment agreements. legalzoom s network of attorneys can help you every step of the way so you can focus on what you do. we ll handle the legal stuff that comes up along the way. legalzoom. legal help is here. you know us for shopping, and now we re there for every turn. cars.com racial america. in such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic. race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society. if every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hard-working white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades are going to be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy will withdraw further into the their private enclaves. president obama ended his speech with this call to action. our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted. if you re tired of a rging with strangers on the internet, try talking with one of them in real life. if something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing. if you re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some suggests and run for office yourself. presuming a reservoir of goodness in other people, that can be a risk and there will be times when the process will disappoint you. but for those of us to have been fortunate enough to see this work and see it up close, let me tell you, it can energize and inspire. more often than not, your faith in america and in americans will be confirmed. mine sure has been. and joining us now is jean st. pierre around e.d. deon. he and i happen to have a new book out. we have a new book out today. i ve got to go to kareem first. you were there at the speech and were there and worked for the president in the campaign. you are an obama world alum. yes. how was it to be there, how much crying was there? it was pretty emotional. even the president himself, as we saw, took out his hand kerr whichever and had to wipe the tear coming down his cheek when he had that tender moment with michelle, talking about michelle and her importance in his life, which was one of the things about the obamas and the family, which is how real they are and how they really give you a hope and something to really aspire to, which we re going to really miss once they re gone, we ll be starving for it. just to answer your question and by the way, congrats on the book to both of you. the room was emotional. you could tell people were excited and wanted to be there for him. i belief i was hearing new stories this morning that people got online at 4:00 a.m. people who were tukted. about 40,000 tickets were landed out. it was respectful but emotional. they were ready to see him. they were excited that the obama family was there. people were very pleased to see the bidens, but it was bittersweet. we needed to hear from him. we needed to hear that farewell. the reality is he s going to be gone on january 20th. absolutely. we were texting during the speech and it really was a quintessentially obama speech but i m dying to let the whole country hear your impressions of this speech. yeah. there were two sort of core things about the speech. the one is what you said and what we were talking about which was there were so many core obama themes in here that we look forward, not back, that as a country, we re a country of constant change. we re not perfect but we always perfect ourselves. my favorite part about obama, he likes the word perfect as a verb, not a noun. at several points in the speech, he urged people to get involved to change the country. i thought there was also another fascinating part of the speech which was a manifesto for democracy. he laid out the markers for how he will probably get involved later on. there are some real warnings here, without mentioning trump by name about donald trump in this defense of democracy. he said that democracy can buckle when we give in to fear. there was an almost eerie line when he talked about the constitution as a great gift. he said america is no fragile thing. we ran across that phrase a lot when we put together our book but then this line. our gains to the long journey to freedom are not insured. i think he was telling his supporters and a lot of people in the country that village len vigilance is going to be required. he s going to be out there to defend these values. my notes i took during the speech, i m going to come to you, he laid out what he said were the three internal threats to democracy. and then he talked about things like climate change that can drive more inequality and more wanton poverty. that is exactly the assessment that the intelligence community has made about the entire western world and the threats to democracy. it was interesting as a speech to the world. i want to play you because one of the underpinnings is the islamaphobia. this was the president talking about fear and islam. democracy can buckle when it gives in to here. that s why i reject discrimination against muslim americans who are just as patriot rirk as we are. so let s be vigilant but not afraid. i also will try to isil will try to kill innocent people. they cannot beat america. i m going to start with you. what struck you that was a huge applause line when he said we have to defend muslims around the world. that s a really great question. there was a part of the speech, which i think will go to your question here which where he talks about america exceptionalism. he loves to define that. because republicans had taken that definition for a very long timeaged he wanted to redefine what that means. he really always puts the onus on us, right. he used the bully pulpit to really rally the troops, and he at the end he basically said america s in good hands because of you. right? and i think that was a really important he laid down the markers. he laid down what there is to fight for and he put that out there. when you and he tied that in with all of his accomplishments as well, kind of weaved that through the speech. i thought that was very interesting. i m curious. contrast that with the big speech he gave in cairo about the global relationship with islam. what did you make of it? this in a way was more tempered and sober speech. the cairo speech was very serious, but that was a time where there was real hope for change. we weren t looking at isis then and he was very clear this time about the dangers. in no way has he backed off this idea of pluralism and empathy and the need for people to empathize across the lines of race and religion. i was really struck by his shoutout to the middle aged white guy who obama said who has seen his world up ended by economic, cultural, and technological change. he s saying that empathy can t be divided. you can t be empathetic to some people and not to others. that s a critique of trump, but it s also a reminder to everybody else about how you have to behave if you want to up hold that s idea lsz. absolutely. he also said let s not pretend that the civil rights movement and jim crow ended in the 60s. certainly. and nothing could be nor true. thank you both from joining us. coming up next, a new call for congress to immediately investigate donald trump and the trump team s dweelgs russia. it s beautiful. was it a hard place to get to? (laughs) it wasn t too bad. with the chase mobile app, jimmy chin can master depositing his hard earned checks in a snap. easy to use chase technology for whatever you re trying to master. the information has not been verified by u.s. intelligence. tuesday night, a democratic congressman tweeted this. fts intel report is true, it would be the most treacherous and criminal act in u.s. history. jonathan, i m starting with you. it s all over twitter and social media. wur doing the cable news of it. but the more crass version is everywhere, now. yeah. how do you inaugurate a president who is now at least this sort of compromised in terms of his dignity going into his inauguration day. he s going to say tomorrow in his press conference it s a big witch hunt. you think he ll do the press conference? yes, i think it would be very damaging for him not to. what s so strange about this story, it s either one of the biggest stories in american political history that an incoming president of the united states has been compromised by russian agents or it s the hitler diaries, a total fake as trump and there s nothing in between. it if the story s true and we ll find out eventually. because as the president indicated tonight, reality has a way of catching up. what you re going to see now is a huge amount of investigative reporting on this. you are going to see congressional hearings. john mccain is insisting on it, rightly, i think. we could have a situation that s not that different from 1972 and 1973. so all these things happened with watergate in the 1972 campaign. it didn t start to come out until 1973 and then they had the big watergate hearings in the summer of 73 and by 74 the president had to resign. i m not saying that s going to happen with trump. sure. we have all our attention consumed in the next six months with what plays out with this story. this is not something that s being said about a politician where there is no information that even could theoretically corroborate that he could be a guy. you ve got tapes, vulgarity which is his stock in trade, but you have this fixation with being on russia s side. this past saturday, after he d had his intelligence briefing trump tweets out, having a good relationship with russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. only stupid people or fools would think it s bad. isn t that the problem, donald trump has set himself up to i don t know. tell me what you think. we have we meaning a lot of us have looked around and wondered why is it that donald trump says so many nice things about vladimir putin so consistently? why has he been so reluctant to criticize him in any way? you showed that tape earlier. it wasn t the russians who did this hacking. it could have been some 400-pound guy on a bed. he has sort of created a question in our heads, why is he like this towards russia. this nflgts, which we don t know how true it is or twlaes yet, but this is a plausible kind of explanation. i think what we ve got here are two baskets of things, each of which is very troubling. basket one is that the trump campaign was actively cooperating with russia to defeat hillary clinton. if that s true, that would be lead to that impeachment scenario. the other thing is all this ugly compromising information that the russians again allegedly have on him, these are two big deals. i think the real test here will be not so much how john mccain reacts, because he s already out there. he wants an investigation. but with this new information, the mainstream republican leadership are saying, wait a minute, do we have to be worried about getting too close to this guy or is this going to be a problem down the line which is why we need to investigate this very quickly. he is now in the poll a 73% approval rating. that s like a governor. that s the lowest for an incoming president. whereas president obama is at 57%, which is toward the upper end of presidents when they re leaving office. so so what do you think is the threshold where republicans say we re not going to follow this guy around anymore. there s been some indications that a lot of americans don t care about the russia story. if you start to see it change, people going, you know what, i didn t initially believe these things, they ll be televised because they re juicy. it could be when peoria as they said in watergate changes its minds. when some of these communities that went for trump, the reporters go out there and find out that people do care, then you re going to see a real change. then it will be a whole different temperature in washington, d.c. all right, thank you both for joining us. good to be with you. coming up next, president obama s emotional thank you to the first family. i m phil mickelson, pro golfer. my psoriatic arthritis caused joint pain. just like my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. and i was worried about joint damage. my doctor said joint pain from ra. can be a sign of existing joint damage. that could only get worse. he prescribed enbrel to help relieve pain and help stop further damage. enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal, events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for. heart failure, or if you have persistent. fever, bruising, bleeding, or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. joint pain and damage. can go side by side. ask how enbrel can help relieve joint pain and help stop joint damage. enbrel, the number one rheumatologist-prescribed biologic. . president obama s speech was also a chance to recognize the women who have been by his side throughout the journey. michelle. [ cheers and applause ] michelle lavon robinson, girl of the south side, for the past 25 years you have not only been my wife and mother of my children. you have been my best friend. you took on a role you didn t ask for. aged you made it your own with grace and with grit and with style and with humor. you made the white house a place that belongs to everybody. and a new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model, so you have made me proud and you have made the country proud. maleeha and sasha, under the strangest of circumstances, you have become two amazing young women. you are smart and you are beautiful but more importantly, you are kind and you are thoughtful and you are full of passion and you bore the burden of years in the spotlight so easily. of all that i have done in my life, i am most proud to be your dad. [ cheers and applause ] the incredible legacy of the other obama, first lady michelle obama. that s next. mom, i just saved a lot of money on my car insurance by switching to geico. i should take a closer look at geico. you know, geico can help you save money on your homeowners insurance too? great! geico can help insure our mountain chalet! how long have we been sawing this log? um, one hundred and fourteen years. man i thought my arm would be a lot more jacked by now. i m not even sure this is real wood. there s no butter in this churn. do my tris look okay? take a closer look at geico. great savings. and a whole lot more. announceyou must be-be strong. you must be. uh. ready for anything. because you never know who s playing. vikings: war of clans: download free now. you foundi m a robot! cars.com rawr yeti and found a place to service it, too. jingle bells now when you re ready, you can sell your old car and find your new one all on cars.com you know us for shopping, and now we re there for every turn. cars.com . the president and the first lady in chicago last night at what s probably their last major public event together before the inauguration. lots of friends on tonight. i cannot wait to hear your impressions, michelle, of this speech. i loved every single word that the president uttered tonight, but obviously one of my favorite parts of the speech is when he looked at his wife and at one of his two daughters and just had nothing but pure love in his eyes for his wife. you know, it was just it was romantic. last week she gave a very emotional speech. her goodbye speech. one of the things she said last week was that she hoped she made us proud and like any good husband will do and like any husband who loves his wife, he said you made us proud. he talked about how she walked into a job that she didn t ask for. he human anized her. when they entered the white house she had to fight the stereotype of the angry black woman. people complained about everything from herbaring her arms and going bare fooft. barack obama told us they are not the stereotype of the black family that has so ingrained in american culture. he s not the broken man that we see in the movie fences. for example, they have not been broken and they could have very easily been broken from people a member of congress yelling at him in the white house, you know, in the joint session of congress you lie and jan brewer rubbing her finger in his face at the airport and all of the things that have been said about his wife, they have made us provided. i won t have time to play my favorite sound bite but she talked about the little boy who wouldwho touched the president s head. what do you think is the most important legacy? let s move. is it the fashion designer she made faimts. what do you think is her biggest legacy? i would say, joy, that i would have to put it all together. michelle obama as a human being is her greatest legacy. she completely oversteps or crosses all boundaries. you can t look at her and just see a black woman. she is every woman and we needed that. we needed that in the white house. michelle obama s legacy, if i have to say her biggest legacy is she and barack obama have shown us that there were not only founding fathers, there were founding mothers. yes indeed.
unfairly. what is wrong with having an overzealous watch dog committee? and isn t getting rid of this office the kind of swampy stuff that republicans across america elected donald trump to get rid of? they re bringing anonymous charges and trying them in a public arena. a person targeted by that has to defend themselves after they ve been attacked publicly when they don t have a right to face their accuser. that s a right that goes right back to jesus himself standing before the high priest. i m going to read it off the screen here, with all that congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the independent ethics watchdog as unfair as it is? so the president-elect appears to be making the argument that you guys have a lot of other things on their plate. why make this the first move in secret the way it went down last night? i would have been happy to bring that to the floor and let democrats vote on that independently. i think you would have seen strong support among the congressional black caucus, in particular. so they brought this amendment to the rules package last night in the organizing conference, it s the appropriate way to do that but i would have preferred to bring that in the open. you would have prepared to have not voted last night and done it today? if it had not been brought up last night, it could have been brought as an amendment to the rule today and then there would have been a recorded vote on this. i think what would have been better. but we don t know whether all the democrats would have then locked up and said we are going to make republicans do this. i spoke with ethics lawyers on both sides of the aisle, that served under george w. burke and president obama. uniformly there is a sense that this is the foxes guarding the hen house. how do you reassure americans who have serious concern about congressional scandals and rightfully so, that there will be some sort of oversight when it sort of them taking your word for it, is it not? we ve always had oversight in congress. it s always been the ethics commite that s balanced. i would assure constituents that if you have a complaint, have an objection, take it to your member of congress. if your objection is about your member of congress, take it to another member of congress. or you can file a public complaint with the office of congressional ethics but you can t hide behind you can t do it anonymously. and then the ethics committee will be doing oversight of the office of congressional ethics so they re folded in together and there are just some rules that take away the things they were doing that are unethical. it unethical to leak confidential information to the public. even having this conversation and you making this argument and defending the moves that you made, do you worry it going to make congress sound frankly a little bit tone deaf as they re kicking off this new session when what you want to focus on is not the question of ethics concerns but other issues? that s true. i m worried about that. you worry about feeling tone deaf here. and that was a significant debate in the closed door session last night people are saying we don t need to take on this debate because we have important work to do. but the bottom line is what s going on is unjust, members have been unjustly targeted, has cost them individually millions to defend themselves against anonymous charges. no citizens would be subject to that outside the walls of congress. anybody want to bring a charge to me, put it in an operation that operates secretly and leaks out information and defend yourself from that. let s pull up the second part of the president-elect s tweet. do they really have to make it as unfair as it may be their number one act and priority. focus on tax reform, health care and so many other things of far greater importance. why bother? donald trump is an excellent businessman, and he takes the issues as they come. you don t get to y, well, we re going to pick this up later, six months or a year from now and deal with it. this is the time we right the rules for the congress, a two-period of time. it would be inappropriate to say we re going to write the rules at the end of the session and not the beginning of the session. they ve spent millions of dollars, there s no positive oufrom the office of political ethics. they re in the business of destroying people s reputation and by acting on anonymous complaints, many of them, if not all of them, motivated politically. i want to ask you, speaking of tweets, one of your tweets from about 24 hours ago. you said russian hackers controlling our election? we know this because the cia and nsa leaked it, right? what does that mean? well, it s a little bit of a quotes in there, we know this because we re assuming as a society, i can see the narrative building do you doubt the cia and nsa? i doubt the reports i m getting. the intelligence reports that you are getting you don t buy? i doubt the cia and the nsa. i will say that straight out because i sat a number of reasons. one is i sat in the briefings in 2003 that laid out the case for weapons of mass destruction. i saw more evidence of weapons of mass destruction in iraq than i have seen evidence that the russians hacked this as point one. and point number two, the director of national intelligence, james clapper, was sitting next to hillary clinton when she informed congress in a classified setting the same stories that we heard from susan rice about it was a video that began benghazi. so pardon me if i m a little skeptical here but i say show me the evidence. but you are privy to the evidence that frankly me and the rest of the american public are not privy to. at this point i have not had an opportunity to sit in on a classified briefing but i would still be skeptical unless they showed me the hard evidence because this has all of the trappings to me of a narrative that s being created here and nobody s looking at the real evidence. they re just looking at opinions on evidence. so i want to see the evidence and then i want to challenge them on their train of thought. but it looks to me like this was not a hack, it s more likely a leak. and if it s a leak, where did it come from? the russians wouldn t have anything to leak if they hadn t hand. if there s no hack, the leaks are more likely to have come out of the cia or nsa or other intelligence committee. and if you do not trust american intelligence assessments and american intelligence agencies, how are the american people supposed to trust them and by extension the rest of government? i would say since i ve just described clapper and hillary clinton where they were as pu purveyors of the message they re the same people. this administration is still commanded by barack obama. so i am skeptical. if this is going to be brought up, this topic, it should be brought up in the next administration with fresh faces that at least start with the presumption that they re honorable. if they say it was the video that started benghazi, then i ll say we have more to discuss. i appreciate you doing this on the first day of the new congress. coming up, the president-elect hitting everything from congress s move on that office of congressional investigations and ethics to the affordable care act to even one of the icons of the american car industry. we ve got kristen welker in new york outside trump tower. you heard a bit of our conversation with congressman king on the affordable care act on the president-elect s new tweets as well. i want to sort of start there. what is your we heard kellyanne conway morning say president-elect trump would weigh in on this ethics move by congress if he felt the urge to. clearly he has felt the urge to, right? reporter: right. and i thought your point was the right one, halle. he s underscoring why is ts the first move that we re seeing from house republicans? significant that he is taking issue with the fact that they ve made this their top priority. at the same time, he sort of walked a fine line in that tweet saying that he agrees with part of what congressman steve king was saying, which is that it isn t as effective as it could be. nonetheless, you heard him stress there, health care, tax reform, those are the issues that he wants to be focused on and, halle, he s tweeting today about obama care. let me read you his tweet. he tweeted people must remember that obama care just doesn t work and it s not affordable. 116% increases(arizona), bill clinton called it crazy. on the campaign trail former president bill clinton did call it crazy the fact that you re seeing some of the prices skyrocket, but he later walked back those comments stressing that he thinks there s a lot of good to be salvaged in the affordable care act. bottom line, donald trump is going to push republicans hard to appeal obama care. then the question comes what do you replace it with? kellyanne conway acknowledging at this point in time there is no real replacement. it could tack several years before they have a full replacement in place. the fight over obama care will likely be one of the first big battles of this new year and this new congressional session. we were just talking with congressman king about the russian interference in the u.s. election according to u.s. intelligence assessments. the congressman has his own views on that. when it comes to donald trump, when is he going to get this intel briefing? do we have any better guidance he said he was looking to? any new word on this press conference he has promised sometimes in the next 17 days? first to the intel briefing. our sense is that it is going to happen at some point this week. kellyanne cl kellyanne conway said a little bit later on this week so possibly tomorrow. that may be when we learn a little bit more about what donald trump says he knows about those accusations of russian hacking. he says over the weekend that he has information that other people don t have. what specifically is that information? that s the key question that everyone is waiting to have answered. what we do know, halle, is that this is creating a real rift between the president-elect and some members of his own party, the more hawkish members of his party, senators john mccain and lindsay graham, senator mccain set to hold a hearing on thursday about the russian hacking. he has been very insistent. he believes the u.s. intelligence and he is supportive of potentially moving to enact stiffer sanctions against russia. as for that press conference, we re hearing it could happen as early as next week, possibly on the 11th. that would of course be the day after president obama delivers his farewell address, but we want to stress, halle, they haven t nailed down an exact date yet. we re trying to get specific details on that before the end of the day as the president-elect holds more meetings here at trump tower today, halle. kristen, thank you. video now released of the turkey night club attack suspect on the run. police out with new evidence say confirms they re hunting for the right man. we re heading live to istanbul next. e. liberty did what? 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they have fingerprints, they have a very good description and they have all of this video that we ve been seeing sort of come out in bits over the past couple of days, security camera, screen grabs, that selfie video, which you just mentioned, which is probably the clearest picture yet of the man please believe is the suspect in all this. and also this video, which has just come out recently, of a man exiting a taxi. apparently this man was getting out of the taxi after the shooting, in the hours after the shooting. police believe this is another picture of their suspect. but do they have a name yet? well, we don t know quite frankly. they haven t come forward with a name. there s been a lot of speculation in the local media, a lot of talk about where this alleged gunman might be from but no concrete information yet from the government or security services and no new press conferences today, halle. what we do know is thathey are they have all of the borders on lookout for this particular person, including the airport, border patrol, et cetera. so they ve cast the net but in terms of real concrete information, we re just not hearing anything, halle. and the hope of course is that will change later in the day. thank you. i want to bring in a former army intelligence officers and research director for the study of war. jessi jessica, walk us through this. why has it been so difficult for turkish officials to find this guy? because the isis network is so expansive and turkey is engaged on multiple front, fighting their own war againin turkey. they have released more videos, more pictures of the suspect. i assume that means they re on the right track? yes, i suspect they will be successful in this manhunt. this is a lot of good press that isis is leveraging as well. isis is fighting not only through violence but through media. you mentioned idea is getting what you called good press, tongue in cheek, how do intelligence officials go back to look to see if isis really is linked to this, if isis did direct or orchestrate this in. this challenge is key to i isis s strategies to its attack. it has an appeal broadly for those willing to conduct attacks as individuals. that is a much harder attac footprint to interdict. isis is doinghat deliberately. since sunday, turkey has pounded some hundred targets inside syria. do you see this attack leading to more serious attacks against isis? the challenge i see is turkey s mechanism for attacking isis inside sear were is to align more closely with al qaeda groups in syria. so really for the purposes of the united states and national security, isis and al qaeda really are equivalent. so turkey is attacking isis but they are not necessarily countering terrorism. jessica, i appreciate your perspective. a terrifying night in the south. tornadoes turning deadly. we ll have the latest on the high winds, the hail, the floods, that has folks from texas to florida trying to clean up. stay with us. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? 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(vo) try new beneful healthy weight with chicken. now with real chicken as the number one ingredient. of killing nine black church-goers last year. deadly storms sweeping through the south. at least a dozen tornadoes touched down as the storm system moved through yesterday. a single tornado now being blamed for killing four people in alabama. bad thunderstorms are also leaving a trail of destruction all across the southeast. we started to run for cover in the back of the shop and before we could get back there, the window came in and we seen the awning flip up. the weather channel s mike seidel is in rehoboth, arizona. how common is it to see tornadoes in january? good morning, halle. tornadoes are unusual in january, especially an outbreak. yesterday reported 12 twisters touching down across the deep south, one of those hitting here and going towards the woods. there is a mobile home back there and a six foot in diameter oak tree came down over the mobile home and split it in two. there were seven in the mobile home and four were killed. that would make it the deadliest tornado in the u.s. since december 26, 2016 if the weather service from tallahassee ces out and determine this is a twister. already out here on the kelly farm, they re trying to do some basic clean-up. you can see the corrugated aluminum the roof has been ripped to sheds. j.p. on the tractor told me the storm was loud out here. a county that has only had three twitters since 1970. the air mass is stable today. we ll see temperatures backing off to the 50s with rain arriving here by friday. mike seidel in alabama for us. to scary video now that shows something every parent worries about. utah twins caught on a nanny cam doing, look at this, what 2-year-old boys do, right, climbing on furniture. the dresser come down right on top of them. that is really tough to watch. one of the twins was luckily able to get himself out. the little boy working and ultimately able to help his brother. the boy s mother posted this really scary video to show the dangers of what happens when furniture is left loose like that. she is going to be talking to my colleague in the next hour about this terrifying experience. both of those boys doing just fine. also ahead, chaos at customs. a technical glitch leaves travelers lined up across the country on one of the biest travel days of the year. we ll have anupdate of where you ll still find backups this morning. stick with us. tech: this mom didn t have time to worry about a cracked windshield. so she scheduled at safelite.com and with safelite s exclusive on my way text she knew exactly when i d be there, so she didn t miss a single shot. i replaced her windshield giving her more time for what matters most. tech: how d ya do? player: we won! tech: nice! that s another safelite advantage. mom: thank you so much! 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absolutely. much better. it s now working as it s supposed to. you got about 8,000 passengers here and thousands more at many other airports, international airports like newark,j.f.k., boston where passeers arrived and found themselves just dealing with a real nightmare and the nightmare sort of continues today because a lot of people when they come into like miami international airport, they re making a connection. because of those delays, they did not make connections and so they re nour trickling through the system to try to get through. the customs and border protection has an interesting term for the glitch that happened with their computers, they call it a technology disruption. it s a disruption they say they ve cleared up. they did fall back to alternate systems but those were very slow and that s why people missed their flights. as we take a look now at what that means for folks trying to make connections, that means let s look at the misery map. when you look at the misery map, you can see there are folks here now waiting to get flights and those flights in places like chicago and atlanta are delayed. we have 339 delays, 18 flights that have just outright been cancelled. those are for other issues. if you re a passenger making one of these long connections, it s miserable. hall e? kerry standers keeping an eye on it for all of us. coming up, the top priority list for the republicans in congress, get rid of the president s signature health care law and then put in something else, right? but what is that something else? we re going to talk about it with the 115th congress getting sworn in in less than 90 minutes. we are live on capitol hill. stay with us. 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. and i thought, well, you need to go to the doctor. i was told that is was cancer, and i called cancer trereatment centers of america. dr. nader explained that they can pinpoint the treatment. once we identified that there was this genetic abnormality in her tumor, we were able to place her on very specific therapy. our individualized care model gives each lung patient specific treatment options with innovative procedures that are changing the way we fight lung cancer. we have excellent technology that allow us to perform very specialized procedures for patients who have lung disease. to learn more about these targeted therapies and advanced procedures for lung cancer, as well as the experienced physicians who deliver them, go to cancercenter.com when he showed me the cat scans, i was so amazed. with this treatment, she had a dramatic response. call or go to cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. care that never quits. appointments available now. but the best place to start is in the forest. kubo: i spy something beginning with. s beetle: snow. kubo: no. beetle: snow covered trees. monkey: nothing to do with snow. narrator: head outside to discover incredible animals and beautiful plants that come together to create an unforgettable adventure. kubo: wow! narrator: so grab your loved ones monkey: don t even. narrator: and explore a world of possibilities. kubo: come on, this way. narrator: visit discovertheforest.org to find the closest forest or park to you. conversation about what that looks like, the repeal effort, et cetera. i want to bring in economist neil cristoff. kellyanne clonway said it could take years. there is no plan behind the replacement for the affordable care act. they re united this thinking they re awful. all the possible replacements might not be very effective or palatable for the public. so that s a tremendous incentive to appeal it and as the insurance industry falls apart, to blame obama care for that. i m april afraid they re going to yield it noneffective and not agree to a replacement until sometimes down the road. house leader mccarthy was asked about this this morning. one of the biggest problems of obama care, it was one-party rule all the way through. i think everybody should have their ideas at the table and we should find a system that actually works that empowers the american person to have a relationship with their doctor and lower the cost. there are gestures being made here to replace the affordable care act if repealed with something, right? you heard kevin mccarty are going to be more inclusive than republicans. how do you see this playing out politically? i must say the one advantage of republicans taking ownership is that it s conceivable that there will be fewer efforts to undermine medicaid expansion around the states. as you know, around half the states around the country, republican states, have refused to expand medicaid simply because it is an obama program. you know, mike pence to his credit did expand it in indiana and save lives in indiana as a result and we have pretty good evidence about what is at stake when you havmore people in shu insured. you have lower mortality rates. insurance is a big deal. 22 million people have gained it. so, i mean, you know, look, journalists after 2016 should be really cautious about predicting political outcomes, but it sure seems to me it would not go over particularly well with the public if those 22 million people were evicted from health insurance. and it s hard to create a replacement structure without all the bells and whistles that obama care included. that s the thing, right? so kellyanne conway, who by the way is having lunch with valerie jarrett tomorrow, did say they want to keep the popular parts, the coverage for preexisting conditions. donald trump has said that publicly. on the one hand that s got to be a silver lining to president obama. but on the other, how do you keep those pieces and pay for them. that seems to be the construction of the issue. it s like building a lego structure with only half the blocks. and the mandate is very unpopular. as you remember in 2008, barack obama, the candidate, didn t want to have a mandate and hillary clinton at that point insisted that you had to have one. well, she turned out to be right. and unless you have a mandate, then a lot of young, healthy people don t sign up for health insurance and so you need to have that mandate to make the rest of the provisions work. so it s very easy when you re in opposition to denounce the mandate. if you re trying to construct a replacement, you can t really create a structure without it. thank you very much for joining us here on this first day congress getting back into session. appreciate it. on day o here of the republicans new majority, do you think they ve already overplayed their hand? we re going to talk about what could be signs of republican fracture. up next, the 115th congress gaveling into session right about an hour from now on capitol hill. we ll bring that to you live right here on msnbc. y car insur. i should take a closer look at geico. geico has a long history of great savings and great service. over seventy-five years. wait. seventy-five years? that is great. speaking of great, check out these hot riffs. you like smash mouth? uh, yeah i have an early day tomorrow so. wait. almost there. goodnight, bruce. gotta tune the a. 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[and her new business: i do, to jeanetgo. jeanette was excellent at marrying people. but had trouble getting paid. not a good time, jeanette. even worse. now i m uncomfortable. but here s the good news, jeanette got quickbooks. send that invoice, jeanette. looks like they viewed it. and, ta-da! paid twice as fast. oh, she s an efficient officiant. way to grow, jeanette. get paid twice as fast. visit quickbooks-dot-com. we are back now live from capitol hill. speaker of the house paul ryan getting ready to gavel congress into session. at the same time he s defending a controversial move by members of his party to in essence gut the congressional independent watch dog. the speaker is just now releasing a statement saying i have made clear to the new chair of the house ethics committee that it is not to interfere with the office s investigators or prevent it from doing its job. all members of congress are required to earn the public s trust every single day and this house will hold member accountable to the people. earlier this hour, president-elect trump weighed in asking why this was the first move of the congress, asking them to focus on tax reform and health care. this was a terrible destruction and the watch dog will have its teeth removed and its bark muzzled by these changes. with me now to talk about all of this, democratic strategist liz smith, the former spokeswoman for martin o malley s campaign, along with republican steve cortez. this is a move, steve, to a lot of people it looks like defanging, taking the teeth out of the watch dog, the bark out of the muzzle. donald trump weighed in but he didn t criticize the move itself. he in fact called this independent ethics office unfair and seemed to have more of an objection to the timing more than anything else than the actual substance of this. does he need to be stronger given that this speaks directly to his pledge to drain the swamp? doesn t that make you mad? you were a guy who wanted him to drain the swamp originally. not just originally. i still very much am. is this training the swamp, though, steve? no. when i saw this move, i saw was bone headed and i don t like the content of it. who cares what i think. the president-elect just weighed in against his own party with a couple of forceful tweets. accountability and transparency, those two aspects of our movement are so important and part of the reason that we won is that americans are sick of a crony system, a rigged system in washington, d.c. that exists for its own benefit and not the benefit of main street america. you said the president-elect clashing with his own party here but he seems to be more upset about the timing here. he still called this ethics office potentially unfair. is that holding up to the values of accountability and transparency? timing matters, appearances matter. we have such important work to do and only, what, i guess 17 days now until inauguration. this is the last thing we should be focused on. i m thkf, though, for the president-elect s tweets. i believe it will put this issue to bed. i believe this is going to be a one-day story because of his reaction. health care and growth should be the first priorities for this congress, not inside baseball, inside the beltway ethics skirting. liz, do you agree? you have a major fight brewing over the obama care act. i think we are going to spend time on this. voters might think government is too big. no voters are saying, wow, our elected officials are too ethical. republicans are forgetting recent history. i remember in 2006 democrats came back from the political wilderness, won the speakership, won back the senate, won the majority of governor s races by running against a culture of corruption of the gop. we ran against all the ethical scandals with jack abramoff and it was in response to those scandals that democrats created the office of ethics. this is an electoral winner for democrats. liz, i would i would say left to their own devices, i wouldn t doubt that. but they won t be left to their own devices. i put a lot of the blame of what s happened in washington, d.c. on congressional republicans, absolutely. but that s one of the reasons that donald trump, an outsider came in and beat 16 republicans. but he s going along with this. he s concerned with the timing, not with the actual action of this. guys, give me one second. i want to talk about a different tweet by the president-elect. he went after gm this morning. the president-elect tweeting about gm and gm responding, by the way, about this tweet about the chevy cruze saying that all are built in the assembly plant. . is this what you want to see the president elect doing? he s using the bully pulpit to put managers out there on notice. we re going to create an environment in america where you want to stay. wire going to make it profitable for you and your employees and shareholders to be here by lower taxes, sensible regulation. on the other hand, it s carrot and stick. there are going to be consequences for companies who choose to do business outside of the united states in terms of access to our markets. the american citizens has not benefited over the dumb trade deals that we have erected over the past two administration, not just this one. i anticipate we ll see more of this. liz, i want to get to you very quickly before we wrap up for the last word. congressman king said to me he doubts when it comes to russian interference, he doubts the cia and he doubts the nsa. when you hear something look that, is it a concern to you? and what can democrats do about that kind of perception among their colleagues here in congress? sure. look, i think we should always approach these things with a dose of skepticism, and that s why we should follow the lead of john mccain, lindsay graham and a whole host of democrats saying that the intelligence agencies should make their findings more public. frankly, if the republicans were smart, they would see that more and more democrats are holding on to this idea that this election is illegitimate and swayed by the russians. if they wanted to legitimatize donald trump, they would embrace more transparency in getting to the bottom of russian interference. it might have been democrats russians were messing with this year but in two years, it could be republicans. thanks for a spirited conversation. there s a senate doubleheader tonight on the rachel maddow show. bernie sanders and incoming democratic leader chuck schumer. a lot of news coming out at 9:00. don t miss it. thank you for watching this hour of msnbc live. and now more with my colleague stephanie ruhle. i m back.