just a job to provide for myself and his parents, but a career that he enjoyed and more importantly passionate about it even though he spent a lot of hours working, he was always love for his work. we spoke about the law and how he applied the law. he was objective in his determination of the law with courtesy, we areith respect and with the highest professionism. although he worked often, he always took time to spend with me his number one fan and his pamly and friends. he was always there when somebody needed something. when wenjian was not working, he cared a lot for the chinese community. he wanted to always do his best to help and support. the very community that he was part of wenjian s kind heart loved by his friend and colleagues and our extended family ha isthat is here today. the caring son, a loving husband and a loyal friend. you are an amazing man even though you left us early, but i believe that he will have his loving spirit to continue to look out for us. he will keep an eye over us. wenjian is my hero. we can always count on him. again, i thank you, my extended family my fam ily of blue for attending today s services, thank you. wen wenjian will always be in my hearts. i love you, i love you forever. [ applause ] ing breaking news, the ongoing funeral service for new york police detective wenjian liu and you heard the widow, and the two with were married for four month, and gave what is a remarkably brave eulogy about her slain hudzsband and talking about how she was his soulmate and best friend and only son of immigrant, and very, very dedicated to his parents and mot to mention the people of new york city whom he risked his life and then died trying to protect them. there are thousands of people crowding the streets outside the brooklyn funeral home where this service is under way, and the police officers are standing shoulder-to-shoulder and notably some officers did turn their officers as the new york mayor bill de blasio did deliver a eulogy. inside the drekirector fbi and the police commissioner and as i mentioned, officer liu s widow and his father. and his father did not speak in english, but you did not have to understand the language to feel his pain. it was really a heartbreaking, heartbreaking event. liu and his partner rafael ramos were gunned down december 27th when they were gunned down in their squad car, and we will be joined by miguel marquez who is outside of the funeral services. miguel can you tell us about the scene there among the thousands of men in blue who came all around the country to at tend this funeral. reporter: for the bulk of the entire ceremony there was a contingent of asian officers just outside of the church here, and we believe that the coffin of officer liu is coming out soon and nypd officer did come up and ask whether we will be broadcasting live or speaking at that time, and that is something that they want to keep very somber event here to honor this police officer as his casket moves towards its final resting place. with the are regard to the police officers turning their back here in front of the funeral home there were zero. no police officers who turned their back. just down from here, on the processional route where the casket will go there with were some police officers who did turn their backs according to our sara ganim who is down tlhere and other producers who saw them but much smaller number than last week, and the police commissioner asking by memo to the police force that it was not an appropriate thing to do. that it is a time for grieving and not grievance and that when they turned their back on the mayor during officer ramos funeral last week they did no valor to the officer s sacrifice and honor of his job in doing so. so he has asked them not to do it now. you can see now the police officers are lining up now. this is the ceremonial unit of the nypd lining up in order to receive the body the casket of officer liu. we expect to see that coming out of here shortly. it looks like they may be slightly ahead of schedule and though it is a little unclear that the family did arrive an hour before the ceremony began and several speakers to listen to his father speak, and i don t speak cantonese, but to listen to him speaking and trying to get through the words and emotion, and it was hard to watch that. this was meant to go for another hour and he may be coming out soon. the ceremony they had in there was a lot of individuals bringing food to the location of the casket and also burning pieces of paper or cardboard to symbolize things from the physical word the food and those symbol ss are things that officer liu in the buddhist tradition would take on to the next life. dana? miguel i agree with you to watch his father to lose any child is just defy sies the laws of nature, but to lose your only son as he did is just words just can t can express how much grief he must be feeling right now. thank you very much and stand by us miguel because we want to go to cnn correspondent sarah again mim who ganim who is outside of the funeral home. can you hear me? yes, it is dana bash sarah, and can you hear us? we are having trouble getting her ifp working, and we will go inside of the studio to tom fuentes, and you are a law enforcement analyst, but also a cop on the beat where you started outside of chicago for six years. and for those of us who have never served or had the honor of serving, talk about what is it like, and what has drawn thousands of people around the country including towns like chicago for this funeral? well to understand police officers it helps to have been one and having been in the life of a police officer. it is not a job but a way of life and not just for you, but the family. it is what has been carried through for the ramos and liu families they have to live with the life and the fear and the threat, and i know my mother who had passed away now, she had a husband and two sons who were police officers at the same time, and she had this worry every day. i cannot imagine. i cannot imagine. the koncontroversy about what these officers faced when it came to racial protests and some of the protests getting personal when it came to the police officers after the killings in ferguson missouri of black teenagers in new york city. as somebody who has bp on the street and been on the beat what strikes you when you see all of this? what strikes me is that the one message that people don t really realize and the one thing about being a police officer is that you realize in the entire criminal justice system, and in the entire medical system and the entire community leader ss, the police officer deals with the victim. the victims die in your arms and the victims die in the ambulance with you in the hospital or in the surgery at the hospital after they have been shot is or stabbed or involved in a terrible accident and it is the police and there is an image that the police have no empathy or sympathy for the members of the public and in the arereality, they have more. the hardened exterior to cope with that is the fact that the police see itt everyday. if the they have animosity, and the the guys carrying the guns in the community, and the gang-bangers gunning down other members, it is because they are seeing the the people shot by the gangs, and the people victimized by the crime. absolutely. so i want to turn back to the scene so that the viewers know what we are look ging at, the funeral just concluded, and we are watching the sea of blue police officers from all over there, and you will see the color guard getting ready, and looks like we are waiting for the casket to come out to take wen wenjian liu to his final resting place. miguel marquez is there. these funerals are so tough to watch and to see this brotherhood and sisterhood to come together. if you can pan over here, ricky, this is the ceremonial unit inside of the funeral home. they are now lining up outside of the funeral home and the co color guard with the u.s. flag the new york citying in ing inand the nypd flag are going to line up in front of the hearse that will take detective liu to his final resting place. the level of mourning and the sense of the sol lumemn nature of what is happening here is unmistakable. what we saw here today is a service that we are not accustomed to and to hear his father speak in cantonese, and even though none of us spoke cantonese, it was very clear and the love of his son was very clear. they did some translation afterwards to talk about how his son would heldp him come work in the garment district after his school work and he would call him and very conscientious and good son. the mayor talked about detective liu s love of fishing. and his cousin spoke about, and we all called him wenjian liu, but his family called him joe. it is how they have become an american family in their own way, and now with the ceremonial unit out of the the funeral home it seems that they are now waiting for the mayor of the other dignitaries and the other director to come out, and then we believe we will see the casket of wenji aan liu come out of the funeral home to make its way. and what miguel is talking about is so true in that what you heard in the eulogies and throughout the service is that people were humanizing him, and he was not a number or a cop on the beat that was killed, but a human being with a family who loved him so much but another thing is what truely american story this is. and so classic new york. and so specific new york you have the son of immigrants coming in and really wanting to be a good american as they called him joe, and looking at the line of work that he chose. and for many of the immigrant families especially when a son or daughter says that i want to be a police officer, the families coming in from other countries, they say, you can t be a police aufofficer in the united states, and this is the wild west and the rest of america looks at us with our 300 million gun s ins in a population of 320 million looks at us as violence and out of control and the violence on the streets and the wild west atmosphere and so in some ways when they hear that their family members want to be a police officer, they rare terrified, and that is probably why he had to call his dad after every shift to say he is still alive he made him. and i would want my son to call me after his shift everyday too, so i understand. and we have a sea of oblue and police men from all over the country to attend the funeral, and sara can you tell us what you are seeing? yes, dana this is the procession route, and i have stepped away from the route to be respectful not to disrupt the officers who are lined up to watch the ceremony, but they have lined up here and listened to every single speaker, and tens of thousands is of officers are here to pay their respects. it is not the brightest or the warmest or the driest of days here in brooklyn but they did not come out in any less numbers as they did last week for officer ramos funeral. you heard are from wenjian liu s father who spoke in mandarin and he said that he was so proud of his son to be a member of the nypd and to help the immigrant community when he was not working. and we heard a couple of notable things prfrom the fbi director james comey and new york mayor bill de blasio and we wondered if there would be an honor of the commissioner to not turn their back on the mayor as he spoke, and we did see some officers turn around and not a majority and not even half of the officers where we were standing, but some. and more than the nypd and some officers who were from out of town who also turned around for the speech. this tepgs between the nypd and the mayor have been growing since the protest in new york, but many of the officers i have spoken to here from nypd and out of town say they don t believe that the funeral for a fallen officer is a place for that. and to give you the idea of how many officers are here this is a sea of blue for nearly a mile and this is how long the route is for those who want to pay their respects. jetblue flew in more than 1,100 officers from all over the country for free. i have seen badges and vehicles from cincinnati and virginia and connecticut and california and it is a long way to come. i have talked to three officers who came from outside of new orleans and they said it was incredibly important for them to be here for this, and not to show support for the fallen officer, but also because they feel that they do still get the re respect and earn the respect of the majority of the nation, and they wanted to show that to the world by coming here to this funeral, and just another note dana about security here because it is not just police officers, but it is a lot of the communities here in the streets, and we are seeing the patrols on the roofs, and canine units and helicopters and many of the units are blocked off on the procession route where the casket is going to be driven down to the cemetery. it is not the only roadblocked off here. they are making sure that it is a safe place for them to hold this ceremony and to hold a proper funeral for one of their fallen. dana. thank you and great the information and color there. i should mention that as you were speaking sara we saw some of the congressional delegation exiting the funeral home there. is another one, peter king, the republican from new york coming out, and some other well known republicans, charlie rangel and congressman joe crowley who was on the show earlier today whose father and grandfather who were both new york city police officers and so we are watching the dignitaries come out, and that probably means not too far behind will be the casket of the slain officer, and while we are watching that i want to turn back to tom fuentes. and you heard sara talking about despite the commissioner bill bratton asking the rank and file not the turn their backs, some did. she reported very important to note that it was not the number that it was at rafael ramos funeral, but it happen ded nonetheless from a treatise from their leader because it detracts from the respects of their fallen comrade. and tom, what do you make of that as a former officer? i think they should not have done it in my opinion, it is not the time or place as mentioned by commissioner bratton. and i thought that commissioner bratton s request to not do it and he said that he would not discipline any officers and no repercussions that way, and he requested it as a fellow officer, and he was a fellow officer in the 1970s when we were pigs and spit on and he thought that police officers out there out of respect for him, and despite the feelings for the mayor which are neg thetive and deep, but out of respect for him, they might honor that respect. and let me play the devil s advocate they defect the freedom of speech everyday and why shouldn t they have their freedom of speech? why shouldn t they display their ainge anger if they are angry? they should, but by doing it today, they are talking about that instead of the great life of officer ramos, and their parents, and the other great officers in the world, and talk act this issue and that is the reason enough not to do it. i get that. and the big picture, and the years you were a cop? yes, in illinois, and 1970 to 1973 when i became a member of the fbi. and racial issues have changed since then, and society has changed since then but is this something that the police force focus odd n? absolutely. the idea that when people say we need community policing. they have had community policing. my father was a police officer and it was a kid going with him to community events and chaperoning field trips and dances and all of that and i was 1 years old when he was a police officer, and the idea that the police need to get into the community and work them, and when you talk about what officer liu and ramos did in their communities tashgs i are a part of that as well as thousands of nypd officers engaged everyday in their community and in the neighborhoods talking to the people trying to help in the policing that they are doing. i the think that is part of what the police are upset about with the public rhetoric that they have not done community policing or they need training because they don t know how to talk to people. police aufofficers have a phd in street psychology and if they don t talk to somebody properly it is because they don t want to and not because they don t know how. it is not because they need to take classes on wrestling, because the modern police officer has to be a wrestler and telling somebody they are under arrest and the person won t comply that is not going to cut it. and the rhetoric about policing needs to be that we need to have a discussion and not accusations back and forth by sound bite. and on that note, we need to return to the solemnity of this moment and hopefully we can see another picture of the sea of blue because it is powerful and poignant. and there it is. and before we go to t rehe reporters in the sea, tom, as a former police officer, yourself and what goes through your mind as you see that e remarkable scene. the brother 450d and the sisterhood of law enforcement, and why it is close, and why the remind minder of it. 115 police officers have died in the line of duty this year, and it is because of the recent amount of public discussion that has been so negative about policingch that is actually contributing to the police officers wanting to travel from california and canada and new orleans to come to be a part of this because they realize that they need to show the solidarity of being in the profession and calling together. well, it is looking like solidarity and achieving that by looking at the pictures. miguel marquez, i want to bring you back in, and listening to tom fuentes and being a police officer, and looking at the police officers from all over the country, and i would believe that is the sentiment that you are seeing there on the ground? yes, it sis, and i can see a half mile down and you can see a fine line of blue all of the way down. they have created just enough space in the very wide street so that the funeral cortege can make its way down that way. the mayor is speakingt that funeral in a personal way about detective liu. also this attack on both detective liu and ramos was not just an attack on two individuals, but it was an attack on the city of new york. the police work the police department being the bedrock of civil society, and the necessity to honor police officers and to have a good relationship between the political set and the police set. so my sense is that the rancor that we have seen in the recent weeks, and the anger in recent weeks h will find ss will find a newer and bet better level, and we have seen in the last half hour not only dignities, but police officer s to come out of the funeral home, and we expect to see the casket of detective liu to emerge shortly for the final ride to its final resting place. and miguel, you have sort of been experiencing the whiplash of emotions there in new york city and now more the past couple of weeks, because of the assassination of these two police officers but then just prior to that the anger at the justice system and in many ways, the cops that we have heard, but the justice system because eric garner who was now everybody knows was killed during an arrest after he was trying to illegally sell cigarettes and the uproar about no indictments about that. that is the ancillary and i have logged many miles as they have angrily taken over to the streets here and that is where a lot of the rancor between the mayor and the nypd comes from. there were beat cops walking alongside the protesters and stopping the traffic to make sure they could be safe and making sure adds they were taking over the streets and the city were safe. governor cuomo said it in his remarks last week probably best there is no better sign of what a great police department that we have that they were at the butt end of the anger of the protesters, and yet, they were protecting their fest first amendment rights while they were taking their abuse at the same time. so that s the sort of stuff that we saw for many, many miles through the streets of new york, and i am sure that those beat officers told their buddies by text and social media and everything else you should hear what they are calling us and hear what they are saying. there is already upset with the mayor before these two officers deaths, but afterward ss, it took it to another level. and i want to tell you that the towers to tunnels program that offered to pay off the home loans for them and they needed $800,000 and they have $700,000 and so they can almost pay off their home loan ss. and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised for these two individuals. for people who felt they were left out in the cold, and bereft and not loved in the city, and last week s funeral, and this week s funeral is showing a different picture. thank you, miguel for the insights and as you were speaking former mayor rudy giuliani is there to pay his respects as well. i want to go back to sara ganim who is there in the crowd, and by way of the context and the background, we have been talking about the new york mayor bill de blasio and the anger that he has apparently incited among these many of the cops the reason most recently is the reason that he taught his biracial son how to handle whether when he is approached by a police officer, because he would be approached differently, because of the color of his skin. and sara, that is what sparked the people turning their backs on him when he spoke last week and to a much lesser extent just this morning. reporter: that is right, dana and some say it goes back to his opposition of stop and frisk when he was running for mayor. and being here, and not just here for the wake yesterday and the funeral today, but going back a few weeks to the very public memorial site in brooklyn sorry, sara, i am sorry to interrupt, but i want to tell you that the family and the widow and the father of wenjian liu just exited the funeral home. keep going, i apologize. no, that is okay, dana. the days after were emotions very raw where the members of the community where where the members of the community had marched in the community had marched in the protests and they said this is not the time to criticize the mayor. there was a scene from the memorial and i witnessed it and it was so incredibly powerful where a woman came with a sign for officer ramos young son who said that your father had nothing wrong and she was having a hard time to tape it to the brick wall and officer came up to put it up on the wall and they put it up together and it was representative at the mood of the memorial, because it was interesting at the same time that some of of the police unions were criticizing the mayor, and now a few weeks remove d removed from here at the funeral here at the wake, and i heard many officers some of them former nypd who work in other departments in other states who had come back for this say, look, it is a political issue, and also a very personal issue for many of the officers but this funeral is not the place for that. and that comes from this feeling that last week at officer ramos funeral, the pictures, the the photographs of the nypd turning their backs on the mayor, those were incredibly powerful pictures, and they changed the narrative of that day away from the funeral, and away from the celebration of his life and towards a more political issue, and people did not want to see that happen again today. and sara i have been in those situation, and it is physically difficult to move around but have you talked to any of the officers who defied commissioner bratton and turned their backs nonetheless? well shgs, i have not, but dana, from where i am, it was not a whole lot of them around certainly mot the numb lyly not the numbers that we saw last week and in the crowd of about 450 where i can see and count from where i am standing maybe 50, or maybe even less, and then some of them were not nypd at all, and they were officers from other jurisdictions who wanted to make the point that they stand alongside the nypd on this issue, but it wasn t a majority and it was not half. it was a few. and their commissioner william bratton, when he made this plea for them not to do this today, he said look it is not a mandate and i won t discipline anybody over it, but i am asking that this day not become about this conversation that we are having right now, that it become that the narrative stay with officer liu and his family and the nypd and like i mentioned before when i talked to officers who came in from out of town i did get the feeling that one of the reason ss that they wanted to come was because they wanted to show that solidarity and they wanted to show that they do feel the support of the nation and while this is a personal issue, a lot of them felt that it was an issue for today. thank you, and that is the case for today. for the viewers who are tuning in we are looking at a cold and rainy day in new york city, but one that is not deterring the thousands is of police officers and dignitaries who have come from around the kuncountry to pay their respects to officer wenjian liu who lost his life and killed on desemcember 20th along with his partner rafael ramos. there was an incredibly moving funeral service that included speeches not just from the dignitaries such as the mayor as we have been discussing or the police commissioner, but hi father who spoke cantonese, and did not speak english, but you did not need to speak that language that to understand the sorrow and the pain of losing his not only son, but his only son and his only child, and then from his widow who he was married to for two months who called him her best friend her soulmate and somebody who really gave his all for not just her and his family but for the city of new york. i want to bring back tom fuentes, and as we look, we are as i mentioned, we heard the ceremony and seeing everybody leave. what we are waiting for right now is for the casket of wenjian liu to exit the funeral home and make its way down to what the reporters on the scene have been describing over a mile of people just lined up on the procession route. what are your thoughts as we areing at this now? just how moving and solemn and the emotions of the officers are of everyone who is attending this. and you know if any good came from the last two weeks of the funeral s funerals, it is that when you have got to know officer ramos and the family better and officer liu and the family better you realize that they are not just people but great human beings and great people and the things they stood for, they are the best that our society has, and they are police officers. it makes me proud to have been a police officer and fbi agent and 36 years sworn in both positions, and makes me proud that i was one of them. tom i have seen you on our air talking about a lot of really, really horrible things unfortunately over the last couple of years, but this is personal for you, i can tell. this is so thank you, for doing this and you are bringing a sense of what it is like for those of us who again didn t have the honor to serve can understand. i want to go totoer errol louis and tom verni, and what are your thoughts? well listening to e dedetek detective liu s family and his wife speak, and like you said you don t have to speak the language to know the raw emotion they are channeling. it is unbelievable tragedy that many of us can t wrap our heads around what took place a couple of weeks ago. i know that as seen earlier on cnn there were a number of nypd officers that did turn their backs when the mayor was speaking, and then when the police commissioner came up to speak they turned back around, so it is important to note that the officers out of respect for commissioner bratton did turn around and for the entire funeral were faced forward. the only time that some of them did turn around is when the mayor was speaking. what do you make of that? well, you have to remember that the police are not allowed to strike here in new york. there is a law that prevents them from striking. they are working pour or five years without a contract, and aside from the political rhetoric that mayor de blasio has come out not only as mayor, but as a candidate when he was running for mayor, and also his comments after the no true bill in staten island for the eric garner incident he has come out in a very anti-nypd specifically set of rethetoric. and the officers, you can t not take that lightly, because this is somebody that you are working for, and aside from the fact ta they are working for years without a contract which in and upon itself is ridiculous, this is the only way that they have a chance as a group to have a silent protest to show their discomfort with the mayor and disagree with him. they are basically giving him a no confidence vote is what it is coming down to. they don t have any confidence in the mayor to prept them in a favorable light to represent them in a favorable light, and it is not just based on the perception but on the mayor s actions in the last year or two. ander roll and errol, you have covered the police department for many years, and new york city and does this strike you as more raw and intense than in the past? well, it is unusual, and not more raw. anybody who was around in 1992 when 10,000 cops essentially rioted on the steps of city hall sort of stormed the building and caricatures and that was a time of very high crime. crime is at a historic lows and as tom points out, there are underlying workplace issues that need to be resolved and not by bill de blasio s making and he has been there for one year and five-year no contract is something that he inherited and trying to e negotiate, and for this department to be as upset as they are speaks to the difficulty of changing the culture of the very large, very respected and very proud organization and there is no question that the change is endorsed by the citizens of new york. they voted in bill de blasio for a reason. this is not some side plank or side print in his agenda, because it is central for what he ran on, and he won in overwhelming votes to make change. and speaking of mayor de blasio blasio he did speak in the funeral in the last hour. i want to play a little bit of what he said. let s listen. detective wenjian liu was a brave man. he walked a path of courage. a path of sacrifice and a path of kindness. this is who he was. and he was taken from us much too soon. i want to go back to you, tom. as a former member of the nypd and as a detective, when you hear the mayor say that does that make you feel more feel better a about the mayor and the tension that we have seen thus far that he is trying hard obviously to mend the fences? well, it is something that i have not seen in quite a while. i honestly, you know, me, personally, and i think that i speak on behalf of a number of officers, and i can t speak on behalf of the entire department of course but i don t really put a lot of, you know credibility into the words that he came out with. i mean, he is really trying to back pedal as best he can. i think that he knows that on a lot of levels that he, you know spoke, i h think, out of turn and especially after the grand jury made their verdict out of staten island and you can t take back what you said and you can maybe offer the retraction and come back and say, listen maybe i spoke out of turn and maybe not saying that the entire nypd is a bunch of racist storm trooper, because that is what he was saying. what happened in staten island had nothing to do with the race, and it was an arrest of a career criminal who chose to resist arrest and the officers used physical force to arrest him, and unfortunately result ed ined in that man s death, and that is in part of itself a tragedy. you won t find any officers glad that person died but it is certainly not the result of the officers looking for, and quite frankly, the officers that day were enforcing quality of life law has the mayor and the city council are out there wanting them and demanding they enforce. turning away from the politics for a moment and back to the solemnity of the moment. what we are seeing now, and waiting for casket of wenjian liu to come out, and while we do, i want to come back to remarkable and the brave eulogy that his widow, and the two were married for two months gave during the funeral ceremony. listen to this. i thank you for sharing this moment with me. with us. with our family. to reflect the goodness of his soul. and the wonderful man that he is. many of you know as joe, especially at work. but to me he is my soulmate. tom, back to you in new york. you know, while you are on the beat, i m guessing as tom fuentes here in the d.c. studio said to me a short while ago, your family is on pins and needles everyday even though things like this don t happen very often, and you are always in the line of fire and it is your duty and what you do? yeah, i had a full head of hair when i started the police department and for those who have seen me it has taken its toll and i did 22 years in the nypd, and i was a beat cop, and community policing and so the concept of the communeity policing that some people have talked about and maybe trying to e restore here in new york i think it is a fantastic way of policing neighborhoods. it absolutely is. and when it is done correctly, and the nypd unfortunately have lost 7,000 or 8,000 police officers since the time of 9/11 and so the physical bodies that you need to conduct that, it is going to be taking some fancy footwork to reassignment personnel to do that the, but that would be a great way to do that to reconnect with the communities in the city. but either way, whether you are doing the community policing or the narcotics tails or chase canning after gangsters, any time you are walking around, you are a walking target. so until you finish the stint that you are slated to do whether it is 20 or 25 years in the police department and until you get out and retire do the families breathe a sigh of relief that you are finished and do your duty. i can imagine. miguel marquez, back to you at the scene. we are looking at the two flags from the color guard, and the ceremonial and now they are going up so perhaps we are going to be seeing the the casket coming out soon. but miguel, it is cold can and rainy and still packed with people there. they are not going anywhere, and this is a solid blue mass that want toss to show the support. the rain has been going on, and it has stopped now shgs, and the trumpeters have come out so we expect taps will be played soon. there were a number of things that we learned in the service. the the mayor gave two examples. clear ly clearly he spent a lot of time with the liu family in the last couple of weeks. clearly a man who loved to fish and when he got a big fish he loved to share it with with the family. and two was the call he went on and there was a call of a man who had fallen and he spoke chinese and when they needed help he would be called in and the man was on the floor and he didn t want to get up or move and liu spent hours with this man and turned out that it was a guy who was elderly and just wanted some company, and liu was more than happy to play along and help this guy up, and those tiny things. and this is a guy who studied accounting but he wanted to become a cop. and he did. bill brotton, the police commissioner spoke about being a cop. he came to the profession late, but the pool was just as strong as someone like brill bratton who joined very, very young. perhaps the most telling sign of this family and the remarkable life was his cousin who said that we didn t call him wenjian but we called him joe. this is a family that arrived here 20 years ago from china and has become fully american family as we wait for the only son of this family wenjian liu to make his way out of the funeral home here in brooklyn. dana. absolutely heartbreaking to watch and think about. and while we are weight, werare waiting, we want to go to another portion of the funeral home and hear from the new york police commissioner bill bratton and hear what he had to say. officer liu believed in the possibility of making a safer world. all cops do. it is why we do what we do. and it is why we run towards danger when others run away. we believe in the possibility of keeping disorder controlled. we believe in the possibility of a city free from fear. pretty emotional from him, and at times in watching his speech even somebody who has seen a lot in his many decades on the police forces across the country look like it was hard for him to sort of keep it together understandably given the gravity of the moment and the speech that he had to give for the loss of his rank and file. we are looking at the color guard and the ceremonial moment when wenjian liu s casket comes out of the funeral home to begin a procession in what the re reporters on the scene there have described as remarkable a mile long the sea of people and not just police officers around the country, but the everyday average new york citizens out there, and sara is out there with the people. sa sara, as they are ready for the moment for the processional and what are you hear prg the people hearing from the people on the street there? reporter: dana i am here with a group of toronto officers who have collected badges from a group of the people here who have handed them out the the members of the community and not souvenirs, but handing them out as a remembrance of the day, a it was a really good moment. it was a great moment to see the officers first of all from so far away and not even part of this country and the united states interacting with the members of the community who came here from far away places who are here to just pay their respects and as they wait along the procession line, they are exchange, and the worlds are colliding. it was a sweet moment. mostly you know officers are standing out here. and it is driz canzling on and off, and they are waiting along a packed processional line, and they are waiting to pay their respects. off officers are here from all across the country, and more than 1,100 came in on jetblue for free, but i would venture to say that i would take the guess to say that there are more than 1,100 officers here from out of town. i have seen so many with my own eyes from departments across the country, and not just the officers are here dana and something that i have noticed is that i have seen patrol cars from as far away as ohio. i saw a group of sheriff s deputies on motorcycle who clearly came here from cincinnati out of state, and that is showing that they drove all of this way on the motorcycles to be here today. i have seen the patrol cars from other states as well not as far away as ohio, but there were a group of motorcycle officers from new jersey today traveling in a group. so we have seen a lot of nuggets that sew that this is really a community event, and when i say community i mean not just new york but community of support and community of within new york as well but a lot of moments today that are indicative of why people want to be here. the events in new york in the last couple of weeks, that is part of it. there is a feeling that they need to come here to show support because of the recent events here. that is clear to me. a couple of the officers here who talked to me from out of state and had been members of the nypd prior to leaving the state told me that they wanted to make it clear that nypd is very diverse, and very diverse and large department. they didn t buy into this idea that there is you know widespread racism. they wanted to come to show and stand alongside their follow officers officers, and show their support because of that reason, and i have to say it is something that is very clear as we stand outside here today. dana, finally, i want to say that it does appear that things are going to be moving along here shortly. as you look down the sea of blue i want to make it clear that this is a very, very long procession line because there is nearly a mile worth of police officers standing here filling up more than half of the street so that they can be here and witness officer wenjian liu s final drive to the final resting place. they are waiting here to pay their final respect ss. dana? and is sara talked about the solidarity as they say, and they all bleed blue. that is very clear in watching these pictures and these images. solidarity is not just about the local police from new york and around the country, but the federal law enforcement. james coalmymey is the drekirector of the fbi, and he spoke. i was not lucky enough to know detective liu. but i have listened to other people talk about how deeply he cared about being a police officer. and former fbi officer, tom fuentes, why so important for the director of the fbi to be there to speak? well to let people know that it is an international issue, and he represents the federal law enforcement, and it is more than the thin blue line, because all of the international partners stand together the as well. the fbi is a conduit the rest of the world through the legal at ta attache program, and they can get assistance from each other, and it is a worldwide fraternity and not just within the ud or within the united states or new york. and errol louis, as you look at the pictures the perception of outside of new york city is a rough and tumble place, but when push comes to shove, the new yorkers get together and they hold hands and really there for each other. i noeknow a lot of the people that we are seeing in these pictures are cops from out of the city but errol, as somebody who has covered new york city, and been a resident of new york city for a long time i m guessing that is probably not a surprise to you? oh no not at all. the thin blue line is pretty thick and long as you can see. i mean, i should mention that my dad is a retired nypd inspector, and my older sister is a retired detective. there are lots and lots of people who have lots and lots of close relationships to the cops. new yorkers are extremely proud of the nypd and it is an important institution in the town. one thing that is important, dana, the protesters who were doing a lot of the black lives matter one of the slogans and organizing all over the country, and they inspired sort of a not quite backlash but a parallel movement, and there were lots of people who have been out there doing their own marches in surprising number of jurisdictions all over to the country, and from massachusetts to utah, to seattle and everywhere in bewean, these sort of spontaneous citizen rallies in sup role for policing. and one of the central democratic institutions in our country. and as you said your father was or is on the police force, and what is your opinion in regard to the national racial tensions? well, i called up my dad, and i call him up anyway but i asked him about some of the events and what he thought, and he said that he was surprised that the cops had turned the backs and so forth and he read that as them being ma nup lated by the union relationship in a way that would not have happened in the day. it is fine to be angry with the political leadership and fine to do something about it but you don t do it when you are in uniform, and not because it is the thing to do. these things tend to work themselves out, and his perspective which is valuable is that it ebbs and flows, and the cops get upset about one thing or another, and whether it is creation of the civilian complaint review board which is a hot button issue a generation ago or appointment of the new inspector general which is a recent fight and court fight or the stop and frisk, and now body cameras and other procedural questions, and it is something that plays out in the public, but it is not supposed to divide the city. as i mentioned here in new york and you have it right up there on the screen there is not so fundamental of a breach that the whole town is going to fall apart. it is the kind of dispute that comes up every so often do we need to tweak it a little bit. my friend tom mentioned eric garner as a career criminal and they would say, he is a guy selling loose cigarettes and trying to scratch outt a living on the wrong side of the law, but you give that guy a ticket a warning. you don t swarm him with six cops and end up killing him, and these are the indkind of fine-tuning questions that need to go on at the the community level. that is where this gets solved andt not so much the politicians. no question, err oshgtsol and as with we await the casket coming out of the funeral home, i want to get back to the human element here as we are seeing a young man slain in the line of duty. and i want to go to what his cousin officer liu s cousin said about him speaking at his funeral earlier today. he was the most caring and thoughtful cousin that anyone could have. he would go out of his way to make sure that we were always happy and taken care of. he brought pride and honor to our family. he was a role model for many. myself included. and will continue to be. oh. that is just incredible and poignant. miguel marquez is standing outside of the funeral home and he watched the entire funeral, and you are watching the the scene right now, deskribcribe it. oh, it is always tough to take take, the drum corps has just come up from a side street. they have specialized vehicle that they have filled with the flowers from inside of the funeral home with a badge of the city of new york police department and the drum corps may be the most chilling of everything that will happen today as they march down the street, and the steady beat and the steady dirge as they pass the line of blue. several members from inside of the funeral home have come out, and we expect that things have expected to get going here fair fairly soon. it is very, very difficult to watch. impressive in the mile or so that i can see, all blue.
. raul castro, the president of cuba will also give a news conference in his country that will happen at noon eastern time. of course cnn will continue to follow this breaking news throughout the day. thank you for joining me today, i m carol kos toll low. @this hour with berman and michaela starts now. hello, everyone. i m john berman. and. and i m michaela pereira. history is being made at this hour after more than a half century of tension and diplomat diplomatic silence between the u.s. it s releasing alan gross from prison after five years. a series of genuinely breathtaking developments. cuba is also releasing a u.s. intelligence asset, a spy, who s been locked up in cuba for more than 20 years. in return washington is freeing three cuban spies convicted in 2001 of espionage. that is big in and of itself. it all seems part now of something much, much bigger. president obama will announce major changes in u.s. policy toward cuba. officials calling them the most sweeping changes since the embargo began more than 50 years ago. cuban president raul castro is planning a similar announcement next hour on cuban tv. the big question at this hour, does this foreshadow a return to normal relations with the island nation, a country that has been a thorn in washington s side since fidel castro took power back in 1959. cnn is covering this from all angles. we should mention we re the only u.s. network on the ground in cuba. patrick oppman is in havana. michelle kosinski joins us from the white house. and justice reporter evan perez and global affairs correspondent elise in washington. elise, i want to begin with you because you have the details of this series of remarkable developments here and at the top of that list we ll have an embassy. the white house wants to open up an embassy in havana. that s right, john, and the u.s. and cuba having these talks for some time. not only about alan gross and the cuban five and u.s. intelligence asset but how the u.s. and cuba can normalize relations. you ve seen talks with u.s. and cuban officials over the last years and the u.s. sees reform on the island. so the u.s. will be opening up an embassy in havana. right now there s an intrasection. the u.s. will also see about getting cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list which has really been a thorn in cuba s side because it was more of a political move. cuba hasn t been seen as having any terrorist activity for years. president obama set to announce with these wide ranging initiatives, really everything he can do outside of the existing legislation. so we re talking about a relaxing of travel restrictions for americans that means a general license to travel practically anything of terrorism, a resumption of banking between the u.s. and cuban banks, americans k use credit cards on the island. the president also going to announce expanded commercial and export of sales and goods to cuba. and officials say this is not a reward to the cuban regime, the regime of the castros but more an acknowledgement that the embargo is not working and that if the u.s. wants to encourage further reforms on the island it needs to engage more with the cuban government and people. they say they will not let up on human rights and actually as part of this deal cuba has agreed to release some 53 political prisoners from a list provided by by the united states, allow more access to the internet for cuban people and allow more access to political prisoners by the international cross-examination and united nationss so as we said for a president that said he wanted to come to office to engage cuba many years ago, that s happened in fits and starts, certainly alan gross has been an impediment to that this will be a landmark deal for president obama that will shape his foreign policy. so many pieces and parts to this. elise labott, thank you so much. not only will our president be speaking about this announcement today around noon, cuban president raul castro is expected to make an announcement on the relations with the united states. that s expected to be at noon as well on cuban tv but is this the beginning of some mending between cuban u.s. relations. we just learned that president himself spoke with the cuban lead era wul castro yesterday to finalize this arrangement is is coming into playwright now. we want to go live to patrick oppman in havana, cnn is the only u.s. network with presence in cuba. patrick, a wul castro, the president, the leader of cuba is expected to speak in just a little while. what is he expected to say? we ll probably hear more details about this historic agreement came through. just came through in the last 24 hours. i understand from a pr company that works for alan gross s attorney, some of the ticktock of what happened here. alan gross was only in formed yesterday that he would be freed and i m told that he didn t know what to respond. there was just stunned silence when his attorney scott gilbert called him on the line to tell him he would be leaving cuban prison after five years. then this morning a u.s. government plane arrived here at a military base in cuba to pick up alan gross. on board is his wife judy, his attorney scott gilbert and as well three u.s. congressman senator jeff flake from arizona, patrick leahy from vermont and congressman van holland from alan gross s home district in maryland. these are three congressmen who have been very much involved in winning his release. then they take off after 8:00 a.m. and we re told at 8:45, the pilot gets on the intercom to tell alan gross that they are now out of cuban airspace. alan gross stands up and is i m told unable to talk he s so overwhelmed by emotion then he calls his daughters and his first words to his daughters are i m free. you can only imagine their reaction at this long nightmare concluded for their father. where do u.s. cuban relations go next. i m joined by a long time diplomat here in havana. they restored semi relations and you are the chief of the u.s. intersection, what do you think looking at the future of the relations between these two countries? i would con garage late this administration. this was the right thing to do at this critical moment. why critical? because the torture report had just come out damaging the image of the united states. now we re going into the hemispheric sum mid-in april. the united states is the only country now that does not have full diplomatic relations with cuba. time to change that. one of the marks, i think, in the hemisphere against the united states is its outdated cuban policy. so we are now moving, the administration is indicating we will move to change our cuba policy to engage with cuba. that s exactly right thing to do. thank you so much. this policy obviously will affect thousands of people s lives as u.s. and cuba who move closer together. of course it s obviously have a major impact on the life of alan gross returning to the united states and the lives of three cuban intelligence agents who are also flying back to the united states. alan gross we re told will land at andrews air force base at 11:30 a.m. this morning, will have some words to the media and then will go back to being with his family trying to get his health better. i m sure that s causing such a good sigh of relief from every family member knowing he s on his way. thanks so much patrick. we appreciate it. i want to turn to somebody on the phone from madrid tud, spain, former governor bill richardson is on the phone with us. your reaction to the news that this deal is being made for the return of an american to american soil but also about the potential for new relations with cuba. well, this is very personal for me because in 2011 i went to cuba to try to get alan gross out and i was unable to. they wanted the five cuban political prisoners, the five spies in the u.s. and the u.s. neither country was ready to do it. so this is huge. alan gross was the impediment for the u.s./cuba relationship improving. so now that that has been cleared away i think president obama is looking at his legacy and saying in lat tip america getting rid of this irritant of the u.s.-cuba relationship where we re not dialoguing or speaking is going to happen and it s going to result in the resumption of diplomatic relations. it won t do much with the trade embargo because congress has to improve softening of the trade embargo. this was the helms-burton act several years ago that basically said the president doesn t have the executive authority to do this without going to the congress. but this is huge. this is the legacy stuff for president obama and my hope is that we zero in on this is good but cuba needs to improve its human rights position, needs to release political prisoners, allow the internet in, allow more freedoms there. hopefully this is going to happen with this release, but this was the linchpin, the release of alan gross for the u.s. that s the news we were hoping to get so the relationship with cuba would improve. you brought up congress here and, governor, you ve had just about every job imaginable, both political and diplomatic so you know the complications here. people say it doesn t seem likely, the congress itself will lift the embargo. there are democrats who oppose this move today. the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, bob menend menendez, put out a statement that said president obama s actions have vindicate it had brutal behavior of the cuban government. what s your reaction to that? there s going to be opposition in the congress. i don t think there s any tway congress will relax the embargo in any way so what the president is doing is taking executive action that he can take on his own. like opening up an embassy in cuba. he can do that i think the exchange of ambassadors is very big and i think senator menendez and a lot of cuban americans rightfully are saying, hey, you know, let s make sure that there are significant human rights improvements not just in the treatment of political prisoners but tourism, transit of cuban american families between havana and the united states. that has improved but for the american people if they open up travel to cuba you re going to see a real travel tourism bonanza because a lot of americans want to go to cuba. i think you ll see a lot of cubans wanting to come to the u.s. so i think this is a very good legacy foreign policy initiative for president obama. it would be interesting to be among cuban americans right now. the old generation, the newer generation. while we still have you, one of the things we have from u.s. officials are trying to stress that this move was not to in any way seem as though it was propping up the castro regime but if we want change in cuba we have to try a different approach. i m curious what your thoughts are there. well i agree. the cuban trade embargo is not working. it didn t improve relations and the cubans were using it to solidify their own leadership. it was also major american relations with the u.s. so this is a good foreign policy move also. the cubans wanted to get off the terrorism list, that didn t make sense because they were cooperating with us on homeland security issues. but i think on a lot of other matters like environmental issues, coastal issues relating to protection of climate change and the seas, it opens up enormous areas, potential areas of cooperation. i think again the congress isn t going to take much action. i think the administration should open it with senator menendez, with senator rubio, with the cuban americans that have really stood up for human rights issues and see if there s a way that there can be a dialogue on americans deciding and being key players in how the relationship with cuba improves because they re patriotic americans and i m for this move and for this relationship improving but it s going to cause a lot of anxious in the cuban american community in miami and new jersey where senator menendez is from. this is a time to reach a dialogue and have a discussion about what human rights initiatives, what openness of privatization of the cuban economy. but this is good and i hope president obama and president castro have a chance to meet in panama in april and maybe this can be expanded, the improvement in the relationship. all right, governor bill richardson, former ambassador, former secretary, thank you so much for being with us to provide your vast insight to what s going on here, this momentous day. president barack obama in less than an hour set to deliver a statement on u.s. relations with cuba. a sea change, really, in u.s. relations with cuba. he ll deliver that from the cabinet room. let s go to the white house now. michelle kosinski 1 there. do do you have a sense of what the president will say and any sense at all of why now? this is momentous. you used that word. the fact that this will open things after such a long period of time. the fact that the white house is calling this the beginning of full diplomatic relations with cuba. a debate. anyone who spent time in miami and has been a part of that community knows that this is a debate to that goes on everyday. something will come up in the news and people will debate whether the current policy is working and castro needs to be punished versus it s not working and something more needs to be done, a modernization of regulation relations. that s the tack the white house is taking here. so we haven t heard from the president yet but we heard a background grieving from seen your white house officials who laid out the entire scope of this. they say the focus is very much still on human rights and democracy but the past policy wasn t doing it. they feel like this will be a more efficient way to press those needs in cuba. it s shocking. the fact that cuba just convicted an sentenced alan gross to 15 years in prison for fomenting dissent, in 2011 and now today we re seeing this sea change as you called it. i was going ask you very quickly in terms of what we re expecting in terms of backlash, because we know the last time we saw a prisoner was lease was suggest bergdahl being released and the white house faced criticism for that. this is not just a prisoner release, there s a humanitarian release, there s also a change, a call for change in policy in a long standing 50 year battle, if you will, or at least a freezeout there will be backlash. it s fascinating. we re hearing from members of congress, some cuban americans. we re hearing from people within the state department who said they felt shut out of these negotiations that started last spring. the question is why weren t they involved more? so the white house did answer that question in this background briefing saying the focus for now is not on what congress can do in the future. although they would like congress to take action. possibly lifting the embargo fully ultimately but they said for now the focus is on what the president can do and this is something he s wanted to do for a long time. and kriept some bipartisan support, the fact that there are members of congress on a plane with alan gross, one a republican, that doesn t seem like much in the grand scope of things but that s what the white house is citing as an example of some bipartisan support it s interesting to see what this will do because when you talk about the backlash, what is expected with cuba in this. they just convicted an sentenced alan gross, how are things going to change so much on their end to satisfy the united states right now? the white house is saying there is an open there. there is talk of reform and this is really the beginning of reform. what they laid out is what s expected of cuba for now is they ll release 53 political prisoners and the white house said many of them have been released. they need to open up communications including internet connectivity, telecoms and include the red cross. there s much, much more to this in terms of what s going to be done. there is so much to this p, including a life altering moment for one man alan gross. we believe this is the plane carrying alan gross right now on the ground from our affiliate wjla. alan gross left cuba this morning. what s remarkable is we were listening to here from our correspondents. he learned of his imminent release yesterday. he has been over time very frustrated with the hopes of being released he is said to have said his good-byes. so the fact that this happened today i m sure he had no words. on board this plane with him democrats and a republican. patrick lahey. chris van hollen, a democrat from maryland alan gross s home state and also jeff flake, republican senator from arizona who is really been supportive of more normal relations with cuba. it shows the bipartisan support but there was also bipartisan opposition to this. we are waiting to get our first look at alan gross. he s 65 years old. he s been in prison for five years. he lost a tremendous amount of weight and as mikhail la was saying, over time he s been angry not just at cubans but there were period of times where he was not happy with the united states for the efforts to get him back. on board the plane was his wife and i can t imagine what that conversation would have been like. consider that for a moment. the man thought he was going spend the last of his days separated from his family. to know that today he is sitting behind the woman he chose to marry, the woman he loves headed back to american soil, i can t imagine the range of emotions he s feeling. one of our producers had a chance to speak with his attorney, scott gilbert. this is what he told our producer. alan gross was planning on enjoying a good scotch. he hasn t had a drink in five years. he wants to spend some time with his family and enjoy a little private time with them. also said he wants to have a good cigar which there will be plenty of americans will tell you is plenty of ironic. but it shows you these were not easy days for alan gross in prison in cuba. there are 50 years of history, 50 years plus of history at play with what s happening today and that s all changing, it seem, today, not just for alan gross but also in the relationship between the united states and cuba. it s filled with complicated tumultuous history. i want to bring in alfredo duran. he bought in the bay of pigs alongside u.s. interests there. he was captured, he was jailed in cuba for 18 months. alfredo joins us live from miami. as you look at this today, not just alan gross being returned to the united states but also what is apparently a change in the relationship between the united states and cuba, what are your thoughts? well, first of all, i m very happy for mr. alan gross. the cuban government released alan gross because he was very ill and alan gross they certainly didn t want to have the responsibility of having alan gross become very, very ill in cuba or pass away in cuba. and so that s why they basically released him. i don t think that there s really very many very much of a meaningful negotiation that had to do with any future relationship between the united states and cuba. there s very it will that will the president can do by executive order in relations to cubaor than possibly start full diplomatic relations. most of the relationship between cuba and the united states has it goes to foreign policy is in the congress hands in the helms-burton bill. unfortunately, the case of cuba is no longer has to do anything with foreign policy, it has to do with political elections in the state of florida and new jersey, electoral politics, presidential politics because of the amount of electoral votes that the cuban american vote in a close election can make the difference. alfredo, i don t want to interrupt you but we re looking at live pictures from joint base andrews, andrews air force base as many people know it outside washington, d.c. we believe that was just the plane carrying alan gross that landed. it does seem likely perhaps this camera is following him. we can t get a good look at it that he may be in that group of people stepping on to u.s. soil for the first time in five years. is. we wanted to stay with the this picture, alfredo, we ll get back to you in just a moment. this is significant. five years of imprisonment in cuba, not expecting to be released home. many people had tried in vain. we heard from form er governor bill richardson had added his voice to the calls to be released. and this happened in very short order, today an exchange. that was humanitarian release but we know there was another u.s. spy that had been held in cuba for 20 years. he has been released as well. there were political prisoners within cuba released as well in this deal today. alfredo, if you re still with us, you were a prisoner in cuba many, many years ago. alan gross, who we believe we just saw land on american soil, he was just released from a cuban prison after five years. there are critics today of this deal who say that the obama administration just made a deal with a repressive regime. a regime that is not changing. how do you react to that? i think that the obama administration, what they did is what every administration of the united states has an obligation to do and that is to try to get whatever person is imprisoned outside of the united states for political reasons to get them back here to the country. the obama white house did the right thing by protecting an american citizen. especially one who seems to be ill. so i congratulate the obama administration for having the courage to do what they re obligated to do and he s done it very well. but you say it s going to take more to see substantive change within cuba. what is it going to take? you know, the only thing that i can forecast for cuba is that nothing is going to change until we have a generational change in cuba. while we have the four or five historical figures of the mountains in cuba still walking around in havana you re not going to see any significant change. you re going to see a generational change, the young cubans, if you take a look at the central committee of the communist party, about 80% of them are under 55 years of age, that ear the ones who will change the future of cuba. they want a better life, they want a more stable government, they want political freedom, they want human rights and that you don t have in cuba right now. alfredo, thank you so much for being with us. we just saw some live pictures right now from andrews air force base of alan gross returning to the united states after five years in a prison in cuba. he was flown back this morning, just told yesterday that he was coming back. he was said when the airplane made it up in the u.s. airspace he was said to have stood up and was at a loss for words, he then called his daughters and had an emotional conversation with them. it s amazings to man this man s first taste of freedom. whatever you have to say about what is happening today, an historic moment today. the change in the relationship between the united states and cuba for one man today life just changed do dramatically. he is home safely. he did not think this was going to happen. one man who met with him in prison, in cuba, congressman sam farr, a democrat from california. he joins us by phone now. congressman, you met with alan gross back in may. when you spoke to him then, do you think he ever saw this day coming? no, in fact, he said that he would not spend his next birthday incarcerated. so it was obvious that he was either going to kind of do something really drastic. he was very upset with both countries. sort of felt let down by our country and certainly upset with the cuban government. he knew that this was a political move by the cubans to arrest him even though he didn t break the cuban law. but to hold him for 15 years in prison, i don t think he ever thought this was going to happen. you can see by the excitement i mean, everybody s excited about this. this is a failed policy, diplomatic relations allow you to negotiate, all the things that people are concerned about about cuba, their violations of human rights and lack of freedom in the press, these are things that can be donor mall channels just like they have been done with vietnam and china and so on. so i m really excited that our policy is becoming mature. becoming mature. it sounds like in order to broker this deal it sounds as though it sort of took an international effort. we ve been giving word from some of our reporters that the canadians and the vatican, pope francis, have been involved in facilitating and brokering this deal. pope francis encouraging president obama in a letter and in their meeting this year to renew talks with cuba. we re just showing once again the moment so many people have been watching and the family was waiting for, the moment when alan gross, his plane touched down on u.s. soil at andrews air force base with his wife and several elected officials on board the plane, people who had been working to secure his release. a tremendous moment there. we know the president has been active in this, congressman farr. i m curious what you re expecting and hoping to hear from the president when he makes his comments at noon today. well, i hope he ll also point out that we re the only country in the hemisphere that hasn t had normal relations and that we ve been isolating ourselves in the world, it s been an embarrassment. we have a summit of all the presidents meeting in panama in march. all of the other countries insisted cuba be invited to the next summit. we had to take some action and i m really proud that he did. i think this is a step in the right direction. as i said, it s mature and all the other concerns that we have now can be dealt with during normal channels and i think it will really allow the american people to interact with cuban people and what better way to build democracy. congressman, though, you served in the u.s. house of representatives the u.s. congress does not seem likely to reverse m t embargo. the president will try to normalize some relations, there will be an exchange of embassy. we ll have an embassy in the united states and cuba will have an embassy in washington, d.c. which is remarkable in and of itself. do you see the politics inside zmong there s bipartisan opposition in some quarters. the strongest opposition in congress is a few members who are cuban americans who have made it their political mission to block any progressive action. they re going to have to stand between the american people and the president on this one because i think american people and the faith-based communities in this country, the trading groups, the business groups will all be behind normalizing relations and so if congress members can t get reelected, they ll listen to the people and i think the american people will respond overwhelmingly in favor of the president s action. we re seeing a closeup picture of alan gross on the side of your screen. there s an image that was taken there of him disembarking from the plane. a lot of people have noted that he has lost a substantial amount of weight during his time in prison in cuba. losing some 100 pounds. there was talk of some medical issues that he was having. it really is something to see, john, when you see this happening. we ve seen a few returns home in the last little while of americans. we saw some other home comings of people and you try to imagine what you would be feeling in a moment like this. we just got a statement from senator jeff flake who was on the plane as he was coming home with alan gross right now. let me read you this statement outloud. it says this is a wonderful day for alan gross, for his wife judy and their family. the manner in which they have endured this nightmare is worthy of praise and admiration. it was an honor to be with alan as he touched down on u.s. soil. you can see the still image of that. after more than five years in a cuban prison. when i visited alan last month, he expressed the hope his ordeal might somehow lead to positive changes between the united states and cuba with today s significant and far-reaching announcements i think it already has. indeed, the life of this man, alan gross, changing drastically today. in just a few minutes 30, minutes from now, president obama will announce major changes in the u.s. relationship with cuba as well. we want to turn to justice reporter evan perez who covered the relationship extensively when he was a reporter for the wall street journal and ana navarro who is, we should point out, a resident of miami, great perspective to get perspective from both of you. evan, you have been covering this issue, this ongoing issue for some time. i m curious about your thoughts and what it will feel like big picture wise. michaela, i ll tell you one example of how bad the relationship between cuba and the united states was in 2009 when president obama took office. i remember meeting the head of the cuban intrasection here in washington and we were talking about hented to get good chinese food and i suggested going to a restaurant in northern virginia in one of the suburbs and he told me he couldn t go because he s not allowed to travel outside the beltway they had restrictions on how far cuban diplomats, cuban intersection is the de facto embassy, at least until now when the president changes this with his executive action. so that gives you a sense of how bad this relationship was. the diplomats couldn t even travel to get chinese food outside the belt way. they couldn t travel 25 miles outside of new york city. beginning last year those restrictions started end iing. we ve come a long way and what is driving this, i think, is demographics, frankly. the fact that you vent v younger cubans that don t feel the embargo has worked. you have older cubans who still support it but younger cubans don t. also since 1980 and the demographic population of students who have come here, they re economic migrants, not because they re fleeing political oppression, i think ana and i would disagree on this but that is also driving this. this is why the obama administration feels that it s safe to do something like this. ana, evan was mentioning where the support for this move today will come from but there is also fierce opposition as well you are living in miami right now. what reaction are you hearing there? well, i have been communicating since the early morning with cuban american leaders, with the cuban american congressional delegation, both democrat and republican and evan is right. he and i do disagree on some of this. i disagree that the demographics have changed as much as some would like us to believe they ve changed. they ve changed some and after this recent election there were mistaken reports that cuban americans had voted majority for charlie crist and they haven t. in fact, if you take a look at florida, there s not one, one statewide elected official that does not support the embargo. the one congressman, democrat cuban american who did support the embargo just got beat like a drum, his name was joe garcia, by a new generation of cubans, carlos corbello who is in his 30s and supports sanctions on cuba. so i think you won t see any change on the congressional opposition from the cuban american front. and though they are they can be very partisan at times on other issues, when it comes to the cuba issue, bob ben thmenen ted cruz, ileana ros-lehtinen, mario diaz-balart, they are one front, they are a solid wall. what you can see here is there s still a fierce discussion and a fierce debate about u.s. relations with cuba. all i have to say is think about when the u.s. senate needs to confirm the president s nominee to be the first ambassador cuba. that will be fascinating. ana navarro, evan perez, thank you so much. in just a few minutes, the president of the united states will speak in the cabinet room and announce these major changes in the relationship between the united states and cuba. the biggest changes, i think, that we have seen in well over 50 years since the embargo and a series of other measures were imposed over time. joining us is wolf blitzer. wolf is going to cover the president s speech when it takes place just after noon. i wonder if you can put this in context, wolf. the historical impact of this in this country and in cuba and what this means? it s an historic moment. this is a most significant development in u.s./cuban relations going back to the revolution and cuba back in 1961. it s been clear to me from the very start of the obama administration this is precisely what the president wanted to do. he wanted to normalize relations, establish full diplomatic relations between the united states and cuba. as cuba, by the way, has with i think all of the countries in north and south america right now. but there were several problems along the way, certainly political problems as ana navarro just pointed out. a lot of domestic opposition not only from republicans but from some democrats as well. at the same time, there s been growing political support for an improved relationship between the u.s. and cuba and that is about to happen with the full normalization of relations, diplomatic embassies, not just an intrasection, there s a cuban interest section here in washington, a u.s. interest section in havana but now there will be ambassadors in both countries. there will be an opening of tourism, of trade. this is really a significant change. the president has wanted to do it but the imprisonment of alan gross was a serious impediment. now that he has been released, obviously that opens the door to what s going on. notwithstanding in the, way certainly, john and michaela, the final two years of his administration. he doesn t have to worry about politics anymore, getting reelected right after the midterms. he thought this was a good time to normalize the relationship. that s what he s going to announce at the top of the hour. wolf, stand by for a second. we want to bring in senator marco rubio who joins us and get his reaction to all of this going on. obviously this is going to have a deep impact, a very personal way this is going to affect you as a cuban american and also as a lawmaker in the state of florida which is has a very, very large cuban american population. give me your reaction, personal and professional. on the issue of mr. gross, i m happy he ll be back with his family. he never should have been in a cuban prison. he wasn t a spy. he was trying to provide a telecommunication equipment to a small jewish community there and he s been a hostage for five years and the cuban government almost allowed him to die in captivity. but these other measures are truly outrageous and counterproduct i have. here s why. the president will increase the amount of remittances to the island, open up the banking sector and open up the telecommunications sector. what are the cubans going to do? they ll release 53 political prisoners who can go to jail tomorrow if they decide to take up the cause of freedom and democracy and allow the united nations to monitor conditions on the ground a little bit more closely. that s it. no democratic opening. no freedom of the press. no freedom of organization or assembly. no elections, no political parties. no democratic opening at all. for me you talk about personally, the issue that i care about in cuba is democracy. i want the cuban people to have freedom and democracy and then they can choose any economic model they want. nothing that has s happening here will further that cause. on the contrary, it will set it back. it s a lifeline for the castro regime that allows them to become more profitable because they control every sector of the economy and allow them to become a more permanent fixture for decades to come now and the cuban people are further away from democracy today because of this. senator, as we re speaking we see pictures on the other side of the screen of alan gross returning to the united states. we saw a picture of him seeing his wife in cuba before he got on the plan to come back to the united states. there are two obviously very relieved people right there. i want to pick up on your point about u.s.-cuba relations. because there are people, senator, who will argue with you. if the goal of all the measures that have been in place for so long, the united states measures against cuba, have been regime change, have been to change what s going on in cuba, fidel castro well t-cas trows have been in power for more than 50 years now. so whatever efforts to change things didn t seem to work. well, first of all i would say that you talk about the economic conditions in cuba being so miserable, cuba trades with every country in the world. the reason why they have an economic disaster because their leaders are incompetent and their model of economics doesn t work. we don t have economic sanctions on venezuela and their economy is almost as bad as the cuban economy because they follow the same model. as far as it not working, it s the fundamental misunderstanding of why the embargo still matters. the embargo is leverage. the sanctions are leverage. raul castro is 80 something years old. from a biological standpoint his days are numbered and that there will be a change in government in cuba and i think that will be precipitated by the continuing response of their sponsors in caracas. the question now is what kind of government takes over. for us the embargoes serve as leverage to go to that new government or whoever their leaders are and say we are prepared as the law says in writing to open up economic relationships and diplomatic relationships with cuba but you have to move on democratic changes. and that s not been done here. we ve just lost a significant part of our privilege to make that happen here in the foreseeable future. not a single democratic concession. and by the way, this idea that the fact that there will now be more american products available in cuba will bring about democracy is absurd. you can t point a single example in human history or recent history especially where more economic trade has led to a democratic opening. china is as repressive as any government in the world and they ve got full economic relations with the united states. i m curious what you re hearing from people in your state. you ve obviously been on the phone hearing from folks in your state, leaders there, freedom the cuban american community. what are you hearing from folks? well, look, i mean, the among many of the exiles there s a resistance to any sort of change whatsoever in policy. they would share many of the concerns i ve just outlined. there are people in the cuban community who share our goals of bringing about democracy and they believe that if somehow there was more economic trade with cuba that that would somehow create the conditions for an uprising or a dramatic change. i just don t know where there s ever happened when has tourism ever brought about democracy in this government controls every aspect of life in cuba, every aspect of life. every single poisy change that the u.s. has ever made towards cuba. whether it s more travel, more person to person contact, more remittences, they have manipulated every single one of them and thelma nip lapt this as well. this is a small island of 13 million people with an apparatus in place for over 50 years. it controls every aspect of life in cuba and it will control this as well. they will use all of these changes to their advantage. they will never allow any of these changes to undermine their grip on the island. senator, you obviously have a personal and professional interest in what is happening in cuba. quickly, were you briefed at all before this morning that this was happening? no, i was aware of it last night but not from the administration. i chose not to divulge what i knew because i didn t want to endanger mr. gross release. obviously there s a human element to it. i was briefed this morning at around 10:00 a.m. by secretary kerry but i had already known about many of these chings and, quite frankly, i was expecting them. for weeks i ve been asking tony blinken who s been confirmed by the senate specifically about these topics and and his answers nebulous at best led me to believe that something was in the works and i think, of course, it s par for the course for this administration to announce it the day that congress finally recesses. i think that was not by accident, either. senator, i want to ask you one question about your opinion about policy toward cuba because you seem to say to me two things that are a little bit in opposition. you say the embargo and sanctions in our measures towards cuba haven t worked because everyone else has been trading with cuba all along but then you say it s leverage in how we deal with cuba in the future. can you have both things at once? can you have it be leverage and can you have it not working at the same time? i think you misunderstood my first point. my first point was people often say the cuban embargo is hurting the cuban people and my answer is that s absurd. the cuban people get theoretically by-products from any nation on earth. the reason they don t have those products is not because of the cuban embargo, it s because of their government being incompetent. now, the u.s. embargo is leverage because cuba cares. we re the united states. we re not some small country halfway around the world we re the most powerful country on the planet, we re their closest neighbor. their number one priority of the cuban government is to affect u.s. foreign policy towards cuba and you see this consistently reflected in the people they try to influence in academia and the editorials that have now been a steady stream of editorials in the new york times and the folks that are walking around the cabal here and the members and colleagues of mine that are constantly being reached out to by the regime. -to-try to get them on their side for these changes there s a reason for that. they know if they can open up u.s. markets they will have american companies investment in the status quo in cuba. and what you re going to have now is american companies doing business in cuba advocating here for us not to do anything to disrupt the status quo because it s good for their bottom line. and i know that to be true because last week we passed a bill here that supported the democratic aspirations of people in hong kong and my office got multiple calls from companies that do business in china asking us not to do it because they have an interest in the status quo. the same was true with ukrainian sanctions and people that have business deals with moscow. they want this not to do too much on the sanctions front. now you ll see that with cuba as well. senator marco rubio, we appreciate your time. we know this is very, very close to home. i guess we have here in studio rabbi eli abadi. he visited alan gross when gross was in prison in cuba. great to have you. first of all, your reaction to knowing mr. gross is now back home on american soil? well, i m thrilled and very excited to hear that he s freed and what a wonderful time and occasion for him to be free as we celebrate the holiday of chanukah where we celebrate the miracle of the oil and this is truly a miracle that alan gross has been freed. you spoke to him, you met with him in cuba, correct? yes. what were his frustrations while he was in prison there? i m sure he was shocked and infuriated at the cuban regime but did he feel like he was getting the support he wanted and needed from the american government all along? i tell you, when i visited him almost two years ago together with a cuban american loyal he was frustrated at the cuban government but he was more frustrated at the american government at that time. at that time he was trying to refuse to meet with any american official because he felt that the united states has abandoned him. he felt that he was laying in a prison in cuba without much support for from the united states. what is your sense about what changed then? because this all seemed to happen fairly quickly. yes. well we have been myself, james barren that will and a few other people, we have been pressing the united states government to sit down and negotiate with cuba his release. whatever the price cuba was asking for, that is for the politicians, really to decide but for us it was really to pressure the u.s. government to sit down and negotiate. there were so many ways that the united states could really extend a hand to cuba for the release of alan gross and i sensed in the last few weeks that something might be happening and so this morning when i heard i was really very thrilled about it. how is his health now? we know he had threatened not to eat. at one point last may he said he didn t think he d have another birthday in cuba. well, if you remember when i was there, i m a physician also and there was a claim he had cancer and he wasn t feeling well and he lost weight and i examined him as a physician, the cuban government allowed me to do so, i read and saw all of his medical records. at that time he was quite healthy. he had lost 100 pounds but then he lost it not only because he did exercise and was on a diet that he himself imposed. now i don t know exactly how he feels except what i hear, that his arthritic pain is preventing him from walking well, that he only sees from one eye. i just saw him going down the airplane, he seemed to be walking fine so i m happy about that. but i think it was more importantly depressed, more emotionally than physically sick and that is because he could not see any light at the end of the tunnel. rabbi, we appreciate you coming in and telling us about your experience meeting with alan gross who is home back on american soil with his wife judith and will be heading to his home i m we know the president will be speaking a short time from now. raul castro, the president of cuba will be speaking. alan gross, we expect, will be speaking. this is a day that a lot of people thought they would not see for a long, long time, if ever. we re going to turn it over to wolf blitzer who s going to take us to the president s big speech. wolf? hello, i m wolf blitzer in washington. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. only minutes away from a major announcement from the white house. president obama about to declare an historic thaw in u.s. relations with cuba. and it begins with a prisoner swap. you ve probably been watching cnn live right now of the american contractor, alan gross. he has just arrived outside washington, d.c., joint base andrews after five years of captivity in the communist neighbor only 90 miles away from the southern tip of florida. alan gross was escorted on the flight to andrews by his wife, judy, two u.s. senators and a united states congressman. we understand cuba has also freed an unnamed u.s. intelligence source who s been held in cuban prisons for more than 20 years. the u.s. has released the three remaining members of what were called the cuban five, they were convicted in 2001 of espionage. the other convicts are back in cuba already. they ve served most of their sentences, all of the cuban five are now back in cuba. the policy changes, by far the biggest and most dramatic changes since washington clamped an embargo on cuba way back in 1961. they include right now more travel for american passport holders, greater opportunities to visit cuba, tourism, greater export of american goods and services. americans will be allowed to bring cuban goods home in limited quantities. cuban expatriots will be able to send more money back home, all leading to a full restoration of full diplomatic relations. the u.s. announcing there will be full-fledged embassies, an american ambassador in havana, a cuban ambassador here in washington. not just diplomatic interest sections but embassies and all that means a normalization of diplomatic relations, in other words. cnn is covering these seismic developments as only cnn can. our patrick ottman is the only reporter there. elise labott is standing by live. alina machado, jim sciutto, evan perez and our white house correspondent, jim acosta. let s go to havana first. patrick is on the scene, the only u.s. television correspondent in havana. tell us, patrick, what s going on right now because clearly this is such a dramatic development and we have learned for the first time in about 50 years there was a major phone conversation between president obama and raul castro, the president of cuba. reporter: yes, that s absolutely unprecedented. the two leaders would not only speak but talk for 45 minutes and hammer out the last details of this exchange of prisoners. we re told this morning that alan gross was picked up by u.s. government plane carrying u.s. congressmen, his wife, judy, his attorney, scott gilbert. alan gross was only told yesterday that he was going to be freed. after his attorney told him by phone the news that he was going to be freed, alan gross was speechless. he couldn t believe it. he left havana this afternoon around 8:a.m. when he was told they had cleared cuban airspace. he rose from his seat and was unable to talk he was so emotional. then he phoned his two daughters. his first words were, i m free. he landed at andrews air force base a little while ago. he s going on now to try to recover the health that was so badly damaged by five years in cuban prison. but there s a much bigger story here, which is a loosening of decades-long restrictions. cubans are still finding out about this basically from u.s. media that s here. they don t have easy access to the internet or regular access to channels like cnn. and raul castro is due to address the nation here any moment now. the cubans still haven t been told by the official state media that this very important change is taking place. they have to let this change sink in, something most people here never thought was going to happen, which is the u.s. if not lifting the embargo, finally loosening some important restrictions that have kept these two countries divided for so long, wolf. the president of cuba, raul castro, i take it he s about to make a statement on television to the cuban people, the president of the united states, president obama, he s about to make a statement. only moments away from both of those statements. this is pretty extraordinary for raul castro to be going out and announcing to the cuban people probably almost exactly the same time that president obama is announcing to the american people and the entire world what s going on. set the scene for the raul castro announcement. reporter: well, i don t think anything has happened like this probably since the cuban missile crisis where basically you have a u.s. leader and a cuban leader addressing their people at the same time. raul castro does not make regular addresses to the cuban people or spontaneous addresses. usually when he talks about the united states, it s very combative terms. so he ll have to really explain this in a way that will line up with some of the hardline rhetoric that we re so used to hearing here. the loosening of restrictions, the u.s. returning these three intelligence agents. they re not people you ve ever heard of very often in the united states but they re famous here in cuba. after gonzalez, there s been no greater government campaign to return a cuban citizen from the united states than these jailed cuban spies. so they will be greeted as victorious heroes who have come back. of course, many of them faced years more in u.s. prison. that s been raul castro s number one priority. now he ll have to explain to people who are used to hearing u.s. talked to in terms of enemy, exactly how this is going to work, what the new relationship will be and as well, this is a country the cubans blame everything, its terrible economy now the cubans will have to soften that hard line a little bit. as well probably take more ownership of the disastrous state of their economy. as some of these restrictions are lifted, increasingly the cubans will no longer be able to blame the u.s. for the problems here in cuba. a dramatic and historic moment in the u.s./cuban relationship, the most dramatic moment in improved relations going back r50 years. patrick oppmann, the only u.s. television correspondent reporting for us from havana. we ll be anxious to hear what the cuban president, raul castro, has to say. yesterday, the president of the united states and the president of cuba had what was described as about a 45-minute to a one-hour conversation. that was the first direct presidential communication between the united states and cuba going back probably 50 years, a major discussion. they choreographed, they worked out all of the details that are about to take place beginning with the president s statement, president obama s statement only a few moments away. elise labott is joining us, our global affairs correspondent. you brought the story earlier this morning here on cnn. i think for those of us who have watched u.s./cuban relations over the years, this is historic. it s a great, great moment if you want to see this improvement in the relationship. it opens up the doors. but there will be severe criticism. reporter: that s right. certainly members of congress, die-hard anti-cuba lawmakers who think this is not the time, that certainly while the castros are in power that there s no way that the u.s. could open up to cuba. what the administration is saying here with all these landmark remarks the president will be making is, listen, the embargo isn t working. if we wanted a regime change in cuba, that s not happening. and they notice there have been some modest reforms in cuba, such as allowing more freedom of expression, more political dissidents are being freed from jail. the cubans are releasing 53 prisoners from a list provided from the u.s. there s more economic opportunities for cubans to own property and things like that. so what the u.s. is saying is this is not a reward for the cuban government. but if you want to increase those changes, if you want to open up cuba, that means you need to engage more with the cuban government and the cuban people. so to that end, the u.s. will be opening an embassy in havana and cuba will be opening up a formal embassy here. this is really the most sweeping overhaul in u.s. policy towards cuba since the embargo was imposed. easing of full diplomatic relations, including embassies and ambassadors between the united states and cuba, a sea change, as we say. alina machado is in little havana in miami for us. how are cuban americans there reacting? reporter: we ve seen a mixture of the reactions. the one thing that everybody agrees on is the fact that it s a good thing that al gan gross was released. there s no debating that. where things get dicey here,
president-elect has nominated ardent obamacare critic tom price, a republican congressman from the state of georgia, congressman price is very tight with paul ryan, this is according to the house speaker himself. here is speaker ryan on local talk radio. what i m excited about is tom price who is a very close friend of mine. tom price is one of the architects of replacing obamacare, of fixing health care. he s a surgeon, he knows how the law works and he s been the most passionate advocate for patient-centered health care reforms that i ve seen in congress and i m really excited he is now going to be the quarterback, the point person in the new administration on reforming health care. so that was speaker ryan and as donald trump is adding to his cabinet, he s also making headlines again for one of his tweets. this is what he wrote nobody should be allowed to burn the the momentum our campaign got in the last two weeks of the campaign i think was largely due to the fact that those obamacare premium and deductible hikes were going out to millions of americans. i think it frightened them as well as it should have. so i m glad president trump president-elect trump is delivering with his pick to repeal and replace obamacare. it was a job killing monster, we are going to have sensible health reform going forward. i m looking at angela out of the corner of my eye shaking her bed. but before we get to that point it s fair to point out the criticisms because one question is how will this affect women s health specifically. planned parenthood is worried about that because we know he has talked about planned parenthood saying the clinics have been involved in what he calls barbaric abortion practices when the supreme court ruled on gay marriage last year congressman price said it was not only a sad day for muarriag but a destruction of our checks and balances. as a democrat, how do you feel? there s so many places to go with tom price, he s definitely smart. he s been a member of congress for some time. six term congressman. he s known for knowing the rules really really well. he was the guy that republicans went to for motions to recommit because he knew the floor procedure rules better than anybody else. the challenge is, as a doctor for him to be opposed to children s health insurance program, for him to want to privatize medicare which we know is a baseline conservative princip principle, it s also very, very challenging. he has voted to defund planned parenthood so i talked about the picks donald trump making are scary to me. what do you do with people who have insurance? 20 million people. we re not talking about two. and this actually has been a job-creating measure. the affordable care act as has created health i.t. jobs, a substantial number of health i.t. jobs. so you ve heard talk about repeal and angela that s i m not done, steve. i m not done. a lot of talk about repeal and replace and they got stuck at repeal, brooke, you re talking about folks who did that 60 plus times in congress. i know and i hear you but he has proposed multiple years in a row the empowering patients first act so at least this is something for republicans. they have someone who has specifics and recommendations as an m.d. but i hear you. steve, go ahead then i want to move on. i think regarding don t take my word for it that it was a job killing monster, take bill clinton s word for it who told us that on the campaign trail somewhat unwittingly talked about how punitive it was to small business. he called it crazy. and when you talk about defunding planned parenthood as being scary, what i think is scary is the fact that the taxpayers pay for an organization which a great many americans find reprehensible and that sells baby parts and that was a major part of our that s been debunked. come on, steve. we won come on, steve. we won on that message. karen, set us straight, please. if i could get to what i think is the main point is that many times during the campaign it was unclear whether donald trump himself understood obamacare really worked. this is not the case with tom pris. he very much does understand it. he understands the mechanisms and obviously trump has picked somebody who is going to be willing to do something that it s unclear trump himself has done which is sort of climb inside the machine and look at the gears and see how it s working. let me just stay with you, karen, because when you look at tom price and you look at elaine chao, you look at the potential picks for state, today s meeting with senator corker, the dinner with governor romney. do these folks sound like how else do i say this? like drain-the-swamp people to you or no? well, elaine chao is married to the senate majority leader. mitch mcconnell. she will be the second wife of a senate majority leader to have been both labor secretary and transportation secretary for your trivia viewers. but it does suggest that in r if donald trump, for instance, does want to proceed on infrastructure spending, there are probably worse picks he could have made in getting this thing through congress than basically having the wife of the senate majority leader being in charge of spearheading it. so she s certainly an insider. but she s an insider who will give him leverage in getting things done he wants done. steve, let s move on. we played the sound with manu raju just chasing senator mccain down the hall way on the trump flag burning toss them in jail or lose your citizenship tweet and i have to ask and also senator cruz echoed the same sentiment that no, of course no one likes watching a flag burn but it is protected under the first amendment. is this the future for republican senators to be answering for every little tweet, comment, moment that the president will make? no, and it doesn t have of the as senator mccain just explained to us. i rarely disagree with president-elect trump, i happen to disagree here. i don t think we need new laws or amendments to the constitution. i also disagree with hillary clinton who while she was senator voted for jail time for burning the flag. i think people who burn the flag are reprehensible and should be ignored and dismissed. speech is about words, we tell toddlers use your words rather than lash out. i would say that to anyone who wants to protest against either mr. trump, against the united states generally, use your words but i don t think we need new laws. angela, what do you think? i agree with steve here. secretary of state. can we read into any tea leaves and the fact that mr. trump s wife and governor romney s wife will be part of this dinner. is this maybe a congratulatory situation or i m going to buy you dinner on the way out, thanks for playing. i m going to swear off from trying to read tea leaves at all. all you know is it increases the drama, the suspense, maybe at the end of it he ll hand a rose to somebody, i don t know. but he has certainly increased the drama around this particular section. thank you for the laugh. karen, angela and steve, thank you all very much. coming up, let s talk about what s happening in tennessee. have you seen these pictures? dangerous wildfires and smoke coming precariously closely to the dollywood theme park, to hundreds of buildings, homes already being damaged or destroyed. at one point flames threatening a popular aquarium with some 1500 animals trapped inside. we ll have an update from someone who works there next. also, a tragic scene in the mountains of colombia. members of this up-and-coming brazilian soccer team among those killed in this plane crash but, incredibly. several people managed to survive. we have their story coming up. if you have medicare all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. (sfx: park rides, music andoooh!d sounds) when your pain reliever stops working, your whole day stops. (sighs sadly) try this. only aleve can stop pain for 12 hours. plus, aleve is recommended by more doctors than any other brand for minor arthritis pain. aleve. live whole. not part. mapping the oceans. where we explore. protecting biodiversity. everywhere we work. defeating malaria. improving energy efficiency. developing more clean burning natural gas. my job? my job at exxonmobil? turning algae into biofuels. reducing energy poverty in the developing world. making cars go further with less. fueling the global economy. and you thought we just made the gas. energy lives here. when a moment turns romantic, why pause to take a pill? or stop to find a bathroom? cialis for daily use is approved to treat both erectile dysfunction and the urinary symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently, day or night. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and 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 it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any symptoms of an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis and a $200 savings card. my husband out the door there was trees on fire in front of where we were at so we tried to get to our car and the smoke was so bad we couldn t, we covered our face with wet towels. widespread panic around gatlinburg, tennessee, as 14 wild fires are raging across the area. the mayor says half the city has been impacted including his own home. the pictures tell the story. look at this thick, thick smoke. flame engulfing more than 250 homes and businesses around gatlinburg, gutting some of them already. thousands are forced to leaf, just look at the destruction left behind in this eastern tennessee mountainside town. this is a resort town, a popular tourist destination, gone. one man barely escaped, speeding what what looks like just a road engulfed in flames. watch. go, go, go, go. [ bleep ] these tires. go. i can t see. just it will the [ bleep ]ing gas, you re on pavement. [ bleep ]. it s on fire. [ bleep ]. he could barely see in front of him. nick valencia is there with us. you ve been in the thick of it. tell me where you are and how bad it is in that neck of the woods. reporter: brooke, we re outside what is effectively the staging area for residents and vacationers in this area that have been evacuated. we re seeing a lot of drained faces, people that have been through the unimaginable, a lot of people are still trying to process what they went through. some haven t slept. you talk about those that barely made it out alive. we re joined by two of those people who were asleep when police started e eed banging on door. you guys are convinced had cops not knocked on your door you might have died last night. how are you doing? well, we re doing great now. still pretty emotional. shook up. we know if they wouldn t have woke us up we would be dead. deni . reporter: denice, what happened when the police knocked on your door? what was going on? we started up out of the bed, cops banging on the door telling everyone to evacuate and we was just able to grab just whatever we could and got out. reporter: you grabbed what you re wearing right now essentially. and got out. as soon as i looked out the window to see who it was there was fire rounding us. reporter: what are you going through right now? describe to the viewer here, they see the images and flames and what is a vibrant, beautiful area decimated. there s just no words. it s hard to comp hence. well, the biggest thing i would like to say, we had a friend, her husband passed away a couple months ago and she just made it out but her house is gone. so really i feel more sorry for her than anyone. reporter: you have a lot of friends in this area, i know you guys are going through a lot. what are you thinking when you re getting out of there, mark? well, when they put us in the back of the patrol car, there was fire out both sides and i mean it was crossing the street and we didn t think we d make. it it was scary when you have flames all around you and everything. embers. you don t know what ember will fly at you. they were landing on the car. everything. it was scary. what did you do last night? where did you sleep last night? did you sleep at all. i didn t sleep at all. i got a 20-minute nap. that s about it. i doubt i ll sleep tonight. reporter: we re outside here in what is the staging area and two minutes ago we saw a lady coming out of here bawling, crying, holding a dog. she d just seen her home. are you trying to get back? what did they tell you about going back? we ve heard a few different stories, we re thinking more like two to three days but we ve heard up to five so we re not sure yet. we re not sure if our place will be there or not. i don t know. reporter: if it isn t, at least you have each other, you re engaged and you have something to look forward to. we ll start all over fresh, we might as well say. reporter: denice and mark, thank you for taking the time. thank you, brother. just a slice of life here outside of gatlinburg, brooke, just hard to low pressure to what those individuals went through. the worst is other. that s the good news. last night those hurricane-force winds, the low humidity contributed to the intensity of the flames that started in the great smokey national mountain park. now the wind has died down but the smoke is very thick in the air and firefighters are expecting to host a press conference a couple hours from now where hopefully we ll get more details about what happens next in this community terribly hit hard by the wildfires. please thank them for us. it happens like this, not even know if you have a home to go home to. i cannot imagine. nick valencia, thank you very much. cnn has also learned 1500 animals tripped at ripley s aquarium are now safe so with me on the phone, ryan desere, he s the regional manager of that aquarium. ryan, i m an animal lover and we ll get to your animals in just a second but i want to talk about humans like you, your employees do you know how ef-affected you all are or your homes by these fires? thank you for asking that question. that means a lot, honestly it does. the answer is we re doing our best, some staff we haven t been able to contact, either they weren t at work or in the area. moirs have left this kind of part of the state for a while. the reason we re having some issues is cell phone communication is very bad in the city right now so it s hard to you can t even get on facebook and do anything like that so we were having issues with that however by and large we have an employee page and everybody that s checked in is in good shape. a lot of our employees houses are in peril. i know at least one did lose her home last night and that just came across there and we re really thinking of her and i would like to say just to point out those folks that are bat blg the fire, the first responders out there, they are amazing, they have done a job i can t even begin to imagine under really horrible circumstances. at one point wind gusts to 93 miles per hour at my home so i can only imagine what they were dealing with. thank you for mentioning them. you are 100% correct these men and women are putting themselves in harm s way. looking at these pictures, i m glad you ve been able to be in contact with some folks but as far as the animals, ryan, are they okay? i think we saw video shot from you so you can really see and feel that smoke at the aquarium. that was yesterday and nobody really knew what was going on. it was early in the morning and the winds were just starting to pick up. i had just gotten off a phone call and walked upstairs to our plaza and see what was going on and that s when the video was shot. so we weren t sure of any circumstances. but we could feel it, the animals are okay, we re fine. no problems at all. we were worried about them last night i would probably say with certainty that we were the last ones in the city and our half dozen marine biologists we have there and support personnel were forced to leave by police escort and that was it was the right thing to do on their part but certainly their safety was par mount to us and they had to go and then we were the first ones back in the city today and largely thanks to the police efforts to allow us back in. we continue to thank them for that, us being able to get back and forth to that aquarium is primary. ryan, thank you for hopping on the phone, you have a lot more to do so i ll let you jump off but just look after yourself and your employees and those animals as well. ryan desear at the ripley s aquarium of the smokies. let me read the statement. this is from dolly parton, this is the neck of the woods where dollywood is right there. she has said this i ve been watching the terrible fires in the great smokey mountains and i m heartbroken. i m praying for all the families affected by the fire and the firefighters who are working so hard to keep everyone safe. it s a blessing my dollywood theme park, resort and so many businesses in pigeon forge have been spared. that is tennessee. let s talk about ohio. horror at that campus in columbus at ohio state. the somali immigrant, the 18-year-old who attacked his classmates there reportedly ranted about the treatment of muslims in facebook postings. we have more on him and more on the police officer who stopped him. plus, president-elect trump tweeting this morning he thinks flag burners, american flag burners, should go to jail or lose their citizenship but that s not exactly what the u.s. constitution says. why did he tweet that in the first place? let s discuss coming up. i work round the clock. i want my blood sugar to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. tresiba® ready tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i want to trim my a1c. tresiba® ready tresiba® provides powerful a1c reduction. releases slow and steady. works like your body s insulin. when my schedule changes. i want something that delivers. tresiba® ready i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i miss or delay a dose, i take it when i remember, as long as there s at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, it lasts 8 weeks without refrigeration. twice as long as lantus®, which lasts 4 weeks. tresiba® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don t use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. don t share needles or insulin pens. don t reuse needles. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which may cause dizziness, sweating, confusion, and headache. check your blood sugar. low blood sugar can be serious and may be life-threatening. injection site reactions may occur. tell your doctor about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins, like tresiba®, may cause serious side effects like heart failure. your insulin dose shouldn t be changed without asking your doctor. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing. fast heartbeat, extreme drowsiness, swelling of your face, tongue, or throat, dizziness, or confusion. ask your doctor if you re tresiba® ready. tresiba® ready you tell your inthey made a mistake. the check they sent isn t enough to replace your totaled new car. the guy says they didn t make the mistake. you made the mistake. i beg your pardon? he says, you should have chosen full-car replacement. excuse me? let me be frank, he says. you picked the wrong insurance plan. no. i picked the wrong insurance company. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, we ll replace the full value of your car plus depreciation. call and if you have more than one liberty mutual policy, you qualify for a multi-policy discount, saving you money on your car and home coverage. call liberty mutual for a free quote today. at that s liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance. shot and killed by police. he was an 18-year-old transfer student and somali native who emigrated to the u.s. two years ago. he was a legal permanent u.s. resident but police are investigating comments they believe he posted on facebook right before he did this, comments that detail grievances about targeting muslims, in part it reads my brothers and sisters, i am sick and tires of seeing my fellow muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured everywhere, by allah we will not less you sleep until you give peace to the muslims. rosa flores is live in columbus. this is a piece perhaps of his men cal state going into this. what more have you learned about him and his family? brooke, i ve been talking to somali community leaders here, one in particular who has been meeting with the family since this event and he tells me that the mother is, of course, very sad and grieving because of her son but is also worried about the somali community and what this could mean for this community. as you were saying, police are trying to figure out the motive so i asked him ant that. what could drive this young man to do this. he said the suspect s mom describes the day yesterday as something very normal. he woke up, helped the family and came here to school, it was a very normal day until there was a door knock on the mother s door and that s how she found out about her son being the attacker. take a listen. the mother was very shocked and crying for her son and also crying for the somalis, the backlash. she was saying my son is gone but what i m worried about is the rest of the somali community because there could be a collective blame where the community has nothing to do with it. as we all try to understand the why, why would someone do this, i also asked this community leader about possible inspiration, was he inspired by somebody? did the mother know or have any clue or suspicions and the answer is no, brooke. he says the family is just as confused as everybody else. so while the motive is unclear, tell me about the police officer who jumped in and took him down. brooke, he is the hero in this case and in this university. he attended this university and he was interviewed by the university newspaper a while back when he joined the force and one of the things that stood out to me is that he was an engineering student and was so inspired by his work at the public safety office at the university that he switched majors, became a police officer and now imagine the blessings for all of the people that were perhaps saved because he intervened. he was at the right place at the right time. two minutes, is what police say, it took him to stop the attacker. two minutes and for the people around him, they hail him a hero. two minutes is stunning and also the way the university sent that tweet and a text out to the students. it helped after talking to a couple of them. rosa, thank you very much in columbus. just a quick reminder to you, ohio state is holding a briefing at the victims of the attack. that s at the top of the hour, we want an update on how they re all doing. some of them still in the hospital so we ll bring that to you as it happens. next, donald trump is busy selecting top members of his cabinet, wbr id= wbr22080 /> just spotted inside trump tower former vice president dan quayle. this as trump meets tonight with mitt romney. we also just learned who else will be at that dinner. more details coming up next. /b> a leak in the roof. luckily the spider recently had geico help him with homeowners insurance. water completely destroyed his swedish foam mattress. he got full replacement and now owns the sleep number bed. his sleep number setting is 25. call geico and see how much you could wbr-id= wbr22680 /> save on homeowners insurance. attention homeowners age sixty-two and older. one reverse mortgage has a great way for you to live a better retirement. it s called a reverse mortgage. call right now to receive your free information kit with no obligation. it answers questions like. how a reverse mortgage works, how much you qualify for, the ways to receive your money. and more. plus, when you call now, you ll get this magnifier with led light absolutely free! when you call the experts at one reverse mortgage today, you ll learn the benefits of a government-insured reverse mortgage. it will eliminate your monthly mortgage payments and give you tax-free money from the equity in your home and here s the best part. you still own your home. call now! take control of your retirement - today! dinner. ann romney will be attending as well as melania trump. read into that what you like. meantime, a head-scratching tweet from president-elect trump. it reads nobody should be allowed to bern the american flag. if they do there must be consequences, perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail. yeah, that tweet raising a lot of questions, not the least what is this at all related to? i can tell you that declaration was sparked by an incident at a small college in new hampshire. miguel marquez is cnn national correspondent here with what exactly happened there. miguel, fill us in. reporter: well, look, there s two things happening here at hampshire college in amherst, massachusetts. one is that there s a lot of bad information out there as well. there has been reported that all flags across campus have been banned. that s not true. that s a campus building there, the alumni office for ham shire college and there are flags flying there. there is a single flagpole, the main flagpole in the center of campus where they are not allowing the flag to be flown at the moment because the day after the election students at lowered it to half-staff during a protest, unhappy with the rhetoric of the election, unhappy with the election result. the next night which happened to be the very early morning of veterans day student, still unhappy, burned the flag, the president of the college a week later decided no flag on that flagpole until they have a dialogue across this campus to figure it out. this while veterans groups became very upset because the flag had been burned on veterans day, because it wasn t flying at this campus. on sunday they mounted a big protest at the campus and then donald trump s tweet in the middle of this has that has taken what started off as a student protest and turned it into a national conversation. in 1989 and 1990 the supreme court ruled and affirmed you can burn the flag, that is, in fact, free speech and in the constitution. the only thing that could undo that is a constitutional amendment which the government could possibly do but that s an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. where all this leaves hampshire college is that they are having a series of discussions. i happened to run into the president of the college today who said, look, we re talking about this, we hope to have it settled. other officials at the school say hopefully in the next couple days the flag will go back up, students will get back to work and the college here will get back to the process of learning. brooke? miguel, thank you for the setup and the genesis of this. now to the tweet and trump. a number of critics are calling this tweet a bright shiny object. others say it s a red herring suggesting it s a distraction from trump s unfounded allegations of voter fraud or even perhaps a diversion from the cabinet picks he is making right now in his twrransition t become our 45th president. whatever the reasoning, the tweet brings up important constitutional issues about the first amendment and the man to discuss them with is jeff rye to be bin and jeffrey toobin. we ve heard from senator mccain, senator cruz, no one wants to see the american flag burned. of course. it s a deplorable act but you are protected within the first amendment. have people challenged that through the years? i imagine it has a checkered past. it was a hot issue in the 80s and 90s, flag burning. that was a big social issue people talked about a lot but the court settled the issue in 1989 and 90 with these very clear opinions that said as mump as we find this behavior distasteful, it s protected by the first amendment. there have been occasional discussions of constitutional amendments to overrule the supreme court but they ve never gotten very far. and certainly for the last decade this has been a settled issue which is why i think people were surprised by the president-elect s tweets last night. so it would take a constitutional amendment. i m just thinking of i know there are people thinking is there any way or anything, he will be the president, that he could do? he s talked about opening up libel laws and tossing people into jail. if he doesn t like flag burning there s nothing he can do. there s nothing he can do. there s another legal mistake in that tweet which is throw the tweet back up again, please. here let s look at the tweet itself. perhaps loss of citizenship. the supreme court has also said that that cannot bt a penalty for any crime. you can t be, you can t lose your citizenship. you can lose your right to vote, you can lose your freedom by going to jail but you cannot be sentenced to loss of your citizenship which is just another aspect of the legal problems with the tweet but i don t think the president-elect is thinking deep legal thoughts about this. this is obviouslien issue people feel emotionally about even though it s sort of antique by this point. understand kbli so. absolutely and a lot of his supporters i think will be encouraged by this. what affect it has, what meaning it has, why he did it, greater minds than i will have to answer that question. i can t imagine that. like you. even the late supreme courtus antonin scalia who we ve heard trump praise said flag burning is protected by the first amendment. here was the late justice in 2012. burning the flag is a form of expression. speech doesn t just mean written words or oral words. burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea. does this go anywhere from here or riles up supporters and that s about it? you have to tell me what he s going to tweet next and then i ll tell you where he goes from here. i cannot do that. i bet you can t but i think the overwhelming likelihood is this will fade away. and his motivations, was he trying to detract attention away from something? it seems to me his cabinet selections are going as he would like so i don t know why he would be trying to detract attention from them. we re talking about it, four minutes worth, he s the president-elect. jeffrey toobin, thank you very much. no smarter legal minds than you, by the way. coming up, more on this tragedy in the colombian jungle. the plane carrying a brazilian soccer team crashes. more than 70 people killed but miraculously several manage to survive. what we know and this incredible cinderella story of this team. also ahead, we are back at trump tower where major selections for the president-elect s cabinet are being made. we will take you there live. again, dan quayle walking in the building with kellyanne conway. what s going on? you re watching cnn. i m terrible at golf. he is. but i d like to keep being terrible at golf for as long as i can. new patented ensure enlive has hmb plus 20 grams of protein to help rebuild muscle. for the strength and energy to do what you love. new ensure enlive. always be you. for the holidays. before his mom earned 1% cash back everywhere, every time. [ dinosaur growls ] and his dad earned 2% back at grocery stores and wholesale clubs. yeah! even before they earned 3% back on gas. danny s parents used their bankamericard cash rewards credit card to give him the best day ever. that s the joy of rewarding connections. learn more at bankofamerica.com/getcashback. [ that s a good thing, eligible for medicare? but it doesn t cover everything. only about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. so consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, they could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call today to request a free decision guide. with these types of plans, you ll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. join the millions who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. and provided by unitedhealthcare insurance company, which has over 30 years of experience behind it. with all the good years ahead, look for the experience and commitment to go the distance with you. call now to request your free decision guide. the sports world is mourning after a plane carrying this popular brazilian soccer team crashes in colombia in south america killing nearly everyone on board. this accident brings an end to really the cinderella story of this underdog team that has captured the hearts of soccer fans around the world. cnn s senior latin affairs correspondent rafael romo tells their story. reporter: a devastating site. a colombian soccer plane crashed into the town in medellin. the aircraft was carrying 81 passengers and crew, including more than 20 journalists and the brazilian soccer team chapecoense. search efforts have been difficult due to ruggled mountains. chapecoense was on their way to colombia to compete in the first leg of the south american cup finals. the team took a commercial flight from sao paulo, brazil, to santa cruz, bolivia, where they picked up this charter flight. they were headed to the airport in rionegro colombia when it went down. according to officials, the pilot declared an emergency a few minutes before the crash saying he was having an electrical failure on board. satellite images show scattered showers and thunderstorms moving through the area at the time of the crash which would have caused some in-flight turbulence. however it will take some time for investigators to determine the cause of the crash. the colombian air force had to abort their mission to the site due to poor visibility. chapecoense had just celebrated a win last wednesday. the team has been described as a cinderella story, having surprised many with their winning performance in recent years, making it to ninth place in brazil s tier 1 league with. the brazilian national civil aviation agency says they denied the charter request of the low livian la mia corporation from sao paulo, brazil, to medellin, colombia. why? apparently it didn t comply with international regulations. rafael romo, cnn. rafael, thank you so much. coming up next, new faces at trump tower including former vice president dan quayle. here he is walking in with kellyanne conway. we re live outside trump tower at the top of the hour where we know cabinet selections are under way right now. we ll have the latest. also ahead, the 18-year-old somali immigrant who attacked his classmates on campus in ohio reportedly ranted about the treatment of muslims on facebook we have new details today on this 18-year-old and about the police officer who stopped him. i work round the clock. i want my blood sugar to stay in control. so i asked about tresiba®. tresiba® ready tresiba® is a once-daily, long-acting insulin that lasts even longer than 24 hours. i want to trim my a1c. tresiba® ready tresiba® provides powerful a1c reduction. releases slow and steady. works like your body s insulin. when my schedule changes. i want something that delivers. tresiba® ready i can take tresiba® any time of day. so if i miss or delay a dose, i take it when i remember, as long as there s at least 8 hours between doses. once in use, it lasts 8 weeks without refrigeration. twice as long as lantus®, which lasts 4 weeks. tresiba® is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. don t use tresiba® to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you are allergic to any of its ingredients. don t share needles or insulin pens. don t reuse needles. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which may cause dizziness, sweating, confusion, and headache. check your blood sugar. low blood sugar can be serious and may be life-threatening. injection site reactions may occur. tell your doctor about all medicines you take and all your medical conditions. taking tzds with insulins, like tresiba®, may cause serious side effects like heart failure. your insulin dose shouldn t be changed without asking your doctor. get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing. fast heartbeat, extreme drowsiness, swelling of your face, tongue, or throat, dizziness, or confusion. ask your doctor if you re tresiba® ready. tresiba® ready
her next book should be called kate s rights. kristen tate. he was raised by a moose. comedian nathan mcintosh. she will address me as your honor. remi spencer. and even when he googles himself it asks did you meet jimmy fallon? i love that one. let s start the show. donald trump sat down with his likely successor and according to e! news where i get all of my political news during the 15-minute meeting they discussed the possibility of kanye becoming the ambassador of sorts in an he said they are repeating themselves. rather than learning what keeps this country safe and what this job will entail he is meeting with kanye west. he has weeks before he is moving to the white house. and kanye west is a person who repeats himself. he is walt disthee and he is steve walt disney and he is steve jobs and kim kardashian is the best. it is disgusting that you would meet rappers. no rappers. no. but wait, i think that i think trump is he has plenty of time. he is ahead of where other president-elects were, the most in history. he has the cabinet and we will talk about his cabinet picks. he is getting a lot of work done, is he not? he read on twitter that you can get the best taco bowls. and the other one is i looked at his entrance like this wasn t a planned meeting. i know they walked out and made it look good. elvis surprised nixon. nixon was like, screw him, let him up. kanye didn t walk in like he was supposed to be there. he hustled. remember that scene in pee- wee s big adventure and he pretends he is with the old man. that was kanye sneaking into the elevator. they went up and made the best of it. they are similar. pee-wee and kanye? kanye and trump. they have a sense of their ego, right? they are always bragging about things. both of their wives have tried to take their twitter away at points. both of their wives are i will stop what i was going to say. they are what they are. they are both beautiful. yes. you can t not say that. mobile ceo. the w stands for winning. lawmakers in both parties have warned that tillerson could face scrutiny for his long relationship with russia. he ordered him the order of friendship. like most of trump s cabinet they don t have prior government experience and that s a bad thing according to some people. politico did a tally. two generals and two bankers and three business executives. one billionaire philanthropist and zero democrats. sounds great to me. actually there will be two governors in the cabinet. trump is reportedly planning to pick former texas governor rick perry as secretary of energy. one thing i love about perry is he has a clean signature. he prints it and spaces the letters out like everyone should. i say let s make signatures readable. spread the word with the hash tag. i am going to change the way i write. vee more. anyway, before he comes secretary of energy he will have to step down as vanilla ice s dj. the kid don t play if there was a problem yo i ll solve it check out my hook while the dj revolves it rick perry! that s a real thing? that s a real thing. that is a real thing. i think you are too young to remember, but vanilla ice was a rapper. that was a longtime ago. i think perry all of the rappers get in line. i love rick perry. he is awesome. and i love the cabinet that trump is putting together. i am so happy that he is not putting all of these political pukes in his cabinet. we know how government bureaucrats are doing in power. he is putting businessmen in there and people with real track records of experience. community organizers will no longer run this country. and you know, what i do is i love appointees that make liberals more mad. the more the liberals hate the people trump picks the more i love them. i think liberals are a little upset because rick perry was under indictment for the last year. it is a big political horse and pony show. actually a grand jury indicted him. he was indicted for criminal abuse. he wouldn t step down after he was convicted for a dwi. he wanted her to step down and she wouldn t step down. she was threatening to veto legislation. but shouldn t she have stepped down? i thought she should have whether she should or shouldn t have did this man abuse his power in office to accomplish a goal? and when you are threatening vetoing legislation you have to resign that is technically an abuse of his power. it doesn t mean he didn t do it and it didn t mean he didn t violate the laws, and he was under indictment. that was one of the primary reasons that people and not just democrats, but republicans alike are disappointed in this choice for such an important position in the cabinet. i like what is happening. he has the ceo and rick perry for energy. i think we will see a change in the way we deal with energy. do you think? he is the first guy to lead a department and he couldn t remember the name of it. nothing you said is as remotely offensive as that video. i know you don t know him as a rapper, but probably as an uber driver. listen to me. this is the one thing i admired about his transition process is he is creating an environment you can do bu politics. everybody is greeted with a handshake and a smile and it looks like ideas are being exchanged. there has been an exchange of ideas and he is bringing in people from other processes. is that a word? i went to community college. i think i have been here and trump is in the wwe hall of fame. he has hired linda mcman who was the wife of vince mcman. trump and linda mcman have both taken stone cold stunners in front of the large groups of people. there are two people in that building that have taken stone cold stunners. in a few years they will say please, politicians again. politicians. i mean that s it. trump is an an antidote for the politics we have it in the past. what do you think about the award of friendship? with russia? why is it a bad thing if we can work with russia. i don t understand. all. hate is liberals trying to point fingers. that s what this russia talk is all about. it can t just be that. let s say it is and we go to the next story. uber can ban you for being too flirty. the company released new guidelines for passenger behavior. among them, no smoking and no vomiting and no abusive language and no flirting. it is okay to chat with someone else in the car, but don t if they have single and don t touch or flirt with other people in the car. passengers could lose access to the service. new york city s taxi drivers recently released their 2017 calendar. this will really keep me warm in the winter months. look at that. love that pink tank, man. and there is one more. let s see it. put that away. as samantha from sex and the city might say. first of all what were you doing holding what looked to be a dangerous snake? when my book came out we had a show called snakes on the cab and we drove around picking up people in the cab and they would be like we are going to 83rd and second. those were just what if something bad happened? you weren t afraid somebody would jump out? we were pretty careful about who we pranked. more importantly it was shot with go pro s and made it look more ominous than it it was. you could restrain the snake. at least you thought you could. what about this calendar? they try to piggyback on the back of the fireman thing. they realized that they couldn t compete from a sex appeal standpoint so they went with like the schtick. and i love uber decided vomiting is legal. and you can t even smooch with other passengers. like after a date you get the girl to make out with you in the car? not in uber apparently. i thought the rules were directed initially to the driver and the passenger. i had some uber drivers and taxi drivers that get really personal and they want to talk and ask you all kinds of questions. when they find out i m a lawyer they want legal advice. i had a driver hand me a contract and asked me to look at it. no joke. he is like am i really going to get 72 virgins? the good thing about my practice area i can say is at least i can give you some advice. it is good to have you around. it makes sense that somebody who owns their own car and is nice enough to work a few hours on the woke end so they don t have to watch you have sex in it. you think it is protecting the driver? this is her car. this is their vehicle. it is a party in there. i you hose it down. these rules are ridiculous. there is a granny sitting in the backseat and she can get him a smooch on the cheek. no vomiting some glad they told me that. the next time i am in an uber and i feel like i will vomit i won t. can i say this as a cabdriver? i am in favor of the no hooking up code for the passengers. i really am. do people used to get it on in the people hookup, but it is never who you want to see. good looking people have options. they have places they can go to hookup. people say have you ever seen people have sex in your cab? i listened to people have sex. i looked at like two. ugly people have apartments too. there is a weird spontaneity among other people where they throw down with a different level of aggression because they don t feel like they will fall out of the sky again. there are no standards and practices. dot ugly people throw up harder? they do it with more spontaneity. the u.n says wonder woman is too scantily clad. good thing nobody listens to the u.n. undo bird on a woman s access for abortion. and rebels in eastern aleppo have accepted a cease-fire and return it to government fors. the u.n is looking at mass atrocities including the deaths of 82 civilians killed by bombings and executions. the town of newtown, connecticut will mark a grim anniversary today. it was four years ago when 20 children and six teachers were gunned down at the sandy hook elementary school. the victims with i will be remembered with a moment of silence and prayer services. county el month iys are asked not to do any work between 9:30 and 9:45 a.m. that s when the shootings took place. be sure to bundle up in the midwest and northeast. arctic cold is expected to spread. highs in the northern plains and the upper midwest will range from 20 to 30 degrees below average today. i m patricia stark. now back to red eye. for more news go to foxnews.com. the united nations has a campaign for an ambassador for women and girls. not everyone saw it that way. some saw a sexy spokeswoman as sexist. there was a petition. it read a large breasted white woman of impossible proportions in a simmer re shimmery motif. i signed it and said sounds great. if you want to spread your message to men you need that stuff to get their attention. that s the beauty of wonder woman. they see her and find her attractive and then they don t take it seriously and she kicks their ass. they will inspire girls to self-confidence and occupations monopolized by men. let s compare her skateboard skills to another famous u.n ambassador. it was hard for him to track down criminals. he couldn t get out of that mode. that is the difference between him not getting secretary of state. somebody leaked that. jimmy, is wonder woman sexist? if you are getting your self-worth from a ambassador you have problems. there are women getting stoned for reading. they have angry birds. they want to do they will be engaging in this anyway. it seems silly. she is not a real person. since she was an ambassador, do you think it was legitimate? i think it was ridiculous. i think the whole thing was ridiculous. i grew up watching wonder woman on tv. that was linda carter. right. i i remember watching it with my granted mother and twin brother. she was a positive role model. yes she is can scantily clad, but they take it so serious and get so sensitive on these topics. maybe she should wear a little more clothing, but i don t think speak for yourself. i don t think it was a negative role model. she does embody empower meant and gender equality and i think it attracts females and males to the issue at happened. i think it is a shame they had to let her go after two months. that s it. i used to watch wonder woman too, but i wouldn t have watched her unless she was gorgeous. i never liked wonder woman. i liked spider-man. now that the u.n has deemed wonder woman inappropriate i love wonder woman. the only thing i hate more than boring superheros are beurocrats telling us how to live. i say the u.n should get rid of them and she is better than them anyway. they need a transgender depressed overweight woman because that will make them all feel better and month one will have to be upset. they did say they wanted alternate representations of women. i was going to suggest dog the bounty hunter s wife. is she a hottie? she is a big lady. have you ever seen her? she has like arms of truth. you would tell her what happened. jie do you have a problem with do you have a problem with hot women as role models? it is body shaming, is it not? i suppose. there has to be real women. does it have to be a fake woman? uh-huh track tiff attractive women aren t real women? attractive women don t exist and they most certainly do. half time request andy levey. and the red eye pod cast is available now. subscribe on itunes at foxnewsradio.com. ?[t1a live from america s news headquarters i m patricia stark. authorities in boulder, colorado say they are looking at new dna technology that could help them solve the 20-year-old murder case of jonbenet ramsey. the colorado bureau of investigation is about to unveil this new technology and it also taps into a database that includes genetic profiles of more than 15 million known offenders and uh resties. jonbenet ramsey was found dead in her parents home the day after christmas, 1996. president obama signed legislation that will invest $2 billion in cancer research. they give $2 billion to the state to fight opioid abuse. another record setting day on wall street on tuesday helping push most international stocks higher in trading. the dow jones industrials rose 114 points to pull to within 89 points of the 20,000 level. and the s&p 500 index rose almost 15 points to 2271. all markets will be watching today s federal reserve meeting. the central bank is expected to announce the first u.s. interest rate hike since december of 2015. iraqi special forces are making gains against isis fighters in mosul. the military said special forces are less than three miles away from the tigress river that running through iraq s second largest city. and dolly parton is headlining a list of who s who of the country music world on tuesday night. it is a telethon to help those affected by the recent wildfires in the smoky mountains. parton s dollywood foundation plans to give each resident $1,000 a month for six months to get back on their feet. the telethon raised more than $2 million. i m patricia stark and now back to red eye. they held a rally in wisconsin. now we have some clips. trump addressed the recount lead by the green party candidate, jill stein. the recount vote has come back. you know, i called it a scam, but i won t say that because we want to be nice. i refuse to say it is a scam so this way they can t report i said it. he expressed his love for paul ryan. speaker, paul ryan. i really have come to oh no. i have come to appreciate him. speaker paul ryan. where is the speaker? where is he? i tell you, he has been terrific. i tell you, honestly he is like a fine wine. every day goes by and i can appreciate his genius more and more. now if he ever goes against me i will not say that. he took a poll on if time should have a person of the year or man of the year. and in the old days it was called the man of the year, right? now so let me do this. we have a lot of women here and i have to do it. do you mind? would you prefer i will go person of the year and man of the year and person of the year and man of the year. what should it be? i am doing it for all of you politicians. not that we are going to change at this point. would you rather see person of the year? man of the year? these guys are so politically correct. so far i have done that three times and person of the year is not doing wealth. he is having a good time. this is trump at his best. did you see the christmas trees behind him? the war on christmas is dead. we can finally say merry christmas in this country without fear. he did have a sign. it said merry christmas on the sign. yes. he is having a blast. what about the people who booed paul ryan? to nathan s . about trump in wwe, it cements that. that is a pro-wrestling drill. dumping on paul ryan indicative of them not knowing where trump stands with ryan today. they might have read like two dispatches ago where they were not friends anymore. it does change a lot. he said if he disagrees he can go back with me. he said paul ryan was like a fine wine. what do you think he meant by that? well since he has uh nounsed that he announced he never drank alcohol i think he is telling us he has no idea. that s my take. look, it sbt politics. he is not doing policy. it is all silliness. it is sad though. it is like this man is going to run things. you think the thank you things wouldn t be do you think this should be called person of the year or man of the year? it is like a stand up show. the t point is you can t say woman of the year. you sucked me into this. we have to go. does the baywatch movie have too much eye candy? it is the debate you don t want to miss. baywatch is getting a reboot unlike the show. i found it too serious. the movie is all about babes and beaches and bathing suits and having fun. biggie, biggie, biggie i just love your flashy ways. do you see it too? the trailer was released last week and the movie comes out in 2017, but not everyone is excited about it. to the tweets. one woman wrote, are we seriously not over sexualizing women and fronting unrealistic body standards? another said, woi, they have baywatch hipper sexualizing men and women. 1k3 one more it turns out the casual masogany. who knew? the first baywatch is how i got my first break. the people who tweeted that, they voted for trump. they did? it was never it was always in this spirit, was it not? the same people who have a problem with linda carter and wonder woman wearing a pretty outfit are those who have a problem with baywatch. if you watch baywatch you know that s what it is about. pretty people running around with little bathing suits on. if you don t want to see it, don t watch it. baywatch was a worldwide phenomenon. i had the david hasselhoff shorts and the hair. this is a popcorn movie and it is meant to be fun. there is no real reason to get upset. this is a dumb movie. what were they expecting? i have never seen baywatch and i know what it is about. they should make the movie with clinically obese people. it would be a big hit and it would be reflective of our society. you re right, you could learn a lesson. no one going to see baywatch knows what this means. i happen to be writing jokes for one of the original cast members, pam, pamela anderson. oh, the roast. they have no [bleep] idea what is going on in the movie. the problem is we are fighting the wrong battles in the country. no one should care what is going on in baywatch you have bigger fish to fry. that does it for me. i m tom shillue and i ll see you next time. or us.
voters, between the ages of 18 to 34, by 2020 they ll be the largest segment of the american electorate. they re not part of this trend. white millennials will almost certainly not vote for donald trump, young white people. the children. heather mcghee, fernand amandi. we ll be right back here on saturday after joy reid s bonus hour. we ll be here, if my voice makes it. be sure to tune in for that. the rachel maddow show starts right now. do you know that i have magic throat lozenges that cure everything? i ll go right to your office and steal them. they sell them at my bodega. i think they re illegal. thanks for being with us here this friday night, this friday before the election. it s very exciting. i m very excited. when john f. kennedy beat midmanhattan with our rca 501 computer. only one-tent of the total vote is in, we re going to have what we call projections. that s estimates on what the final vote will be in a popular and then what the final vote will be in the electoral college. here s how that projection will be made. the rca 501 computer is connected with nbc s vote gathering equipment up there with you in midmanhattan. down here in wall street, the computer takes in vote totals, punches them out on tape. that tape is fed electronically into banks of magnetic tape storage reels. now, the information can be called up with other information from the electronic console. i think we can call it a wedding of political science and electronic science. it achieves its election results which i ll be reporting throughout the evening by doing some computations. the political equations and the experts tell me to accomplish these equations humanly would take the work of 60,000 clerks. this is richard ardness with the rca 501 computer. it s now about ten minutes old. it puts them out pretty fast. projects the popular vote for president like this. 51.2% for kennedy, 48.8% for nixon. which i believe is the same thing it s been saying all night. the odds it figures i didn t know electronic computers figured odds, did you? no, i ve never heard that before. that was new to me tonight. we may be able to find some other kind of work for the 501 when the election is over. it can compute odds? maybe there will be some other kind of work for that there computing machine after this election is over, fellas. nbc s whiz bang rca 501 computer. it did get the election results right basically, on that election night in 1960. the nbc computer did pick kennedy. i should tell you that abc and cbs also unveiled their own computing machines on their election night broadcast in 1960 and the abc and cbs computers were wrong. both of their computers picked nixon in a landslide. computers have gotten better since then. and they use less tape. when election nights are big blowouts, they can sometimes be a little forgettable. when ronald reagan just rolled jimmy carter in 1980, nbc news called that election that night at 8:15 p.m. and, you know, however consequently that election was in the long run, and it was consequently, no one remembers all that much about the very end of that presidential race let alone what happened on election night. it s when things are close. it s when things really go down to the wire when they tend to get a little nuts and things tend to get memorable. in terms of this race we re in now, the polls have definitely tightened in the last few days. there are people who say that the polls are less useful now at this point in the race than they might have been in previous elections because early voting is so popular now because so many people have taken advantage of absentee voting and cast their ballots already, more than 37 million americans have already voted. so because of that, because such a huge chunk of the vote is in, there s an argument to be made that looking at the early vote totals, that tells you a lot more about who is going to win than looking at polls for these last few days. steve shale out of florida tells us that he thinks by the end of the weekend, 70% of the vote might be in in florida, ahead of election day which doesn t come around till tuesday. election forecasters rely on all the various data they have to work with. they have been moving states from lean democrat to toss-up or toss-up to lean republican. you re definitely seeing the polls tightp in the estimation. the polls and the prospects for each candidate you re seeing those tighten in the eyes of the people who make projections about these things. one very blunt but indirect sign that the election is getting closer is that the markets have been freaking out a little bit. since donald trump s numbers started going back up last week, the stock market has been a little nauseous. and you are seeing this interesting correlation throughout the general election campaign. markets have tended to react negatively whenever things perk up for donald trump. over the last nine days the stock market has been very negative. it has dropped every single day of the last nine days. market analysts are attributing those drops town easiness with the prospect that donald trump might have a shot at winning this election. nine straight days of losses on the stock market is the longest uninterrupted decline in the market in more than 30 years. so from lots of different angles, you can see the tightening of the race. but hillary clinton is still favored to win the race in the end by all the 21st century iterations of the rca 501. at fivethirtyeight.com they re giving her a 64% chance. the new york times gives her an 84% chance of winning. a lot of other analysts make election projections like this and they have hillary clinton s chances of winning higher or lower depending on who you ask. looking at them real quick, the huffington post as a polling aggregator, they ve got clinton s chances at 98%. the prince s election consortium has her at 99%. the professional prognosticators like cook and roth and larry sabato, they ve got the race forecast as either likely democratic or leaning democratic. so there s a range of projections out there depending on the methodology of the different forecasters and what they consider to be the relevant data at this point. but all of the nationally recognized forecasters, all of them, are now predicting that it s more likely clinton will win on tuesday night than trump will win. but if you have been feeling a little tension in the reair, that s real. as we get down to the wire, get down to the very end, in a close race getting down to the very end, we re getting a lot of dramatic news. today was a lot of dramatic legal news. actually today down the line uniformly was a good day of legal news for the democrats. in all these various states there s been various legal fights to stop voter intimidation tactics by the republican party and by the trump campaign. also there have been a lot of legal efforts to block republican efforts to make voting harder by various means. today in kansas and in ohio and in arizona and in north carolina, democrats won legal battles over voting rights and voter intimidation in all of those states today. democrats basically ran the table in terms of their big legal fights in the state. we ll have updates on all those legal battles coming up later on in the show with one of the lawyers that has been spearheading that voter rights fight in the courts. the other battle that i think was a legitimate shock to the system at this late date in the race, the friday before the election, was the bridgegate trial. guilty on all counts. new jersey governor chris christie, of course, came very, very close to being donald trump s vice presidential running mate. he did not get the vice presidential job but trump then gave christie instead arguably the most substantive job he had to offer in terms of shaping what the trump administration would be like if he wins. donald trump put chris christie in charge of his transition effort. which means he s basically choosing staff, choosing personnel for donald trump s federal government. today back home in new jersey, two of the senior people who chris christie chose for his own administration were both convicted on all of the federal felony charges for which they were being tried. this is the scandal involving political retribution on christie s behalf using the george washington bridge between new york and new jersey as the means of punishment. the clinton campaign has already called for trump to drop chris christie as his transition chief given these guilty verdicts today. we don t know whether to expect that might happen but the trump campaign did announce that christie s planned trip to new hampshire to go campaign for donald trump at three separate new hampshire events tomorrow, that trip has been called off. no explanation as to why. we ll have more ahead on that as well. but as we head into these final days, one thing is starting to seem very clear, and i m trying to think about this from sort of a 30,000 foot perspective. looking at that archive footage from 1960, looking at archive footage from some of the other races and stuff that happened three and four days out, four days out in the 2000 election when the george w. bush dui was exposed, for example. looking at the kind of things that happen at this point in the race, i think it s clear that we do now know for this race that when the history of this year s election is written the standout nutty thing that surprised everybody at the end that historians and journalists will talk about forever when they talk about this election, we now know what they re going to talk about. what they re going to talk about will be the political intervention, the brazen multifaceted, political intervention into this election by the fbi. he s got a surprise or two that you re going to hear about in the next few days. i m talking about some pretty big surprise. i heard you say that this morning. what do you mean? we ll see. you re lucky because we ve got to go. we re out of time. i want to keep pressing you. we re not going to go down. we re certainly not going to stop fighting. we ve got a couple things up our sleeve that should turn this around. we ve got a couple of things, some pretty big surprises. what did you mean? maniacal laughter. that was rudy giuliani rubbing his hands together in glee, saying something was coming. that was on fox news two days before the fb director sent a letter to congress about hillary clinton, a letter that made no specific allegation of any wrongdoing but because it was from the fbi director and about hillary clinton it nevertheless shook the plings olitics of thi presidential race right to its core. rudy giuliani said two days ahead of that that he knew something was coming. last night on this show we asked was it possible that rudy giuliani was tipped off to what the fbi director was about to do? how did he know? did the fbi tell him? this morning he bragged that, yes, in fact, he had gotten advance word. i did nothing to get it out. did i have a role in it? no. brags that four days before the political election, they ve been getting tipoffs from the fbi about donald trump s political opponent. they re given a heads up over at the trump campaign before anything is released to the public let alone to congress. ranking democrats on the judiciary committee and the government oversight committee in congress today asked the department of justice inspector general to look into these bragging claims by the trump campaign that they had advanced word asking the inspector general at the justice department to find out if in fact there were people in the fbi who were trying to influence the election in that way, who were trying to help the trump campaign in that way by feeding them insider information ahead of the public. that happened today. the fox news channel today itself also made a remarkable retraction today. all the time but especially in the heated election on a topic this explosive, every word matters. no matter how well sourced. which brings me to this. i explained a couple of types yesterday the phrasing of one of my answers to brit hume wednesday night saying it was unartful, about saying how the investigations would continue after the election. i answered that, yes, our sources said it would, they would continue to likely a indictment. well, that just wasn t inartful. it was a mistake. and for that i m sorry. that s the reporter and anchor bret baier at fox news channel today. i don t usually do this on stories like this, but i m going to take a point of personal privilege here. i will tell you in my view, in my personal view, i think that bret baier is a good reporter and a good anchor. i also think he is a good person. he made a mistake on this story. in this business, that is a very hard thing for people to admit. but not only did bret baier admit that he made a mistake, he explained the mistake and i think this is important, he didn t talk around it. he had the courage and decency to use the word mistake in saying what had gone wrong and then saying he was sorry. and that s really, really hard to do in this business. there s a reason you don t hear a lot of on-air corrections in this business, but that was well done and the right thing to do and i think it s worthy of respect. okay. what bret baier initially reported and has now retracted and called a mistake and apologized for was this claim on fox that there was an active fbi investigation of hillary clinton that was likely to lead to indictments. that was a fox news claim from earlier this week. but to be clear, what bret baier did today was he took that back. indictment obviously is a very loaded word, john, especially in this atmosphere, and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment. nobody knows if there would or would not be an indictment. it was a mistake when fox said there would be. hope it didn t create a false impression. hope that didn t affect the race. at the end of a presidential race, especially when it s close, things go a little nuts. and the fbi director apparently trying to influence the election, fbi sources leaking false information to generally pro-trump news outlets. fbi sources giving advanced notice about politically damaging information to the trump campaign. one fbi field office reportedly using materials created by the head of the trump campaign and funded by trump s biggest donor. using that as their fbi research, as their fbi evidence to try to open up new investigations on hillary clinton which they then leak about to the trump campaign and to pro-trump news outlets. yes, stuff always twos n goes n the end of a presidential campaign. but this is not just actors behaving in a nuts way, this is an unsettling way for it to go nuts, right? it s been intense enough to know that in the u.s. intelligence community the russian government has been trying to disrupt our election through deceit and political operations. it s another thing to think that parts of the fbi are doing the same thing. there s a lot to cover tonight. there s a lot just to watch in terms of what s happening in the last flurry of activity in this election. president obama is full time on the hustings now. two big events in north carolina today. hillary clinton is at a jay-z concert in ohio tonight with beyonce and big sean performing as special guests. donald trump was in new hampshire and in ohio and in pennsylvania today. trump s doing florida, north carolina, nevada, colorado, iowa and wisconsin this weekend. clinton s doing ohio, florida, pennsylvania, new hampshire, more ohio. on monday night on election eve we now know that donald trump will be in new hampshire with his vice presidential running mate mike pence. on election eve hillary clinton will be in philly with president obama and michelle obama. and basically no one sleeps between now and tuesday. but do past close elections give us any advice, any useful understanding for knowing what to expect in these last few crucial nutty days? joining us now is our friend michael beschloss, nbc news presidential historian. are you eating protein? are you sleeping? are you adequately hydrating? i m not eating at all, and i don t think i m going to breathe for the next four days. i m turning to you for historical context. i raised the proespect of 1960 because i wanted to show that great footage you unveiled for us with nbc and their computing machine. the polls say this will be a close race, too. is that what we ll be looking at in the next few days? i think it is. it s almost become the rule that these things that happen in the last days and weeks affect public opinion. it s difficult to measure public opinion when things are moving. best example was two tho2000, t that george w. bush had been arrested for a drunk driving charge in 1976 was released. some of bush s aides said they felt that that moved as many as 20 million votes away from him. votes that are hard to get by pollsters in the last few days. late breaking stories like that, we talk about them as october surprises. this year they re like november surprises. like the world series is in november now. that s exactly right. we ve seen the bridgegate story itself is a bit of a november surprise given the importance of chris christie and the trump ticket. the transition director. we ve got the fbi intervention which is turns the out to be not just one story but sort of an ongoing story. is there a way to look at historical context and which kind of late breaking stories do tend to influence the outcome of an election and which end up being trivia? the problem is that when it happens this close to an election, it s very hard to separate what is important from what is trivial. one example is 1968, lyndon johnson on halloween announced a bombing halt of north vietnam in an effort to start peace talks. so a lot of these democrats were angry at johnson and hubert humphrey who was running as his heir, came flooding into the humphrey camp, humphrey was running ahead of richard nixon because people thought there might be peace. at this point the south vietnamese said we re not coming to the peace table and millions of voters moved away from humphrey back to nixon. nixon won the election. later on we discovered that nixon s people backstage had been encouraging saigon not to go to these peace talks saying, you know, help nixon by not going, we ll give you a better deal. johnson was furious. johnson thought this was treason. but in those five days those things were happening so fast it was very hard to find out what was going on. and the cross current dynamics with the early vote and so much of the absentee vote being in. it s even hard nowadays. michael beschloss, nbc news presidential historian. i beseech you, eat protein, adequately hydrate, try to sleep over the weekend. thank you, my dear. i give you the same advice. secretary clinton is apparently getting ready to go on stage in cleveland. there you see her with jay-z and beyonce. president obama just wrapped up in charlotte. donald trump just finished a rally in pennsylvania. there s a lot going on right now. we ll be right back. the microsoft cloud helps us stay connected. the microsoft cloud offers infinite scalability. the microsoft cloud helps our customers get up and running, anywhere in the planet. wherever there s a phone, you ve got a bank, and we could never do that before. the cloud gave us a single platform to reach across our entire organization. it helps us communicate better. we use the microsoft cloud s advanced analytics tools to track down cybercriminals. this cloud helps transform business. this is the microsoft cloud. we can t go back to the years of devastating cuts to public education. so vote yes on prop 55. prop 55 prevents $4 billion in new education cuts, without raising taxes on anyone, and with strict accountability. budget forecasts show if we don t pass prop 55 big cuts that hurt our kids are coming, and california will suffer budget deficits all over again. so vote yes on 55. because it helps our children thrive. on the hustings in north carolina today, president obama drew attention to this voter suppression phenomenon that s been happening in specifically in north carolina this year. republican activist groups have campaigned in north carolina to get thousands of people kicked off the voting rolls in the lead-up to the election. well, today in north carolina president obama told the story of one of those people who got purged off the voting rolls. she s 100 years old. she s a north carolina resident named grace bell harvison. weeks ago she found she d been purged off the voter list. she got attention thanks to reporting at the nation. she was able to get herself reinstated after a fight. she s lived and voted in north carolina her entire life. she s 100 years old. she apparently wrote a letter to president obama about her experience which the president read aloud on stage today. yesterday, yesterday grace bell hardison sent me a letter. i want you to know what she wrote. dear mr. president, at 100 years old, you can believe i ve seen it all. it is by god s grace that i m still able to be here with my family. i lived through the civil rights era. i know the blood that was shed in the name of the right to vote. i can assure you, mr. president, that i will keep fighting on. if i haven t stopped fighting at 100 years old, then neither can you. ms. hardison got her voter registration reinstated. you better believe she s going to vote. they targeted the wrong woman. they targeted the wrong woman. there was a really interesting ruling today in north carolina in the democratic effort, in the civil rights effort, to stop that purge of thousands of people off the voting rolls right before election day. it was one of the states today in which democrats and civil rights groups actually had huge victories in the court. it could be a very big deal for election day. those stories are coming up soon. stay with us. g new cars. that said, chris christie, of course, also has a day job. he works as the governor of the great state of new jersey. as of today, four of the people he hired for his own administration have been convicted of federal crimes, corruption charges and political retribution schemes carried out on behalf of chris christie for his political benefit. say what you will about chris christie as a politician and public servant, but his ability to find the right people and put them in the right jobs, that might not be construed as his greatest asset right now with four of his aides and appointees looking at prison time. but that s what he s in charge of for the would-be trump administration. the two people convicted today are looking at the possibility of 20 years in prison. chris christie is picking all the new top staffers for president trump. after the conviction on all counts today of christie s deputy chief of staff and one of his top appointees, now we ll be looking at sentencing, so we will see how much time they ll do. but christie himself may be taking the stand himself. christie in person. 2 1/2 weeks from now. in a related criminal complaint that was brought about in the bridgegate scheme. the timing means that if elected tuesday, chris christie will presumably be taking the stand two weeks later to talk about his own role in the criminal bridgegate scheme. while he is simultaneously serving as the head of the transition team for the president-elect. and that is going to be particularly awkward, not just in the abstract but because it s not like donald trump himself complete ignorance or can take christie s side in this. he can t. he can t. not with this on the record. look. here s the story. the george washington bridge. he knew about it. hey, how do you have breakfast with every day of your lives, they re closing up the largest bridge in the world, the biggest in the united states, traffic flowing, during rush hour, people couldn t get across for six, seven hours, ambulances, fire trucks, they re with them all the time can the people that did it. they never said, hey, boss, we re closing up the george washington bridge tonight, no, they never said. they re talking about the weather, right? then so he knew about it. he knew about it. totally knew about it. totally knew about it. donald trump speaking in december. governor christie put out a statement today in response to the guilty verdicts insisting that he never knew about the scheme while it was happening despite all of the testimony to the contrary at the trial. keep in mind at the trial both the defense and the prosecution said that governor christie knew about the lane closure scheme while it was happening in september 2013. he knew about it before the media started to pick it up. first in ra traffic column by the bergen record then in the wall street journal which was the first newspaper to link that mysterious days long traffic jam to a political scheme that was aimed at winning political endorsements for chris christie. here s the amazing kicker in this story in terms of our democracy. as the bridgegate scandal that those papers broke, as the bridgegate scandal first went to trial, the bergen record, first paper to report anything about it, they were told by their corporate owner that their newsroom is getting gutted, cut nearly in half as bridgegate went to trial. this week as the bridgegate case went the jury, the wall street journal announced that it s gutting the greater new york section of the journal that broke the political side of bridgegate. the two papers that broke this story wide open both got gutted while it was in the courts. chris christie is still the head of the trump transition team, at least for now. tonight christie called off his trump appearances in new hampshire this weekend. but four of chris christie s aides and appointees are federal convicts now. chris christie s own political career is likely toast because of all this. all that happened because of smart, local beat reporters, not pundits, local beat reporters working for newspapers following lead leads, digging up dirt, not taking no for an answer, not believing chris christie when he said, no, i never heard about it. in all of it at the end, turns out the endangered species the local beat reporters without whom we d have never known that this abuse of power happened. subscribe to your local paper. pay to join the website of your local paper. seriously. your country needs you. ove, does psoriasis ever get in the way of a touching moment? if you have moderate to severe psoriasis, you can embrace the chance of completely clear skin with taltz. taltz is proven to give you a chance at completely clear skin. with taltz, up to 90% of patients had a significant improvement of their psoriasis plaques. in fact, 4 out of 10 even achieved completely clear skin. do not use if you are allergic to taltz. before starting you should be checked for tuberculosis. taltz may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you are being treated for an infection or have symptoms. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. inflammatory bowel disease can happen with taltz. including worsening of symptoms. serious allergic reactions can occur. now s your chance at completely clear skin. just ask your doctor about taltz. now s your chance at completely clear skin. like their photo claims tool. it helps settle your claim quickly, which saves time, which saves money. and when they save, you save. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance, an allstate company. click or call. esurance does insurance a smarter way, which saves money. like bundling home and auto coverage, which reduces red tape, which saves money. and when they save, you save. that s home and auto insurance for the modern world. esurance, an allstate company. click or call. i ve never liked marijuana. but i m voting yes on prop 64 to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and over. it has important safeguards wbr id= wbr22365 /> for families, like strict product labeling and child-proof packaging of all marijuana products. and banning edibles that would appeal to a child. raising a teenager, that regulated system makes a lot more sense than what we have now. plus, 64 taxes marijuana to wbr id= wbr22665 /> fund priorities like after-school programs. personally, marijuana s not for me. but my mind s made up. i m voting yes on 64. /b> matter of minutes. when we report on that wednesday night, that go fund me page was way past its $10,000 goal that had been set that morning. all the way up to $90,000. tonight i can tell you that they ve now raised over $200,000 which is awesome. and they re going to need it given the amount of damage they went through. but still no arrest. still no explanation. and that congregation will be without a home church this sunday. i ll be right back. and at progressive, we let you compare our progressive direct rate. great deals for reals! .and our competitors rates side-by-side, so you know you re getting a great deal. saving the moolah. [ chuckles ] as you can see, sometimes progressive isn t the lowest. not always the lowest! jamie. what are you doing? -i m being your hype man. not right now. you said i was gonna be the hype man. no, we said we wouldn t do it. i m sorry, we were talking about savings. i liked his way. cha-ching! talking about getting that moneeeey! talking about getting that moneeeey! savings worth the hype. now that s progressive. this. this election season does seem to have brought out more than its fair share of unhinged people. having law enforcement, having deputies at polling places to keep the peace is maybe not a crazy idea. but the other way to look at this is we don t have a great history in this country with armed law enforcement stalking around the polls. right now republicans are waiting to hear any minute from a federal judge who will issue a ruling on whether the national republican party has violated legal restrictions it s been under for over three decades now, restrictions that were put in place because they sent vigilante poll watchers into minority precincts during a governor s race in new jersey in the 80s. armed off-duty law enforcement officers to supposedly protect the ballot. but they stalked around minority polling places wearing guns and intimidated the heck out of voters. the republican party has been banned from election day poll watching stuff ever since because of that thing they pulled off in the 80s in new jersey with all the guys with guns. a federal judge is expected to rule, we think, maybe late tonight, maybe tomorrow on whether the rnc actually violated that ban with the stuff they ve been doing that this year. we re expecting that as late as tomorrow. a national ruling on the national republican party and poll watching, but there are similar lawsuits targeting six specific states with similar complaints. in ohio today a federal judge issued a restraining order against the trump campaign, restraining order against the trump campaign and longtime trump adviser roger stone who has been hyping the campaign s voter protection efforts. this judge has issued the restraining order, has ordered the campaign and its supporters to avoid, quote, harassing or intimidating conduct at polling places. and now tonig in north carolina, a federal judge has ruled that thousands of voters who were illegally purged from the voter rolls in a process that she called insane, those voters have to be reinstated. we reported on this case, this purge in north carolina earlier this week. reported on the naacp suing over those thousands of people being thrown off the rolls. well, the judge in that case has now issued a ruling, has ordereded that those thousands of people in north carolina need to be reinstated right now in time for the election. joining us now is the lead attorney representing the north carolina naacp. she s also the legal director of forward justice. congratulations on this win today in north carolina. thank you for having me. so how many voters are reinstated by this ruling? is it instantaneous? will they definitely be able to vote on tuesday? the judge ordered that they will be able they will be reinstated in time to vote on tuesday and i believe that the counties are already working to carry that out and it will be carried out. and it is the injunction applies to three counties and it is probably around 4,000 voters. one of the counties they haven t ascertained the exact number, but we think it s around 3,000 in that county alone. there s always this flurry of legal activity right before every election. i think particularly those of us who aren t lawyers, who don t necessarily know how the courts, what the power of the courts is in this, sort of hear this. you hear about that ohio restraining order against the trump campaign and trump supporters that they can t intimidate people. and you wonder if it s too little too late. you wonder if with the election four days away that a legal order like this can and will be enforced and people can have confidence in that. what s your view of that? i believe that it will be enforced and the courts do become more vigilant in the days before an election because last-minute activities are difficult to police, but the federal government has the power to enforce court orders. i believe that they will be enforced. in your professional view as a person who has been very active in voter protection, voting rights law over the years, with what we ve seen specifically in north carolina, so much heat on north carolina this year, do you think that there s potentially enough voter suppression activity by the state, by local governments, by local officials or potentially enough voter intimidation plans by people and this election that it really could affect the result in that state? is it a big enough problem that we should worry about the result there? well, rachel, i do believe that north carolina is ground zero for voter suppression going back it goes back decades. the type of activity that you describe that resulted in that new jersey nationwide consent decree was also engaged in by senator jesse helms among others in north carolina in the past decades. but yes, in addition to and then the voter suppression law that actually north carolina represented north carolina naacp in that case where they tried to do the most restrictive photo i. did in the country and tried to take away same-day registration and take away a week of early voting and take away the wrong precinct battle county. and the court stepped in. so i m hopeful with this latest victory that just came out today with the federal court ruling and the monster voter suppression law and with continued vigilance and the fight back empowers voters. so we re telling voters do not be intimidated. intimidation is illegal. and the people who do it should be arrested and they should be prosecuted. people should be vigilant about it and also determined that nobody s going to pressure them out of exercising their right. penda hair, lead attorney representing the north carolina anyways ip and the legal director of forward justice, a real activist on this subject for a long time. thank you for your time tonight. thank you. we have much more ahead tonight. stay with us. armers, we ve seen almost everything, so we know how to cover almost anything. even a rodent ride-along. [dad] alright, buddy, don t forget anything! [kid] i won t, dad. [captain rod] happy tuesday morning! captain rod here. it s pretty hairy out on the interstate.traffic is literally crawling, but there is some movement on the eastside overpass. getting word of another collision. [burke] it happened. december 14th, 2015. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum (ee-e-e-oh-mum-oh-weh) (hush my darling.) (don t fear my darling.) (the lion sleeps tonight.) (hush my darling.) man snoring (don t fear my darling.) (the lion sleeps tonight.) woman snoring take the roar out of snore. yet another innovation only at a sleep number store. you know, at the end of a week like this, the end of a campaign season like this, i think we can all agree that we can all collectively use a quick trip to antarctica. it s cold. it s quiet. ice. pen wins, no attack ads, your uncle can t reach you. there s just this. you don t really need a news hook to go to antarctica but we ve got one, oh yes, we do. get a hat. get your gloves, grab a blanket. probably thought the election couldn t get any other weird little twists and turn in it at this point. well, here s something to watch in case this election really goes down to the wire on tuesday night. today, a democratic member of the electoral college, so one of the people who actually casts the vote that elects the next president, democratic member of the electoral college said he will not vote for hillary clinton, even if she wins his state. he s from washington state. hillary clinton is expected to win that state on tuesday, but robert was a bernie sanders supporter in the primary and today he told the a.p. that he believes hillary clinton is a criminal and that she doesn t care about american indians. he is native american himself. he told if a.p. today, quote, she will not get my vote, period. millions of us vote for president. but it s really only the 538 people who are the members of the electoral college who ratify that choice and actually pick the president. the electoral college will cast its votes after the election on december 19. we expect them to be bound by the way their states voted, but expectations i mean, it is unusual, it is exceedingly rare for an elector not to vote the way his or her state voted but technically, there s nothing in the constitution that would block that. and in fact, he says he s perfectly happy to bear the one penalty in law that s supposed to stop him from doing this. apparently, under state law, there s a thousand dollar penalty if he doesn t cast his electoral college vote the way his state votes. he says he s perfectly happy to pay and he s not voting for clinton. it s a far off possibility he could personally throw the election here, though. at 270 to win.com, there are 97 different permutations in which this election could end in a 269-269 tie, and the electoral college. if he doesn t vote the way his state votes, if he says he s not going to do it, 269 minus 1 gets you to donald trump is president. that could happen. stay with us. liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn t have that. you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance you re smart. you already knew that. but it s also great for finding the perfect used car. you ll see what a fair price is, and you can connect with a truecar certified dealer. now you re even smarter. this is truecar. what does john kerry know that we don t? the state department just announced secretary of state john kerry s immediate post-election plans. right after the election, at the end of next week, secretary of state john kerry is going to antarctica. he s the highest ranking u.s. official to ever go to antarctica, and then after he goes to antarctica, he s going a further 980 miles south to the freaking south pole. john kerry is going to the south pole to ride out the aftermath of the election next week. does he know something that we don t know? when we got to that news story in today s staff news meeting, the reaction in the room was not what i would have expected. everybody was like, naekt? take me with you, john kerry! everybody is stressed out about the election. whether you support trump or you support clinton or whether you re the last collar county soccer mom polling cliche in the country, everybody is stressed out. if you re worried your chosen candidate isn t going to win, the best way to alleviate that stress is to act, to do something about it. call the campaign you like. volunteer to phone bank. volunteer for whatever else they want you to do in this last weekend. do that. you will feel better. i don t recommend that you spend the weekend fantasizing about fleeing the country, about running off to antarctica, unless you re john kerry, that s not happening. but might i also suggest spending a little time with an old pal. an old pal is a classic drink, it s only got three ingredients. it s been around since the 19 sorry. been around since the 1920s. you only need three things and some ice. you need two ounces of rye