i ll speak with congressman of the armed services committee. and our correspondents and specialists are all standing by with full coverage. let s begin with jim acosta covering the president in new jersey. the president still hasn t made up his mind apparently about talking to mueller. what is the latest? reporter: that s right. it doesn t sound like it. he just wrapped up a round table discussion on the issue of prison reform over at his golf club in new jersey. he didn t take questions from reporters about subjects like the mueller investigation. so what we have now here is the latest reality tv cliff hanger from president trump. the president is keeping the country in response. will he or won t he sit down with robert mueller in the russia investigation? it s the question of the moment for president trump. the president isn t signaling to reporters which way he is leaning on whether to tell what he knows about the russia probe to special counsel robert mueller. instead he is letting the response build tweeting this is an illegally brought rigged witch hunt. stay tuned. i think the tweets are ad nauseam. he obviously likes to suck all the oxygen out of the room. reporter: rudy giuliani says an answer to the mueller question is coming soon but he is dropping hints that the legal team is worried a trap is being set. he knows the answers to every question that he wants to ask. he is going to ask them. did you tell comey to go easy on flynn? the president will say no i didn t. why do you want to get him under oath? you want to trap him into perjury. we are not going to let you do that. reporter: giuliani told fox mueller shouldn t to protect the president. it s like a classic catch 22 situation where we are the process is such a tough spot. we have to keep the majority. if we do not keep the majority all of this goes away. reporter: cnn has learned the president is expected to have dinner with his outside attorney rudy giuliani at his golf club later on this evening, another sign the trump legal team is closing in on a decision whether to give mueller one of the final pieces he needs. it seems the president and his legal team are trying to have it both ways both complaining that the investigation is taking too long. one thing he needs to wrap up the investigation is an A look at breaking news, politics and reports from around the world. thanks very much helping us better appreciate what is going on. let s get more from a member of the armed services committee. do you think it is the job of lawmakers, members of the house of representatives to, quote, protect presidents from their own party? that s the suggestion that we heard from devon nunez. absolutely not. when we swore our oath it was not to protect the president. it was rather to protect america, the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. nowhere did it say protect the president. that is not our job. we are equal and opposite an opposing branch of government. our job is to make sure that we are protecting america from enemies within and without. that is not to say the president is an enemy. it is simply to say that is not our job. we do have some very, very serious issues. law, hacking into and stealing information not only from the democratic national committee, but also from the democratic congressional campaign committee as well as john podesta. those are crimes that russians have been indicted for taking part in. let s turn to rudy giuliani s latest comments to our own dana bash. he says he doesn t mind dragging out this russia investigation because it might actually help fire up the republican base before the mid term elections in november. is the president s legal team negotiating in good or bad faith? bad faith. rudy giuliani throughout this entire process that he has come back as the personal attorney to the president has been dissimilating, changing his story every other day and putting up false flags for one thing or another. frankly, i don t believe for a moment that he is telling the truth about anything that he says. he is about as disreputable as the president when it comes to truth telling. should robert mueller take the timing of the mid term elections into consideration as far as his decisions are concerned in the coming weeks? we have already seen what happens when the fbi tries to play it politically. that happened in the hillary campaign and it was a major problem for her campaign when mr. comey tried to take into account the political import of what was going on with regard to the investigation of her e-mails and her computer systems. the result of that was a very bad thing. the answer to your question is no, he should not play politics. he should be straight up and down on the issue of the investigation and let it go where it may go. would it influence the election? perhaps it would. his job is to investigate what happened. cephallet cephallet s let s turn to the devastating wildfires. give us the latest on efforts to contain the blazes and how the people of your district are coping with this disaster. first of all, the largest fire which is in my district, the ranch fire together with the adjacent fire is huge. when they get to be that big we do not have enough equipment and personnel to surround that fire. so it continues to burn into the federal forest and into area fortunately that is not much habitation. there are few people living in that area. about 115 homes presently burned in those fires. they are just two of the many, many fires that are now burning in california. the carr fire has about 1,000 homes, seven deaths already there. we are short of personnel and equipment. fortunately the mutual aid coming from other states and from australia and new zealand much appreciated, much needed. we do need a presidential disaster declaration for the ranch in river fire. you can merge that with the fires in carr and down in ferguson in the yosemite area. we are under attack in california. when the president says the problem is we are letting water flow out to the ocean, that is just foolishness. let s just say it is foolish. what we do need is federal assistance in the presidential disaster declaration and we also need over time to manage our wild lands, our forests better than we have in the past. that will take federal money. so we will need that help from the president, as well. have you been in contact with the white house to try to get a clear answer on exactly what the president means, what he is proposing when he says your environmental laws in california are preventing water from being used by the firefighters to end this? i wouldn t try to understand what the president is thinking. it looked to me like he wasn t thinking. the president really ought to ask a few people what is going on before he starts his finger on his tweet. the reality is it was just foolishness. the reality is we need federal help and water policy in california. that is one thing they can help with. in the area where the fire is burning we must build an offstream storage reservoir. we need federal help on that. specifically we need $35 million right now so that the bureau of reclamation can do its part of the environmental and engineering work for that reservoir. if that reservoir was in place it wouldn t have much to do with the fire except you certainly wouldn t have it burning where the reservoir is. it would be of enormous help in providing environmental water for our fish and into the delta as well as for our communities and for our agriculture. so mr. president there is a water issue and there is something you can do, help us with the reservoir. thanks for joining us. thank you. good luck to all the folks in your district elsewhere in california, as well. this is a true disaster. moscow is furious at new sanctions after a nerve agent attack in britain. will the kremlin retaliate? 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(indistthat was awful.tering) why are you so good at this? had a coach in high school. really helped me up my game. i had a coach. math. ooh. so, why don t traders have coaches? who says they don t? coach mcadoo! you know, at td ameritrade, we offer free access to coaches and a full education curriculum- just to help you improve your skills. boom! mad skills. education to take your trading to the next level. only with td ameritrade. this is what he called theater of the absurd. the russians went further than that. they are threatening to retaliate against the united states, some pretty strong words for the spokesperson. translator: russia will be working on retaliatory measures in response to another unfriendly act by washington. the assurances of the u.s. administration to increase efforts to improve relations with russia look quite peculiar. this is blatant hypocrisy. reporter: the russians saying they are not sure what exactly president trump s policy is. does he want better relations or not? sounds like russia is complaining about mixed messages from president trump. but then these sanctions, what is your sense on that? i think the russians are absolutely confused. it is quite interesting to see how they are sort of trying to come to grips with this. one of the things we have to keep in mind is that these sanctions were announced on the same day that rand paul announced he had carried a letter from president trump to vladimir putin apparently offering some sort of negotiations or better relations on certain issues. the russians say those are pretty mixed messages there. one person on state tv came out and said he believes in the u.s. the left-hand doesn t know what the right hand is doing. at the same time it seems as though especially on russian state tv that there are still people who seem to believe that there might be some sort of master plan that president trump has to maybe shame his critics in washington into supporting better relations with russia. let s listen to what happened on russian state tv tonight. translator: if president trump wants to have cooperation with russia this turmoil is beneficial because he can say look what the washington swamp led us to. we are almost fighting with a nuclear armed country. reporter: that is russian state tv there. that was quite interesting to hear from the kremlin spokesperson because they weren t willing to go as far as to completely criticize the united states. saying despite new sanctions announced vladimir putin still very much committed to trying to improve relations between the u.s. and russia. he says that policy is nowhere near changing at this point. the sanctions go forward from the u.s. the president remains pretty much silent on these sensitive issues as far as russia is concerned. the top aides are not silent but he is. thank you very much. coming up, are the president s lawyers trying to foil an interview with special counsel by imposing tough conditions on robert mueller? and do they fear their client is simply unable to tell the truth? the g.o.p. chairman of the house intelligence committee is caught on a secret recording saying republicans need to keep their majority in the house to protect the president from robert mueller. stay with us. you re in the situation room. . - anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally begins to change which may cause trouble with recall. - learning from him is great. when i can keep up! - anncr: thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. - dad s got all the answers. - anncr: prevagen is now the number-one-selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide. - she outsmarts me every single time. - checkmate! you wanna play again? - anncr: prevagen. healthier brain. better life. it s a revolution in sleep. the new sleep number 360 smart bed, from $999. intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. and snoring? how smart is that? smarter sleep. to help you lose your dad bod, train for that marathon, and wake up with the patience of a saint. and now, save up to $500 on select sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, no interest until january 2021. ends wednesday. why people everywhere are upgrading their water filter to zerowater. start with water that has a lot of dissolved solids. pour it through brita s two-stage filter. dissolved solids remain? what if we filter it over and over? 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i think appropriate is in the rear view mirror for rudy giuliani. he is the personal attorney for the president of the united states which makes people think he has a very different role. his role is to protect donald trump exclusively and to playoff of the court of public opinion in a way that he recognizes could be a battle of impeachment and not in a court of law. for him to suggest that he has some ability to have leverage over the special counsel over a probe into collusion between a foreign government 90 days out from a mid term election when we are aware that there are further evidence and further attempts by russia to infiltrate is really inappropriate, arrogant and overly ambitious. does he have a point that this will rile up the republican base, giuliani, going into the mid terms? yes, he is right but it won t rile up necessarily the republican base but the 30% to 37% of people who are die hard donald trump supporters. when we talk about polling right now we see donald trump has an approval rating of 85, 88, 90 among republicans. that is different than having the same republicans willing to vote for a candidate that donald trump says is a good candidate. the president tweeted today once again as usual this is illegally brought rigged witch hunt run by people who are totally corrupt and/or corrup don t know what he is threatening. it is basically magnetic poetry at this point. it is same things in different terms. we don t know. the president does love these cliff hangers. he wants to keep people on his side and riled up before the election. and they are making these accusations like mueller is going to do this and that. it s the iceberg effect. we can see there is a lot more under the surface. if you take a step back and we don t know what robert mueller has. the person in the driver seat is robert mueller. it is not donald trump and it isn t rudy giuliani who keeps changing his story to try to spin his way out of this. clearly the president is deeply concerned about what is going on. he would like to know what mueller has, as well. let s turn to another sensitive issue, devon nunes told republican donors that the republicans have to keep the majority in the house of representatives in order to protect the president from mueller. listen to this. we have to keep all of these seats. we have to keep the majority. if we do not keep the majority all of this goes away. did he just say out loud something that members of congress are not supposed to say? yeah. absolutely. look, he went into that fundraiser for a political reason which is okay, completely legal. and he is making a political argument. also okay in the broad sense. but the fact of the matter is devon nunes, the argument he is making is members of congress don t work for the constituents that sent them. they work to protect the president. that s not democracy. that flies in the face complete ly with how the constitution is written. the congress isn t supposed to to whatever it takes to prop up the executive. and i get politically all the reasons why republicans want to have someone like donald trump in there, a lot of policy issues, fine. but to articulate it the way he did as if he and other republicans are the president s protector is really, really not okay. the thing that can hurt them in certain districts where they are looking at the republican agenda of voters saying i like that. i like what you are doing. their job is just to protect the president that undermineathize republicundermineathize under mines the republicans in the districts struggling to survive. and the memo and the probe that said they were investigating the matter as collusion on the parallel investigation along with robert mueller. so to have this be the incentive, not only for him to articulate it and voice it calls into question the basis of the memo and justifies the credibility of the other side saying you were never about trying to help the american people, just protecting one person. congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of government and is not supposed to be part of the executive branch. they have a separate oversight role that they are supposed to engage in. as our colleagues are saying here, the investigators are not supposed to be sidled up with the investigates. are we surprised? he went down to the white house to talk to him about what was being investigated on capitol hill. there will be winners and losers in history when we look back on this. it s sad to say i think devon nunes will be a loser in this. there is more news we are following. an alarming claim by a united states senator that russians already have penetrated the states elections systems. are other states at risk? and the alzheimer s association is going to make it happen by funding scientific breakthroughs, advancing public policy, and providing local support to those living with the disease and their caregivers. but we won t get there without you. join the fight with the alzheimer s association. deporting immigrants while fighting for the right to stay here in the united states, an order that means two are being brought back to the united states. tell us more, laura. reporter: a dramatic scene unfolding today in the case of a mother and her young daughter from elsal vudoor wvadoelsalvad it all started in federal court here in washington, d.c. when the aclu was trying to fight the deportation order and they found out that the family was already gone on a plane back, something which apparently came as a surprise to the justice department as well as to the court. he ordered the family immediately returned to the u.s. we are trying to find out why the family is at the moment. officials told us that the family would not get off that plane but they were certainly sent scrambling. and just a short time ago i was told that the plane is now in route back to houston, texas and should be landing shortly if it has not already. clearly an extraordinary turn of events reaching almost to the level of contempt where judge sullivan threatened the attorney general jeff sessions if they did not comply with his order. the president and supporters are not going to be happy about this. we will continue to follow the story. thanks for the update at the justice department. new concerns about elections after u.s. senator s alarming claim that the russians already penetrated some voting systems here in the united states. also ahead a live update on the california wild fires which are threatening more homes right now. when it comes to strong bones, are you on the right path? 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why wait? ask your doctor about prolia. russian operatives have penetrated the voting systems of some florida counties. brian todd is working the story for us. how significant is this threat not just in florida but elsewhere? we re told this threat is very significant. cyber security experts have given us a disturbing picture of just how easy it is for russian hackers to get into voting systems. less than 90 days from the midterms, an ominous warning from an influential senator who says russian hackers have successfully breached florida s voter registration systems. bill nelson spoke to the tampa bay times. they have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about. reporter: when cnn asked senator nelson for specifics about what the russians had c e done, he didn t elaborate, saying that s classified. the florida department of state and the department of home hand security say they ve seen no evidence to support nelson s claims. u.s. intelligence officials recently said the russians don t appear to be as aggressive as they were in 2016. relative to what we have seen for the midterm elections, it is not the kind of robust campaign that we assessed in 2016 election. reporter: still, dan coats says the warning lights are blinking red on america s digital infrastructure. how could russian hackers get into florida s voter registration system? it s using a phishing e-mail. this piece of malware would do things like record passwords and user names to log into the voter registration system and then they would be able to use those credentials as their own. reporter: then experts say they can inflict chaos at the polls. what kind of damage can they do? they can effect voter rolls and they can insert people, they can modify, they can deplelete, they can change information and make it more difficult for voters who come in and actually cast ballots. reporter: something senator nelson says he s worried about. you can imagine the chaos that would occur on election day when the voters get to the polls and they say, i m sorry, mr. smith, you re not registered. reporter: cyber security experts say some of those problems can be worked out at the polls, but the russian hackers could still create chaos by planting doubt in the minds of american voters. certainly a big part of elections is how we trust the election process. and if they re able to dedprad that tru degrade that trust, that can affect things like voter turnout. can russian hackers affect the vote counts? experts say that s tougher to do because offend protections in place and paper ballots. state election officials in florida tell cnn they re taking this threat seriously. you re also hearing in a recent investigation florida didn t fare very well when it comes to election security. that s right. the center for american progress investigated all 50 states for election security. that firm gave florida a grade of f. the center said that florida officials didn t give them enough information on what they were doing to prevent and detect hacking and that their auditing systems to determine whether the votes were accurate aren t good enough. thank you very much. coming up, while his lawyers work to thwart an interview with robert mueller, the president delivers at very another very at about the russia investigation. what s he threatening? liberty mutual saved us almost $800 i m a small business, but i have. big dreams. and big plans. so how do i make the efforts of 8 employees. feel like 50? how can i share new plans virtually? how can i download an e-file? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes. just like that. like everything. the answer is simple. i ll do what i ve always done. dream more, dream faster, and above all. now, i ll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. happening now, to tell the truth. after eight months negotiating with the special counsel over whether president trump will sit down for an interview, there s still no resolution, but the president s lawyers are clearly worried about their clienteling t the. caught on tape, the house republican majority is necessary to protect president trump from robert mueller. culture of corruption, democrats are seizing on the indictment of republican congressman chris collins, charged with insider trading and lying to the fbi. a new talking point democrats appear ready to use in an attempt to win back control of the how is this fall. and space force. president trump s reelection campaign launches a new fund-raising drive selling space force merchandise hours after vice president pence lays out a plan for the new branch of the united states military. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. president trump and his lawyer rudy giuliani continue to send mixed messages tonight on whether the president should sit for an interview with the
its own you know the fact that motivates me to carry on fighting like against the injustices in the world. it s not as if i m especially angry with the italian groups have been vikas they were actually all on my side we realized that in prison it was just italian government that has gotten worse and. the most of all. back then you wanted to help but you were charged with a serious and organized aiding and abetting of illegal entry you were facing four years in prison when the trial lasted for five years how did you cope with that it can t have an easy. life and no i can t say it was but it s made me what i am today it s good now i know exactly what i wants and i work with all the energy i have and like i m a little bit older to find the injustice in this pack of lies that have been told one of in the same continent if i save people s lives in the same everyone already saying. well done you re not blaming right now the same lies are being spread about the captains of the ngos are going to come between today and he also. sees it isn t that you say you were against and just all of the africans you rescued were deported because they gave false information regarding their country of origin. did you think that was justified or unfair. as of tomorrow and this is what well they waited all the ports i was allowed to stay we don t know why an exception was made as a scene but it doesn t matter what the captain rescues people in distress the sea will be doesn t have to ask where they are from you just ask whether they have a brown or green face he just has to bring them to safety and that s all he is obliged to do it with a fifty i understand you had it was justified if the italians saw this as illegal immigration. absolutely not that would be a different case with and let me bring them to shore they first have to check where you really from do you have grounds for asylum where this was not checked which was a major mistake and breaks every law in the booking us because that s. now many years later the refugee crisis in the mediterranean has taken on an even larger dimensionless according to the un eight hundred people have already drowned this year. in the meantime it looks like private sea rescue operations are the bane of many mediterranean countries. is that an accurate observation to go out of this with you i m afraid it is although a really lovely experience and policies change somewhat because we have to do what we can to support spain on that we can t just say ok the problem to solve spain was sort of that it s a problem with. the german chancellor is just spoken for the spanish prime minister and we re one of the world s richest countries and we should be turning a blind eye considering ourselves safe because we re surrounded by safe third countries. involved in the hunt for. the human but the nuns and the first thing the german chancellor wants to do with other heads of government is the problem of the traffickers who are sending people to their nets in the end is this the right approach isn t acting and that s not at all. let s imagine there was no traffic in the big venue for a while this was the message. will three hundred more refugees around is what i m trying to. so what happens next if you can flip a vixen by being a bit too. bucket of here because people would starve the beaches of north africa instead because they can t get out to sea and. no one would help them you know they would starve there about on a north african beach i don t know what s worse starving or drowning or not seeing the big picture on the fuss about nothing but there s another art to mention some say that all their private rescue ships near the coasts are part of the traffic and business model. tied austrian chancellor court sees it that way when this consular courts rule. he says nobody drowned off the coast of australia because the refugees know that they will get sent back how do you respond to that. but i would say mr kurtz needs to think a little bit harder waldemar we ought to study the world before he comes out some don t statements like that the autumn of two major universities although the oxford years were best to go whether there is a little effect on the yacht a lot of very old rescuers writes in it motivated by them so it s their own studies show that this poll a fact is not exists and we agree it s could do so we have these studies there are also fact based observation since the balkan route was closed no more refugees travelled this way isn t that a valid argument. of course we got very annoyed when the miss you said the refugee problem is have been solved because they put a fence. but we saw pictures of people on the other side accents trying to wash an ice cold water and nobody was helping them to the. border line you re a human rights but no borders when we drove there enough struggling to get food soup because no one else felt responsible kind of anything this is an acceptable government so getting back to sea rescue there was another angle what does the international maritime law say about emergency rescue it says that a captain as a bludgeon to help anyone who is in distress at sea bring him or her to safety that s all there is to it is this new. traffickers exploit this law by using unseaworthy ships with no fuel onboard to trigger a rescue knowing the rescuers are obliged to help. by disease which is on call would see do you feel used by them as a rescuer who does it and that s what i mean. this country in the line of maybe that s the case but my primary concern is human life but the laws are being exploited is a secondary importance and the human life is what matters not borders that s the case you do for me how the n.g.o.s who are helping in the mediterranean might move if the button here does you are a strong advocate of this position and its mission you work on a voluntary basis and you turn down a paid position you are or aren t. you say that no one feels without good reason. does that mean in your view we should take in every refugee mr manhood through thing of. every refugee is life has to be say whatever happens whether they can stay permanently is another matter. we need to amend their asylum laws and see who has a genuine to have fled their country if one comes was told that the flight of the views was let s not bother to rest and to move i don t want to model here by did you. get several efforts are currently being made to create an asylum law and. immigration law so. are you optimistic that this will improve matters. as a woman death and if you combine this with daniel counter our state premier recently said that reason should be created to allow people to stay and if we need them we should cut out the red tape i think it s a great i. think if you draw the line between those who are allowed to stay and those who have to leave. this is a thorny issue people have come here from countries where officially there is no persecution but living conditions are very. good just wanting a better life give you the right to choose where you live. just wanted to. i think so. many times interior minister said my children were in this position i would receive fleeing somewhere where they have a future in my view each individual carefully considered on the for me economic refugees don t exist. just like you nine years ago a german captain is now on trial in america. pay to save two hundred thirty lives with his german rescue ship lifeline. apparently it entered without proper registration. and in general can rescuers ignore the rules. mr. big nice here but i d say if it s a question of human life alone may be violated for. invasion which case. now we have taken the place of the company who was in charge and. they had a formal entry of the torch register and they were registered with. the dutch dispute this up with me in that i spoke to them on the phone myself here in berlin and. they disputed we have the official papers and i have to say that i m not sure. petaling saying get it now the rescue ship has nothing to do with it had been furious with them so that s it but nothing solved he got and. you also broke a law back then which made the whole cop on a more rescue mission very controversial in germany if you introduce the salient cord without permission do you regret that today but once it does what you want me not at all. and the poets i know there was a very risky situation on board a ball that people were all very agitated to an exhausted. lot of and they could have said we ll take over the ship with thirty seven young man on board it wouldn t have been too hard on the like you just head for the beach. it was an imminent threats but as a captain do you have to think ahead and we didn t just answer the forcing we approached the boys i threw down the anchor and then everything took off it s official our survival from the portal to arrive then the pilots. in the god. i register my arrival at an italian forces a german ship all and first the authority said yes it s time for seven days they wouldn t tell us when they had decided not to let us in here on target it s all politics just politics. let s put it to. you say that rescuers can ignore. the german interior minister and disagree with him you wrote him a letter and he replied what was that about who can ask me answer the first letter about what is politicians doing very vaguely but what did you want from him. i want to clarify things and support the n.g.o.s in the mediterranean the criminal minds of the then one of his pyramid secretaries i think it was mr vineberg i answered your fault there s no point telling me what he said as it was totally meaningless. that s why i do believe didn t get picked up in a second but i sense that we sent this letter will be made public that s why when the for the he didn t reply to that one that you re still waiting for a reply yes we would like to speak to him personally that could perhaps we can talk again when you get an answer. because we ve reached the end of our interview mr schmidt and as always i d like to ask you to quickly three sentences italy s judiciary calls me a human traffickers. but i see myself and. his helper. if i were in this situation again i will fall back again immediately. but. people don t stop dying in the mediterranean the first thing germany should do is the police support the rescuers. as mr smith many thanks for the interview you re welcome please. believe. we make up oh but we watch as afaik the un does that shit but we are december so hopelessly. they want to shape the continent s future it s hard to enjoy negative numbers as they share their story and their dreams and their challenges of the seventy seven percent platform for africa charged. with different languages we fight for different
with all of that. anderson, one thing we should also note, and it s something you just mentioned a short while ago, that is that one of the reasons why christine blasey ford s legal team is canceling some of these interviews that they had set up is that they wanted to show some good faith to the other side and according to this source that was a welcome sign. it signaled to them that there s sort of a commitment there to get this done. and according to this source, in the words of this source, we want to work this out. anderson, one other interesting prospect in all of this that i think really needs to be underlined and highlighted, and that is that the conversations are continuing inside the senate judiciary committee to have a female attorney, a prosecutor or litigant of some kind to represent the all-male gop side of the senate judiciary committee. i was talking with a source earlier this evening who said essentially they don t want to have the image out there to the american people of a group of aging men on the senate gop side quizzing and questioning and the therapist who dr. ford went to? shouldn t she be talked to? it s interesting that dr. ford has gone so far as to take a polygraph. i wonder if judge kavanaugh is willing to take a polygraph. she s done a lot, it seems to me, to reinforce her credibility. credibility that was not at issue when she took these steps. it seems to me that the fbi ought to be investigating that and telling the committee what they found. cnn, we re reporting that republicans are looking to bring in a female outside counsel to question ford if the hearing happens. beyond just the optics of it, could it also be more effective in terms of getting closer to the truth and do you think that person should also ask questions for the democrats or do you think democratic senators should ask questions? no, i think what s sauce for the goose also go for democrats as well, if you ll forgive me. and i think having an outside counsel, given how sensitive this is. remember what we re talking about, anderson. we re talking about an allegation. and her side has used these words of attempted rape. we don t need anybody making points back home, whether on the democratic side or the republican side if what we re trying to do is to find out what happened. because we re talking about a lifetime appointment. we won t be able to do anything about it afterwards. we ve got to do it now. it doesn t seem like there s anyone on the republican side, though, on the committee talking about bringing in any other potential witnesses other than these two. well, anderson, you ve got to do one of two things. you ve got to have the fbi investigate these witnesses. for example, mark judge. somebody s got to talk to him. or you ve got to have a real hearing where these people come before the public. those are really the only two alternatives. somebody s got to investigate those witnesses who are relevant to this hearing. you can have the fbi do it. they can then work with the committee. or you can bring those witnesses before the committee. now, if there s any other alternative, as a member of congress i don t know what it is. as someone who advocated for anita hill,ings, if ford does end up testifying, what advice would you give her going into it? i think she has been able i think dr. ford has been able to tell her story to professionals, that is to say, to a therapist. she apparently spoke to her own congresswoman and told her story there. she is herself apparently a very intelligent professional. so i would just say to her tell it straight. tell it the way you ve been telling it to all those who say they believe you. congressman norton, appreciate your time. thank you. i want to broaden the conversation. back with us tonight is former federal judge nancy gertner. now a lecturer at harvard university s law school. there is cnn political analyst gloria borger and david gergen. judge gertner, when you hear these new details about negotiations between the committee and professor ford s lawyer, how much do you read into that? it s still up to chairman grassley whether he ll push back the monday hearing. well, i mean, i think that it s good that she s saying she s going to come to the hearing. she left herself open when she said without x or y, without the fbi investigation she s going to she s not going to come. but i want to underscore what the congresswoman said, which is that a hearing without other witnesses and a hearing without investigation sounds like an appeasement to the me too movement. in other words, it sounds very much like hey, we ll hear from you, now let s vote. in other words, there s no there will be searching entry of her but it becomes he said/she said more than it already is. while there may be other witness that s you re not going to. so it then relies on a high status male being accused by a lower status female. and that really, forgive me, is an empty ritual at this point. having other witnesses is one thing. having an investigation is another thing. this is really thank you very much for appearing, now let s vote. gloria, the notion that republicans on the committee might retain a female outside counsel to question ford and, again, unclear whether that would be in public or in private, how much political strategy would be behind that move? well, look, it s all political. they re not dumb. they understand that you have all of these white men who would be questioning this woman, that there is no female to ask questions, and that it would the optics of it would look terrible. and you know, from the other point of view if i were professor ford, i might rather be questioned by the committee, to be honest, in many ways because perhaps she would be able to handle the political questions just with her story whereas a practiced attorney might be better at it than the members of the committee. so you know, it s kind of interesting. they have to on this phone call today, and i ve been talking to a couple of sources about it, it was a good call but there are lots of issues that need to be resolved. i mean, if there is an attorney on one side, will there be an attorney on another side for the democrats an, for example, who would go first? how long would they be given? you know, there s still a lot that needs to be resolved. and there s no way and everybody knows it that they could have done it by monday. david, it certainly seems like there is no appetite, on the part of republicans, to have an fbi investigation at this point. none. zero. i think what we do know, anderson, is they have entered negotiations and both sides seem to want to get to yes. so i think chances are much higher tonight that she s actually going to come and testify. even if it s later in the week. and i assume chairman grassley as part of that would do it later in the week. but there s no indication of any give of witnesses coming in. very importantly, no give on the idea of having a real investigation before you get there. it s just hard to know how you can put two people and conclude what s the truth if you have no real information about what other parties say. you need to hear from a variety of people under oath. so i think it does come down to he said/she said, which means they re going to vote and he s going to win. i do think also on the outside counsel, it s important to distinguish. this is somebody they re bringing in who s going to be on their side who is trying to impugn and to discredit. this would not be a neutral this is not a neutral arbiter. so the democrats may be well advised to do that but on the other hand, they ve got people who are pretty experienced and they ve got women of their own who can ask questions. i m not sure they need to duplicate that. also what s really striking is the disproportionate amount of power coming into this. here kavanaugh goes into the white house every day and he has hours and hours of prepared testimony. he s got a whole the republicans on the hill. they control a lot of this. in some ways it s going to be a david versus goliath or christine versus goliath. that will be tough for her but she may be a more sympathetic character as a result. judge, one the things that remains unclear tonight is what if any investigation it doesn t seem like there will be any investigation into the allegations. that s significant. i want to step back and say there are three choices here. one is to have an investigation. and no one in any court ever gets on the stand without a private investigation, depositions, discovery. nobody except on judge judy does that. that would be one option which they ve now rejected. the other would be to have other witnesses so it is not just he said/she said. and that s rejected. now you re talking about sort of the classic troubling scene where yes, you re having her testify, having him testify, but as david gergen indicated this is unequal at the start. and there s no outside context. i can t emphasize enough how unusual it is to simply have people, you know, confront their accuser with no other evidence other than essentially their own words. maybe there is no such evidence out there. but it seems to me we have to look at that before we proceed with this. i also have to admit that this stuff about talking about the optics. we should be talking about getting to the truth. right. i totally agree with you. but you ve also got to presume that the staffs of the committees are doing their own internal investigations. the outside groups are doing investigations. they re digging as hard as they can to find whatever they can. and i would presume that if the democrats do their own questioning there will be they will have their own information that they will then ask judge kavanaugh about. so what i think we would see coming out of this hearing would be sort of information that people have culled while we ve been waiting for this to get started without really an official fbi investigation, which is what they should have had in the first place. i think there s a real chance that each side will introduce ideas or conspiracies about the other side that are unresolved but that push the public in one direction or another. and we do know that the white house forces are very clever at this. and that s why i think she s i mean, it s extraordinarily brave of her to come in and do this because she s paid this personal price already. but the odds of winning this kind of argument, unless she can appeal to people s sense of she really is a victim here, she really is being ganged up on. we re going to take a break, continue the conversation. also we ll talk about the details of when, where, how we ll hear from judge kavanaugh and his accuser which are very much in flux. the latest on what we know. also tonight breaking news on the mueller investigation. new word tonight about the time the mueller team is spending with the president s former attorney michael cohen and what they re talking about. so you don t die waiting. upmc does more living-donor liver transplants than any other center in the nation. find out more and get out of line today. be right back. with moderate to severe crohn s disease, i was there, just not always where i needed to be. is she alright? i hope so. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn s disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. manu raju also has some new information and i do as well. that professor ford really doesn t want to be questioned by outside counsel. we were talking about that earlier. and she would like senators to question her instead. she doesn t want it to turn into some kind of trial where she s being questioned by an attorney like that. and that she does not want to testify in the same room as judge kavanaugh. she doesn t want to be in the same room with him at the same time. and that and manu is also reporting that she wants the committee to subpoena mark judge and these other alleged witnesses. and so those are just some new details we re both learning this evening. judge, what do you make of that? well, i mean, i think that the candidly, with all due respect to the senators, they re not as good questioners as a lawyer would be even though the senators that are lawyers are not as good questioners as someone who is a litigator would be. i mean, that s an interesting choice. you wind up with less probing and more awkward questioning that way. do you think there s a reason what do you think her reasoning would be on that? you can make the argument that a, she doesn t want an accusatory prosecutor type on the republican side asking her questions. the other side of it is some might argue she wants the visual of, you know, male senators of a certain age asking awkward questions. right. i mean, if it s the latter, then it s a political decision. if it s the former, i can understand it as a an issue of comfort more than anything else. the other thing is what we re heading for is a hyperpartisan hearing without a judge. i hate to sort of tout that but there s no one there to say hey, that s an inappropriate question or that s going too far except the partisans on both sides. let me just add this, anderson. from a source i just heard from. one of the reasons i believe she doesn t want to be questioned by outside counsel is that she believes senators should be accountable for the questions that they re going to ask and that the burden should be on them to ask the questions they want to ask and not an outside counsel who is a professional at doing this and let them be accountable to the american public. she is going to be accountable to the american public for what she says. they should be accountable, as well. i just don t know how this is going to be seen as anything other than a trial. both are going to be have to make persuasive arguments. i just don t agree with her on that point. it does seem to me there might be a compromise and that is each side can select three senators or four senators to represent anybody everybody. the stories are not that long. it s not going to take that long to question these people. i think a more relevant question is what is the order? i would think it s probably advisable to go second if you can. but then if the first person is questioned and the other person goes, then do they get rebuttals? how do they keep each other out of the room at the same time? do they take recesses? i think those are going to be important questions as well. go ahead. as are the questions about subpoenaing other witnesses. again, you make this this is already a he said/she said. but you make it a stark he said/she said when all you have are the two antagonists and not other witnesses in other circumstances. we re also learning that according to cnn that she wants no time limit on her opening statement. gloria, is that what you re hearing? yeah. actually, that s manu s reporting. they have to choreograph these things, as you know, down to the minute or else, you know, everything can go awry. and clearly, in telling her story it would seem to me, reading between the lines on manu s reporting here, is that she wants to be able to tell her story as she recollects it and tell everything about it and tell how it has affected your her life. and so you know, usually in congressional hearings there are time limits about testimony. and i think this is one of the things she and her advisers have said. if she s going to do this and she s going to appear before congress and the world, she wants to be able to tell it all. david, we re learning also, the washington post is reporting that thursday is a potential date. that seems to be a fair compromise. it s good for senator grassley for moving in that direction. but having said that, it s going to be thursday, you know, there are several days now between now and thursday when they could be doing background investigations. and they could be collecting evidence under oath. that s still the relevant question. but if it was to be an fbi investigation that would be something that would have to come from the white house. yes. and it would have to come right away. but it gives you ample time. if it took three days to do the anita hill background investigation, why can t they do this essentially in three days? judge, do you think there is if they do say thursday, then pressure builds to try to have some sort of background investigation? i think so. it also is the fairest approach. that s what i was saying before, is there are three alternatives here, which is fbi, witnesses, or just one on one. and they ve chosen the least fair approach to either side. gloria, so thursday the potential date. no time limit we re hearing. the professor would like no time limit on her opening statement. i assume if that was the case judge kavanaugh would have no time limit on his opening statement. david raises the point, though, about rebuttals, would they be able to respond and who goes first. there are still many questions to be worked out. these are things that need to be worked out. and i think david raises a great point, which is while you re working out all the logistics why not actually have the investigators talk to witnesses. you know, this happened a long time ago. more than 30 years ago. it s not like you have to go through 5 million text messages between kids. this is a more limited kind of investigation. so while they work out one thing, why can t they do two things at the same time? it would seem to me that they re able to do that if the president would say yeah, maybe we ought to do it. rather than letting that go by the boards. she has made it very clear that this is what she would prefer. but if she doesn t get that, it seems to me she wants to be able to tell her story in full. gloria borger, judge nancy gertner, david gergen, thank you very much. coming up next tonight s other big breaking story. reports that michael cohen and robert mueller s prosecutors have been talking a lot about a lot. late details. the possible legal impact and more. when we continue. -computer, order pizza. -of course, daniel. -fridge, 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times white house correspondent maggie haberman. maggie, what more do you know about the scope of what the mueller team had been talking about with cohen? my understanding, anderson, is a pretty wide range i think has covered areas related to the campaign. has covered areas related to president trump s business. remember, michael cohen was not on the campaign. he spent extremely little time there. he was not welcomed by most of trump s campaign advisers. but he certainly has a window into a bunch of the trump campaign excuse me, the trump business activities. among them a trump tower moscow project that he himself had tried to get off the ground at one point that was scuttled at the beginning of 2016. but you know, typically speaking in these kinds of meetings that witnesses have had with the special counsel s office there have not been limits certainly on the kinds of things that they re being asked about, and michael cohen i think can provide a variety of information. the question is going to be whether cohen finds it excuse me, mueller finds it valuable. whether mueller believes it either provides new information or whether it backs up other information that he s already received. it s yet another brick in what seems to be this case that mueller is building toward a likely report to congress. i can t imagine that this comes as much of a shock to the president. i don t think so. michael cohen s adviser lanny cohen excuse me, lanny davis. this is quite a night for me in terms of names. lanny davis had been on tv making very clear that cohen had information that he was willing to give mueller, that he had stories to tell. they were all but picking up an auction paddle saying talk to me both before and after the plea. i don t think this surprises anyone. and i think there s a question if cohen provides valuable information for any of these investigations could he see a reduced sentence? i think that is certainly something his advisers are looking toward. no, i think the president feels under siege by a lot of these things. but i don t expect any of this is a surprise to him at this point. you ve written about the relationship between michael cohen sometimes tortured relationship between michael cohen and citizen donald trump. president trump as roger stone, another trump long-time adviser had put it to me for a story i did several months ago. president trump went out of his way to treat michael cohen like, quote unquote, garbage. now, trump is not exactly easy on anyone, as we all know from our reporting. but he could be particularly tough with cohen. trump s allies and current advisers would say that s because cohen had made some errors and made some mistakes that the president was unhappy with, then candidate trump and before that businessman trump was unhappy with. but he was very tough on him. unfortunately, trump has this sort of one-way loyalty that he exhibits with his aides. he expects it and he often doesn t give it in return. i think you are going to see potentially some of that playing out in cooperation with investigators. maggie haberman, appreciate it. thanks very much. let s get some information from cnn senior legal analyst preet bharara. before being fired by donald trump he served as u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york where michael cohen took his guilty plea. with cohen cooperating with mueller what doors does this open for mueller? we don t know what if anything cohen has on donald trump. we don t. but we have some basis to think there s a bunch, in at least three categories. we have what he said at his plea agreement. his plea proceeding where he said basically i committed a campaign finance violation at the direction of the president, trump. we also know that he might have some information or at least we can suspect he might have some information that may not carry the day on whether or not donald trump obstructed justice. if he was close to his lawyer and we see from some recorded conversations he had a lot of discussions with his lawyer about things he might not have talked about with other people. there s that bucket. and then there s what s been reported that michael cohen may know a lot about donald trump s endeavors, business and otherwise, in russia. we don t know, but we know he s talking a lot and he has some reason to try to provide as much information as possible because it helps him. it is particularly remarkable, especially on the heels of paul manafort cooperating, also obviously michael flynn, gates, all papadopoulos, all these people who had been around the president. the sheer number of people who mueller has turned is pretty extraordinary. i think he s basically gotten everybody. i ve said recently that based on the mueller track record i don t think mueller goes after someone unless he knows he has the goods. if you read the documents in these cases, they re really strong. not just giving little bits of information about why someone is guilty of a crime. they re what we call speaking charges, speaking indictments. even the ones against the folks for example at the gru, the folks in russia who were charged with various crimes, who were never going to get in the country, never going to be able to slap cuffs on. the detail in these charging documents is such that i think mueller appreciates even more than the average prosecutor the importance of the public having confidence that he s bringing cases that are well grounded in fact. according to this report also they have discussed whether or not anyone around the president had broached the idea of a pardon. and if a pardon was broached, what s the significance is that a possible obstruction? look, you have to be careful about what conclusions you draw from the questions that prosecutors ask. and i know everyone wants to jump to the conclusion. but i ll tell you, when we were in conference rooms with cooperating witnesses and the people who work for me were doing the same thing you go through a checklist and you ask about the thing that you think is most likely true. right? but then you go concentric circles around the core of what you re looking at with that person. i m not saying this is that. but you ask a lot of questions of people that may be a little bit out of left field just to make sure that you ve covered your bases. and so it is possible that they re close to bringing some kind of case that involves obstruction and that s at the heart of what they re looking at and what they re asking michael cohen about. but it s also possible that it s at the periphery and they re just covering their bases because i think it would be irresponsible i think any witness that comes across their desk they have to ask questions about obstruction. you have to do that for exhaustive purposes. cohen s participation in this has been voluntary. what s in it for him that s sort of odd. given that he s sort of playing around in three jurisdictions. you don t have that that often. it happens from time to time, you share a cooperating witness. meaning you think normally he would try to get something out of it before cooperating? yeah. you usually have a deal with the office with whom you re trying to cooperate. and usually you work all that out. if there are multiple offices they ll have a basis for an investigation, in a organized crime office or corporate fraud or anything else, it gets worked out in advance so everyone knows what the promises are, what they can expect, everyone knows what the prosecutor s going to argue for even if the prosecutor can t guarantee a lenient sentence because that s up to a judge. the fact cohen has had these interviews, does it make it any less likely or more likely that the president might sit down with mueller? it seems the more mueller knows the less it would be likely the president would sit down. my sense, we re talking about likelihood in the sort of 1% to 2% range. i think the likelihood of the president sitting down is fairly close to zero. i don t know that that particular factor would play in it at all. thank you. other emerging details around the possible testimony v professor christine blasey ford and reaction to the story from a group of republican women in florida. you might be surprised what they have to say. you ll hear from them next. this is a story about mail and packages. and it s also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they re handing us more than mail they re handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you with féria extreme platinum haircolor by l oréal. lighten up! lightens hair up to seven levels. féria is ammonia free with conditioning oil. never dull, never flat. live in color. live in féria extreme platinum by l oréal paris. everyone that speaks about him. this guy s an altar boy, a scout. because one woman made an allegation, sorry, i don t buy it. but in the grand scheme of things, my goodness, there was no intercourse. there was maybe a touch. can we really? 36 years later? she s still stuck on that? had it happened. i mean, we re talking about a 15-year-old girl, which i respect. you know, i m a woman. i respect. but we re talking about a 17-year-old boy in high school with testosterone running high. tell me what boy hasn t done this in high school. please, i would like to know. why would she come forward if this wasn t true? because it has basically destroyed her family. she s had to move, she s gone undercover. she s gotten death threats. so if she s lying, why come forward? she s also destroying his life, his wife s lives, his children s lives. his law career. i mean, why didn t she come out sooner if she s telling the truth? why didn t she come out when he was going into the bush white house? why didn t she come out he s been a federal judge for over a decade. why not have a thorough investigation instead of just the two of them he said/she said? it doesn t matter. it does not matter what everyone else has to say. this is what happened, though, with clarence thomas and anita hill. the fbi investigated. it took three days. done. why not now? this is not the same. this is a high school kid. there s no anita hill story. does something that allegedly happened some 30-plus years ago matter today? you can t judge the character of a man based on what he did at 17. and i would hate to think that 30, 40 years later somebody s going to destroy your life because someone at some party you it s not right. but maybe you touched somebody the way you re not supposed to and who brought the alcohol for these kids? as women, though, do you have some sympathy for her for what she s going through? no, i have no sympathy. and perhaps at that moment she liked him and maybe he didn t pay attention to her afterwards and he went out with another girl and she got bitter or whatever the situation is. they re kids. if it is true, would it be okwu if he became a justice on the supreme court? as long as that s an isolated incident, yes. he was 17. he was not even an adult. and we all make mistakes at 17. i believe in a second chance. i d be more than okay with him being supreme court judge. if the person made a mistake and they move on and they have been a good human being, you know, who are we to judge? joining me now for perspective, cnn political analyst and usa today columnist kirsten powers. also carrie severino, chief counsel and policy director of the judicial crisis network which supports the kavanaugh nomination. i m wondering what you make, what you heard from that group of women who believe judge kavanaugh. well, i just want to say this idea that any 17-year-old has done this is just completely incorrect. i went to high school. i actually went to a private jesuit high school. it wasn t all boys the way this was. it was coed. this was not the way the boys i went to high school with behaved. it s not normal behavior. we have to be very careful about saying that, specially to teenagers today. we don t want them to think that this is normal behavior for teenage boys. i do agree that you don t want to hold a person to everything they ve done as a teenager and that people absolutely can do bad things when they re teenagers and turn into great members of society. i don t question that at all. but if this happened, i do think that it s not the supreme court is such a rarefied position, to be a supreme court justice in this society, and you are being a judge on the highest court in the land and you are held to a different standard than other people are. i think you can both say that yes, someone can make a mistake when they re 17 years old and it doesn t have to haunt them for the rest of their life and also say, but you know, they proba y shouldn t be on the supreme court. carrie, what do you make of the woman who said tell me what boy hasn t done this in high school? did that concern you? that is a little concerning. i fear, though, it s all too common. i ve had friends who had similar experiences happen to them. but i still don t think if there was attempted rape going on here, that obviously is something that should be taken very seriously and not discounted simply because it s old. that said, i think all the evidence is pointing to the fact that brett kavanaugh did was not involved here. the experience she describes is horrible. but i think we ve seen more and more people coming saying you know, the people that have been identified there so far. we had another one, p.j. smith, who said i was identified as being at that party and i can tell you i was never at a party like that with brett kavanaugh, this is not like what i knew him to be. so that of course you couple that with all of the dozens of women who say they knew him at the time. it doesn t add up with him. his repeated adamant and very confident denials saying this was not me. i think it s the evidence points to the fact that it actually wasn t. kirsten, one of the arguments that some of the women randi talked to made is that why now? why didn t she come forward with this earlier? brett kavanaugh has been, you know, in the public eye. he s gone through confirmation hearings and had background investigations in the past. yeah. it s distressing to me to hear people saying that after what we ve gone through with me too because i feel like this issue has been covered so thoroughly, that this is very standard for through sexual trauma and sexual harassment for that matter. that they feel ashamed, they feel like something s something is wrong with them, maybe they caused it. they fear they ll be ostracized if they come out. there s a lot of fear involved. and there s a lot of good reasons not to bring it up. we have to remember especially during this era. it was not an environment where a woman or girl could feel she could bring this up and be heard and taken seriously. i wonder what you make of the reporting tonight. we re hearing professor ford does not want an outside counsel by the republicans, a female outside person questionings her or even a staff counsel that she wants the questions to come from senators. do you see that as reasonable or political? i m not sure what the logic is. there are several of those. we just had reports of all the different demands she s making. if you watched those hearings previously. having the senators do it, means you don t have a continuous line of questioning. you ve got people overlapping. it s very hard to follow. frankly, the senators aren t very good questioners, some people suggested it s going to be harder questioning from a lawyer. i m not sure that s clear. we saw some very aggressive questioning at the kavanaugh hearing recently. i liked the idea. i heard a few days ago, let s have her lawyers question kavanaugh and kavanaugh s lawyers question her. i do know chairman grassly has tried to be as accommodating as possible with all of her requests. i m sure they will make every effort to be as accommodating as they can. we have to go. kirsten powers, thank you. one quick note now about a cnn special you don t want to miss especially now. take a look. one year ago, hurricane maria devastated puerto rico. the president claims the recovery efforts were a huge success. i think we did a fantastic job in puerto rico. cnn has the real story. what do you want people to know? please come here more. a decorated combat veteran living in a tent. the truth is that people died because the trump administration did not pay attention. cnn special report, a storm of controversy, what really happened in puerto rico. tomorrow night at 10:00. not cool. freezing away fat cells with coolsculpting? now that s cool! coolsculpting safely freezes and removes fat cells with little or no downtime. and no surgery. results and patient experience may 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ms-13 has been around for a long time. it started in the 80s and has been on the east coast since then. what s different now is over the last couple years, there s been this wave of unaccompanied minors who showed up on our border and they re vulnerable kids. most of them have experienced severe trauma because their home countries have been decimated and are devastated by street gangs like ms-13. they come here, some of them haven t been with their family members for years and years, they don t fit in, and they re just looking for a place to belong. and they re placed in communities, whether it s virginia, long island parts of boston, and they re not able to deal with the population. it s kids attacking kids, and the trump administration would like us to believe that ms-13 is this transatlantic criminal enterprise, but the reality is that while there are many members of ms-13, it s very disorganized. they don t actually make a lot of money. you can t even compare them to sophisticated drug trafficking organizations. and they prey on young, vulnerable kids. and the violence we ve seen. the violence is horrific. what are some of the other things you re going to be focusing on this season. we ll be looking at the scourge of methamphetamines that have been overtaking many states including oklahoma. we have an episode of gender fluidity. i m excited about this one. we re in the midst of this gender revolution that s being led by kids. these kids are very open about the fact that they don t feel entirely male or female. they re sort of like this third gender. and they speak about it very insightfully. and their family members, the ones we ve profiled at least, have been so accepting. so it s a really fascinating and exciting kind of episode and movement that s happening. look forward to the whole season. lisa ling, don t miss the season
see beginning right after the 2018 midterms. dan, to be continued. please come back. that does it for us. we are out of time. here s ali and stephanie for velshi & ruhle. thank you. have a good rest of the afternoon. good afternoon to you. i m ali velshi. i m stephanie ruhle. it s wednesday, october 3rd. let s get starter. 36 years ago this happened. i had one beer. right? i had one beer. well, you think it was nope. it was one beer. oh good. how did you get home? i don t remember. how did you get there? i don t remember. where s the place? i don t remember. how many years ago was it? i don t know. i don t know. i don t know. what neighborhood was in? i don t know. where s the house? i don t know. upstairs, down stairs. where was it? i don t know. i had one beer. a man s life is in tatters. a man s life is shattered. his wife is shatters. his daughters who are beautiful, incredible, young kids, they destroy people. they want to destroy people. these are really evil people. think of your son. think of your husband. think i ve had many false accusations. i ve had it i ve had so many. and when i say it didn t happen, nobody believes me. was it appropriate for president trump to openly mock the account of christine ford last night? that s a lemming-like word you re all using, peter. that woman has been accommodated. the president s comments were just plain wrong. there s no time and no place for remarks like that. but to discuss something this sensitive in a political rally is just it s just not right. it s kind of appalling. nbc news learned the fbi could finish up the investigation at any time. the new york times reporting on a letter kavanaugh wrote in 1983. giving advice to high school classmates who would be joining him for a beach week getaway in ocean city, maryland. kavanaugh learning the friends whoever arrive to the condo first, should quote warn the neighbors we re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific punkers among us, advise them to go about 30 miles. maybe the temperament. maybe lied about how much he drank in high school and maybe threw ice in a bar in new york. enough. vote. the senate will vote on this nomination this week. the new york state tax department is now reviewing the allegations in that epic and explosive the new york times investigation illustrating potential fraud, scams and more on the part of the trumps. turns out it was not a million dollars. but the equivalent today of $413 million the president received from his father s real estate empire over the years. the times says, quote, much of the money came to trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes in the 90s. we looked at fred trump s empire and kept going and going and going. going and going. and happening this hour, we re going to hear live from the white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders. it is the first formal white house press briefing since september 10th and as soon as it happens we ll bring it to you live. we have had the very strange full press conference at the u.n. that the press held. fbi s expanded background check could be wrapping up today. that s what nbc news is learning as the deadline looms this friday and there s a new letter released dating to kavanaugh s beach week in june 1983. between his graduation from georgetown prep and his freshman year at yale. nbc has not independently seen the letter. kavanaugh through his attorney confirmed writing it. the note mostly logistics ahead of the trip sent to his friend p.j. smith but there are some interesting passages that continue to contradict some of the judge s testimony about his drinking. for instance, kavanaugh tells smith, quote, it would probably be a good idea to warn the neighbors that we are loud, obnoxious drunks. he adds, there are, quote, prolific pukers among us. in the yearbook he called himself the biggest contributor to the beach week ralph club. he said it was him not handling spicy foods. goes on in the letter to say of the neighbors, quote, advise them to go about 30 miles. but then the letter cuts off. we don t know what this is referring to. there s another thing he mentions earlier in the letter. any girling to beg to stay there are open with open we don t we have eclipses. we don t know what he means. leaving it to the imagination of the other boys. because this behavior is nothing out of the ordinary for many teen boys at the time, the judge denied during testimony that he was a heavy drinker and in an interview, he wasn t a heavy drinker and threw up because of a weak stomach and spicy foods and the attitudes of women in high school was respectful and matters only because kavanaugh made it an issue himself. joining us is former fbi agent jack owens and linda fairstein. jack, to you first. senator cornyn said at least some part of the fbi report will need to come out. how much do we really need to see collectively to evaluate if we have enough information and do we have the right to do that? we usually only fbi level don t release any of these reports. if they re going to be released, it s going to contain only the information the fbi provided. all right. let me ask you this, linda. there are 40 people who have been identified as potentially having some information into this case. every time we see a letter or somebody tweets it s very confusing. very, very confusing to figure this out. as an investigation goes, wouldn t it make sense to investigate i don t know whether it s 440, 400, but it does seem people left out with information. yes, it certainly does. last information was they hadn t interviewed dr. ford and you can get a lot more from him. example, he says he identified kavanaugh with 100% certainty. we don t knowment it s not been brought out by either side. how did she know him? how many times before was she with him? why is she so certain? there s things to ask her that don t affect what happened in the bedroom up the stairwell but the befores, the afters, the other guys, how did she know any of them? that supports how certain she was. where this house is. i mean, i have had the privilege of working with the fbi a bit and nypd in this kind of case, every day of my career so you start with these guys who are named, the ones in the calendar, for example. if we think it s that date. where did they live at that time? this gathering was not at the house of a stranger. this gathering at the house of someone they all knew so you find those houses. and maybe you drive her by them if they still exist and maybe the fbi knocks on the door and says, let me see the interior of your house. but there are so many specifics and so many people to talk to and you certainly can t do it without the main participants. you worked in sex crimes for decades. yes. we keep hearing over and over and people saying it to me. the president said that is war on young men. what if this was your brother, your husband, your son? no one single person should ever be collateral damage and in terms of men falsely accused, it is like 2% to 7% of those overall. so in your experience, how often is it that this happens to just an unsuspecting guy? very infrequently. very infrequently. false reports are terrible and if it happened to somebody you cared about, yourself, it is a terrible thing. and we worked very hard, every prosecutor did. we were the first unit in the country. you get them out of the system. there are sort of tell-tale facts that you dig for that helps you put them apart. do you see them here? i haven t seen them in dr. ford s account. for example, julie the third swetnick. swetnick. there s something a prosecutor would go after. people are discrediting her already. why would someone go to ten parties like this? why would someone go back when they re gang raped? you d have something to dig out with her to make sure that you don t see it with christine ford s? not at all. what president trump did last night at the rally in mississippi, i started doing this when you were kids or you know, before then. in the 70s. and this was the technique. you just attack the victim. you blame the victim. you don t she remembers distinctly what happened to her in the room. this is the technique of whom? a defense attorney. a defense attorney? the worst defense attorney. and it would be ms. ruhle, you don t the day before, you don t remember how he got there. therefore, you can t remember the part that seared itself in your brain which is the physical attack. it was just so ugly to see again. it was the 1970s brought back before us. a lot of reasons to talk about why that may be happening. but, jack, ideally, we ve got a lot of criticism of how this investigation is going. how should it have gone? the bureau should take as long as necessary to gather the evidence in this case. there s always, always a deadline in a background investigation. one of the bureau s chief mandates is to vet federal judges nominees, particularly ones for the supreme court. i would as a case agent, if i had any questions, i would like to talk to judge kavanaugh and to dr. ford, talk to them about my questions and then go out and find other people to interview. get that information. and come back. to judge kavanaugh and dr. ford with further questions that i have as a result of my interviews. linda, does this letter make sense to you? i ve been to beach week in high school and college. i know plenty of boys in high school who talk up a big game of partying or hooking up with girls and it turns out it s not true. does it surprise you that brett kavanaugh would paint such an angelic picture of himself when information like this is readily available? you know, here we are again with the fff. calling himself bart. prolific pukers. no upset stomach due to spicy food. right. i think all of the evidence, his own testimony, but certainly everything that s come out since, he had a drinking problem. he could have said i was full of it in high school. i want youd to think i was a big stud. been like, seen that. right. the fact that his best friend you have to go with the evidence. have they talked to mark judge yet? if this was his best buddy and best friend, this is a guy who went off the charts alcoholic. sadly. kavanaugh calls him a great writer. i don t know that the pathetic book about the drinking is a work of literature but there are so many people to talk to. yes, kids brag and do that all the time and that has to be separated out. linda, jack, stand by. we have to go do the white house. here s the first press briefing since september 10th and sarah huckabee sanders is introducing someone. the head of the sba. for his support of the small business administration he clearly understands the value of small businesses. they re approximately 30 million of them in this country and i m happy to be their advocate. this money is used in the veteran program. we ll establish a seven-month intensive training program called emerging leaders. it is an adaptation of that program for our veterans helping them transition from military life into private sector if they desire to start their own jobs and their own companies and be entrepreneurs. once again we thank the president very much for this and it will be put to good use. thank you all very much. thank you, administrator mcmannment i would like to bring up ambassador john bolton to discuss the withdrawn from the optional protocol to the vienna convention on diplomatic convention. he ll take some questions after some remarks and i ll be up to take questions of the day. thanks. thank you, sarah. earlier today secretary of state pompeo made a very important announcement regarding the president s decision to terminate the 1955 treaty with iran. a treaty iran made a mockery of with the support for terrorism, provocative ballistic missile proliferation and maligned behavior in the middle east. it was a defeat for iran. it correctly rejected nearly all of iran s requests, but we re disappointed that the icj failed to recognize that it has no jurisdiction to issue any order of sanctions of the united states imposes to protection its own security under the treaty. instead, the court allowed iran to use it as a forum for propaganda. the iranian system has pursued a policy of hostility toward the united states, defames the central premise of the treaty. the regime cannot practice animosity and ask for amity under international law. in addition, i m announcing that the president has decided that the united states will withdraw from the optional protocol and dispute resolution to the vienna convention on diplomatic conventions. this is in connection with a case brought by the so-called state of palestine naming the united states as a defendant challenging our move of our embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. like to stress the united states remains a party to the underlying vienna convention on diplomatic relations and we expect all other parties to abide by their international only gag obligation under the convention. our actions are consistent with the decisions president ragan made in the 1980s in the wake of the suits against the united states by nicaragua to terminate the acceptance of the jurisdiction of the international court of justice under article 36-2 of the icj statute and his decision to withdraw from a bilateral treaty with nicaragua and with the decision president bush made in 2005 to withdraw from the optional protocol to the convention on consular relations following the interference in the domestic criminal justice system. so our actions today deal with the treaties and current litigation involving the united states before the international court of justice. given this history, and raunl s abuse of the icj, we ll commence a review of all international agreements that may still expose the united states to purported binding jurisdiction dispute resolution in the international court of justice. the united states will not sit idly by as baseless, politicized claims are brought against us. that concludes the statement. i d be happy to try to answer a few questions. yes, sir? thank you, mr. ambassador n. response to the actions that you have just announced, iran s foreign minister has called the u.s. an outlaw regime. i wanted to get your reaction to that and ask you if i may, mr. ambassador, of north korea with the announcement that the secretary of state is going to be traveling to pyongyang. do you trust kim jong-un? do you personally trust kim jong-un? well, with respect to questions outside the scope of our withdraw from these two treetdties, i m going to pass on those because we want to emphasize the step that is the president authorized in connection with those two treaties. you know, iran is a rogue regime. it has been a threat throughout the middle east not only for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs but it s acted for decades as the central banker of international terrorism and it s hostile military behavior in the region today is a breach of international peace and security. so i don t take what they say seriously at all. sir? two questions for you. first, are there any practical ability to keep an interaction here in the united states, first off? second, are you at all concerned the president concerned of the message of the sense of people of iran canceling amity to be used by the our dispute is with the. ayotollah. we wish they had an ability to control their own government. on the intersection? no. won t have any affect on that. sir? canceling those two treaties, i m trying to figure out what are the open path for potential talks. do you still have with iran and actually the palestinians? well, this is really has less to do with iran and the palestinians than with the continued consistent policy of the united states to reject the jurisdiction of the international court of justice which we think is politicized and ineffective. it relates, obviously, in part to the views on the international criminal court and to the nature of so-called purported international courts to be able to bind the united states. sir? closing doors in the end. you won t be able to it s closing doors that shouldn t be open to politicized abuse which we have consistently seen in the icj. john? thank you, mr. ambassador. as you know, yesterday the french government denounced the iranian government for terror plot in paris against the national council of iranian resistance leading group opposing the ayatollahs. is that a factor of withdrawing from the two protocols? no. but i have to say what the french have done is exactly the right thing. they arrested and other european governments arrested accredited iranian diplomats, accredited iranian diplomats for conspiracy to conduct this attempted assault on the rally in paris. so, that tells you i think everything you need to know about how the government of iran views its responsibilities in connection with diplomatic relations and i hope it s a wake-up call across europe to the nature of the regime and the threat they pose. ma am? are these actions ramping up tensions? what is our intelligence when it comes to their systems? their weapons at this moment? i m not going into what our intelligence states but the issue is protecting the united states against the politicized use of these international institutions. as i have said, this goes back now close to over 30 years really in connection with u.s. policy of rejecting jurisdiction, of these courts. and it s a continuation i think in the interest of the american people. so does this further divide any kind of attempt to try to come together on what was prior to trying to look at them in closing they re bringing a lawsuit against us in the icj has nothing whatever to do to a diplomatic effort to resolve the issues. it exacerbated the differences. can you respond to the iranian foreign minister saying that the u.s. is driven by regime change? i ll say it again. maybe he ll listen this time. our policy is not regime change. but we do expect substantial change in their behavior. that s why the president has directed all of us in the government to come up with steps to reimpose the economic sanctions and to do whatever else is necessary to ensure we bring maximum pressure on the regime to stop its maligned behavior across the board, not just in the nuclear field but across the board. and given that the eu and still a part of the nuclear deal, does it make the united states efforts to try to force iran to abandon or at least try to dismantle its nuclear program any weaker? in other words, how much leverage do you have at this point? i don t think iran is dismantling the nuclear program. recent reports that are public indicate that it s increasing its activity. how do you convince them if you don t have the eu partners on board? i think we apply the maximum amount of leverage we can. we re working with our european partners, with the british, the french, the germans and others. they have chosen to remain in the iran nuclear deal. but as i ve said to them, it is like a book that was written several decades ago in this country. something like the six stages of grief. you have denial and then anger and get to acceptance. i think that s the direction of the europeans moving in. european companies in droves are fore swearing business opportunities in iran because they don t want to be caught up in the pressure campaign that we re applying. ma am? mr. ambassador, you just addressed palestinian and said it is a so-called state. is that language productive in achieving it s accurate. it s not a state. committed to the president in new york city as you know recommitted his goal to achieving a two-state solution. that s right. so, is using that sort of language productive in his goal? yeah, sure, of course. it is not a state does. it does not meet the customary international law test of statehood. it doesn t control defined boundaries. it doesn t fulfill the normal functions of government. it is not a state. it could become a state as the president said. but that requires diplomatic negotiations with israel and others so calling it the so-called state of palestinian defines what it s been. a position that the united states government pursued since 1988 whether the palestinian authority declared itself to be the state of palestinian. we don t recognize it as the state of palestine. we have consistently across democratic and republican administrations opposed the admission of palestine to the united nations as a state. it is not a state. the iaea is saying it doesn t take at face value netanyahu s claims that iran s harboring a secret atomic warehouse. do you agree with the israeli prime minister that there should be an inspection and what s your reaction to the comments? well, i haven t seen those comments. i ll say we have been our intelligence community s been reviewing the material that israel extracted from iran and going over it in quite some detail and i ll say it s extremely impressive and we have been very supportive of the israeli effort and supportive of the iaea taking new steps to follow up on it. senate just confirmed a few days ago ambassador jackie wolcott taking up her new position as u.s. ambassador to the u.n. agencies in vienna. specifically, the international atomic energy agency. and she ll be on the job shortly making our case there. sir? thank you, sir. when the president came out in support of the two-state solution at the u.n. last week, prime minister netanyahu responded that he s confident israel would retain security control of the west bank under any white house plan. is that correct or are you open to a palestinian state with no security presence from israel inside their borders? we have been working as you well know on a peace plan involving israel and the palestinians. we ll be rolling it out in due course when we decide it s the most appropriate time to do it and i m sure that will answer your question then. i see the lady with the over here. take one last question. i m sorry. i did try to recognize this gentleman. i guess i didn t point accurately enough. my apologies. thank you, mr. boomp. john kerry said yesterday he s not met with the iranians since the u.s. pulled out of the deal but before. do you think he violated the logan act by doing so? i think secretary pompeo addressed that previously and i ll stick with his remarks. thank you very much. thank you, ambassador bolton. fema in coordination with the federal communications commission will conduct a nationwide integrated public alert and warning system test of the emergency alert system. and the wireless emergency alerts later today. this will take place in two parts. the wea portion at 2:18 p.m. eastern and then the eas portion at 2:20 p.m. eastern. this is the first nationwide wea test and the fourth for the eas. the overall test will assess the operational readiness of the infrastructure for distribution of a national message and determine whether technological improvements are needed. looking ahead to monday, president trump will travel to orlando, florida, to address the international association of chiefs of police. as the largest gathering of police leaders, the president will speak about the work of the administration to protect american communities by restoring law and order, supporting local law enforcement and securing the border. lastly, on the night president trump nominated judge brett kavanaugh senator schumer declared the democrats would oppose this nomination with everything they had. before a single document was produced, a single meeting with the senator or a hearing ever scheduled, chuck schumer and the senate democrats telegraphed a strategy to throw the kitchen sink at the judge. they re opposed to judge kavanaugh s judicial views but undercutting the voice of the american people when they elected donald trump. they have questioned the legitimacy and tossed around vicious accusations of perjury. all false and baseless but now they have sunk lower as they sprang the 11th hour accusations and a full-scale assault on the integrity. this is a coordinated smear campaign. no evidence. no independent corroboration. just smears. here are just a few of the examples. chuck schumer said, i quote, there s no presumption of innocence or guilt. chris coons said kavanaugh and i quote, now bears the burden of disproving these allegations rather than dr. ford. hirono said that judge kavanaugh doesn t deserve the presumption of innocence because of his judicial views. one thing is clear. democrats want do block kavanaugh and hold the seat open until the 2020 election. this is about politics. and this is about power. pure and simple. and they have destroyed judge kavanaugh s reputation, undermined dr. ford s privacy and tried to up end the traditions of innocent until proven guilty. we ll receive and submit the fbi background. adds leetder mcconnell, the judge deserves a prompt vote and we expect him to get one. with that, i ll take your questions. john? three people most important in the process are senators murkowski, collins and flake. this morning two of those senators, flake and collins, were extremely upset that how the president described christine blasey ford at that rally in mississippi. knowing how sensitive this issue is and how important it would be if the fbi investigation shows no other compelling evidence to keep judge kavanaugh for the court, these people need to be comfortable with voting for him, why did the president say what he did last night and the way he said it? the president was stating the facts and facts included in special prosecutor rachel mitchell s report and facts in the dr. ford testimony and the senate has to make a decision on those facts and whether or not they see judge kavanaugh to be qualified to hold the position on the supreme court. every single word judge kavanaugh said is picked apart. every single word. second by second of his testimony has been picked apart. yet if anybody says anything about the accusations that have been thrown against him that s totally off limits and out ray jous. this entire process is a disgrace and the only reason that it s been that way is because senate democrats didn t do this the way it should have been done and they circumvented the system. frankly, they have undermined the entire judicial branch by the way they acted and the inappropriateness of the way they controlled them. sorry. go ahead. pointing out inconsistencies in testimony is one thing but the tone with which the president did it last night had an affect. is the president concerned that he may have put the votes in danger doing what he did last night? i don t think so. the president is very confident in his nominee as he stated time and time again. and we expect the senate to vote and we hope they do that soon. zeke? two quick questions. first, is the white house having response to the purported mailings to officials and the president been briefed on the investigation and the updates? the president certainly made aware but i would refer you to u.s. secret service to respond to those. do you have any comment on the meeting with deputy attorney general rod rosenstein? again, we don t have any updates on that front. if there s a meeting we ll let you know. they continue to work together and both show up every day and do their jobs. one more back on kavanaugh. you said democrats for undermining dr. ford s privacy. are you trying to have it both ways? on stage last night, essentially mocking her, her testimony? not at all. we re pointing out the hi pom sy. none of this would be taking place if the democrats did this in normal order and not exploited dr. ford and attacked judge kavanaugh in such a public manner and handled completely differently and the senate democrats hold all of the responsibility for that process. josh? the new york times reported yesterday that the president had engaged in outright tax fraud throughout the 90s with suspect tax schemes and basically getting more money from his parents than he said. you rebutted the story. can you explain what is inaccurate about that story? if there s anything that s inaccurate about it? totally false accusation. i won t go through every line of a very boring 14,000-word story. one thing the article did get right is it showed that the president s father actually had a great deal of confidence in him. in fact, the president brought his father into a lot of deals and made a lot of money together. so much so his father said that everything he touched turned to gold. the president s lawyer addressed some of the specific claims. and walked through how the allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100% false and highly defamatory. there s no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. he went on much further and i would encourage you to read every word of his statement which completely undercuts the accusations made by the new york times. does the president s taxes still under audit? a number of the taxes are. from the 90s and early 2000s? i can get back do you. going do provide any of his tax returns? i m not aware of plan to do so. thank you, sarah. it was a couple of days that the president called christine blasey ford a very credible witness. very credible, very compelling but now he s basically making her out to be a liar. which is it? certainly the testimony by dr. ford was compelling. but you can t make this decision based on emotion. it has to be based on fact. they have to determine what the facts are of this case. that s one of the reasons that they asked and begged for the fbi and delayed a hearing vote so they could get more facts on this case. we expect the fbi to turn those facts over to the senate and they can make a determination based on that. that s all we re asking for. you said that he was stating the facts at the campaign rally but this was so much more than stating the facts. this was a full-scale campaign rally assault on a woman who says she s a victim of sexual assault. what do you get out of that? is that to help kavanaugh s nomination? rally the base? going to help with the midterms? like what s the point in doing that? again, i dispute that it wasn t anything other than the president stating facts and facts laid out in the prosecutor s memo that she put forward to the senate. each of the things he called out were laid out in the memo. there s conflicting feelings on capitol hill right now over whether the fbi investigation into judge kavanaugh to be made public or not. does the white house commit to transparency on this effort and let the american people see the full rein of the investigation? look. we have been very open and transparent through the process. the president ordered the fbi investigation and as allowed the senate to actually control and dictate the terms and scope of the investigation. we re continuing to do that. and allowing the fbi to actually do it as they do best and that s their jobs to do this investigation. on declassification and not spoken in a while. the president has said i missed you guys, too. the president said he d refer the process to the doj inspector general but he wants to see that happen quickly. what does quickly mean? will we see the documents before the midterm elections? i m not going to walk through a time line but we re continuing to work through that process and when we have an update on it we ll let you know. alex? why did you say earlier this year that michael cohen was acting on his own in an arbitration proceeding to prevent stormy daniels from doing a tv interview when the president directed that? i won t get into a back and forth. that s an issue for the president s outside counsel. i direct you there for an answer. john? thank you, sarah. two brief questions. first. the impact of the president s comments in mississippi notwithstanding it is a fact that senators collins, murkowski, flake and manchin are undecided votes critical to the vote. are there any plans for the president to call them between now and next week and make one final pitch, perhaps explain his remarks a little bit more? i m not aware of a scheduled call and we have been in close contact with the number of members and we ll continue to do so up until the vote. blake? sorry. go ahead. i was going to ask is to the president s early supporters in the house, collins of new york and duncan hunter of california, are running under indictment. there are rules of the national republican congressional committee barring support for members who are under indictment. does the president still support both of them for re-election? i can t get into a lot of details. one, for hatch act violation. but also, with an ongoing investigation i m not going to be able to comment here. thank you. as the briefing was beginning, bloomberg put out an article about the fbi background investigation and bloomberg is reporting right now that the fbi h hasn t interviewed dr. ford or brett kavanaugh because the white house didn t give investigators clear authority to do so. is that the case? as we have said several times, the approximate s indicated that whoever the fbi deems necessary to interview he s fine with that. but he s also asked that the senate determine the scope of what they need in order to make a decision on whether they vote kavanaugh up or down. i can also tell you that both kavanaugh, judge kavanaugh and dr. ford were questioned in the most public way possible by the members of the senate who are ultimately the ones who have to make the determination on whether or not they vote for judge kavanaugh. if they had additional questions for them, they had a time and opportunity to ask those. does the white house does the white house believe it s appropriate for these two we will allow aiesha? go ahead. thank you. so president trump talked a lot yesterday about this issue of being concerned about men being guilty before being thought of guilty before being proven innocent and this idea of due process but in the past with the central park five he put out an ad basically calling for the death penalty before they had been found convicted and after they were exonerated he still basically said that they may be guilty. and even as president he s talked about presided over rallies of people saying lock her up talking about hillary clinton. so i guess is there a disconnect of when the president is interested in due process for some and not others? not at all. the president encouraged the senate to hear dr. ford s testimony in the same way of judge kavanaugh s. he s simply stating the fact we re a country of law and order, still believes that you re innocent until proven guilty and see that process go through in its entirety and should be on a fair playing field. that s simply the only point he s making. go ahead. central park five was guilty. does he feel that now? i have to look back. that s a real question in the midst of this. sorry. dave, go ahead. the president has taken this moment to say that he s been affected personally. by all of these allegations. and he s picking and choosing just as the question was. he said that the central park five was guilty and then he s made bill clinton guilty. has he sidecided to change his mind it s interesting you bring up bill clinton. nobody wants to hear those accusers voices heard but happy to hear the others. dave, go ahead. does the dave, go ahead. still talking to them. several times in the last week the president has tried to reassure voters that he ll protect people with preexisting conditions from losing their health insurance. is that a sign he s worried that republicans are losing the argument on health care in this election? the president wants to protect people. i think it s pretty simple. he said that he supports that and make sure that that s not something that gets lost. jim? sarah? go back to this it was pretty obvious that the president was mocking christine blasey ford last night. he said how did you get home? i don t remember. how did you get there? i don t remember. where is this place? i don t remember. he seemed to be to the delight of the crowd there in mississippi mocking her repeatedly. is there something wrong with the president of the united states mocking somebody that said she was sexually assaulted? it seems to me he was stating facts laid out in the testimony. every single word that judge kavanaugh said is looked at, examined, picked apart by most of you in this room and no one is looking at whether or not the accusations made are corroborated, whether there s evidence to support them. every person she named said they don t recall or wasn t there. every single bit of evidence and facts that we have seen in this moment have supported judge kavanaugh s case and the president simply pointing out the facts of the matter and that is what the senate will have to use to determine whether or not they vote to support him or not. are you saying are you saying judge kavanaugh s the victim in this? i think dr. ford and judge kavanaugh are victims at the hands of the democrats. i think it s disgraceful what they have done and exploited this process. they exploited dr. ford. they re exploiting all of the women that have come out to make any type of accusation. this isn t the process to have been done and everybody deserves to be heard and includes judge kavanaugh and should be part of the process and the facts have to be looked at and you have to look at the prosecutor s memo. those are where you see all of those facts laid out and makes a compelling case. john, go ahead. don t have any problem i don t have any problem stating facts, no. john. thank you, sarah. i know that s something you probably do have a problem with but i don t. sarah, we state the facts and i think many occasions when you don t state the facts if i may respond. john, go ahead. thank you, sarah. five days ago on friday the president when asked about dr. ford s testimony before the senate said that she was a very credible witness and saw different tone, different substance last night in those remarks to that campaign rally audience in mississippi. why the change in tone? and does the president believe what he said on friday that she was a very credible witness? i ve addressed this a number of times. the president also said she had a very compelling story. nobody disagrees with that. hold on. credible part. nobody disagrees with that but the president stating the facts laid out in the testimony and that the prosecutor laid out in her memo. at the end of the day the senate has to make a decision on where they stand. go ahead. still credible? does the president still believe that dr. ford s testimony was credible when she testified under oath? the president believes that judge kavanaugh should be confirmed. he has a lot of confidence in him and like to see a vote to see that happen. president trump seemed to link the credibility of a claim with how much time passed since the individual made it. president trump has also called the sex abuse scandal in the catholic church very sad but many of those victims waited decades before coming forward. why does the president seem to assume men who are claiming abuse but wait to come forward are telling the truth but not women? that s just completely untrue. the president has supported, again, throughout this entire process dr. ford s ability to come forward and tell her story. he s the one that ordered the fbi to do a background further supplemental background check to look into the allegations that the senate deems necessary before making a vote. he s also been more than happy to give a platform to the accusers that have come out against then president bill clinton. to say that he s never sided with women is just ridiculous. he has implied that they re coming out of the woodwork all of a sudden and cited that as a reason why even though he s called for an investigation he s saying that because after judge kavanaugh is in public service and in the public eye for over 26 years, been through six background investigations, now part of a seventh, that this is the first time you re ever hearing of any of these allegations. the fact that through all of those background checks not even an inkling of any of those things came up and a top prosecutor for ken starr in a major public position. none of these things came up. nominated to be on the federal bench, none of these came up. he s been a public figure and a lot of opportunity for the people to raise this issue and it never has. and now, at the 11th hour, the democrats have exploited this process and done so publicly and it s a shame and he s simply calling that out. thanks so much, guys. we ll see you soon. okay. press conference, first one by sarah huckabee sanders at the white house since september 10th. the president did give a press conference at the united nations and a lot of questions of the president s remarks of christine blasey ford yesterday at a rally. the president s been very active with rallies and things like gatherings like that recently. questions of whether it was right to politicize that and the president calling for an investigation earlier saying that christine blasey ford s testimony was credible and he thought so. and then mocking her. uh-huh. a lot of questions of the new york times alleging decades of tax fraud, tax schemes among the trump family. donald trump s father fred trump and the siblings. sarah sanders really didn t want to speak about it or boring very boring story. i ll speak personally. i didn t find it boring at all and said one thing it showed that donald trump s father fred had complete trust in his son s business accumen. that wasn t the case. if you actually looked at what it was, it was a tax avoidance and fred trump gifted the money to the children than give it to the tax man. those are two different things and one point i want to say in the 90s it was fred trump coming the rescue of his son donald trump who was facing pending personal and corporate bankruptcy so that s a misstatement by sarah sanders right there and i mean, just think about this, ali. if you think about the shear volume, the amount of money, the amount of real estate assets in new york city that donald trump has gifted by his father, it s amazing. if he had just sat on them, literally did nothing, he would be the real estate king of new york. you could just do that. have real estate in new york and just not sit on it like a chicken with an egg. kristen welker in the briefing room right now. with us by the way are legal analyst danny cevallos and linda fairstein. kristen, first of all, a lot of questions in there. many of which sarah huckabee sanders wasn t going to answer. she was defiant to the questions of president trump s comments last night regarding christine blasey ford, a number of reporters said that he was mocking ford. she really disputed that characterization. she said, look, he wasn t mocking her. he was laying out the facts. essentially trying to lay out the fact that she wasn t able to answer some of the questions that she got while she was testifying under oath. she was also asked repeatedly about that tax story that you re talking about. i thought it was striking when she was pressed on whether or not the president would, in fact, use this moment to release his tax returns. no indication that that is going to happen. according to sarah sanders but i anticipate to get more questions about that. you re absolutely right. she said this story was totally false. it was boring. and tried to put the highlight on the relationship between president trump and his late father. but again, most of the questions centered around christine blasey ford and the fact that you had a number of senators coming out and saying that they disagreed with the president s comments. they disagreed with his attacks against dr. ford and sarah sanders essentially asked whether or not that could jeopardize his own nomination she disputed that that was the case. but there is no doubt that even republicans have come out and said that that s not the way to talk about a sexual assault victim and dr. ford. what will the political implications be? is president trump doing that for political reasons? sarah sanders asked about that, as well. she disputed that but bottom line this is a president who has changed his tone. he went from saying that dr. ford was credible to last night before a crowd of thousands essentially, a lot of people would say, mocking her. sarah sanders certainly on the defense today. this is her first briefing she had in several weeks so notable for that reason, as well, guys. all right. kristen, stay with us. danny, linda, stick around. i want do bring in the conversation someone who s at the brett kavanaugh confirmation, alyssa confirmation. alyssa, you ve had a front row seat to all of this. you were there for the confirmation hearing. the cardboard version of you was there many the saturday night live rendition of the hearing. you ve watched this all week. you ve watched president trump turn from she is credible. let s listen to her to i m going to call it out an all out assault and now just moments ago sarah sanders defending it. what s your take? i m filled with a lot of rage. it started last night. i couldn t sleep at all last night. i can t believe this is where we are. we are making distinct about what we want to be as a country. we re making distinct choices of the people we re putting in positions of power whether it be trump or kavanaugh or our institutions. sexual abuse has been institutionalized in this country. i don t think we can allow another generation of women and children to feel as though their government isn t listening, that doesn t care and they are invisible. i m filled with rage. for sarah to say he was stating facts. the sky blue. i can state that fact. if i do it totally a little off, like the sky is blue, i m mocking someone that may have said that. tone is everything right now. we are making a choice. the republican party is making a choice to back this man and this administration in this time, right now, right here and history will reflect upon this time as being devastating. i will tell you this. 4 d 34 days till the midterm election. there were 800,000 new voters on voter registration day. i think women, i think survivors, i think men are not going to allow this to continue. we re going to take back the house and maybe the senate. you said people are not women are not getting support from the government. it almost seems like the opposite based on comments the president made, lindsey graham has been making. the president said it s a scary men. one out of every six women will become the victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. this not false rape basic cu ac. they are being the opposite of supporting. i will also add that 80% of victims of sexual assault do not report at all. we re talking about a very minuscule point of women that are falsely reporting. also, men are having a hard time right now. i mean, come on. i feel as though he s completely belittling the intelligence of the american people. he s not doing it by accident and neither is lindsey graham. they are speaking to a huge portion of the population who agree with them. what do you think about that in. do they agree with him or is he using some sort of cult like force to try to make them see that? i m not sure if you were to have a real conversation with any american whether they be democrat or republican, that they would side with this kind of behavior where we ve reached a low we re mocking people and their stories of hurt and of pain. who are we? who do we want to be as a country? what are we trying to project of the young people of this world? to the young people of this country. it s heartbreaking to me. i think we yes, we re in a time that s very gray. this is the metoo generation. what is happening right now is we re defining boundaries. boundaries that have never been defined before. as trump might say that white men have it very difficult right now, i m saying that women, young people, have had it difficult for generations and generations and generations. we will not be silenced any longer. if that means that men have a hard time right now, then i m sorry. this is the way the pendulum has to shift for us to have the equality and security in our country and our societal views. we cannot stand for it anymore. alyssa milano, thank you very joining us. thank you for giving me the opportunity. we re going take a quick break. the dow closed yesterday at a record high for the 14th time this year and it s just under another historic first. 27,000. here is a live look at the dow right now. remember, when you take uncertainty out of picture, which is what happened with the new renegotiated nafta, that s a positive for markets. we re going to call it nafta 2.0. that s what it is. machine it nafta 2.0. that s what it is. machin or something woven into the dna of the doers, the determined, the driven? 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complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid, 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that s good. have to think about is there s a cultural cultural cultural divide. also to say this metoo movement is black and white and the other side is just being fool by the president, that s not right either. i m not sure there s way we i m hoping there s way we can integrate this. we can understand the oppression and the power that others have.
evidence to support their allegations. including naming over two dozen witnesses each. unfortunately, the limited investigation that was conducted by the fbi failed to interview any one of the witnesses these two women identified who could support her account. let me say that again. they refused to investigate, to talk with any of the 24 witnesses that could have supported their accounts. mr. president, i think it s important to remember why we re here today. we re here to determine whether judge kavanaugh has demonstrated the impartiality, the temperament, the even handedness that s needed to serve on this great high court of our land. if confirmed, he will join eight other individuals who are charged with deciding how the laws of our land are interpreted and applied. he would be a deciding vote on the most important issues affecting our country. and every american for generations to come. mr. president, madam president, based on all of the factors we have before us, i do not believe judge kavanaugh has earned this seat. thank you. dianne feinstein, the top democrat on the senate judiciary committee making the case against confirmation of judge kavanaugh. we re expecting to hear momentarily from chuck schumer, the democratic leader, the minority leader in the u.s. senate. he s expected to speak shortly. he ll be followed by mitch mcconnell, the majority leader, the top republican in the u.s. senate. we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer reporting from washington. this is truly a very, very important moment in u.s. history. a moment that could affect americans lives for generations. in a few minutes, the u.s. senate will vote on the future of the supreme court nominee judge brett kavanaugh. will he take the swing seat on the high court, shifting the balance towards conservatives for decades to come? or will the gop come up a vote or two short? it s unclear right now what the final vote on the senate floor will be. republican leaders said this morning they did not, they did not yet have all the votes they need, but they also said they remain confident they can get to the crucial number. that number is 50 votes. they need 50 votes. if it s a tie, 50/50, the vice president of the united states, mike pence, he breaks the tie in favor of confirmation. there are 51 republicans in the u.s. senate, 49 democrats. two of whom are independents, but caucus with the democrats. 51/49. this is going to be a critical moment. right now, manu raju is up on capitol hill. manu, expecting to hear from chuck schumer, mitch mcconnell, lots of speakers, a few more speakers before this critically important procedural vote. yeah, and we don t know how it s going to go. and the final vote quite yet, wolf. the four undeclared senators are still undeclared. joe manchin, the west virginia democrat, right now is behind closed doors reading this material about brett kavanaugh s past. entering this closed-door briefing to understand what happened. he refused to say how he would vote. he actually said he would not make a decision until the vote is actually cast. now, the three republican senators we re watching very closely, also have not made their decisions known yet. lisa murkowski of alaska, susan collins of maine, jeff flake of arizona. we expect susan collins to make her announcement about her final vote later this afternoon. so potentially her vote this morning may not be the same as her vote tomorrow. we just don t know the answer to that. she declined to comment on her way into her office this morning. so the republican leadership at the moment is confident that ultimately that kavanaugh will get confirmed, that they ll overcome this democratic filibuster this morning, but no one can say for sure, and republicans i have talked to this morning, wolf, say they don t know what is going to happen, which makes this vote very dramatic as we head into the crucial 10:30 vote this morning. we ll see how the senators react, if they hold back and wait until the end of the vote to cast their vote or if they decide right away, going yea or nay. we don t know how that s going to go at the moment. significant time in the senate. a rare moment. manu, hold on for a moment. chuck schumer, the democratic leader of the minority leader is speaking. i ll get to him in a moment, but dana bash, you have breaking news. i m told as manu was talking about one of the key republican senators here, susan collins. i m told she will vote yes on this morning s procedural vote, the cloture vote. however, we have all been kind of looking coming up to this vote as the key vote. it might not be the key vote. because she s going to vote yes, but then she s going to give a speech on the floor at 3:00 where she s then going to talk about her final vote, whether she will actually vote to confirm. and that could be different. it could be the same, but it could be different. there s going to be tremendous suspense, assuming that this cloture vote passes between then and when we have that question about the final vote. everybody stand by. that s important news. susan collins is concerned. chuck schumer is speaking on the floor. and finally, the dam broke under the weight of credible allegations that judge kavanaugh committed a sexual assault in high school. in 2018, the republican majority conducted a hearing that made the anita hill hearings in 1991 look fair by comparison. in this hearing, there were no corroborating witnesses on either side. no independent investigation of the facts to inform the questioning. they even hired an outside counsel to put a witness, dr. ford, on trial. only at the 11th hour urging a breakaway members of their caucus, republicans submitted reluctantly to a one-week investigation of the allegations. an investigation which was then severely circumscribed by the white house. our republican friends blame us for this process. they re always finding a strawman, but nothing could be further from the truth. first, they blame us for delay. knowing full well that majority leader mcconnell has complete control of when nominees are brought to the floor. leader mcconnell could have moved this nominee two weeks ago or one week ago. democrats had no say and don t when it comes to who comes to the floor. but in each case, leader mcconnell couldn t move the nominee forward because he was blocked by fellow republicans, not democrats, from moving forward. when it comes to complaining about delay, two words never come from our republican friends lips. merrick garland. republicans are also saying we engaged in, quote, a smear campaign, or the politics of personal destruction, with this nomination. in reality, again, they re using democrats as a strawman because what they re really talking about is what dr. ford said. democrats did not induce her to come forward. her conscience did. and our republican friends are our republican friends accusing dr. ford and her deeply held memories of what happened to her of a smear campaign? are they accusing dr. ford of a smear campaign? of engaging in the politics of personal destruction? because that is who they re actually blaming. they re decrying her testimony. and then trying to blame democrats. i don t blame them. they have a flawed nominee. they don t want the focus on the nominee. when future americans look back at these proceedings, let them draw no lessons from the senate s conduct here. let them look back on this chapter as the shameful culmination of the scorched earth politics practiced by the hard right in america. people who will stop at nothing to entrench an advantage on our nation s courts. let the confirmation process for judge kavanaugh be recorded as a sorry epilogue to the brazen theft of justice scalia s seat, the ignominious end of bipartisan cooperation and consultation on the confirmation of supreme court justices. and for what? for whom were senate republican leaders willing to discard all semblance of fairness to confirm? judge brett kavanaugh certainly a product of an elite education, but also someone with hard-right conservative jurisprudence, far, far away from what average americans believe. why most democrats opposed his nomination at the outset feels like ancient history now, but let us not forget that most importantly, we strongly disagree with a number of judge kavanaugh s views. he s deeply skeptical of unenumerated rights, including a woman s right to make fundamentally private decisions about her medical care. he s deeply skeptical of the government s role in protecting americans with pre-existing conditions. he s deeply skeptical of nearly all rules and regulations that protect consumers, workers, the environment. and the flashing red light warning sign at the center of judge kavanaugh s jurisprudence are his views on executive power and accountability. somehow, this conservative judge and scholar of the constitution sees at the heart of american democracy, a president kum king, an executive who is unaccountable to the laws he s sworn to unhold. a head of state who while in office should be beyond the reach of subpoenas, criminal investigations, or civil investigations. this moment in american history demands deep skepticism about judge kavanaugh s views on executive power. nominated as he was by an executive who disdained the constraints of his office and who is at this very moment the apparent subject of investigations his supreme court nominee believes should be invalid. i met with judge kavanaugh for almost two hours. i asked him about all of those issues. his answers were constantly evasive and utterly unsatisfactory. it was deja vu all over again in the first round of hearings. when judge kavanaugh deliberately avoided talking about his views on roe, health care, presidential accountability, and more. there was no league reason, rule, or logic that prevented him from being clear and saying what he thought. he was evasive because he knows that his views are deeply at odds with the progress america has made over the last century of jurisprudence and at odds with what most americans believe. his performance was not only unfair and frustrating to the senate, it was unfair to the american people. when a nominee refuses to disclose their views, chances are you have a nominee whose views are far outside the mainstream of america, whether they be far right or far left. my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may not have as grave a concern about these views as we do, but let no american be surprised if judge kavanaugh becomes a decisive vote to restrict the rights and privileges of the american people while stretching the bounds of privilege for the current occupant of the white house. judge kavanaugh s nomination ultimately does not only encompass questions of ideology or credentials but questions of character. here again, judge kavanaugh falls woefully short of what americans expect and deserve in a supreme court justice. he has repeatedly misled the senate about his involvement in some of the most serious controversies of the bush administration, including warrantless wiretapping of american citizens, our policy against torture, the theft of electronic records from democratic senators, and his involvement in the nomination of very controversial judges. faced with credible allegations of various types of misconduct, judge kavanaugh s credibility was again tested. and he continued to dissemble and even prevaricate about easily refuted facts. beyond the issue of credibility, judge kavanaugh presented to the senate the bitterest partisan testimony i have ever heard coming from a candidate seeking the senate s approval, whether they be for the bench or the executive branch. now, there are many who think that what happened when judge kavanaugh was 17 years old should not be dispositive. even if you believe that, his actions at age 53 in terms of demeanor, partisanship, and above all, credibility, should be dispositive. judges at every level of the federal bench should be held to the highest standard of ethics and moral character. judges at every level should be judicious and credible and independent, but especially, especially on the supreme court. i do not see how it s possible for my colleagues to say with perfect confidence that judge kavanaugh has the temperament, independence, and credibility to serve on the united states supreme court. so i ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, why judge kavanaugh? there is no dictate that you have to march blindly forward with a nominee when there are others available to you. there are many judges who i m sure conservatives would be happy to have on the court. i would remind my colleagues, the seat that brett kavanaugh aspires to fill was held by a justice who assumed the bench after one nominee was voted down by the senate and a second nominee withdrew his nomination. but the republican majority has pressed forward blindly on judge kavanaugh. even when brave women came forward to speak truth to power. why? for what cause? for the sake of winning? that s not reason enough. my colleagues on the other side, if you have doubts about judge kavanaugh s credibility, about his ability to tell the truth, about his ability to be impartial and nonpartisan, no matter what you think of his juris prunls or what he may or may not have done in high school and college, you should not vote to confirm him to the supreme court. so, my friends, democrat and republican, for all the controversy, all the heavy handedness of the process, all the hyperbole and vilification of both sides, there s also hope that the senate can save itself. we can salvage some decency here at the end. if judge kavanaugh is rejected, president trump will select another nominee, likely right of center, probably not to my liking, but without the cloud that hangs over this nominee. and we can proceed to consider that nominee in a much less bitter, much better, less partisan way. a bipartisan majority of senators considering fully the weight of judge kavanaugh s testimony, record, credibility, trustworthiness and temperament, considering fully the heartbreaking testimony of dr. christine blasey ford, can vote to reject judge kavanaugh s nomination and ask the president to send the senate another name. for the sake of the senate, of the supreme court, and of america. i hope, i pray my colleagues will do so. chuck schumer, the democratic leader, the minority leader in the u.s. senate, making the case against confirmation of judge kavanaugh as the new u.s. supreme court justice. we re getting new information on some of the four undecided senators who will either make or break the confirmation. gloria borger, you re getting new information as well. i want to add to what dana was saying. these senators, including senator flake, still pretty much seem to be trying to decide what they want to do. we know that senator flake voted yes in committee, so he s not as much of a mystery perhaps as senator collins or murkowski. but there is this possibility that people vote yes on cloture, meaning move the nomination, and then decide to vote against the nomination in the end. i mean, you ll recall, and we have all covered this, that this occurred during health care, when john mccain, for example, voted yes on cloture, but that was because he thought he could perfect the bill on the second round. there s nothing here to perfect. it s just a nomination on a single person. i gotta go to senator mitch mcconnell, the majority leader. the stakes are always high for a supreme court nomination. but colleagues, the extraordinary events of recent weeks have raised them even higher this time. when we vote later this morning, we will not only be deciding whether to elevate a stunningly well qualified judge to our highest court, not anymore, not after all this. the united states senate will also be making a statement. partisan politics can override the presumption of innocence or we ll reaffirm that in the united states of america, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. we ll either state that facts and evidence can simply be brushed aside when politically inconvenient and signal that media bullying and mob intimidation are valid tactics for shaping the senate. the mob can attack and the senate caves. or we ll stand up and say that serious, thoughtful, fact-based deliberation will still define this body. we ll either give notice that totally uncorroborated allegations are now officially, officially enough to destroy an american s life or we ll declare that our society cannot, must not, will not set the bar so low. so, madam president, today is a pivotal day in the nomination process of this excellent judge. but it s a pivotal day for us here in the senate as well. the ideals of justice that have served our nation so well for so long are on full display. so let s step back and sample a few of the choice moments that the senate and the american people have been treated to during the disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful spectacle of the last two weeks. the very night judge kavanaugh was announced as the president s choice, we heard the junior senator from oregon declare that this nominee would pave the way to tyranny. his audience crowds of far-left protesters, still filling in the blanks on their picket signs. they weren t quite sure who the nominee was going to be yet. we have heard the junior senator from new jersey describe judge kavanaugh s nomination as a great moral struggle, in which there are just two camps. you re either complicit in the evil or you re fighting against it. more recently, we have heard the junior senator from hawaii argue that her personal disagreement with judge kavanaugh s judictud nominee meant he deserved less of a presumption of innocent when it came to allegations of misconduct. you disagree with her, you re not entitled to the presumption of innocence when it comes to allegations of misconduct. that s from a member of the judiciary committee? that s the definition of due process? apparently, you get due process only if you agree with her. and even more recently, we saw the junior senator from rhode island hold forth with great confidence, great confidence, offering his expert interpretations of goofy jokes in high school yearbooks from the early 1980s. that was incredible. many women live in fear. how do you think kavanaugh will make us feel? have you made your final decision how you ll vote on brett kavanaugh? i will be i will be voting yes on proceeding to the final confirmation vote, and i will announce my intentions on how to vote later today. thank you. have you made your mind up, senator? senator, have you made your mind up? there you heard it, she ll vote yes on this procedural vote coming up in the next few minutes, but later this afternoon, we re told about 3:00 p.m., she ll announce how she ll vote tomorrow on the final vote for passage. let s go back to the majority leader. to public discourse. before the ink had dried on justice kennedy s retirement, our democratic colleagues made it perfectly clear what this process would be about. delay, obstruct, and resist. and before the ink had dried on judge kavanaugh s nomination, colleagues across the aisle, including democratic members of the judiciary committee were racing to announce they had made up their minds and were totally opposed to his confirmation. mere hours after judge kavanaugh was nominated, my friend the democratic leader promised, quote, i will oppose him with everything i ve got, he said. hours after he was nominated. it was thus abundantly clear his goal was to defeat the nomination by any means necessary. it was right there from the beginning, madam president. clear declaration plain as day, nothing, nothing could get most democrats to consider this nominee with an open mind. it would be delay tactics, obstruction, and so-called resistance until the final vote was called. for a few weeks, their efforts played out along the lines that sadly have become somewhat ordinary around here. there were excuses for delay. those fell flat. there were gross distortions of judge kavanaugh s record that were batted down by outside fact checkers. and there were all the usual phony apocalyptic pronouncements that are shouted whenever a republican president nominated a supreme court justice. happens every time. hostile to women, hostile to vulnerable people, hostile to workers, same old tricks, same old playbook. but here was the problem. the old plays weren t working. the distortions were being literally drowned out by the facts. senators received and reviewed more pages of background materials on judge kavanaugh s nomination than for every previous supreme court nomination combined. we read judge kavanaugh s 12-year record of judicial rulings from our nation s second highest court, 300-plus opinions. we heard sworn testimony, written accounts from hundreds of character witnesses from all stages of judge kavanaugh s life and career. and the picture painted by these facts was nothing like the caricature. nothing like the caricature. so it was clear, madam president, the old tactics weren t working. wasn t going to get the job done. the resistance demanded more. try something new, they said. well, we all know what happened next. uncorroborated allegations of the most sensitive, most serious sort were quickly sharpened into political weapons. one such allegation shared by dr. ford in confidence with the committee somehow mysteriously found its way into the press. well, chairman grassley immediately sat out on a sober focused search for the truth. the committee collected testimony, organized a new hearing, and most recently asked for the supplemental fbi background investigation, judge kavanaugh s seventh, seventh fbi investigation. by any fair standard, the facts, the actual facts, proved to be straightforward. no corroborating evidence, none. none. was produced to support any of the allegations leveled against judge kavanaugh. no corroborating evidence from the fbi inquiry or from anywhere else. nothing. well, that wasn t enough for our democratic colleagues, of course. the facts were not exactly the point, after all, we sort of get it by now. when the very fbi investigation for which they had been clamoring turned up no new evidence, the democrats moved the goalpost yet again. i believe the latest story is that the whole investigation is invalid. now listen to this, because individuals who had only recently been told second hand or third hand about nearly 40-year-old allegations weren t treated as essential witnesses. let me say that again. the latest story is that the whole investigation is invalid because individuals who had only recently been told second hand or third hand about nearly 40-year-old allegations weren t treated as essential witnesses. never mind that they didn t actually witness anything. they didn t witness anything. so let s be clear, madam president, these are not witnesses. these are people supposedly in possession of heresy that they first heard 35 years after the supposed fact. what nonsense. the people whom dr. ford claimed were witnesses, they have spoken with the fbi. we know that because they, through their attorneys, put out public statements saying so. and what we know now is what we knew at this time a week ago. there is absolutely no corroborating evidence for these allegations. same thing we heard a week ago. if they were, you bet we would have heard about it, but there isn t. so not withstanding that, the leak of dr. ford s letter in violation of her privacy and against her wishes opened the floodgates. the feeding frenzy was full on. the weaponization of her letter by the left led to a torrent of other equally uncorroborated allegations. they were dumped on judge kavanaugh and his family. and breathlessly, breathlessly, the media seized on them, the more outlandish, the better. americans were informed judge kavanaugh masterminded violent drug gangs as a young teenager, until that accuser walked her story back. we were informed that judge kavanaugh beat someone up on a boat in a rhode island harbor. until that accuser totally recanted. we heard another tall tale of physical assault until that account was thoroughly debunked by a sitting federal judge. oh, and yes, we were informed that juvenile jokes in his high school yearbook were actually sinister secret references. oh, there keystone cops were on the case. keystone cops were on the case, madam president. and senate democrats cheered them on. they read parts of this uncorroborated, unbelievable mudslide, mudslide, into the senate record. they cited them in an official letter demanding judge kavanaugh s nomination be withdrawn. were they true? well, of course, that was quite beside the point. quite beside the point. so long as they were convenient. every effort was made to insure that the fact-free verdict of the mob and the media would win out over the actual evidence. make sure the mob prevails. but the uncorroborated mud and the partisan noise and the physical intimidation of members here in the senate will not have the final say around here. the senate will have the final say. so madam president, we re almost at the end of the runway. the cross of anger and fear and partisanship have blown strong these past weeks. they have harmed a good man and his family. they have tarnished the dignity of this institution, but all of it can end today. the time has come to vote. the senate stands on the threshold of a golden opportunity. we have the opportunity to advance the nomination of an incredibly well qualified and well respected jurist to a post that demands such excellence. we have the opportunity to put judge brett kavanaugh on the supreme court where his distinguished service will make us and our nation proud for years to come. but we have the opportunity to do even more. today, we can send a message to the american people that some core principles remain unfettered by the partisan passions of this moment. facts matter. fairness matters. the presumption of innocence is sacrosanct. the senate has turned its back on these things before, madam president, but never for long. and never without deep regret. this institution does not look back proudly on the era of joseph mccarthy. nor on any of the other times when the politics of personal destruction poisoned its judgment. no, no, the senate looks back on those things with shame. and with a conviction that we cannot go down that road again. we know the senate is better than this. we know the nation deserves better than this. by confirming judge brett kavanaugh to the supreme court, this brilliant jurist will be charged with upholding the rule of law and honoring american justice. we must hold ourselves to that very same standard. we must seize the golden opportunity before us today to confirm a supreme court justice who will make us proud. and to reaffirm our own commitment to the justice that every single american deserves. as a reminder all right, the roll call is about to begin on the senate floor. very, very important vote right now to proceed. proceed with the confirmation of judge kavanaugh to the united states supreme court. this is a procedural vote, but critically, critically important, with still some uncertainty whether or not it will pass or fail. if it passes, there will be final vote tomorrow some time on the floor of the u.s. senate. although interestingly, susan collins, the republican senator from maine, just said she will vote in favor of this procedural legislation, allowing a final vote. she ll make a statement later this afternoon, we re told around 3:00 p.m. eastern, whether or not she will vote in favor of confirmation. we re still waiting for more specific details from lisa murkowski. jeff flake, similarly, we expect he will vote for this procedural vote. joe manchin, the democratic senator from west virginia, his vote is still very much, as we speak right now, up in the air. dana, what s the latest you re hearing? the thing to keep in mind i want to point our viewers to the vote on the floor has started. this usually takes 15, 20 minutes for the roll call. yes, and they keep it open until the senators get there. the thing to keep in mind as we watch the vote right now is that up until this morning, we thought this was the whole ball game, that whatever happened in this procedural vote would be determinative of what happens with brett kavanaugh, but we can t say that anymore. the reason is because susan collins is the one who actually said she s going to vote yes now and she ll announce later what she ll do for the final confirmation. gloria s hearing that jeff flake may be in the same boat. we don t know. i was told that even up to this morning, wolf, jeff flake was making phone calls to confidantes, talking about the issues, talking about the concern, the pluses, the minuses around this kavanaugh vote. and that just tells you how much of a nail biter this is. not that we actually need to say that, but those are kind of important data points and color about what s going on with these really, really important senators as they agonize over what they re going to do here. the four senators, they have to make a tough decision, because it s either pass or fail. is that the only option? yeah. it s getting a little more complicated, as dana points out. we have to see how the vote turns out in another 20 minutes or so. but if you ll recall, during health care and david chalian has done some research on this, that collins and murkowski voted against cloture, against having the bill proceed to a final passage, and they ended up being against health care. but it was mccain their procedural vote was an indication as to where they were going. that wasn t the case with john mccain. exactly, and john mccain voted for this procedural vote, because he thought he could get the bill fixed up and maybe he could vote for it, and then he ended up voting against the bill. mr. inhofe. aye. mr. isaacson. aye. mr. johnson. mr. jones. mr. kaine. no. mr. kennedy. aye. mr. king. ms. klobuchar. no. mr. kyle. aye. mr. langford? aye. mr. leahy. mr. lee. mr. manchin. mr. marquee. ms. mccaskill. mr. mcconnell. mr. menendez. mr. murkily. no. mr. moran. ms. murkowski. mr. murphy. no. mrs. murray. no. mr. nelson. mr. paul. aye. mr. perdue. aye. mr. peters. no. mr. portman. aye. mr. reed. mr. rich. aye. mr. roberts. aye. mr. rounds. aye. mr. rubio. aye. mr. sanders. mr. sasse. aye. mr. schatz. mr. schumer. mr. scott. aye. mrs. shaheen. mr. shelby. ms. smith. no. ms. stabenow. no. mr. sullivan. aye. mr. tester. mr. thune. aye. mr. tillis. aye. mr. toomey. aye. mr. udal. no. mr. van hollen. mr. warner. no. ms. warren. no. mr. whitehouse. mr. wicker. aye. mr. wyden. no. mr. young. aye. senators voting in the affirmative, alexander, burasso, blunt, bozeman, burr, caputo, cassidy, collins, corker, cornyn, cotton, crapo, cruz, danes, enzi, earnest, fisher, flake, gardener, graham, grassley, hatch, heller, hovan, heightsmith, inhofe, isaacson, kennedy, kyle, lankford, mcconnell, moran, paul, perdue, portman, rish, roberts, rounds, rubio, sasse, scott, shelby, sullivan, thune, tillis, toomey, wicker, and young. mr. manchin, aye. senators voting in the negative. baldwin, bennett, booker, brown, cantwell, carden, casey, coons, duckworth, cortez masto, feinstein, gillibrand, harris, hinrich, kaine, klobuchar, leahy, markey, murkley, murphy, murray, nelson, peters, schatz, smith, stabenow, tester, u doll, warren, whitehouse, and wyden. mr. sanders, no. mr. lee, aye. ms. hassan, no. mr. jones. no. mr. johnson, aye. mr. schumer, no. mr. donnelly, no. ms. heitkamp, no. mrs. mccaskill, no. mr. menendez, no. mr. reed, no. mr. king, no. mr. van hollen, no. ms. hirono, no. mr. blumenthal, no. mrs. shaheen, no. we re waiting for the official announcement from the senate floor. it looks like this procedural vote, a very critically important procedural vote, will pass narrowly, will pass. susan collins, the republican senator from maine, votes yes. jeff flake, the republican senator from arizona, votes yes to allow this confirmation process to move forward for judge kavanaugh. joe manchin, the democratic senator from west virginia, votes yes. lisa murkowski, the republican senator from alaska, votes no. there are 51 republicans, 49 democrats, with manchin now voting yes to move this legislation forward, allowing a full scale vote tomorrow in the senate floor. it looks like they do have the votes to move the kavanaugh nomination forward. lots of people are going to be analyzing this. let s listen in for a moment. i think the official announcement is coming. are there any senators in the chamber who wish to change their vote? as a reminder to our guests in the galleries, expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted in the senate galleries. on this vote, the ayes are 51, the noes are 49. the motion is agreed to. the judge kavanaugh nomination now moves to the next and final stage, a full vote in the senate. that s expected tomorrow. but this was a critically, critically important move. 51/49. the only democrat voting in favor, once again, joe manchin, the democratic senator from west virginia, who is in a tough re-election battle right now in his home state. let s get analysis. it s dramatic, susan collins, as you first reported, dana, she said she would vote in favor of this moving forward, this procedural vote, but she was going to make her final announcement later this afternoon around 3:00 p.m. eastern. how she ll vote tomorrow on final passage. that s right, and as this vote was happening, it s probably still the case right now, susan collins and lisa murkowski, susan collins voted yes on the procedural vote. lisa murkowski voted no. are sitting next to each other talking. they have been in constant communication, along with jeff flake as well, i m told, but particularly the two of them because they bonded over a lot of things but especially their no votes on repealing health care last year. and the fact that they are talking, i m told, is something to watch. because senator collins has not said formally how she s going to vote in the final vote. neither has lisa murkowski, but if you vote no on the procedural vote, which is basically traditionally something that you do for your party, you re not going to vote yes on the final. it s hard to imagine her changing her mind. but we ll see what senator collins does. i m told that she has been up and down, round and round, about what she s going to do. and sitting there talking to somebody she knows and she trusts could have an impact on what she does. but 51/49 is as slim a margin as you can get. the only thing that would have been slimmer is if the vice president had to step in. if it would have been 50/50, it would have passed because the vice president is the president of the senate, he breaks the tie. but we need to keep that in mind, how historically unusual this is, for a supreme court justice, a nomination by a president of either party, to be this to have this kind of drama even on a procedural measure, to have it go forward with this narrow of a margin. so the question now is will susan collins, jeff flake, and joe manchin continue to vote yes when the big vote comes up tomorrow. and joe manchin, if he broke with his party on this procedural vote, it s hard to see him voting the other way. back with his party. but you never know. you never know. manu is up on the hill for us. manu, you watched all this unfold. yeah, rather dramatic scene. a very unusual scene on the floor. senators themselves sitting and casting this vote. they usually reserve that for pretty historic moments. this being one of them. casting one vote at a time. now, lisa murkowski kept her cards close to her vest up until that final vote. she sat very calmly, according to our colleagues, lauren fox and phil mattingly who are in the chamber, they report she just announced she would vote no almost expressionless as she did that vote. there was some discussion among some of the members, but catching some of colleagues by surprise. the question still remains, i was just talking to people in the leadership on both sides, what will happen on that confirmation vote. they do not know for sure if there are the votes to confirm brett kavanaugh, because of the very reasons we have been discussing. is susan collins going to split her vote, essentially vote no on confirmation after voting yes to advance the nomination? her decision to make this announcement later today raising a lot of questions that she may vote no. and joe manchin, did he just vote to advance this nomination? that does not necessarily mean he s going to vote to ultimately confirm kavanaugh tomorrow. a lot of discussion, a lot of confusion among the leadership on both sides because of the uncertainty right now of kavanaugh s nomination hanging by a thread at this moment. high drama here, wolf, as members try to grasp what just happened on the floor, wolf. and manu, just to be precise, they have 30 hours to debate and then there will be a final vote on confirmation some time late tomorrow afternoon, unless the timing changes, right? because there s one complicated factor. that s right. a couple things that could happen. if the democrats were to agree to not hold the floor as they plan to do essentially all night and begin to move and debate all day tomorrow, they could speed up that final confirmation vote. i would not count on that. but the complicating factor being steve daines, a montana republican senator who supports brett kavanaugh, is attending his daughter s wedding back in montana tomorrow. walking down the aisle with her. and he plans to come back if his vote is needed. so that means they may hold open the vote overnight until he returns, potentially early morning sunday, if his vote is absolutely critical. if his vote is not critical, he may not be needed. this could all be moot if we learn how manchin and collins go one way or the other. if there the two republicans defect, that s enough to derail the nomination, but if joe manchin were to vote yes, they would need daines to come back and pence to break that tie. so a lot of uncertainty right now. we ll have to wait for the key moment this afternoon when collins announces her decision and we get a sense from joe manchin on what exactly he s thinking. i assume senator manchin will make his announcement at some point today. senator flake as well. lisa murkowski, she voted no, the republican senator from alaska. gloria, you re getting more information as we assess. this is an historic moment right now, because it looks like he s going to be confirmed and become a united states supreme court justice. he s 53 years old. he ll remain in the supreme court for 30, 35 years, and we ll have an enormous impact on so many critically important issues. yeah, i m trying to get more information. i wouldn t say that i have succeeded at this point. but you know, we re trying to figure out, obviously, if people could change their votes. somebody like flake, for example. somebody like collins. and also, what strikes me is the closeness of this. and our contributor, steve vladdic, sent a note to cnn and said there has never been a tie vote broken by a vice president to confirm any federal judge, let alone a justice. and that may be what we re about to see whenever that vote takes place, if you do get some people changing. i also think it s critical that susan collins is going to announce how she s going to vote at 3:00, because what that has done right now, it appears it has bought democrats some time to go to jeff flake now and try to get jeff flake to eventually vote no. i mean, perhaps they can get him