well, if i might to make sure we are not making a mistake senator coops. it is my hope that if you are confirmed and we do make progress on bipartisan criminal justice reform that as attorney general you will carry out whatever legislative decisions might be made by this body. last let me say in my six years here in addition to not working on a number of bipartisan proposals on criminal justice reform you have repeatedly voted against congressional attempts to prohibit torture in the military on text or the interrogation context and to defend enhanced interrogation practices. are you clear now that our statutes prohibit torture and if the president were to rover yid that clear legal authority what actions would you take? on your previous question i would note the federal prison population has already dropped 10 or more percent and will drop another 10,000 this year. what is happening now is reducing the federal population. this law only dealt with the federal prison population. and that represents the most serious offenders, our federal dea and u.s. attorneys are prosecuting more serious cases. with regard to the torture issues, i watched them for some time and have been concerned about what we should do about it. the bill that passed last time was a major step. i thought it was really not the right step. senator graham, i know, has been an opponent of torture steadfastly and supported a lot of different things, opposed it. it basically took what i was teaching the young soldiers at the army reserve unit as a lecturer as a teacher, the army field manual. listening to democratic senator after democratic senator give speeches in praise of the rule of law. i am heartened by that i am encouraged by that. because for eight years it s been absent. for eight years, we ve seen a department of justice consistently disregarding the rule of law. when eric holer s department of justice allowed illegal gun transactions, illegally sold guns to mexican gun traffickers as part of fast and furious, guns that were later used to murder border patrol agent brian terry, the democratic member of this committee were silent. when eric holder was found in contempt of congress for refusing to cooperate with congress s investigation into fast and furious, once again the democratic members this committee were silent. when the irs illegally targeted united states citizens for exercising the first amendment views for exercising their roles in the political process, democratic members of this committee were silent. when the department of justice refused to fairly investigate the irs targeting citizens and indeed assign the investigation to a liberal partisan democratic who had given over $6,000 to president obama and democrats, democrats on this committee were silent. when numerous members of this committee called on the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to ensure that justice was done on the irs case democrats on this committee were silent. when the justice department began using operation choke point to target law-abiding citizens that they disagreed with politically. you are a racist! you are ties in the kkk. you are [ inaudible ] black lives matter, black lives matter, black lives matter! guantanamo terrorists without the notification of congress, the democrats on this committee were silent. that pattern has been dismaying for eight years but i take today as a moment of celebration. if once again this committee has a bipartisan commitment to rule of law, to following the law, that is a wonderful thing and it is consistent with the tradition of this committee, going back centuries. now if we were to play a game of tit for tat, if what was good for the goose were good for the gander then a republican attorney general should be equally partisan, should disregard the law, should advance political preferences favored by the republican party. senator sessions do you believe that would be appropriate for an torney general to do? no, i do no i believe you and i think we do have to be aware that when something like this is done and some of the things i m familiar with enough to agree with you that i thought were improper, i do believe it has a corrosive effect on public confidence in the constitutional republic of which we are sworn to uphold. i think you are exactly right. you and i are both alumni of the department of justice, and it has a long bipartisan tradition of staying outside of partisan politics, of simply and fairly enforcing the law. i will say right now if i believed that you would implement policies, even policies i agreed with, contrary to law. i would vote against your confirmation. the reason i m so enthusiast enthusiastically supporting your confirmation is i have every degree of confidence you will follow the law faithfully and honestly. and this is the first and most important obligation of the attorney general. now, earlier in this hearing senator franken engaged you in a discussion that i think was intended to try to undermine your character and integrity. and in particular, senator franken suggested that you had somehow misrepresented your record. it is unfortunate to see emembes of this body impugn the integrity of a senator with whom we have served for years. it is particularly unfortunate when that attack is not backed up by the facts. senator franken based his attack primarily on an op ed written by an attorney, gerald hebert. there is an irony in relying on mr. hebert, because as you know, 1996 mr. hebert testified then and attacked you then, making false charges against you. indeed i would note in the 1996 hearing two days later mr. hebert was forced to recant his testimony to say he had given false testimony to this committee and to say, i apologize to any inconvenience to this committee or mr. theation and with non-criminal civil rights cases was to provide support for the civil rights division attorneys. i reviewed signed and cosigned briefs and others filed during my tenure. i provided assistance and guidance to the civil rights attorneys, had an open door policy with them and cooperated with them on these cases. for the cases described in 6, i supervised litigation and sign the pleading. that is consistent with the 1986 testimony that you provided help every step of the way; is that correct? i think, yes. there is no question you have been forthright with this committee and i would note that members of this committee don t have to search far and wide to know who jeff sessions is. we ve known every day sitting at this bench alongside you. i want to shift to a different topic, and it s the topic i opened with which is the politicization of the department of justice. the office of legal counsel has a critical role of providing sound, legal and constitutional advice both to the attorney general and the president. in the last eight years we have seen a highly politicized olc. an olc that has given politically convenient rulings whether on recess appointments, whether on executive amnesty. and early on, perhaps that was started by 2009 attorney general holder overruling olc concerning legislation trying to grant the district of columbia representation in congress. and it may well be that that sent a message to olc that its opinions were to be political and not legal in nature. tell me, senator session what will you do as attorney general to restore professionalism and fidelity of the law to the office of legal counsel. senator, i think any short-term political agenda gapes that come from the abuse of the law making processes and requirements of the department of justice just don t make sense. it will always in the long run be more damaging than the short-term gain that one might have. the office of legal counsel, all of us who have served in the department know, is a bigtime position. you need a mature, smart, experienced person who understands this government, who understands the laws and is principled and consistent in their application of the laws. that will help the president. it will help the congress. it will help the american people. i do believe we need to work hard to have that, and i will do my best to ensure we do have it. one final question. in the last eight years the deputy of justice s slit for general office has also i believe been unfortunately political sized. it and it sustained a unprecedented number of losses before the united states supreme court. indeed, president obama s justice department won less than half of its total cases before the supreme court, which is the lowest presidential win rate since harry truman. the average historically for the last 50 years has been about 70%. snum rouse of those cases were unanimous with indeed both obama supreme court appointees voting against the lawless positions of this justice department including their assertion that the government has the authority to supervise and direct the appointment and the hiring and firing of clergy in the church. what will you do as attorney general to ensure the integrity of the office of slitter general that it is faithful to the law and not advancing extreme political positions like the obama justice department did that have been rejected over and over again by the supreme court? i think the problem there is a desire to achieve a result sometimes that overrides the commitment to the law. in the long run, this country will be stronger if we adhere to the law even though somebody might be frustrated in the short-term of not achieving an agenda. the solicitor general should not advocate to alter the meaning of words to advance an agenda. that is an abuse of office and i would try to seek to have a slit for general who is faithful to the constitution, serves under the constitution, does not feel that its that power to rise above it and make it say what it wants it to say. thank you senator sessions. we ve been watching this hearing now since the morning hours. we want to get a quick accounting of what our correspondents have been able to learn, starting with kelly o donnell who covers capitol hill for us and has been stationed outside the hearing room. kelly, what have you picked up? brian, this is of course the entrance to the kennedy caucus room where this hearing and many others in history have taken place. and i think what is particularly striking today is how you see republicans trying to prepare and protect jeff sessions in terms the criticism coming his way, and democrats who are working to elicit areas where they think there are weaknesses in his testimony or discrepancies in his record or thing they can try to ship a light on because democrats don t have the numbers to block this confirmation but they want to expose forward barring any unforeseen circumstance. you really get a sense today of the mood here. as the first confirmation hearing, one with high stakes, a huge role, and nominee who does have some controversy in his past, the energy here in the russel senate office buildings with protesters, with international media here, and with all the people associated with staging a hearing like this, putting this on, it has been a day where you really get a sense that this is when congress can do its work with the nation paying attention. and these are real issues that are raw nerves for many americans. and they are getting a hearing today. sessions has been put through a lot of practice. we could hear that in some of his responses where he knew that there might be some areas in his record or his past statements that needed to be fixed a bit. and some of the republicans have tried to give him a forum to answer the critic. and we ve seen that unfold today. kelly o donnell on the hill. to pete williams we go next. pete, the folks that haven t watched a hearing, a high-profile hearing like this for long time would be forgiven for forgetting that this is really a team sport. various members of both teams go up, take their turns, make their points, try to score some points. so it would be so unusual indeed for this committee to knock down, to reject a nominee for a cabinet job. correct. and i think what you are seeing here is exactly that a well coordinated evident here among the democrats. all of them seem to be asking about a different facet of jeff sessions either of his time as the u.s. attorney and prosecutor in alabama and his time as a u.s. senator. and they are not repeating each other for the most part although there have been several questions here about for example, what if donald trump insists on trying to reimpose water boarding? would you advise him that that s against the law? sessions has said several times that he would. the question of voting rights has come up repeatedly today as well. senator sessions seemed to go out of his way although only with one sentence, to say that he believes civil rights are very important, specific voter rights. voter id has been a controversial issue, it s one that the justice department has been suing states over what they consider to be restrictive voter id laws. senator sessions said on the surface it did not appear to him that state voter id laws actually suppress the minority vote. so elections have consequences. there are going to be many case ways in which in justice department under donald trump is different than under barack obama. i think today is an effort both to try to tease out his views that will be different but also to try to set some markers here and putting himself on the record on issues like civil rights and the voting rights act. we are starting a busy week. while we ve been talking, up with of two other hearings have been going on. the nation s command structure and intelligence has been appearing over in front of senate intelligence. what has been gained or learned from that hearing? i don t know, brian, because i have been watching this one. but senator sessions was asked today about the intel committee report, which as you know donald trump has shown some skepticism about its conclusion. and what mr. session said today is he has no reason to doubt the intelligence report about russian hacking. and he has seen no evidence to the contrary. nothing to indicate that the report is wrong. in other words, he s not exactly embraced it, but nothing we won t distance himself from night pete williams sharing with our viewers a fundamental truth. while watching one hearing we can t be expected to watch another at the same time. never been done as far as i know. pete, thank you very much. and thanks as always for your honesty. we re going to take a break in our coverage on the other side katie tur is here and standing by in our new york studios to take this hour the rest of the way. turns out that attorney general nominee jeff sessions and chuck schumer have a similar morning routine. do you work out in the gym with senator sessions? what does he do and what do you do. we are on the bikes next to each other oftentimes watching morning joe and making diametrically opposed comments about what s going on. no fights have broken out yet. that s a good thing. ch: this moe to worry about a cracked windshield. so she scheduled at safelite.com and with safelite s exclusive on my way text she knew exactly when i d be there, so she didn t miss a single shot. i replaced her windshield giving her more time for what matters most. tech: how d ya do? player: we won! tech: nice! that s another safelite advantage. mom: thank you so much! (team sing) safelite repair, safelite replace. he is sitting before the senate intelligence committee for a hearing on russian hacking. this is his first time speaking publicly since the presidential election. first to session s nomination hearing which was mark bite repeated protests, the alabama senator sitting before that committee since roughly 9:30 this morning in a hearing that s expected to last two days. here s a quick recap of what we have heard so far. i abhor the klan and what it represents and its hateful etiology. i believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve secretary clinton. how do you feel about a foreign entity trying to interfere in our election? i think it s i go can t event. i m not asking if you believe it influenced it just if you belief the report of our intelligence agencies? i have no reason to doubt that and have no evidence that would indicate otherwise. i have no belief and do not support the idea in a muslims as a religious group should be denied admission to the united states. i do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into america. down the hallway at the capitol fbi director james comey being asked what he knew about and when about reports russia hacked america s election. there is no doubt that the russians attacked intruded and took data from some of those systems. joining me now from the hill, casey hunt. and from the pentagon, hans nickels. casey, let s start with you. senator sessions was grilled on civil rights, women s rights, hate crimes, immigration, his ability to say no to donald trump. the muslim ban, torture, russian hacking, freedom of the press. what so far has been the major headline? and is there anything in there that could potentially, if not derail his confirmation, then pose a hurdle? at this point katie i think the short answer is we haven t heard anything that stands out as something that s really going to be a sticking, tripping block for jeff sessions on his road to confirmation. now, that said, before we go through a couple of those other issues one thing that we did see some late focus on was senator al franken s line of questioning. what franken did was essentially press jeff sessions on his history fighting for civil rights. so jeff sessions, the trump transition team have worked very hard to highlight areas of his resume when he served as alabama attorney general and in other roles fighting on behalf of civil rights. essentially trying to push back against this narrative that emerged when sessions was denied that federal judgeship over questions about remarks to colleagues that his colleagues said were racist. so that s been their kind of whole way of looking at this. what franken did was try to poke holes in that, asked sessions did you prosecute 20 or 30 cases about desegregation or was it really just a few? that was the one moment when we saw sessions struggle a little bit to answer questions. you heard senator ted cruz just before we started talking here focusing a little bit on that trying to give sessions some points of defense of course if you will, trying to say that yes he did work on those issues. but other than that, katie, i think a lot of the points that democrats have hit on through these hearings we expected. we expected the focus on the violence against women act. we expected the focus on race. of course some of those issues came up under questioning from republicans. lindsey graham pushing senator sessions on that russian hacking question. that was a potentially risky place for sessions to be. he was questioned whether he does believe the fbi s assessments, other things like that. i think atmospherically the protests very much a central point of this and underscore kind of the public pressure around this nomination. but so far i m not hearing anybody say that this hearing means that sessions is any less likely to be confirmed. what will be the democrats strategy going forward? i know we ve seen a number of protests in the hall trying to disrupt this hearing. but this is just the first of many confirmation hearings we are going to be getting this week. what is going to be the general strategy for the democrats? is this just a situation where they are going to be trying to question each nominee as a proxy to donald trump because they can t question him directly? in some cases, yes, that s true. session is particular because of his background on civil rights and because there are so many activists who are really focused on this nomination. and you saw that in the protests here today. i think you are going to see different strategies for other nominees. you are going to see probably an ideological activist focus around people like tom price for health and human services. i think you will see a focus on russia and hacking with rex tillerson for example. i think each one is going to bring up a new set of questions. i think the nominees that republicans and the transition team are most concerned about and ones where democrats see most tune might be flying under the radar. one i want to highlight is the nominee fortressry secretary. he has to turn over his tax returns. there was a lot of money spent and that he made in a lot of ways that the democrats are going to question. the housing crisis for example. republicans don t think he is going to be as polished as rex tillerson might be tomorrow or as jeff sessions has been today. we have seen a number of protests in that room. interesting to point out that that is the same room as we ve seen the watergate hearings. it s where clarence thomas had his hearings. it s also the very first investigation they ever did in that room was 1912, the investigation into the sinking of the titanic. a little the more you know right there. let s turn to our pentagon correspondent who has been monitoring the other hearing that s going on on capitol hill right now. james comey in front of the senate intelligence committee. this is the first time we ve seen the fbi director since the election. hans, talk to me about what we are hearing so far. he is there to testify about russianacking and he was asked very specifically if the fbi investigated any of president-elect donald trump s ties to russia. what was his answer on that? well, his challenge throughout this entire hearing is not to give too much away in terms of sources and methods. but listen to what he had to say actually about the forensics of what they know. our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that s involved. so it s the best evidence. were you given access to do the forensics on those servers? we were not. we were a highly respected private company eventually got access and shared with us what they saw there. katie the main point, main takeaway from this hearing versus last week this senate select committee on intelligence seem much more partisan. we have seen a number of senators block and tackle for the president-elect essentially make his point that they don t necessarily think the hacking influence was dispositive on the election and we ve seen democrats similarly looking to those panelists, looking to the fbi director, dni director clapper that russia clearly meddled and tried to influence the election. last week you had republicans, john mccain saying it was an act of war. this committee seems more partisan less impartial than the one last week. one final piece of information. we are watching both hearings hear. you just saw senator sessions make the point that he does not think that enhanced interrogation, torture, isly. that is a clear departure from the alberto gonzalez point that you can always have some enhanced interrogation. that s a departure from what donald trump said on the campaign trail, that he believes water boarding is not torture and it is an effective form of interrogation. he since tried to walk that back a little or change his stance on it since he found out that james mattis his nominee for defense secretary didn t necessarily believe it. james, one other point. s in the first time we ve seen james comey since the election. 11 days before the election he came out and revuved, if you will, the investigation into hillary clinton s e-mails. are we expecting to hear him address that in any way? are the democrats going the try to get him on record or have they already for how he whether he believes he might have unduly influenced the election with that release? my kptation katie heading into this was that he was clearly going to be grilled on that i have not heard a question on that. i have pete williams to thank for this it s really hard to watch two hearing at once but i have not heard that. pete williams is a better reporter than me. let me offer that. and you don t need a second source on that. williams, better than nicholls. pete williams is great. hans nicholls, you are proven to be great as well. thank you for joining me. joining me now, cornell williams brooks and cedric richmond. mr. brooks, i want to start with you. senator sessions tried vehemently to say he was not a racist, to push back against this caricature of him that was painted in 1996 when he first went in front of the hearings to try to get a federal judgeship but was unsuccessful in that. has he said or done anything today that makes you feel like he has changed or he is somebody that will be a defender of civil rights in this country, a defender of the causes of the naacp. no. i have not heard anything to suggest that he is fit to lead the department of justice. the fact of the matter is we are not our endeavor is not to nor is our burden to prove that he is a racist. but it is our burden as attested to by the record that he is not fit, nor is he inclined to protect american citizens from racial discrimination. so when you look at the record, going back to 1986 where you had federal officials testifying under oath as to racially offensive remarks when you look at those remarks, that behavior, and the conduct, the legislation, the record from then until now we find nothing that assures american citizens that they will be protected by senator sessions as attorney general of the united states. so when it comes to voter suppression we have courts in the fifth circuit and the fourth circuit that have found voter id laws, voter suppressives and racial dim in aer to. in the state of alabama you have a voter id law. in his home statement he said not a mumbling word about that id law and has in fact suppressed support for voter id laws. we have 21 million americans whose right to the franchise is in peril, threatened by voter id laws. he has not made it clear that that would be a prosecutorial priority. so simply mouthing the words voter rights, as you mouth faith in voter fraud, which is a predicate for voter suppression does not offer us any assurance at all that he can lead the department of justice. so what we ve seen today is some deference to senator sessions for his tenure, his time, his collegiality in the senate as opposed to expressing confidence in his constitutional suitability to lead the department of justice. when we look at his record respect to criminal justice reform he stands for mandatory minimums in a country and at a moment when we have 2.3 million americans behind bars, 1 million fathers behind bars, 65 million plus americans with a criminal record and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of activists in the streets across our country who are standing against this era of mass incarceration. we draw no assurance from his record. when it comes to immigration rights, he stood against any and every form of comprehensive immigration reform in this country in the senate. and so if we are going to give him credit for his collegiality in the senate, we also have to give him accountability for his legislative record in the senate. make no mistake. stay with us mr. brook. congressman richmond i want to bring you in. you are part of the congressional black caucus. they held a news conference over the course of the last few weeks and they have been voicing concerns about the session nominations. you yourself will be testifying against senator sessions on bhaft of the cbc tomorrow. what are you planning to say? and how are you planning to convince your fellow congressmen that maybe senator sessions is not the right choice for e.g.? i think that cornell laid out a very good description of the concerns that we have. the position of attorney general is a very serious position. tur top law enforcement officer in the kuchbl you will enforce civil rights. you will enforce voting rights. and senator session s records on voting rights is suspect at best. at worst, he is a participant in disenfranchising people and voting is the roots to the treef democracy. congressman those are the concerns we have. these are two different jobs. his job as a senator is not necessarily the same as his job as if he gets confirmed as an attorney general. in one case he is trying to shape laws and advocating for laws or voting against laws. in another, he is slated to uphold the laws that already exist. are you not confident that he as a professional, he as a lawyer, as a civil servant, will be able to disassociate himself from his own personal viewpoints? and uphold the laws as they stand on the books? well, if you look at his record from when he was attorney general in alabama or you look at his complete body of work, part of the role of the attorney general of the united states is to make sure that policing and justice is done on a fair basis. he has already expressed his concern and his thoughts that consent decrees were intrusive. and if consent decrees are the department of justice s vehicles to make sure that police departments across the country, new orleans, baltimore and others are under cop sent decrees to make sure that justice is done and justice is applied across the board. let s not talk about all the desegregation cases for education that are still out there. there are 30 education cases under consent decree to make sure that children from every zip code will be treated fairly in terms of quality access to a public education. and the attorney general of the united states has a responsibility to ensure those thing. his record, his words, i think demonstrate that he does not have the desire to do it and he wouldn t do it. in those roles of the department of justice are just as important as any of the other roles. congressman richmond, very quickly because i want to get mr. brooks take on this as well. it looks like he will be confirmed. are you going to be able to work with him going forward? well, part of our duties is oversight. and to make sure that the rules and the guidance of not only the deputy of justice but all of the departments are followed. and to that extent, we will never give up our right of oversight and our congressional responsibility to make sure that the department is running in that matter. but we are pushing for criminal justice reform. and senator sessions was an obstacle to criminal justice reform to the extent that he would see the light and all of the data and come along with criminal justice reform we will work with him. but i believe our role is going to be to make sure that the department of justice upholds its oath and it fights against discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and all of the other things. and i so far us, we are going to be in oversight mode making sure that the department does what it s supposed to do. mr. brooks, quickly, if you can, where does the naacp go from here? where do we go from here? we double down in terms of our opposition. we have to be very clear about this. this is a perilous moment in american history where this nation is deeply divided by race, where the criminal justice system seems to represent injustice for so many people around the country. and so we are very clear, we have to hold senator sessions accountable for his lack of commitment to using consent decrees where we have police departments in ferguson to baltimore to cleveland where consent decrees are a vehicle through which we hold police departments accountable and we bring communities and police together. we have to take this nomination seriously. and it is not a foregone conclusion that he will be confirmed. make it clear. from 1789 until now, the senate has had the responsibility of not engaging in a political coronation, but in fact engaging in a democratic confirmation process in which they assess the fitness of the attorney general nominee to be attorney general. and we are going to make the case until the last possible moment. we will register our concerns. we will register our discontent in terms of our views and opinions, our perspective under the constitution. not only will we articulate them with our mouths but also with our bodies in terms of civil disobedience. be clear, this process continues as we speak, and the naacp opposes this nomination as we see. we will see. one more dave hearings. thank you gentlemen. next up, new reaction from the trump transition about today s confirmation hearings as the president-elect himself prepares to hold his first news conference since his white house win. that is expected to happen tomorrow. stay with us. president-elect of the united states. it s going to be his first news conference in more than 160 days, since mid-july. and it s happening just nine days before his inauguration. as of now, all signs point to it actually happening, too. joining me now from our washington newsroom, peter alexander. let s talk about this news conference before we get to the news conference let s first talk about how the transition team is reacting to senator session s testimony today. it s very clear that he was well prepared for this. are they feeling like he is well representing not only himself but donald trump s presidency? i think before we do this we need to put something that says spin alert on the bottom of the screen. they are not going to say they think he is getting crushed. they are going to say they are satisfied. i spoke with one of the persons who was hyped the scenes in the process of preparing. they say they couldn t be happier with this. they say his performance has been excel.. they say he has been confounding all the car,tures the left wing group has been trying to sell over the last weeks. they insist that the democrats are struggling. the bottom line is another individual close to the transition told us he is presenting himself as compassionate, as level headed and as a constitutional thinker. they recognize that they are on home field advantage right now. it is a more than likely despite all the protest you have seen there that he will have sufficient support because obviously republicans have majority right how. spin alert indeed let s talk about tomorrow s news conference. he is expected to talk about his business dealings and the ways he is going to go forward by handing it over to his children. what else are we expecting to hear from mr. trump? what sort of topics could be covered? there is a myriad of them, right? i think you are exactly right. this is the first time he has held one of these news conferences in more than 160-something days right now. so reporters, you and i and others have obviously been gathering up our questions. there are a variety of top i. the best opportunity we ve had to sort of pin him down on questions related to the intelligence report and other which come in the short he can changes when he comes down from his tower at trur tower on fifth avenue. the golden escalator. i trust will there will be questions about russia, especially the intelligence. has said russia is not the only perpetrator of these types of crimes. he refers to china and others. and others in his team has said too much focus has been put on russia. obviously questions in other places in that region, syria as well. obamacare going to be a significant conversation pooesz piece as well. also foreign to remind the audience last time he had a news conference during the dnc that s when he encouraged the russia to find hillary clinton s memes. those notable. the new york times is saying he is going to be encouraging republicans to immediately repeal obamacare. he is saying that if it takes weeks it will be too long. but he also wants them to have a plan in place to replace it. that doesn t seem like that is likely to happen. is this just him using his bully pulpit to get them to move quickly more quickly than maybe congress normally does? here s the challenge here. here s in part what he said to the new york times. he said we have to get to business. obamacare has been a catastrophic event. the challenge here is that his position is saying there should be an immediate repeal of obamacare. and then within a matter of two to three weeks perhaps a replacement put in place as the fact there is no replacement available right now. the vote on the process begin as early as this week in terms of repeeping right now. you have some republicans who want to see a repeal but they also want to have an immediate replacement. we are concerned in the repeal happens too soon it could take a couple of years to have a replacement. i ve been interviewing some at the freedom caucus and elsewhere, and they have admitted we don t have a plan. we have a lot of plans, paul ryan among others say they need time to develop the replace men plan. it s going to be difficult. let s continue on this track talking about donald trump s urging of congress to repeal obamacare. joining me now is political analyst robert costa. no one better has a direct line into the donald trump transition and to donald trump himself than you do, robert. now talk to me. how frustrated is he potentially going to be seeing that congress does not work as quickly as maybe he would expect them to? or maybe he is used to in his business dealings? quite frustrated. the u.s. congress here at the capitol is by no means like the trump organization. things move at a glacial pace in congress. it is difficult to get rid of the obamacare because of all the different taxes and to make sure the insurance system doesn t collapse. while they want to get rid of the health care law as soon as possible the process could take not only weeks but months. as you are talking you should mention that senator sessions as you can see on our screen is still being grilled, if you will, on capitol hill. his hearing started at 9:30. it has been quite a long time. it is going to go through tomorrow. talk to me about how the transition is preparing not only senator session but the other nominees, if you will, for four cab for cabinet position. they are doing mock hearings. they are trying to get them prepared for a myriad of questions from democrats, trying to find a way to make them as non-controversial as they possibly can be? that s exactly right, katie. senator sessions because he is a member of the club in congress s a member of the senate, he hasn t had as extensive preparations or concerns. of course he has gotten ready for these hearings but he is seen as someone who in spite of his report, quite conservative by all accounts, from both parties, he will be likely confirmed even as there are some protests from democrats. other nominees on the agenda, such as rex tillerson, the oil executive, former head of exxonmobil they are getting much more training. tillerson has been media savvy during his career. he has a large public profile as a major executive at a global corporation but it s different here at this stage. tomorrow we have donald trump s press conference. we also have news that jared kushner is going to be a senior adviser, that s his daughter ivanka s husband. a ton of news coming out of the trump transition. there will continue to be i suspect in the days to come. stay with user, robert costa joining us from the hill. next, president obama s last address to the nation in just hours before donald trump becomes america s 45th commander in chief. this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain and protect my joints from further damage. this is humira helping me go further. humira works for many adults. it targets and helps to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. 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. ready for a new chapter? talk to your rheumatologist. this is humira at work. confirmations of an attorney general in modern times. because usually you have got a president with long public service experience. you know where he stands on voting rights, civil rights, criminal justice. not donald trump. nor has he ever dealt with an attorney general before. so what you have seen is these senators trying to get sessions essentially to agree to certain precedents serving a president who delights in breaking traditions and precedents so they will have some assurance on what is going to happen. let s talk about president obama. he gives his final address tonight. going back home to chicago essentially trying to recapture a lib of that grant park feeling he had back in 2008 when he accepted the presidency. talk to me about what you expect to hear from him. and where will this rank in terms of presidential farewells? i think what we will hear is some prompting to people like me, historians, what we should think and write about barack obama in the future. we had farewell addresses from truman and eisenhower and reagan. these were all people along the years. barack obama presumably has decades ahead in his career. presumably we ll hear him say this is what i think i have done and this is why it s relevant to the country in the future. we should also note that the hearing with fbi director james comey has now ended. stay here on mbz to watch complete coverage of president obama s final address. also complete coverage of all of the hearing news we re coming out of today. ahead of the president s speech you can watch all of these different shows on mbz and nbc. and lester holt of nbc nightly news with sit down with president obama exclusively. you can watch that conversation friday night on nbc. check your local listings. that does it for this hour of mbz live. kate snow picks thiks up right now. we have a lot to cover this
. raul castro, the president of cuba will also give a news conference in his country that will happen at noon eastern time. of course cnn will continue to follow this breaking news throughout the day. thank you for joining me today, i m carol kos toll low. @this hour with berman and michaela starts now. hello, everyone. i m john berman. and. and i m michaela pereira. history is being made at this hour after more than a half century of tension and diplomat diplomatic silence between the u.s. it s releasing alan gross from prison after five years. a series of genuinely breathtaking developments. cuba is also releasing a u.s. intelligence asset, a spy, who s been locked up in cuba for more than 20 years. in return washington is freeing three cuban spies convicted in 2001 of espionage. that is big in and of itself. it all seems part now of something much, much bigger. president obama will announce major changes in u.s. policy toward cuba. officials calling them the most sweeping changes since the embargo began more than 50 years ago. cuban president raul castro is planning a similar announcement next hour on cuban tv. the big question at this hour, does this foreshadow a return to normal relations with the island nation, a country that has been a thorn in washington s side since fidel castro took power back in 1959. cnn is covering this from all angles. we should mention we re the only u.s. network on the ground in cuba. patrick oppman is in havana. michelle kosinski joins us from the white house. and justice reporter evan perez and global affairs correspondent elise in washington. elise, i want to begin with you because you have the details of this series of remarkable developments here and at the top of that list we ll have an embassy. the white house wants to open up an embassy in havana. that s right, john, and the u.s. and cuba having these talks for some time. not only about alan gross and the cuban five and u.s. intelligence asset but how the u.s. and cuba can normalize relations. you ve seen talks with u.s. and cuban officials over the last years and the u.s. sees reform on the island. so the u.s. will be opening up an embassy in havana. right now there s an intrasection. the u.s. will also see about getting cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list which has really been a thorn in cuba s side because it was more of a political move. cuba hasn t been seen as having any terrorist activity for years. president obama set to announce with these wide ranging initiatives, really everything he can do outside of the existing legislation. so we re talking about a relaxing of travel restrictions for americans that means a general license to travel practically anything of terrorism, a resumption of banking between the u.s. and cuban banks, americans k use credit cards on the island. the president also going to announce expanded commercial and export of sales and goods to cuba. and officials say this is not a reward to the cuban regime, the regime of the castros but more an acknowledgement that the embargo is not working and that if the u.s. wants to encourage further reforms on the island it needs to engage more with the cuban government and people. they say they will not let up on human rights and actually as part of this deal cuba has agreed to release some 53 political prisoners from a list provided by by the united states, allow more access to the internet for cuban people and allow more access to political prisoners by the international cross-examination and united nationss so as we said for a president that said he wanted to come to office to engage cuba many years ago, that s happened in fits and starts, certainly alan gross has been an impediment to that this will be a landmark deal for president obama that will shape his foreign policy. so many pieces and parts to this. elise labott, thank you so much. not only will our president be speaking about this announcement today around noon, cuban president raul castro is expected to make an announcement on the relations with the united states. that s expected to be at noon as well on cuban tv but is this the beginning of some mending between cuban u.s. relations. we just learned that president himself spoke with the cuban lead era wul castro yesterday to finalize this arrangement is is coming into playwright now. we want to go live to patrick oppman in havana, cnn is the only u.s. network with presence in cuba. patrick, a wul castro, the president, the leader of cuba is expected to speak in just a little while. what is he expected to say? we ll probably hear more details about this historic agreement came through. just came through in the last 24 hours. i understand from a pr company that works for alan gross s attorney, some of the ticktock of what happened here. alan gross was only in formed yesterday that he would be freed and i m told that he didn t know what to respond. there was just stunned silence when his attorney scott gilbert called him on the line to tell him he would be leaving cuban prison after five years. then this morning a u.s. government plane arrived here at a military base in cuba to pick up alan gross. on board is his wife judy, his attorney scott gilbert and as well three u.s. congressman senator jeff flake from arizona, patrick leahy from vermont and congressman van holland from alan gross s home district in maryland. these are three congressmen who have been very much involved in winning his release. then they take off after 8:00 a.m. and we re told at 8:45, the pilot gets on the intercom to tell alan gross that they are now out of cuban airspace. alan gross stands up and is i m told unable to talk he s so overwhelmed by emotion then he calls his daughters and his first words to his daughters are i m free. you can only imagine their reaction at this long nightmare concluded for their father. where do u.s. cuban relations go next. i m joined by a long time diplomat here in havana. they restored semi relations and you are the chief of the u.s. intersection, what do you think looking at the future of the relations between these two countries? i would con garage late this administration. this was the right thing to do at this critical moment. why critical? because the torture report had just come out damaging the image of the united states. now we re going into the hemispheric sum mid-in april. the united states is the only country now that does not have full diplomatic relations with cuba. time to change that. one of the marks, i think, in the hemisphere against the united states is its outdated cuban policy. so we are now moving, the administration is indicating we will move to change our cuba policy to engage with cuba. that s exactly right thing to do. thank you so much. this policy obviously will affect thousands of people s lives as u.s. and cuba who move closer together. of course it s obviously have a major impact on the life of alan gross returning to the united states and the lives of three cuban intelligence agents who are also flying back to the united states. alan gross we re told will land at andrews air force base at 11:30 a.m. this morning, will have some words to the media and then will go back to being with his family trying to get his health better. i m sure that s causing such a good sigh of relief from every family member knowing he s on his way. thanks so much patrick. we appreciate it. i want to turn to somebody on the phone from madrid tud, spain, former governor bill richardson is on the phone with us. your reaction to the news that this deal is being made for the return of an american to american soil but also about the potential for new relations with cuba. well, this is very personal for me because in 2011 i went to cuba to try to get alan gross out and i was unable to. they wanted the five cuban political prisoners, the five spies in the u.s. and the u.s. neither country was ready to do it. so this is huge. alan gross was the impediment for the u.s./cuba relationship improving. so now that that has been cleared away i think president obama is looking at his legacy and saying in lat tip america getting rid of this irritant of the u.s.-cuba relationship where we re not dialoguing or speaking is going to happen and it s going to result in the resumption of diplomatic relations. it won t do much with the trade embargo because congress has to improve softening of the trade embargo. this was the helms-burton act several years ago that basically said the president doesn t have the executive authority to do this without going to the congress. but this is huge. this is the legacy stuff for president obama and my hope is that we zero in on this is good but cuba needs to improve its human rights position, needs to release political prisoners, allow the internet in, allow more freedoms there. hopefully this is going to happen with this release, but this was the linchpin, the release of alan gross for the u.s. that s the news we were hoping to get so the relationship with cuba would improve. you brought up congress here and, governor, you ve had just about every job imaginable, both political and diplomatic so you know the complications here. people say it doesn t seem likely, the congress itself will lift the embargo. there are democrats who oppose this move today. the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, bob menend menendez, put out a statement that said president obama s actions have vindicate it had brutal behavior of the cuban government. what s your reaction to that? there s going to be opposition in the congress. i don t think there s any tway congress will relax the embargo in any way so what the president is doing is taking executive action that he can take on his own. like opening up an embassy in cuba. he can do that i think the exchange of ambassadors is very big and i think senator menendez and a lot of cuban americans rightfully are saying, hey, you know, let s make sure that there are significant human rights improvements not just in the treatment of political prisoners but tourism, transit of cuban american families between havana and the united states. that has improved but for the american people if they open up travel to cuba you re going to see a real travel tourism bonanza because a lot of americans want to go to cuba. i think you ll see a lot of cubans wanting to come to the u.s. so i think this is a very good legacy foreign policy initiative for president obama. it would be interesting to be among cuban americans right now. the old generation, the newer generation. while we still have you, one of the things we have from u.s. officials are trying to stress that this move was not to in any way seem as though it was propping up the castro regime but if we want change in cuba we have to try a different approach. i m curious what your thoughts are there. well i agree. the cuban trade embargo is not working. it didn t improve relations and the cubans were using it to solidify their own leadership. it was also major american relations with the u.s. so this is a good foreign policy move also. the cubans wanted to get off the terrorism list, that didn t make sense because they were cooperating with us on homeland security issues. but i think on a lot of other matters like environmental issues, coastal issues relating to protection of climate change and the seas, it opens up enormous areas, potential areas of cooperation. i think again the congress isn t going to take much action. i think the administration should open it with senator menendez, with senator rubio, with the cuban americans that have really stood up for human rights issues and see if there s a way that there can be a dialogue on americans deciding and being key players in how the relationship with cuba improves because they re patriotic americans and i m for this move and for this relationship improving but it s going to cause a lot of anxious in the cuban american community in miami and new jersey where senator menendez is from. this is a time to reach a dialogue and have a discussion about what human rights initiatives, what openness of privatization of the cuban economy. but this is good and i hope president obama and president castro have a chance to meet in panama in april and maybe this can be expanded, the improvement in the relationship. all right, governor bill richardson, former ambassador, former secretary, thank you so much for being with us to provide your vast insight to what s going on here, this momentous day. president barack obama in less than an hour set to deliver a statement on u.s. relations with cuba. a sea change, really, in u.s. relations with cuba. he ll deliver that from the cabinet room. let s go to the white house now. michelle kosinski 1 there. do do you have a sense of what the president will say and any sense at all of why now? this is momentous. you used that word. the fact that this will open things after such a long period of time. the fact that the white house is calling this the beginning of full diplomatic relations with cuba. a debate. anyone who spent time in miami and has been a part of that community knows that this is a debate to that goes on everyday. something will come up in the news and people will debate whether the current policy is working and castro needs to be punished versus it s not working and something more needs to be done, a modernization of regulation relations. that s the tack the white house is taking here. so we haven t heard from the president yet but we heard a background grieving from seen your white house officials who laid out the entire scope of this. they say the focus is very much still on human rights and democracy but the past policy wasn t doing it. they feel like this will be a more efficient way to press those needs in cuba. it s shocking. the fact that cuba just convicted an sentenced alan gross to 15 years in prison for fomenting dissent, in 2011 and now today we re seeing this sea change as you called it. i was going ask you very quickly in terms of what we re expecting in terms of backlash, because we know the last time we saw a prisoner was lease was suggest bergdahl being released and the white house faced criticism for that. this is not just a prisoner release, there s a humanitarian release, there s also a change, a call for change in policy in a long standing 50 year battle, if you will, or at least a freezeout there will be backlash. it s fascinating. we re hearing from members of congress, some cuban americans. we re hearing from people within the state department who said they felt shut out of these negotiations that started last spring. the question is why weren t they involved more? so the white house did answer that question in this background briefing saying the focus for now is not on what congress can do in the future. although they would like congress to take action. possibly lifting the embargo fully ultimately but they said for now the focus is on what the president can do and this is something he s wanted to do for a long time. and kriept some bipartisan support, the fact that there are members of congress on a plane with alan gross, one a republican, that doesn t seem like much in the grand scope of things but that s what the white house is citing as an example of some bipartisan support it s interesting to see what this will do because when you talk about the backlash, what is expected with cuba in this. they just convicted an sentenced alan gross, how are things going to change so much on their end to satisfy the united states right now? the white house is saying there is an open there. there is talk of reform and this is really the beginning of reform. what they laid out is what s expected of cuba for now is they ll release 53 political prisoners and the white house said many of them have been released. they need to open up communications including internet connectivity, telecoms and include the red cross. there s much, much more to this in terms of what s going to be done. there is so much to this p, including a life altering moment for one man alan gross. we believe this is the plane carrying alan gross right now on the ground from our affiliate wjla. alan gross left cuba this morning. what s remarkable is we were listening to here from our correspondents. he learned of his imminent release yesterday. he has been over time very frustrated with the hopes of being released he is said to have said his good-byes. so the fact that this happened today i m sure he had no words. on board this plane with him democrats and a republican. patrick lahey. chris van hollen, a democrat from maryland alan gross s home state and also jeff flake, republican senator from arizona who is really been supportive of more normal relations with cuba. it shows the bipartisan support but there was also bipartisan opposition to this. we are waiting to get our first look at alan gross. he s 65 years old. he s been in prison for five years. he lost a tremendous amount of weight and as mikhail la was saying, over time he s been angry not just at cubans but there were period of times where he was not happy with the united states for the efforts to get him back. on board the plane was his wife and i can t imagine what that conversation would have been like. consider that for a moment. the man thought he was going spend the last of his days separated from his family. to know that today he is sitting behind the woman he chose to marry, the woman he loves headed back to american soil, i can t imagine the range of emotions he s feeling. one of our producers had a chance to speak with his attorney, scott gilbert. this is what he told our producer. alan gross was planning on enjoying a good scotch. he hasn t had a drink in five years. he wants to spend some time with his family and enjoy a little private time with them. also said he wants to have a good cigar which there will be plenty of americans will tell you is plenty of ironic. but it shows you these were not easy days for alan gross in prison in cuba. there are 50 years of history, 50 years plus of history at play with what s happening today and that s all changing, it seem, today, not just for alan gross but also in the relationship between the united states and cuba. it s filled with complicated tumultuous history. i want to bring in alfredo duran. he bought in the bay of pigs alongside u.s. interests there. he was captured, he was jailed in cuba for 18 months. alfredo joins us live from miami. as you look at this today, not just alan gross being returned to the united states but also what is apparently a change in the relationship between the united states and cuba, what are your thoughts? well, first of all, i m very happy for mr. alan gross. the cuban government released alan gross because he was very ill and alan gross they certainly didn t want to have the responsibility of having alan gross become very, very ill in cuba or pass away in cuba. and so that s why they basically released him. i don t think that there s really very many very much of a meaningful negotiation that had to do with any future relationship between the united states and cuba. there s very it will that will the president can do by executive order in relations to cubaor than possibly start full diplomatic relations. most of the relationship between cuba and the united states has it goes to foreign policy is in the congress hands in the helms-burton bill. unfortunately, the case of cuba is no longer has to do anything with foreign policy, it has to do with political elections in the state of florida and new jersey, electoral politics, presidential politics because of the amount of electoral votes that the cuban american vote in a close election can make the difference. alfredo, i don t want to interrupt you but we re looking at live pictures from joint base andrews, andrews air force base as many people know it outside washington, d.c. we believe that was just the plane carrying alan gross that landed. it does seem likely perhaps this camera is following him. we can t get a good look at it that he may be in that group of people stepping on to u.s. soil for the first time in five years. is. we wanted to stay with the this picture, alfredo, we ll get back to you in just a moment. this is significant. five years of imprisonment in cuba, not expecting to be released home. many people had tried in vain. we heard from form er governor bill richardson had added his voice to the calls to be released. and this happened in very short order, today an exchange. that was humanitarian release but we know there was another u.s. spy that had been held in cuba for 20 years. he has been released as well. there were political prisoners within cuba released as well in this deal today. alfredo, if you re still with us, you were a prisoner in cuba many, many years ago. alan gross, who we believe we just saw land on american soil, he was just released from a cuban prison after five years. there are critics today of this deal who say that the obama administration just made a deal with a repressive regime. a regime that is not changing. how do you react to that? i think that the obama administration, what they did is what every administration of the united states has an obligation to do and that is to try to get whatever person is imprisoned outside of the united states for political reasons to get them back here to the country. the obama white house did the right thing by protecting an american citizen. especially one who seems to be ill. so i congratulate the obama administration for having the courage to do what they re obligated to do and he s done it very well. but you say it s going to take more to see substantive change within cuba. what is it going to take? you know, the only thing that i can forecast for cuba is that nothing is going to change until we have a generational change in cuba. while we have the four or five historical figures of the mountains in cuba still walking around in havana you re not going to see any significant change. you re going to see a generational change, the young cubans, if you take a look at the central committee of the communist party, about 80% of them are under 55 years of age, that ear the ones who will change the future of cuba. they want a better life, they want a more stable government, they want political freedom, they want human rights and that you don t have in cuba right now. alfredo, thank you so much for being with us. we just saw some live pictures right now from andrews air force base of alan gross returning to the united states after five years in a prison in cuba. he was flown back this morning, just told yesterday that he was coming back. he was said when the airplane made it up in the u.s. airspace he was said to have stood up and was at a loss for words, he then called his daughters and had an emotional conversation with them. it s amazings to man this man s first taste of freedom. whatever you have to say about what is happening today, an historic moment today. the change in the relationship between the united states and cuba for one man today life just changed do dramatically. he is home safely. he did not think this was going to happen. one man who met with him in prison, in cuba, congressman sam farr, a democrat from california. he joins us by phone now. congressman, you met with alan gross back in may. when you spoke to him then, do you think he ever saw this day coming? no, in fact, he said that he would not spend his next birthday incarcerated. so it was obvious that he was either going to kind of do something really drastic. he was very upset with both countries. sort of felt let down by our country and certainly upset with the cuban government. he knew that this was a political move by the cubans to arrest him even though he didn t break the cuban law. but to hold him for 15 years in prison, i don t think he ever thought this was going to happen. you can see by the excitement i mean, everybody s excited about this. this is a failed policy, diplomatic relations allow you to negotiate, all the things that people are concerned about about cuba, their violations of human rights and lack of freedom in the press, these are things that can be donor mall channels just like they have been done with vietnam and china and so on. so i m really excited that our policy is becoming mature. becoming mature. it sounds like in order to broker this deal it sounds as though it sort of took an international effort. we ve been giving word from some of our reporters that the canadians and the vatican, pope francis, have been involved in facilitating and brokering this deal. pope francis encouraging president obama in a letter and in their meeting this year to renew talks with cuba. we re just showing once again the moment so many people have been watching and the family was waiting for, the moment when alan gross, his plane touched down on u.s. soil at andrews air force base with his wife and several elected officials on board the plane, people who had been working to secure his release. a tremendous moment there. we know the president has been active in this, congressman farr. i m curious what you re expecting and hoping to hear from the president when he makes his comments at noon today. well, i hope he ll also point out that we re the only country in the hemisphere that hasn t had normal relations and that we ve been isolating ourselves in the world, it s been an embarrassment. we have a summit of all the presidents meeting in panama in march. all of the other countries insisted cuba be invited to the next summit. we had to take some action and i m really proud that he did. i think this is a step in the right direction. as i said, it s mature and all the other concerns that we have now can be dealt with during normal channels and i think it will really allow the american people to interact with cuban people and what better way to build democracy. congressman, though, you served in the u.s. house of representatives the u.s. congress does not seem likely to reverse m t embargo. the president will try to normalize some relations, there will be an exchange of embassy. we ll have an embassy in the united states and cuba will have an embassy in washington, d.c. which is remarkable in and of itself. do you see the politics inside zmong there s bipartisan opposition in some quarters. the strongest opposition in congress is a few members who are cuban americans who have made it their political mission to block any progressive action. they re going to have to stand between the american people and the president on this one because i think american people and the faith-based communities in this country, the trading groups, the business groups will all be behind normalizing relations and so if congress members can t get reelected, they ll listen to the people and i think the american people will respond overwhelmingly in favor of the president s action. we re seeing a closeup picture of alan gross on the side of your screen. there s an image that was taken there of him disembarking from the plane. a lot of people have noted that he has lost a substantial amount of weight during his time in prison in cuba. losing some 100 pounds. there was talk of some medical issues that he was having. it really is something to see, john, when you see this happening. we ve seen a few returns home in the last little while of americans. we saw some other home comings of people and you try to imagine what you would be feeling in a moment like this. we just got a statement from senator jeff flake who was on the plane as he was coming home with alan gross right now. let me read you this statement outloud. it says this is a wonderful day for alan gross, for his wife judy and their family. the manner in which they have endured this nightmare is worthy of praise and admiration. it was an honor to be with alan as he touched down on u.s. soil. you can see the still image of that. after more than five years in a cuban prison. when i visited alan last month, he expressed the hope his ordeal might somehow lead to positive changes between the united states and cuba with today s significant and far-reaching announcements i think it already has. indeed, the life of this man, alan gross, changing drastically today. in just a few minutes 30, minutes from now, president obama will announce major changes in the u.s. relationship with cuba as well. we want to turn to justice reporter evan perez who covered the relationship extensively when he was a reporter for the wall street journal and ana navarro who is, we should point out, a resident of miami, great perspective to get perspective from both of you. evan, you have been covering this issue, this ongoing issue for some time. i m curious about your thoughts and what it will feel like big picture wise. michaela, i ll tell you one example of how bad the relationship between cuba and the united states was in 2009 when president obama took office. i remember meeting the head of the cuban intrasection here in washington and we were talking about hented to get good chinese food and i suggested going to a restaurant in northern virginia in one of the suburbs and he told me he couldn t go because he s not allowed to travel outside the beltway they had restrictions on how far cuban diplomats, cuban intersection is the de facto embassy, at least until now when the president changes this with his executive action. so that gives you a sense of how bad this relationship was. the diplomats couldn t even travel to get chinese food outside the belt way. they couldn t travel 25 miles outside of new york city. beginning last year those restrictions started end iing. we ve come a long way and what is driving this, i think, is demographics, frankly. the fact that you vent v younger cubans that don t feel the embargo has worked. you have older cubans who still support it but younger cubans don t. also since 1980 and the demographic population of students who have come here, they re economic migrants, not because they re fleeing political oppression, i think ana and i would disagree on this but that is also driving this. this is why the obama administration feels that it s safe to do something like this. ana, evan was mentioning where the support for this move today will come from but there is also fierce opposition as well you are living in miami right now. what reaction are you hearing there? well, i have been communicating since the early morning with cuban american leaders, with the cuban american congressional delegation, both democrat and republican and evan is right. he and i do disagree on some of this. i disagree that the demographics have changed as much as some would like us to believe they ve changed. they ve changed some and after this recent election there were mistaken reports that cuban americans had voted majority for charlie crist and they haven t. in fact, if you take a look at florida, there s not one, one statewide elected official that does not support the embargo. the one congressman, democrat cuban american who did support the embargo just got beat like a drum, his name was joe garcia, by a new generation of cubans, carlos corbello who is in his 30s and supports sanctions on cuba. so i think you won t see any change on the congressional opposition from the cuban american front. and though they are they can be very partisan at times on other issues, when it comes to the cuba issue, bob ben thmenen ted cruz, ileana ros-lehtinen, mario diaz-balart, they are one front, they are a solid wall. what you can see here is there s still a fierce discussion and a fierce debate about u.s. relations with cuba. all i have to say is think about when the u.s. senate needs to confirm the president s nominee to be the first ambassador cuba. that will be fascinating. ana navarro, evan perez, thank you so much. in just a few minutes, the president of the united states will speak in the cabinet room and announce these major changes in the relationship between the united states and cuba. the biggest changes, i think, that we have seen in well over 50 years since the embargo and a series of other measures were imposed over time. joining us is wolf blitzer. wolf is going to cover the president s speech when it takes place just after noon. i wonder if you can put this in context, wolf. the historical impact of this in this country and in cuba and what this means? it s an historic moment. this is a most significant development in u.s./cuban relations going back to the revolution and cuba back in 1961. it s been clear to me from the very start of the obama administration this is precisely what the president wanted to do. he wanted to normalize relations, establish full diplomatic relations between the united states and cuba. as cuba, by the way, has with i think all of the countries in north and south america right now. but there were several problems along the way, certainly political problems as ana navarro just pointed out. a lot of domestic opposition not only from republicans but from some democrats as well. at the same time, there s been growing political support for an improved relationship between the u.s. and cuba and that is about to happen with the full normalization of relations, diplomatic embassies, not just an intrasection, there s a cuban interest section here in washington, a u.s. interest section in havana but now there will be ambassadors in both countries. there will be an opening of tourism, of trade. this is really a significant change. the president has wanted to do it but the imprisonment of alan gross was a serious impediment. now that he has been released, obviously that opens the door to what s going on. notwithstanding in the, way certainly, john and michaela, the final two years of his administration. he doesn t have to worry about politics anymore, getting reelected right after the midterms. he thought this was a good time to normalize the relationship. that s what he s going to announce at the top of the hour. wolf, stand by for a second. we want to bring in senator marco rubio who joins us and get his reaction to all of this going on. obviously this is going to have a deep impact, a very personal way this is going to affect you as a cuban american and also as a lawmaker in the state of florida which is has a very, very large cuban american population. give me your reaction, personal and professional. on the issue of mr. gross, i m happy he ll be back with his family. he never should have been in a cuban prison. he wasn t a spy. he was trying to provide a telecommunication equipment to a small jewish community there and he s been a hostage for five years and the cuban government almost allowed him to die in captivity. but these other measures are truly outrageous and counterproduct i have. here s why. the president will increase the amount of remittances to the island, open up the banking sector and open up the telecommunications sector. what are the cubans going to do? they ll release 53 political prisoners who can go to jail tomorrow if they decide to take up the cause of freedom and democracy and allow the united nations to monitor conditions on the ground a little bit more closely. that s it. no democratic opening. no freedom of the press. no freedom of organization or assembly. no elections, no political parties. no democratic opening at all. for me you talk about personally, the issue that i care about in cuba is democracy. i want the cuban people to have freedom and democracy and then they can choose any economic model they want. nothing that has s happening here will further that cause. on the contrary, it will set it back. it s a lifeline for the castro regime that allows them to become more profitable because they control every sector of the economy and allow them to become a more permanent fixture for decades to come now and the cuban people are further away from democracy today because of this. senator, as we re speaking we see pictures on the other side of the screen of alan gross returning to the united states. we saw a picture of him seeing his wife in cuba before he got on the plan to come back to the united states. there are two obviously very relieved people right there. i want to pick up on your point about u.s.-cuba relations. because there are people, senator, who will argue with you. if the goal of all the measures that have been in place for so long, the united states measures against cuba, have been regime change, have been to change what s going on in cuba, fidel castro well t-cas trows have been in power for more than 50 years now. so whatever efforts to change things didn t seem to work. well, first of all i would say that you talk about the economic conditions in cuba being so miserable, cuba trades with every country in the world. the reason why they have an economic disaster because their leaders are incompetent and their model of economics doesn t work. we don t have economic sanctions on venezuela and their economy is almost as bad as the cuban economy because they follow the same model. as far as it not working, it s the fundamental misunderstanding of why the embargo still matters. the embargo is leverage. the sanctions are leverage. raul castro is 80 something years old. from a biological standpoint his days are numbered and that there will be a change in government in cuba and i think that will be precipitated by the continuing response of their sponsors in caracas. the question now is what kind of government takes over. for us the embargoes serve as leverage to go to that new government or whoever their leaders are and say we are prepared as the law says in writing to open up economic relationships and diplomatic relationships with cuba but you have to move on democratic changes. and that s not been done here. we ve just lost a significant part of our privilege to make that happen here in the foreseeable future. not a single democratic concession. and by the way, this idea that the fact that there will now be more american products available in cuba will bring about democracy is absurd. you can t point a single example in human history or recent history especially where more economic trade has led to a democratic opening. china is as repressive as any government in the world and they ve got full economic relations with the united states. i m curious what you re hearing from people in your state. you ve obviously been on the phone hearing from folks in your state, leaders there, freedom the cuban american community. what are you hearing from folks? well, look, i mean, the among many of the exiles there s a resistance to any sort of change whatsoever in policy. they would share many of the concerns i ve just outlined. there are people in the cuban community who share our goals of bringing about democracy and they believe that if somehow there was more economic trade with cuba that that would somehow create the conditions for an uprising or a dramatic change. i just don t know where there s ever happened when has tourism ever brought about democracy in this government controls every aspect of life in cuba, every aspect of life. every single poisy change that the u.s. has ever made towards cuba. whether it s more travel, more person to person contact, more remittences, they have manipulated every single one of them and thelma nip lapt this as well. this is a small island of 13 million people with an apparatus in place for over 50 years. it controls every aspect of life in cuba and it will control this as well. they will use all of these changes to their advantage. they will never allow any of these changes to undermine their grip on the island. senator, you obviously have a personal and professional interest in what is happening in cuba. quickly, were you briefed at all before this morning that this was happening? no, i was aware of it last night but not from the administration. i chose not to divulge what i knew because i didn t want to endanger mr. gross release. obviously there s a human element to it. i was briefed this morning at around 10:00 a.m. by secretary kerry but i had already known about many of these chings and, quite frankly, i was expecting them. for weeks i ve been asking tony blinken who s been confirmed by the senate specifically about these topics and and his answers nebulous at best led me to believe that something was in the works and i think, of course, it s par for the course for this administration to announce it the day that congress finally recesses. i think that was not by accident, either. senator, i want to ask you one question about your opinion about policy toward cuba because you seem to say to me two things that are a little bit in opposition. you say the embargo and sanctions in our measures towards cuba haven t worked because everyone else has been trading with cuba all along but then you say it s leverage in how we deal with cuba in the future. can you have both things at once? can you have it be leverage and can you have it not working at the same time? i think you misunderstood my first point. my first point was people often say the cuban embargo is hurting the cuban people and my answer is that s absurd. the cuban people get theoretically by-products from any nation on earth. the reason they don t have those products is not because of the cuban embargo, it s because of their government being incompetent. now, the u.s. embargo is leverage because cuba cares. we re the united states. we re not some small country halfway around the world we re the most powerful country on the planet, we re their closest neighbor. their number one priority of the cuban government is to affect u.s. foreign policy towards cuba and you see this consistently reflected in the people they try to influence in academia and the editorials that have now been a steady stream of editorials in the new york times and the folks that are walking around the cabal here and the members and colleagues of mine that are constantly being reached out to by the regime. -to-try to get them on their side for these changes there s a reason for that. they know if they can open up u.s. markets they will have american companies investment in the status quo in cuba. and what you re going to have now is american companies doing business in cuba advocating here for us not to do anything to disrupt the status quo because it s good for their bottom line. and i know that to be true because last week we passed a bill here that supported the democratic aspirations of people in hong kong and my office got multiple calls from companies that do business in china asking us not to do it because they have an interest in the status quo. the same was true with ukrainian sanctions and people that have business deals with moscow. they want this not to do too much on the sanctions front. now you ll see that with cuba as well. senator marco rubio, we appreciate your time. we know this is very, very close to home. i guess we have here in studio rabbi eli abadi. he visited alan gross when gross was in prison in cuba. great to have you. first of all, your reaction to knowing mr. gross is now back home on american soil? well, i m thrilled and very excited to hear that he s freed and what a wonderful time and occasion for him to be free as we celebrate the holiday of chanukah where we celebrate the miracle of the oil and this is truly a miracle that alan gross has been freed. you spoke to him, you met with him in cuba, correct? yes. what were his frustrations while he was in prison there? i m sure he was shocked and infuriated at the cuban regime but did he feel like he was getting the support he wanted and needed from the american government all along? i tell you, when i visited him almost two years ago together with a cuban american loyal he was frustrated at the cuban government but he was more frustrated at the american government at that time. at that time he was trying to refuse to meet with any american official because he felt that the united states has abandoned him. he felt that he was laying in a prison in cuba without much support for from the united states. what is your sense about what changed then? because this all seemed to happen fairly quickly. yes. well we have been myself, james barren that will and a few other people, we have been pressing the united states government to sit down and negotiate with cuba his release. whatever the price cuba was asking for, that is for the politicians, really to decide but for us it was really to pressure the u.s. government to sit down and negotiate. there were so many ways that the united states could really extend a hand to cuba for the release of alan gross and i sensed in the last few weeks that something might be happening and so this morning when i heard i was really very thrilled about it. how is his health now? we know he had threatened not to eat. at one point last may he said he didn t think he d have another birthday in cuba. well, if you remember when i was there, i m a physician also and there was a claim he had cancer and he wasn t feeling well and he lost weight and i examined him as a physician, the cuban government allowed me to do so, i read and saw all of his medical records. at that time he was quite healthy. he had lost 100 pounds but then he lost it not only because he did exercise and was on a diet that he himself imposed. now i don t know exactly how he feels except what i hear, that his arthritic pain is preventing him from walking well, that he only sees from one eye. i just saw him going down the airplane, he seemed to be walking fine so i m happy about that. but i think it was more importantly depressed, more emotionally than physically sick and that is because he could not see any light at the end of the tunnel. rabbi, we appreciate you coming in and telling us about your experience meeting with alan gross who is home back on american soil with his wife judith and will be heading to his home i m we know the president will be speaking a short time from now. raul castro, the president of cuba will be speaking. alan gross, we expect, will be speaking. this is a day that a lot of people thought they would not see for a long, long time, if ever. we re going to turn it over to wolf blitzer who s going to take us to the president s big speech. wolf? hello, i m wolf blitzer in washington. we want to welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. only minutes away from a major announcement from the white house. president obama about to declare an historic thaw in u.s. relations with cuba. and it begins with a prisoner swap. you ve probably been watching cnn live right now of the american contractor, alan gross. he has just arrived outside washington, d.c., joint base andrews after five years of captivity in the communist neighbor only 90 miles away from the southern tip of florida. alan gross was escorted on the flight to andrews by his wife, judy, two u.s. senators and a united states congressman. we understand cuba has also freed an unnamed u.s. intelligence source who s been held in cuban prisons for more than 20 years. the u.s. has released the three remaining members of what were called the cuban five, they were convicted in 2001 of espionage. the other convicts are back in cuba already. they ve served most of their sentences, all of the cuban five are now back in cuba. the policy changes, by far the biggest and most dramatic changes since washington clamped an embargo on cuba way back in 1961. they include right now more travel for american passport holders, greater opportunities to visit cuba, tourism, greater export of american goods and services. americans will be allowed to bring cuban goods home in limited quantities. cuban expatriots will be able to send more money back home, all leading to a full restoration of full diplomatic relations. the u.s. announcing there will be full-fledged embassies, an american ambassador in havana, a cuban ambassador here in washington. not just diplomatic interest sections but embassies and all that means a normalization of diplomatic relations, in other words. cnn is covering these seismic developments as only cnn can. our patrick ottman is the only reporter there. elise labott is standing by live. alina machado, jim sciutto, evan perez and our white house correspondent, jim acosta. let s go to havana first. patrick is on the scene, the only u.s. television correspondent in havana. tell us, patrick, what s going on right now because clearly this is such a dramatic development and we have learned for the first time in about 50 years there was a major phone conversation between president obama and raul castro, the president of cuba. reporter: yes, that s absolutely unprecedented. the two leaders would not only speak but talk for 45 minutes and hammer out the last details of this exchange of prisoners. we re told this morning that alan gross was picked up by u.s. government plane carrying u.s. congressmen, his wife, judy, his attorney, scott gilbert. alan gross was only told yesterday that he was going to be freed. after his attorney told him by phone the news that he was going to be freed, alan gross was speechless. he couldn t believe it. he left havana this afternoon around 8:a.m. when he was told they had cleared cuban airspace. he rose from his seat and was unable to talk he was so emotional. then he phoned his two daughters. his first words were, i m free. he landed at andrews air force base a little while ago. he s going on now to try to recover the health that was so badly damaged by five years in cuban prison. but there s a much bigger story here, which is a loosening of decades-long restrictions. cubans are still finding out about this basically from u.s. media that s here. they don t have easy access to the internet or regular access to channels like cnn. and raul castro is due to address the nation here any moment now. the cubans still haven t been told by the official state media that this very important change is taking place. they have to let this change sink in, something most people here never thought was going to happen, which is the u.s. if not lifting the embargo, finally loosening some important restrictions that have kept these two countries divided for so long, wolf. the president of cuba, raul castro, i take it he s about to make a statement on television to the cuban people, the president of the united states, president obama, he s about to make a statement. only moments away from both of those statements. this is pretty extraordinary for raul castro to be going out and announcing to the cuban people probably almost exactly the same time that president obama is announcing to the american people and the entire world what s going on. set the scene for the raul castro announcement. reporter: well, i don t think anything has happened like this probably since the cuban missile crisis where basically you have a u.s. leader and a cuban leader addressing their people at the same time. raul castro does not make regular addresses to the cuban people or spontaneous addresses. usually when he talks about the united states, it s very combative terms. so he ll have to really explain this in a way that will line up with some of the hardline rhetoric that we re so used to hearing here. the loosening of restrictions, the u.s. returning these three intelligence agents. they re not people you ve ever heard of very often in the united states but they re famous here in cuba. after gonzalez, there s been no greater government campaign to return a cuban citizen from the united states than these jailed cuban spies. so they will be greeted as victorious heroes who have come back. of course, many of them faced years more in u.s. prison. that s been raul castro s number one priority. now he ll have to explain to people who are used to hearing u.s. talked to in terms of enemy, exactly how this is going to work, what the new relationship will be and as well, this is a country the cubans blame everything, its terrible economy now the cubans will have to soften that hard line a little bit. as well probably take more ownership of the disastrous state of their economy. as some of these restrictions are lifted, increasingly the cubans will no longer be able to blame the u.s. for the problems here in cuba. a dramatic and historic moment in the u.s./cuban relationship, the most dramatic moment in improved relations going back r50 years. patrick oppmann, the only u.s. television correspondent reporting for us from havana. we ll be anxious to hear what the cuban president, raul castro, has to say. yesterday, the president of the united states and the president of cuba had what was described as about a 45-minute to a one-hour conversation. that was the first direct presidential communication between the united states and cuba going back probably 50 years, a major discussion. they choreographed, they worked out all of the details that are about to take place beginning with the president s statement, president obama s statement only a few moments away. elise labott is joining us, our global affairs correspondent. you brought the story earlier this morning here on cnn. i think for those of us who have watched u.s./cuban relations over the years, this is historic. it s a great, great moment if you want to see this improvement in the relationship. it opens up the doors. but there will be severe criticism. reporter: that s right. certainly members of congress, die-hard anti-cuba lawmakers who think this is not the time, that certainly while the castros are in power that there s no way that the u.s. could open up to cuba. what the administration is saying here with all these landmark remarks the president will be making is, listen, the embargo isn t working. if we wanted a regime change in cuba, that s not happening. and they notice there have been some modest reforms in cuba, such as allowing more freedom of expression, more political dissidents are being freed from jail. the cubans are releasing 53 prisoners from a list provided from the u.s. there s more economic opportunities for cubans to own property and things like that. so what the u.s. is saying is this is not a reward for the cuban government. but if you want to increase those changes, if you want to open up cuba, that means you need to engage more with the cuban government and the cuban people. so to that end, the u.s. will be opening an embassy in havana and cuba will be opening up a formal embassy here. this is really the most sweeping overhaul in u.s. policy towards cuba since the embargo was imposed. easing of full diplomatic relations, including embassies and ambassadors between the united states and cuba, a sea change, as we say. alina machado is in little havana in miami for us. how are cuban americans there reacting? reporter: we ve seen a mixture of the reactions. the one thing that everybody agrees on is the fact that it s a good thing that al gan gross was released. there s no debating that. where things get dicey here,
down an american movie, censor an american picture it doesn t like, wrong in not calling him first before buckling before a north korean dictator. this is obama laying it on the line in a press conference that signalled all the audacity he s packed into a week since the november election, the deal on climate change, the protective order for people who came here illegally, and including the post of an american ambassador with the communist government in cube a taking questions from all women reporters in today s press conference, where will this obama audacity take us? i m joined by david corn, and by actor, writer and director sean penn who joins me now by phone. first of all, here s the president speaking about sony s decision to pull the interview, the movie that inspired the hacking. let s watch. sony is a corporation. i would agree with the president. i think that, you know, i m not speaking as an advocate for the motion picture industry or as a critic. but we have to realize this is a genuine emergency, this is the popularization of cyber war and it requires an alternate threshold on the thinking and the language that we use. when representatives of sony deny that they pulled the film and put it on distributors, that it s not really recognizing the same responsibility a parent has to drive the show when something threatens their child. in this case, it doesn t matter whether it s an individual, a government, or a company, the response of sony should have been to say, we ll make our apologies later and we ll put it online open and free for the world to see. so i would say it s a cop-out popularized taking a weapon and shooting at civilians on the street. it shows the possibilities. once those possibilities go out into the culture, just like guns, we ve got a computer in every household, and this is not technology. this is far from the hands of anyone. let me go over to david corn. your view on this as a guy who writes all the time. it does seem to be an easy call. as sean penn just said, they could have gone other routes besides the regal theater chain. we re going to put it on a network. they could have put it out themselves on a website. they could have said we take these threats seriously to the theaters. if they feel they can t have security, we ll do it another way. at the end of the day, unless they put it out they still can put it out. they can put it out for free. or set up their own website and anyone who wants to see it pays ten bucks and that s it. if they don t do that, at some point, probably some point soon, it just sends the message, that this works. i ve heard some conservatives today criticize the president for saying what he did too late, after sony already did what it s done. and the question, though, is, is this going to set a precedent or not? that s why i think it s right for the president and for the others to say, we don t agree and try to give them some more spine, give them some support, back them up a bit. and so sony still has a chance to make this right. but they re engaged now in what looks to be and sean penn, i want to bring you in. sony is engaged with a dialogue in the north koreans. they thanked them today by saying, thank you for doing what we told you to do. if you keep doing that, don t show this picture, then we won t cause you any more trouble, we won t release any more of the information from the hacking. it seems like they re almost in league now because they re being thanked for it, and told, if you re a good boy, we won t bother you anymore. it s an engagement of relations now, it seems. yeah, i think that sony has made themselves almost irrelevant in what s going to be a much, much bigger and more dangerous story. they might have been the trigger that participated in what was a mistake here. but, again, i think that if we don t take this on, on a united nations level, if it if we aren t waking up and recognizing that what happens once, and recognize that we just got hit by a truck and we can t tell ourselves that we have a mild headache and we can go home and go to bed, because you re going to wake up with blood in the brain. that s where we are on this cyber war issue. the declaration has been set. it s not even it s not sony. it s not even north korea. north korea is the size of mississippi. that can be handled by the mean spirited in a day. and it s also that which gets into the minds of a culture with a lot of disease in it. is there any way the creative community, the directors, writers, the actors, are able to leverage this? i mean, it s always dangerous in a tricky career to make demands be on, pay me and put me to work. but is there any way actors or writers could say, you re going to green light this movie, okay, when you green light it, it stays green and no dictator is going to stop it? do you think there s any chance, or is that too far a hope, that the creative communities will say, i m not making movies to be stopped by the bad guys? i think there will be discussions and there will be attempts to put lobbies together on that basis. but i think that the very first thing that those in hollywood or wisconsin can do is stand up as a country and stand up as a united country that this be taken in a serious way. well the me show you more of the president today. i thought it was a first-rate press conference. clarity, and good guys, bad guys, it wasn t the soft line he sometimes has taken before. here talking about north korea and the sony hacking. let s watch again the president today. i think it says something interesting about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring seth rogen and james flacco. i love seth, and i love james. but the notion that that was a threat to them, i think gives you some sense of the kind of regime we re talking about here. they caused a lot of damage. and we will respond. we will respond proportionally and in a place and time and manner that we choose. i wonder, when you make a movie, you ve made some really important films, and i was thinking, part of the decision to make a movie is that you want the bad guy to hear it. it isn t just a joke by seth rogen, a satire movie, but it wouldn t bother you a bit to know that the people being satirized hear it and it hurts them and humiliates them. what did you make of the president saying, it s a seth rogen movie, it s a bit over the top to begin with, that it would scare them? well, you know, i go back to, i think it was 1997 when martin scorsese s film came out on tibbett and the chinese were in negotiations with disney, who backed down tremendously on the release of that film as a result. and whether or not it s the president framing it as a marginalized threat based on the movie, it really goes deeper than all of that to me. i think that when eisner was interviewed and said disney was not in the human rights business, they were in the entertainment business, that he really missed the mark. we are all in the human rights business today, whether in our economy, or in our homes. and i do think that sony does have an opportunity now to do something heroic, but more importantly, i think that moscow and beijing and washington have something to do that s very important. because this is something that threatens all governments, all corporations. it calls into question, you know, where we divide our capitalism and our recognition of human rights, and i think it s a really, really big historic moment. and if it s not taken by the reins by some brave people, we ll be heading into a world that we never imagined. sean, thank you for coming on and for the great work you ve done, all the greatest performances, dead man walking, every one seemed like it dealt with an important issue and you were on the right side. thank you very much and thank you to david corn. coming up, president obama in his press conference, it was kind of a press conference, not the idiotic swagger of w. it was real, it was human. this is a changed president, a confident president. you can see it in the way he s talking and acting. if you watched it today, you may have noticed that the president made some history today. he called only on women reporters. didn t mention it. i noticed it halfway through. somebody called it to my attention when we were covering it live. more on that decision in a minute. and this is hardball, the place for politics. my baby drove up in a brand new cadillac. my baby drove up in a brand new cadillac. look here, daddy, i m never coming back. discover the new spirit of cadillac and the best offers of the season. lease this 2015 standard collection ats for around $329 a month. l today sony pictures released a statement that said the studio did not cave to the threats from the hackers. the studio says that when theater owners refused to run the movie, they had no choice but to pull it. we ll decide. the statement adds that the studio is surveying other platforms in which to release the film. i ll believe it when i see it. we ll be right back after this. thank you. ordering chinese food is a very predictable experience. i order b14. i get b14. no surprises. buying business internet, on the other hand, can be a roller coaster white knuckle thrill ride. you re promised one speed. but do you consistently get it? you do with comcast business. and often even more. it s reliable. just like kung pao fish. thank you, ping. reliably fast internet starts at $89.95 a month. comcast business. built for business. hello, everybody. we really got a full house today, huh? well, all i want for christmas is to take your questions. well, since the midterm we ve seen there again a self-confident forward-leaning president. and in today s final press conference of the year that he hopes will capture the year, he commanded the room, ticking off his accomplishments. here he is. all told, over a 57-month streak, our businesses have created nearly 11 million new jobs. america s now the number one producer of oil, the number one producer of natural gas. our rescue of the auto industry is officially over. we ve now repaid taxpayers every dime and more of what my administration committed. we ve created about half a million new jobs in the auto industry alone. about ten million americans have gained health insurance just this past year. we re leading the coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy isil. and in less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in afghanistan will be over. there he is talking about his successes. joining me now, washington bureau chief for usa today. and from national urban radio. we ll have you on to talk about your book, april, if you d like. april, you were there today, and i want to know what the reaction was from your male colleagues to the fact that not one i could be a male and say, why did you invite us if you weren t going to let us involve ourselves in the q & a process, mr. president? your thoughts and feelings. you know for one thing for sure, in this town, it s a white, male dominated town. i know for a fact. i just walked out of the white house and the press area. many of our male colleagues have been going into the press secretary very upset that they were not called on today. but let me say this to you. as a woman, as someone who s been covering the white house, it s nice. and someone who sits in the third row, not the first row or the second row, but the third row, it s nice to see a change of pace. and from some of the white house sources that i talked to tonight, apparently there was a plan not to go this is not the first time, but not to go to the networks. this is not the first time that this has happened. they said, okay, since we see we ve got a lot of women in the audience who are really good at what they do, let s call on the women. so he didn t call on you. yes he did call on me. you demanded chris, i raised my hand like a reporter s supposed to. why don t they have the old tradition of reporters waving their hands and the reporters get the attention of the president. i raised my hand. that started during the bush years, like a good reporter is supposed to. who else raised their hand besides you? i don t know. i didn t see behind me. anyway, good for you. and how would you describe the men s attitude? we were they whining or bitchy, the fact that they didn t get called on? let me tell you something, the cameras on the front row, they ll keep cool. but behind the scenes, they re not happy. phone calls are being made. but they ll be cool. you ll always see a cool demeanor, but they are not happy with it. what do you think of that, susan? i didn t even notice for the first six or seven, then somebody pointed it out and said, it s all women. and he s going to keep this up. and he went to the end and i think clearly they had a plan to do this. what s the point? a little mischief. why not? what s the purpose of this thing? what was the quality of the questions? i have to tell you sounded pretty good to me. i have to tell you, i didn t notice anything was going on. in fact, i wouldn t have noticed they were all women. so that s a great thing. let s talk about the president today. april, you cover him all the time, and susan. there s something different about the president. i wouldn t call it swagger, because i hate it. some presidents being like w. swagger sitting down, i don t know how they do it, but they do. the french word i like is alon, a quiet self-confidence in the president. he didn t have before this election. something liberated this guy. i don t know if it was liberation, but i think it was more so what he had to present to america, an optimism. because they got a shellacking in november. and he had to come out, everything is changing, i m optimistic, we are americans, we can fix problems. that s what he said to the end, we can fix things as americans. so i think he wanted to come out with an optimistic tone, looking forward to the positive. and one thing that i took away was when he said with the democrats and the republicans, the fight, he said, yeah, there are fighting, but there are things that we also agree on. so he s looking to the positive in 2015 in closing out 2014. how did you react to him talking about the quality in fact, let s watch him respond to you. okay. i actually think it s been a healthy conversation that we ve had. these are not new phenomenon. the fact that they re now surfacing, in part because people are able to film what have just been in the past stories passed on around a kitchen table, allows people to, you know, make their own assessments and eflgdss and you re not going to solve a problem if it s not being talked about. did you buy the fact that people and race relations? i saw his optimism and his hope. you have to remember, when you talk about race in this country, the president did get it right. this is centuries old. centuries. and it stems from slavery. went to jim crow and it s moved on. it s not just a legislative issue. it s a heart issue as well. i do think people want to see a better day, but are there still vestiges and residue of the past? oh, yes. as a reporter, i did like the fact that he did kind of change his answer. because i asked him six years ago this month, in the oval office about the state of black america, and he harkens to charles dickens talk about the the best of times and the worst of times, yeah. yeah. for african americans who have a good education, it s a good time. but for those who don t, it s unemployment and lack of opportunity. when he talked about black america, as well as all america is better in the aggregate since his administration, it was interesting to hear that versus six years ago this month in the oval office from my interview that i had with him. thanks so much. you know, one thing that struck me about his answer was how much different just cell phone technology makes. that picture, the video of eric garner makes all the difference in settling the he said/he said debate. it makes all the difference for people who might have denied what had happened there. there was no denying it. i don t know anybody that thought that was a proper decision. sometimes you have to have a trial before a jury before a thank you. i raised my hand, chris. by the way, i love the weather today. did you like the weather today? it was okay. see, you have to disagree with me. [ laughter ] i proved it now. every time i say something, this reporter has to find a different conclusion. anyway, it s style. thank you very much. coming up, a new biography of john f. kennedy jr reveals new details about the relationship with his mother jacqueline kennedy. the author joins us next to talk about a little bit of glamor here in politics. and this is hardball, the place for politics. i got it. now jump off the bridge. what? in 3.2.1. are you kidding me? go. right on time. right now, over 20,000 trains are running reliably. we call that predictable. thrillingly predictable. right now, you can get a single line with 3 gigs for $65 a month. 3 gigs . is that a lot? that s about.100 app downloads, 45 hours of streaming music, and 6 hours of video playing. (singing) and five golden rings! ha, i see what you did. (singing) four calling birds.three french hens. (the guys starts to fizzle out) two. turtle. doves. i really went for it there ya you did. you really, really did now get 3 gigs of data on one line for $65 a month. switch to at&t, buy a new smartphone and get $150 credit per line. intbladder leak protection.ant new always discreet underwear for sensitive bladders from always, the experts in feminine protection new always discreet underwear absorbs heavy bladder leaks faster than the leading brand, so you can feel comfortably dry. plus always discreet has a discreet fit that hugs your curves. you barely feel it. new always discreet underwear. now bladder leaks can feel like no big deal. because, hey, pee happens. get to the terminal across town. are all the green lights you? no. it s called grid iq. the 4:51 is leaving at 4:51. they cut the power. it ll fix itself. power s back on. quick thinking traffic lights and self correcting power grids make the world predictable. thrillingly predictable. worked for president kennedy in the white house. they had a great time. people loved politics. it was a positive thing. and that s been missing. yeah, i mean, i think it s like anything else. if, you know, the trick is catching people s attention. and the only thing that people see are a bunch of men fighting on television all the time, or negative commercials on television, or acerbic editorials, they ll turn their attention somewhere else. we wanted to bring some fun, some levity, but be serious-minded at the same time. christopher anderson joins us now. he s out with a masterful biography called the good son. thank you for joining us. i ask that question, what did we miss about the upbringing of john kennedy jr? first of all, i have to say, you look much better today than you did back then. [ laughter ] and i love all your books as well. look, what we didn t get right about jfk jr is that he was more bouvier than kennedy. that was a wonderful interview. you mentioned alon and president obama and a transformation that s taken place here and that is a quality that both jfk jr and his father had in spades, but i think more so in the case of jfk jr, because he was really a natural politician in many ways. his dad was a little reluctant with the kissing-babies thing. but john could connect with people. he was self-efacing and incredibly articulate. if you look at the pictures in the relationship with his mother, and the reason i wrote this book, that was a phenomenal relationship he had with jackie. they were each other s protector from the very beginning. did he ever think of becoming a european movie star? he looks like a european movie star. he looks french. there s the bouvier. you see pictures of his grandfather on his mother s side. he looks like that side of the family. he did want to act, as you may recall, and jackie pulled him back from the brink. she did say one of the most wonderful thing was seeing him act and she did on many occasions when he was at brown university and afterwards, but she thought there were great things ahead for him. her whole attitude was hands-on. she said if you bungled raising your children, nothing else in life matters. so she kept him away from people are going to go out and buy this book right now. it looks like candy for christmas. especially for those of us who grew up with the kennedys. the pictures in this book are enough. let me ask you about his possible running for politics. i talked to kennedy jr and said his numbers were very good. my question, john f kennedy jr, did he get polling done and see if he could beat hillary clinton? indeed there was a private poll, taken just before his tragic crash, his death. and he, by all accounts, his close friends said he intended to seek the seat of daniel patrick moynihan. he had gone to the new york chairwoman of the democratic party. he was intent on beginning his political career. ed koch told me, even if she tried, she couldn t have got that seat from kennedy. i think he was right. let s talk about the horrible ending. i read along the line that jacqueline kennedy was concerned about her beautiful son s interest in aviation and wanting to be a pilot someday. absolutely. and it s so unbelievable. it s a premonition from hell, but go ahead. she shared that with maurice templeton, the last significant relationship she had in her life. look at the kennedy track record. uncle joe died in a plane crash. his aunt kathleen teddy was almost killed. alexander o nasis, the son of john s stepfather was killed in a plane crash. so there s a long and terrifying list. that was the one thing that she worried about. it was only after that she passed away that he went ahead with his plans to get his license. and we see the tragic consequences. great book. the book is called the good son, about the attractive son of kennedy. you have a great son-in-law running a good part of this network. thank you, he s a great guy. sure is. up next, the big fight on the right between rand paul and marco rubio s regarding president obama s historic shift of policy on cuba. plus stephen colbert says farewell. what a show it was last night. all that straight ahead. you re watching hardball, a place for politics, where you hear the debate. and cialis for daily useor you. helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. they take us to worlds full of heroes and titans. for respawn, building the best interactive entertainment begins with the cloud. this is titanfall, the first multi-player game built and run on microsoft azure. empowering gamers around the world to interact in ways they never thought possible. this cloud turns data into excitement. this is the microsoft cloud. here s what s happening. president obama and the first family have left washington and are heading to hawaii for the holidays. nobody public events are scheduled for the duration of his trip. it won t be a white christmas for most of the east coast, but it will be a wet one. a storm system is expected to bring rain from florida to maine along with high winds. the midwest will see snow and ice. and health officials say the flu is widespread in 29 states. the strain in most cases is not covered by this year s shot. back to hardball. at a minimum, i would say this, barack obama is the worst negotiator that we ve had as president since at least jimmy carter and maybe in the modern history of this country. i intend to use every tool at our disposal in the majority to unravel as many of these changes as possible. this is all one-sided. that s what happens when you send a speech writer to negotiate a deal with a dictator. i think it sends an awful awful that the u.s. under this president is no longer a reliable ally in the feet for freedom and democracy. you saw marco rubio, jockeying for position in a crowded republican field of possibilities, launching an assault on president obama s deal to restore relations with cuba. he has a fight on his hands with senator rand paul of sdk and things are getting personal. rand paul bucked rubio by declaring his support for president obama s goal to end the cuban embargo. i mean, if the goal was regime change, it sure doesn t seem to be working. and probably it punishes the people more than the regime, because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. if there s open trade, i think the people will see what it s like to all of the things that we produce under capitalism. so in the end, i think probably opening up cuba is a good idea. here s rubio with his lesser abilities going back at paul on fox last night. like many people that have been opining, he has no idea what he s talking about. the embargo is not what s hurting the cuban people. it s the lack of freedom, and the lack of competent leaders. today, the senator unloaded on rubio, saying, i m a proponent of peace through commerce. i believe engaging cuba can lead to positive change. seems that rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and build a moat. i reject this isolationism. it s a shot here against rubio. he was 7 years old during camp david when jimmy carter, the guy he said wasn t a good negotiator, brought together israel with his major strategic enemy, egypt, and forced a permanent peace treaty between the two of them. match that, marco. just do something like that in your lifetime. let s talk about this interesting fight on the right. we grew up with the idea, we all did, that the republican party was the hawkish party, anti-communist, anti-everything, anti-everybody, let s go to war. and now you see an interesting intra-mural battle where you see rubio carrying the traditional baggage of the hawks. but then you see rand paul, who s got to be the most spontaneous, and i have to say scrambling arguer i ve ever seen. he doesn t say in the pocket. he s scrambling like rg3. he s always got something. you know, it s an epic battle between conservatives and libertarians it s epic, but it s new? it s fairly fresh. it s been simmering for some time, but coming out before the 2016 cycle and rand paul is playing on that and he s also playing on the fact that this is marco rubio s token cuban kid moment. hey, i m cuban american, let me get some headlines here. so this is his way to come out and say really outrageous things, whether they be right or wrong, just so he can say, i m out in front of the beipack, because he knows rand paul is playing it effectively ahead of that cycle. one thing rand paul is doing, why he s taking obama s position on this. he s saying, we do need to change up our strategy on this. he knows there s young voters who want to vacation in cuba. they know the strategy is outdated. and the cuban american vote is about 50/50 now. it s a wash. so don t assume you have to move in the direction of the red hots. the issue of cuba is no longer a defining issue for republicans. 20 years ago, the republicans came down hard. a lot of them in the house in the senate now don t care about this one way or the other. it s ancient history. they re more concerned about domestic policy and spending. it s going to be much more difficult for marco rubio to try to push rand paul to the side than maybe five or ten years ago. how does the white house sum this strange bedfellows situation up? president obama said he will continue to press this on. he had a press conference this afternoon and said he was planning to do what he wanted to do despite congress s opposition, and this is obviously one of those things. but he d rather work with congress. but this is definitely something they ve come out for and they are full throttle to do what they want to do. here he is, he fired back on critics of the cuba deal. let s watch him. what i know deep in my bones is that if you ve done the same thing for 50 years and nothing s changed, you should try something different, if you want a different outcome. and this gives us an opportunity for a different outcome. through engagement, we have a better chance of bringing about change than we would have otherwise. change is going to come to cuba. it has to. they ve got an economy that doesn t work. that sounds so millennial. the old guys didn t get it right. we ll try something new. it s a reflection of the administration trying to pivot into this kind of a mode. i think it s going to be, people want to get everything they want on this deal. republicans may be able to force their hands on things like maybe opening an embassy how do you do that? how do you stop the president who has the right to declare diplomatic relations with another country? they ll go to go to congress to approve shipping money in the state department to open up the embassy. congress will say no. they ll need that. without that, that could have an impact on some of this. but it depends on how much having a physical embassy matters. is that the house and the senate? both. obama made this announcement a week after they pass a $1.3 trillion budget. so he has the seed funding to move forward with the staff it strikes me as a little pissent. to not let the guy name an ambassador. just seems so petty, kate. it s not like debating. it s saying you can t do what you have a right to do. it s like saying we re not going to pay for the white house meals anymore, or close down the electricity in the executive branch. just seems so small-minded to use your power that way. congress will do everything they can to stop it the way they think they can. i called the man who is down there already ambassador. so there may not be an ambassador there, but there s a presence there. it s going to be very difficult for them to really the fundamental change has already happened. we are now talking about having normalized relationships with cuba. it s a fundamental shift and there s not a lot republicans are going to be able to do other than the cuban americans, jose diaz-balart, that would be hard for the republicans to shoot that down, i would think. in many ways, there are things that have ticked down over the years. the president has, you know, loosened travel restrictions. there s a pretty robust u.s. presence there, where they route things through the swiss government. so there s a presence there. really quickly, the underreported political dynamic, russia is about to build a spy base and the cuban relationship with venezuela and with people like iran, north korea, it s a very clever move by the president. and it could continue in the wrong direction for a while. i don t want to deal with the communist government. i don t want to meet with these guys. i ll go with a travel agent. their time is up, by the way. the roundtable is staying with us. coming up, stephen colbert s big send-off last night. looked like a lot of fun. alan alda, george lucas what a crowd. we ll talk about the beautiful song they sang on the way out the door last night. this is hardball. thanks. [ male announcer ] fedex® has solutions to enable global commerce that can help your company grow steadily and quickly. great job. (mandarin) cut it out. see you tomorrow. state of the union address will take place on january 20, that s the date that house speaker john boehner chose. we ll be right back after this. but i ve managed.e crohn s disease is tough, except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. and when i finally told my doctor, he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. when electricity is generated here s awith natural gasu: instead of today s most used source, how much are co2 emissions reduced? up to 30%? 45%? 60%? the answer is. up to 60% less. and that s a big reason why the u.s. is a world leader in reducing co2 emissions. take the energy quiz round 2. energy lives here. if this is your first time tuning into the colbert report, i have some terrible news. this, in fact s your last time tuning into the colbert report, until no, no, no. folks, until ten years from now, when they reboot it directed by j.j. abrams. we re back. it s officially the end of the era. stephen colbert signed off and the satirist did it in style, leading a massive course of celebrities at his sing-along. just like you always do tell the news keep the dark clouds far away we ll meet again we ll meet again. . some sunny day just like you always do till the blue skies dry the dark clouds far away so will you please say hello to the friends that i know tell them i won t be long they ll be happy to know that as you saw me go i was singing this song we ll meet again don t know when don t know where but i know we ll meet again some sunny day we re back with our great round table. charles and katie and john. did you realize what was going on is there? the last music from dr. strangelove when the bombs are dropping, and then henry kissinger while they re singing we ll meet again. what did you think? i was supposed to be there but i had a brother-in-law party last night. i m curious to see what happens when he goes will he be a new permit? well, he has to be. he can t be himself, though. but i want to see how much of the politics he s able to bring into late night sort of basic television. i think that that will be an interesting thing because he s done such a great job of helping along with jon stewart create this new brand on cable. and i noticed kimmel is getting better. isn t he? i don t know what the competition will be. i have a feeling he s a really nice guy when you meet him but he s a regular guy. i think he has to develop a hybrid of the guy he plays because chevy chase, as i said the other night, didn t work as chevy chase. he just disappeared because when he wasn t playing that character like jerry lewis played a character, the jerk, he called him. most guys play somebody. right, right. he made political news reporting more approachable, the whole game of politics more approachable. he represents that rat pack. let s watch more from colbert s sendoff last night. he reflected on some of his major accomplishments over the last nine years. zoe all those things they said i did, save olympics, the rally to restore sanity and/or for and/or cat stevens career. none of that, none of that was really me. you, the nation, did all of that. i just got paid for it. thanks. thanks. that was really cool of you guys. nice when good things happen to good guys. thank you. when we return, let me finish with president obama today and how things are going racially in this country. i m going to let the president speak for the president. you re watching hardball, the place for politics. thanks to angie s list, now it is. we ve made hiring anyone from a handyman to a dog walker as simple as a few clicks. buy their services directly at angieslist.com no more calling around. no more hassles. start shopping from a list of top-rated providers today. angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. visit angieslist.com today. .the getaway vehicle! for all the confidence you need. td ameritrade. you got this. were. the gap between income and wealth of white and black america persists. and we ve got more work to do on that front. i ve been consistent in saying that this is a legacy of a troubled racial past of jim crow and slavery. that s not an excuse for black folks. and i think the overall majority of black people understand it s not an excuse. they re working hard. they re out there hustling and trying to get an education, trying to send their kids to college. but they re starting behind oftentimes in the race. what s true for all americans is we should be willing to provide people a hand up. not a hand up but help folks get that good, early childhood
solidify women where they are which is not in his favor. saying about this recording, this was locker room bander and a private conversation that took place many years ago. bill clinton said far worse to me on the golf course. not even close. i apologize if anyone was offended. that will do it for this hour. next we will pick up continuing coverage of hurricane matthew. welcome to our continuing breaking coverage of hurricane matthew. the sterm up the southeast coast after leaving severe damage across the caribbean. there are two confirmed deaths in florida. winds are at 110 miles per hour. as strong as you get for a category two storm. moving to the north and we will bring you over here and this is a brand-new path. the areas around savannah. if you are in the brunswick area or charleston to georgetown, you are staring at this saying this is going to be a close call. it s not a major hurricane, but even a category two with a wind of 90 to 110 miles per hour. that s what we saw during the day. the storms on the track northward by 2:00 a.m. at the closest point from savannah, georgia. we don t know if they will go through the western eyewall. if it does, you will have significant power outages and problems in the area. we will get the storm surging into the area and that will be bad in the bruniswick area. it will be worse this afternoon into this evening all the way through the coastline of georgia and through there into south carolina. if we had to pick a location with the best chance of getting landfall and maybe right in the area of charleston and the storm goes off the coastline of north carolina and saturday night, the outer banks is mostly okay, but heavy rain. i want to bring you to the other computer. the big issue is the potential for the storm surge. this happened and almost over with, but this is the area of greatest concern from hilton head to savannah down to brunswick. they could be close to ten feet of storm surge that will be life-threatening over six to 12 hours. thank you very much. while there is plenty of good news and not in the clear and for more we turn to reporters on the ground. in jacksonville as well as savannah, go ahead. what are you seeing? hey there and good afternoon. steady rain all afternoon and pounding the area in the downtown area. we have seen storm surge only about two or three feet. more serious to the east at jacksonville beach. as we have been seeing over the last few hours, a lot of storm surge and pounding the coastline over there as well as the saint august seen area. tens of thousands of people without power and the mayor of jacksonville had evacuated nearly half a million people in this city. thankfully they said since the storm tracked east, they tamped down expectations and were able to say they were expecting less wind and said they went as planned. we have been seeing steady rain and trees we see toppled at the debris. people are told to hunker down for the next few hours. the story today in the area from jacksonville beach is storm surge. we are seeing the heavy rain pounding the city. unlike anything the city has seen in a while. thank you. in georgia, go ahead. i can you that the rain just is increasing in intensity. just as you heard from florida, we have similar conditions here. steady rain and it comes in these bands and sideways. it s heavy at times and then it abates and it s heavy gain. this is the savannah river and part of what people worry about. when the storm is at high tigde all of this water will surge up and get the high tide and heavy rain and that makes for a perfect storm that will flood into the downtown area of savannah. he has always told the first responders to leave the area. they told people if they find themselves shelter and call 911, evacuations with the wind speeds and the storm surge. and some folks decided not to listen to the evacuation order and that s behind this now. my biggest sees that we can t be clear appears to be leading out. we need to get in and make sure people are getting out. it s the most important thing and we can rebuild damage in homes as painful as that will be, but lives are number one. what day of the week do you think it will bring back normalcy to your community? i know residents that evacuated will be anxious to get back in. with public safety being the pop concern, we will pursue tomorrow with the safety issues and get people back in their home. huge part of who we are. we want to make sure visitors are comfortable and we have a lot of work ahead of us and our primary concern is the safety of the people who are here and making sure it s safe for people to have a return. we have turned off the water system and we have a lot of work to do and understanding that will have a lot better idea. what are people drinking in the water is off? and people know what the checklist is. bottled water was flying out of the stores and if they have gas and they can boil water and if they chose to stay, they can do that. we will be there to help. and finish your thought and time for you. thanks for spending time with us. we will continue to have updates on the progress throughout this hour a& politic and if you the potential bombshell that dropped on donald trump s head. it is related to him and something he said in his own words. you want to hear it for yourself. a battle ground map with both preparing for the debate. all eyes on that sunday debate. donald trump said it s his last chance to hold on to very skeptical republicans in washington. that story is straight ahead. i m terrible at golf. he is. but i d like to keep being terrible at golf for as long as i can. new patented ensure enlive has hmb plus 20 grams of protein to help rebuild muscle. for the strength and energy to do what you love. new ensure enlive. direction. two shy of 270. if you fill in the states that are likely orleaning in the red, that brings trump to about 190 that means he would have to sweep every other toss upstate to win. that s not a hospitable environment for the path. if he lost any of the state, clinton wins. there is no room for error for team trump as he takes the debate stage. that looks like it got a lot more perilous after the bombshell audio on trump. we will show you and play it for you straight ahead. blan bill clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course. not even close. i apologize if anyone was offended. this is horrific. wie cannot allow this man to become president. i will bring in our panel with former white house director. vice president from the new york times. sarah, your thoughts. i don t know what to say beyond who knew furniture shopping was such a romantic gesture. there is no defending it. it is horrific. daniela. she is right. it s horrific and you department even play which is i think is the worst part. he talks about assaulting people which is okay because he s famous. wbr-id= wbr13124 /> it is not surprising given everything we know about donald trump. we will repeat the warnings the other things he said about women and other people. is this a person you want to sit in the oval office and be a role model forever your children and your family? it boggles my mind that people are undecided about this. i will ask you as part of the journalistic and political questions, does this do the things we just said by it criticized by a republican and analyst, do they reveal something else? about women or anyone else. it s just a total breech of the usual wbr-id= wbr14233 /> encasement of politics. even with donald trump we haven t earned anything like this in the rally or speech. would you want this guy in a room with your daughter or sending someone into the white house to work for president? i want to ask you. this is accurate that we haven t seen this audio about a candidate, but there are trump supporters and historians argue that there are other presidents, nixon and lbj come to mind who had recording devices in the white house who had very objectionable things on tape said about different groups of people and about women and about jews and about african-americans. sure. a range of horrors. i don t know how much politically that would help donald trump because lbj said a democrat said terrible things. i don t know who is defending that. what would you say to the argument and statement i said earlier? he said look, you take anyone s private locker room bander, you can find something objectionable. that may be true, but it doesn t make the fact that he said these things okay. of course timing is everything in politics. you are approaching the next debate. this is something a voter is going to ask him about and you have to address it on sunday night. the timing of this could not be worse for donald trump. the bigger issue here is donald trump said many things in the campaign that offended people. in that regard this is not new and i don t know that there is a wide group of voters that ultimately changes their views because of it. they suggested that. i do think that the challenge for that group of undecided voters and those people that he needs to move the hillary supporters and he needs to move off of her candidacy on to his, this becomes more of a window into the soul than any one offensive comment. i think it is just another problematic thing and he is now on defense again one more day that he needs to be talking about hillary clinton s e-mail problems or the clinton foundation challenges and where the world stands from a foreign policy perspective and her role in this. we are talking about something that is not befitting of a presidential campaign. or of anything. he has to change minds. he can t become president if he doesn t change minds. it is impossible that this will push him in the direction of winning more votes and not less. that s exactly right. his challenge may not move supporters off of him. i m sure it won t, but he doesn t have enough supporters to win the presidency. he needs to do everything he can to move independents and people who are not decided to him. these comments are not going to help and i m very curious to see how this will come into play during the debate on sunday. you mentioned that conservative reaction and potential supporters. a long time critic of trump with him over the red state conference and their dealings has a direct appeal with insighting the remarks that he never felt he asked for forgiveness on anything. he claims he never needed to ask for giveness for knowingly trying to sleep with a married woman. that s a part of this that can you get lost amid the objectionable language and the story line here. that s him seeming to brag or take a positive association from the story which is that he was pursuing this woman he viewed to be married. how would you approach that? evangelical camp is split. with folks like eric erickson who has been strong for most of the campaign. not all of it, but he is strong against trump because of the way he conducted himself. there are others that tell all of this believing that hillary clinton is so bad for america that even an imperfect donald trump means the potential for a supreme court and the conservative philosophy and they are willing to take that risk. both sides are dug in. it s going to be interesting to see if some of the evangelicals come off that. i don t think they will. what donald trump needed to do and needs to do after this assuming it s true is to come out and more forcefully apologize and say look, this is unbecoming of a president. you cannot talk about people like this. i think that would help him with a lot of people who understand that everyone has things in their past they are not proud of and things they said they are not proud of. he is basically apologizing for this, although i think it needs to be stronger. it may dove tail with what daniela is saying about the way that the culture deals with language about women and hostility towards women for being women. when barack obama was in jeremiah wright s church, days of demands and hoe had to give an entire speech about it. here you have a brief apology from donald trump and are these comments that merit a deeper reckoning from a candidate? thank you all for being with me. we will talk about the shut down and pitfalls for both candidates and as we have had the latest coverage from the ground in florida and georgia tracking matthew. stay with us. looking sharp, len. who s the lucky lady? i m going to the bank, to discuss a mortgage. ugh, see, you need a loan, you put on a suit, you go crawling to the bank. this is how i dress to get a mortgage. i just go to lenngtree. i calculate how much he i can afford. i get multiple offers to compare side by side. and the best part is. the nks come crawling to me. everything you need to get a better mortgage. clothing optional. lendingtre when banksompete, you win. ok! .awkward i ve got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out medicare doesn t pay all my medical expenses, i looked at my options. then i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. [ male announcer ] if you re eligible for medicare, you may know it only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is upo you. ca now and find out about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare suppment insurance plans, it helps pick up some of what medicare doesn t pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. to me, relationships matter. i ve been with my doctor for 12 years. now i know i ll be able to stick with him. [ male announcer ] with these types of plans, you ll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually referrals needed. so don t wait. call now and request this free decision guide to help you better understand medicare. and which aarp medicare supplement an might be best for you. there s a wide range to choose from. we love to travel - and thers so much more to see. so we found a plan that can travel with us. anywhere in the country. [ male announcer ] join the millions of people who have already enrolled in the onlmedicare supplemt insurance pls endorsed by aarp, an organization seing the needs of people 50 and over for generations. remember, all medicare supplement insurance plans help cover what medicare doesn t pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call now to request your free decision guide. and learn more about the kis of plans that will be here for you now - and down the road. i have a lifetime of experiee. so i know how important that is. of the matchup and tune in for full coverage in the debate and our favorite anxious onnors you might recognize will be in full regallia gearing up for the debate. we will have an update up the coast so stay with us. because, healthier doesn t happen all by itself. it needs to be earned every day. ing wellness to keep away illness. and believing a single life can be made better by millions of others. as a health services and innovation company optum powers modern healthcarey connecting every part of it. so wlehe world kee archg for healier wee here to make healthier happen. i spent many years as a nuclear missile launch officer. if the president gave the order we had to launch the missiles, that would be it. i spent many years as a nuclear missile launch officer. i wbr id= wbr20925 /> prayed that callave the order would never come.h the missiles, [ radio chatter ] self control may be all that keeps /b> these missiles from firing. [ sirens blearing ] i wod bomb the [ beepout of them. i wbr-id= wbr21230 /> want to be unpredictable. i love war. the thought donald trump with nuclear weapons scares me to death. it should scareveryone. i m hillary inton and i approve this messa. damage in different jurisdictions. one of many partials giving briefings as people take them and i m going to turn to miami as we head to the national hurricane center. today they came up along the east coast and the sensor has been offshore about it looks like it the pass to savannah and charleston. it likes like savannah is at great risk. category four is very rare and it seems to be moving at its own pace. and it might be up the coast. it has been moving at 10 miles per hour and that s close to normal. this is not unusual. the good news and bad news when it s moving slowly with more time to prepare, it lingers longer. author for the storm surge and that s a big concern this time. thank you very much. we will turn now to jacob in jacksonville, florida. all day long, it has been raining consistently and raining enough that they are standing with the water like this one are popping up around the city. this by far is not the most dangerous thing around the storm. we saw the massive storm surge about 23 miles from here. and up and down the coast and up and down the middle, that s creating dangerous conditions for low-lying areas. as windy as it has been. and far away from the coast and they have to look for not only rain and wind, but the beach and the river. thank you very much. now we turn by phone to savannah looks like the place where the hurricanes can come closest and what is your view and how is it going? we had great results for people who left town. we had 75% participation and we feel good with the numbers and we are trying to make sure about the ones that are here understand we need to hunker down and get a grip and find the safest place with you can. we stopped all emergency calls because of the weather and we will wait until the storm passes between the times that are 6:00 in the morning. we have the surge based on like you were talking earlier. we are concerned because of that. that s on the earlier side and we are not sure about the surge. they moved them out of the lower areas and hopefully we will be able to take care of them tonight. you are advising them to hit hardest around 6:00 in the morning on saturday? we are looking at more of the 2:00 time. that s the same time our eyes are working in the same time period. the roughest will be from 2:00 to 4:00 and tropical stuff from 10:00 to 6:00. that s what we are an tis waiting. we have seen a lot of coordination from the local and state and federal and we saw marco rubio teaking and are you getting everything you need from the state and local authorities at this time? i have never seen a group of people cork from the emergency homeland security. every one worked to make it as easy as possible. it s something to be proud of if you are a sides. you have people in places that can do that job. it has been great. a lot of resolve. that s good to hear. thanks for joining us on a busy day. glad to be here sir. thank you for your time. we will continue to update throughout the evening and income up back to 2016 with interesting political developments. stay tuned. he has a sharp wit, a nng smile, we have been following this for a while. they publicly blamed russia for the election-related hackings that occurred here in the united states. they are confident russia is behind the hacks that include breeches from the democratic campaign committee. they said the steps and disclosures intended to interfere with the u.s. election process and we believe based on the scope and sensitivity of the efforts that only russia s senior most officials could have authorized the activities. they believe the system is essentially to decentralize them and suffer from disruptions in hacking that could affect the election in november. they came at about the same time that president obama stopped by his holding place in downtown chicago to cakaftan early vote. we ll be right back with how the presidential candidates are and may not be preparing for the crucial second debate this weekend. or put them on a rack. but the specialists at ford like to show off their strengths: 13 name brands. all backed by our low price tire guarantee. yeah, we re strong when it comes to tires. right now during the big tire event, get a $140 rebate by mail on four select tires. i had a problem with the mike. we had a guy oscillating my mike. i went there a little bit before and i said the mike is so great. unfortunately when i went to talk, they turned the mike up and down and you saw it. everybody in the room saw it. we had a real problem. he is still talking about the mike from the last debate. donald trump there last night and that is new sound in case it sounds like old sound suggesting it was sabotaged by microphone oscillation. just purr porting what he said. the practice may not be going to play. the story out today saying trump continues to push back against the notion of traditional preparation. trump resisted suggestions from advisers to practice exhaustively for the skds debate. he flat out refused to participate in mock sessions saying play acting was annoying. on the stakes for the trump campaign on sunday night are massive right now. there are republicans who are basically signaling they are looking at an off-ramp. the battleground map tilting towards clinton and so are the national and state polls and the new york times reported just this week that gop operatives telegraphing, quote, should mr. trump falter badly, republican congressional candidates may take it as a cue to flee openly from their nominee. let s bring back our panel, daniella fairman and nick confesso confessore. sarah, there are plenty of republicans who say, that s the new york times grabbing an anonymous quote here or there and trying to spin it into a bigger story. no offense, nick. you don t have to rebut that if you don t want that. and they would say, my point, about any newspaper that has a couple of quotes. is this a media narrative, or in your view as a republican in touch with a lot of people, is this a real problem for trump? i think it has a real potential to be a problem for trump. and look, the proof will be in the pudding. look, we ll certainly know how donald trump does after sunday night anwe ll see within a week to ten days after the second debate if republicans do, in fact, start running i m a check on hillary clinton, as if the presidential race is a foregone conclusion. but i think these conversations are happening. i don t think this is just the media narrative. it s a tricky situation for republicans. because, you know, by saying or telegraphing this, you think that the republican candidate isn t going to win, it can have a dampening effect on turnout, it can have a lot of factors that can be negative on one s candidacy. it s demoralizing. yeah, it can be it s not just an easy slam dunk, it can cause more damage than just, you know, running the i m a check and balance on the democratic president. no, it s a message that admits a problem, nick, put aside your msn credentials, you mainstream media establishment reporter, there s someone else that might agree with this narrative. and we ll put up on the screen in the four-way race, just since september. so just looking at the arc here, as we re now in the home stretch of october, hillary clinton, overall, up four. donald trump, up one in what he had before. and gary johnson losing seven. so in whatever sort of mood there is, the mood is third party candidates waffling. that s not necessarily good, if hillary seems to be picking up some of what they had. look, two things are happening. one is the block of voters who are considering johnson and stein, right, are now moving in some large degree towards hillary clinton, and not trump. so, yeah, it s typical to see third party candidates waver and lose steam at the very end. it is happening, it is happening to hillary clinton s benefit. second of all, you can see in polling that a lot of senate republicans are having trouble separating from donald trump. not all of them, not bob portman, you know, but most of them are finding that he drags them down. that as he suffers, trump suffers, the senate candidate suffers, and we even had a house strategist in that story, saying that even house candidates are suffering. so the top of the ticket does matter. it can drag the whole thing down. i think that goes to the question if donald trump is any good at outreach. he has had a real sort of proud attitude about any aspects of the general election, when we re accustomed to nominees trying to do bridge building. i m a little reminded of when jay-z said either love me or leave me alone. i think that s how a lot of people feel. but you can t build a 50% coalition with the feeling that people should either be in your corner or go away. and he has to have that kind of scorn for people who don t want to get behind him. absolutely. for the past year and a half, donald trump has been saying, i m the best, i am tremendous, i have the best words and the best brain. and nobody is going to tell me how to win a general election. and what worked in the primary is obviously going to work now. so i m not surprised that the new york times said he s not doing debate prep. and i wouldn t be surprised if he does poorly again on sunday, that he still rebuffs and says, you know, a mike was broken, or something else happened, and not listen to the people around him. daniella, it was not broken, fact check! it was not broken, the mike was oscillating. that s all he said. be fair. sorry, it was oscillating. it was oscillating, my bad. i don t have the best words. i mean, sunday night is a big night for him and donald trump needs to do two three things, regardless of whether he s prepping or not. he needs to not miss opportunities. he needs to be talking about hillary clinton want hillary clinton s e-mail scandal, about the way the clinton foundation has conducted its affairs, and about her performance on the world stage. he missed opportunities in that first debate. he cannot do that again. second, he needs to have strong answers on policy questions. people understand he is not a policy wonk, and to some degree, they like that about him. but he s got to have a strong, solid answers. and third, how does he interact with these voters? the human dynamic, i think, is going to be a big part of the discussion on monday, for both of these candidates. and he s going to have to do well in that regard. because you re eye to eye with real people. nick? look, prep is not just about having facts and figures at your fingertips in a debate. it s not being prepared for lines of attack and how to avoid walking into traps, how to control the tempo of the debate and talking about things you want to talk about. what happened to him last week was at almost every stage for the last two-thirds of the debate or more, he was talking about things that hillary clinton wanted to talk about. exactly. it was conducted on her internship terms. if you don t prep, it will happen to him again and she will win the next debate. and that s what makes a town hall a little trickier. because these are voters you re talking to. you can t talk down to them, you can t interrupt them. if you don t like their question, you really can t blow them off. these are the people you re trying to convince to vote for you. that raises the final question, daniella, do you think he will interrupt any voters to say wrong ? i wouldn t be surprised if it happened. i would like to think that he would not do that, that he would understand that that would be really, really bad to tell a voter that their question or their premise is wrong. well, we will find out. that s why we will be watching. sarah, daniella, nick, thanks for joining ours panel here. i m ari melber. we ll have more on 2016 and on hurricane matthew, so keep it locked right here on msnbc.
as we see this splits. yes, let me walk you through donald trump s strategy over the next three days to do the ten state splits. we are calling that hillary clinton s blue firewall, the states of wisconsin and pennsylvania. that s one region and then you know donald trump has to be able to win the must-win florida and north carolina. if he does not win any of those states, this race is over. he has to be able to hone onto that. he wants to be able to go out to the west and see if he could pick off a state like colorado, for example, that helps him out. just to kind of show you then, you know, hillary clinton s holds. pennsylvania is critical to that. michigan is critical to that. that s a reliably blue state and she will be here later today. and campaigning later on tonight with jay z, she s adding a stop this weekend. the polls are all tied up. she s battling for every vote and not taking any vote for granted, thomas. kristen, standby, lets go to our katy tur. this rhetoric that trump is using that clinton is likely under an investigation for a long time, america deserves a president who can go to work on day one. is this red meat where the folks already supported? well, it is. it is aimed at those republicans that are out there that are uncomfortable with donald trump and trying to get them to get up and get out and go to the polling booth and cast their ballots for trump and instead of somebody like a third party candidate or somebody they made perhaps write in and as we saw, some folks say they re going to write in a third party candidate including john kasich who wrote in john mccain when he was? ohio. what they are trying to do is paint hillary clinton as somebody that s so questionable and somebody who has so many issues in office and including an investigation and they within the to say it will end up with a criminal indictment even though they do not know that s going to happen. so they can scare those republicans into coming home. mit romney enjoyed a lot more republican support than donald trump has at the moment over 93% or 94% or 95%. in order for donald trump to be competitive or any democrats for that matter, he s going to slit f solidify all the republican votes as they can. there is some indications that is working. i was talking to sources in new hampshire who tells me the polls are tightening in that state. republicans are coming home to donald trump in a way where they have not seen before this past week. they re still unsure that he will be able to pull it off in new hampshire but hopeful than they were a week ago and above anything else of what this is happening, of kellyanne conway and new hampshire and pennsylvania and others across the country including marco rubio and florida. they are going to don t do this and they hope that donald trump stays on message and we see him on the campaign trail and he acknowledges this and at oftentimes he can be his own wor words. we know that toomey you katie and kristen welker, has team trump responded about upcoming indictment for clinton? reporter: no, the trump campaign has not responded to that. they have been using that and saying that just came out and hillary clinton is going to be criminally indicted and they use this fox news reporting but they have not commented since brett bearer have backed off of it. yesterday, he said this was artful terminology. today he s apologizing that it is not just artful but inaccurate. kristen what about how is team clinton responded of a false story? reporter: no reaction to that. you remember in the wake of comey coming forward and announcing that he s looking into newly discovered e-mails, clinton campaign turning the pressure on comey, hey, if you are going to do this, release all the information. we saw that from her top surrogate. clinton is not talking about this issue anymore. she s trying to turn the page. you will hear some of her top circuit taking this on. it is friday, the e-mail from comey came out on friday, the access hollywood came out on a friday that hurt donald trump. what will happen this friday? anybody s guess. katy, and kristen and mark and jacob, everybody thank you very much, appreciate it. i want to follow on this case of chris christie. bill baroni, chris christie will be campaigning for trump. he released this statement that reads in part. let me be clear, once again, i had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments and had no roles of authorizing them and anything said to the contrary over the past six weeks in court is simply untrue. i want to bring in our legal correnspo correnspondent, ari melber. well, we have been following two cases and this is a jury to your question decided that there were something rotten there that this is what this administration did and convicted to christie s aids. that s not good. nine counts and of wired fraud. the problem with chris christie is how that looks and if he had former aids singling him out. the good news for chris christie is that this case is finally over. he was not ever charged to be fair and clear and thus in that sense, the legal chapter appears closed. all right, i have halie touched on this at the end of last hour of the rolling stone verdict and the fact that there is three people, defendants in the defamation trial and how this has moved forward. this is a story that ran rolling stone, alleging a rather graphic gang-rape at a fraternity on campus. the administrator from the school sued and said not only your story was false but you defamed me along with others in doing it so recklessly. people often say i am going to sue, i will sue for defamation and you lied about me. very rarely those cases go to court and when they do, rarely you will get these major guilty verdict. with this jury found just in the last hour, no, there was recklessness and there were actual malice, these people did not just do their jobs poorly, they did their job incredibly recklessly, they did not get the basic fact-checking and the basic stories that a reporter is supposed to do. we are not talking about jail, we are talking about money damages up to $7 million. that chapter would come later. this is a huge blow to rolling stone which i should mention and people probably know at home has published a great number of issues and music and cultures and rights over the years. this story is a blemish for that. did rudy giuliani knows about last friday s, of october s surprise two days before the story broke. i mean i am talking about some pretty big surprise. yeah, i heard you said that this morning. what did you mean? you will see. you are lucky because we got to go. i am out of town. we are not going to go down. we are not going to stop fighting. we got a couple of things off our sleeves that should turn us around. why agents reportedly are against hillary clinton and what these new claims could mean for the race going forward. first, a reminder our coverage begins tomorrow eastern with a live one hour show hosted by your own joanne reid and tuesday tuned in on our msnbc election beginning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. . (friends gasp) the app where you put fruit hats on animals? i love that! guys, i ll be writing code that helps machines communicate. (interrupting) i just zazzied you. (phone vibrates) look at it! (friends giggle) i can do dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs. you name it. i m going to transform the way the world works. (proudly) i programmed that hat. and i can do casaba melons. i ll be helping turbines power cities. i put a turbine on a cat. (friends ooh and ahh) i can make hospitals run more efficiently. this isn t a competition! a lifesaving pill by five thousand percent. said he wished he d raised it more. prop sixty-one targets drug company price-gouging to save lives. the drug price relief act will save californians nearly a billion dollars a year. join the california nurses association and aarp and vote yes on sixty-one. the drug giants won t like it. and he ll hate it. investigation into hillary clinton s private server and making that information public. those reports suggesting that fbi agents have a highly in favorable view of hillary clinton. a fresh story that s out today. spencer, it is great to have you with me. you spoke to fbi agents that s serving into the organization. take us through your reporting and what you uncover. i want to see what fbi agents thought about comey s decision putting the fbi front and center days before people going to the polls. what i found was an extraordinary climate. some people were saying that no matter of the support for trump, some were serious and kind of there is a tremendous towards hillary clinton. did you find folks wanted to speak out on this on background and give you the kind of insights and look at what the climate was like? it was extremely difficult. people were reluctant to criticize an agency that they feel they are personally attached to. has comey put himself in an in possible position? he s extremely in a difficult position. some point presuming that she s elected president. comey is going to have to find some way of working with with her and that may under mind the relationship between the white house and the fbi. we played this earlier of rudy giuliani raising eye brows of what he said last week about this and what he said today. you are going to hear about it the next few days. i am talking about some pretty big surprise. oh yeah, i heard you said that this morning, what did you mean? we ll see. we got a couple of things up our sleeves that should turn this around. a couple of days before this broke and you looked and you said look out, something is coming down and certainly it did. what did you know and a lot of network pointed that out. i am not part of it at all. all i heard was former fbi agents telling me that there is a revolution going on inside the fbi and now is at a boiling point. so there are people in the fbi leaking information into trump s team. that s what it sounds like. rudy giuliani , he had a history of playing politics. i am a native new yorker. it is going to be difficult to manage and put rank and file fbi agents trying to do their job with integrity in a difficult situation. spencer, great work. national security for the guardian. today our pulse question, reports say the u.s. government is concerned hackers from russian may try to under mine the election, are you worried your vote may be compromised? coming up in the case, the fight to finish, which gives us the best idea on what could happen when those ballots are all in and experts weigh on the other side of this break. my name is barbara and i make dog chow natural. now that i work there, i value the food even more. i feed it to yoshi because there are no artificial colors, preservatives and it s made with real chicken. i m so proud to make dog chow natural in davenport, iowa. do you have thecare? coverage you need? open enrollment ends december 7th. don t put it off til later. now s the time to get on a path that could be right for you. with unitedhealthcare medicare solutions. call today to learn about the kinds of coverage we offer, including aarp medicarecomplete plans insured through unitedhealthcare. these medicare advantage plans can combine parts a and b, your hospital and doctor coverage. with part d prescription drug coverage, and extra benefits. all in one complete plan. for a low monthly premium, or in some areas no plan premium at all. unitedhealthcare doesn t stop there. you ll have $0 copays for preventive services. like an annual physical and most immunizations. you can also get routine vision and hearing coverage and a fitness membership. for prescriptions, you ll pay the plan s lowest price, whether it s your co-pay or the pharmacy price. or pay zero dollars for a 90-day supply of your tier 1 and tier 2 drugs, delivered right to your door. in fact, our medicare advantage plan members saved an average of over $4,500 last year. so call or go online today to enroll, and enjoy these benefits and more, like renew by unitedhealthcare, where you can learn about healthy living and earn rewards, too. your healthcare needs are unique. that s why, with over 30 years of medicare experience, we ll be there for you we can even help schedule your appointments. open enrollment ends december 7th. so don t wait another day. if you re medicare eligible, call now and talk to unitedhealthcare about our plans, like aarp medicarecomplete. let s get you on the right path. call unitedhealthcare or go online to enroll. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. it really is turning into a true fight. we got both nominees in the battleground with their running mates these final few days. hillary clinton has made campaign stops to florida 25 times to donald trump 37. she made 15 stops in ohio today. trump makes his 26th visit to that very posimportant state. trump travels there for his 24th time. clinton has made 15 stops in north carolina and donald trump of 21. the trump campaign relies on their nominee s star power out there, clinton has the power of the president and elizabeth warren and formal president, bill clinton on the trail for her. how is early voting coming out. we got our democratic strategist and peter hart. gentlemen, it is good to have you with us. we have 36 million votes are being cast. is early voting a good predictor when we get to tuesday evening for the results. well, you cannot use early voting to predict how people are voting. the most poimportant thing is lk what we are seeing in the electorelec electorate. so peter, the pulse captures something that cannot be determined by early voting data. the early voting data as steve says is exactly right. it tells you about the organization and that s going to make a difference on election day. you will learn that. the polls will cross section of americans. as we can see the election is very close and as you pointed out, thomas. you look at the states where hillary and trump are going and essentially what it shows you is michigan is going to account for a lot and they re closing out in pennsylvania. well, it is where they are going and going and seems to continue to make these trips to the same old spots. we are seeing wild fluctuations in polls. this is a good example of the washington post polls where we saw hillary clinton leading by 12 points and leading by two of the following week. what do you say of the volatility and what s driving? this is the strangest election cycle of our history and voters just kind of reacting to it. it is interesting though and i know peter knows this more than i do. i think that s important to keep in mind that we are fighting over four or faive states. really, it has not moved since labor day. this does come down to which one of these campaigns going to grind it out in four or five states. peter, are we going to see a total redefined and folks like yourself are going to look at this and wonder of 2016, we just got this new free press michigan polls. this was done on the first and the third, the four point margin of error, that s a tie. the fracture is within the blue wall and the blue fortress and how this can all flip and redefine for 2016. you look ahead and it is changing and donald trump made it change. he reached out the voters. he lost the expanding l electorate. the news that you bring out of the michigan poll is the best news that hillary clinton s campaign will hear today. and it will be maybe hopeful? the day is still young and we have seen a lot of friday s surprises. our strategists and our peter hart and steven shales. thank you gentlemen. the security that its plan to protect election day. says it won t let up for a while. the cadillac xt5. what should we do? .tailored to you. wait it out. equipped with apple carplay compatibility. now during season s best, get this low mileage lease on this cadillac xt5 from around $429 per month, or purchase with 0% apr financing. i am totally blind. i lost my sight in afghanistan. if you re totally blind, you may also be struggling with non-24. calling 844-844-2424. or visit my24info.com. they re planning unprecedented security on this year s election. cynthia mcfadden. officials in the department of the homeland security, military and the intelligence community tell nbc news the u.s. government is gearing up for an unprecedented effort to protect the country on election day. according to multiple intelligence sources, u.s. officials are deeply concerned about and preparing f some sort of cyber chaos next week. an attack on critical infrastructure including the u.s. power grid is one of three worse case concerned. so we have cynthia mcfadden, we should point out that there is no reus thomas hock the integrity of the vote itself. joining me is our executive director and an author of defeating isis. malcolm, thank you for joining us. how probable is this? well, it is a question of who s the actor that would want to do that or paralyze the united states. i have another book called the plot to hack america. that was oriented to russian te intelligence. they can do that and slow down the united states. the fundamental vote will not be corrupted. that s calculated on a white board there is this chaos and the noise that goes around it and gets people undone. what does the cyber community and cyber security expert is being enhanced to make sure that this is plausible. v verified russian intelligence and their version of nsa and the department of homeland security and the director of national e intelligence, all came together. almost all states and i believe 45 was the number of states have consulted with dhs which means national security agency is assisting as well and they are making secure that the computer switch actually tabulate the vote. the plot to do all of this. what security expert has to do to stay ahead of what could happen. that s what it is all about sfooch, we got to stay ahead of those of what cause the kay yochaos. we had this noise on the campaign trail saying that the russians may have something to do with it. you have to first believe that the enemy is out there and they re going to carry out some sort of a ferry s blood. if you don t believe that the russians have done this then you cannot make the offenses against the cyber weapon systems that they employ. that s what the states are doing now. they believe that russia and other actors can come in and interfere with the electorate. to handle it or shut off if they are attack. that s the big game. malcolm stance, thank you. i want to give you an update of the pulse. are you worried that your vote maybe compromised? even though it cannot happen but fears are real. 60% say yes and 40% say no, check out www.pulse.msnbc.com. tonight, who ll take the stage in cleveland to rock the boat for hillary clinton. the man on your left, jay z, will be there. what about beyonce? say no that it is not going to be beyonce. stranger things have happened before. one person cons to rally voters for clinton is her former boss, president obama in the final stretch before election day. i was working in the yard, my chest started hurting on very specific therapy. our individualized care model gives each lung patient specific treatment options with innovative procedures that are changing the way we fight lung cancer. we have excellent technology that will allows us to perform very specialized procedures for patients who have lung disease. to learn more about these targeted therapies and advanced procedures for lung cancer, as well as the experienced physicians who deliver them, go to cancercenter.com when he showed me the cat scans, i was so amazed. with this treatment, she had a dramatic response. call or go to cancercenter.com. cancer treatment centers of america. care that never quits. appointments available now. that he s almost done for his former secretary clinton this time in fayetteville, in north carolina. the clint the enthusiasm people have for president obama. here is the president in one of his two stops for clinton on thursday. if you are registered, you can vote right now. [ cheers ] there is early voting location just ten minutes away. our ron allen is in fayettevil fayetteville, the president is giving a lot of attention in north carolina. is he trying to do what can do for clinton what he could not do for himself. reporter: exactly, he lost in 2012 but he won in 2008. every vote counts. that s what the president have been saying there is numerous stops here. he s going to be back in north carolina, durham, on monday. debra ross is up, warming up the crowd. the president should be here in a moment. some of the people here have been waiting since 5:00 a.m. this morning outside in the rain for the president to get here. that s how popular he is here. you are right, at this point, the early voting figure, the african-american turn out is lower and the enthusiasm gap is that plclip that you just played, president obama gave the address of the early voting place. that s how intense it is and where they need to be. the other issue here is intense voting rights battle, there are thousands of people waiting for a federal judge s decision. 70,000 people have been purged. they want to vote on tuesday and they re waiting to get that right. that s the issue here. we ll see the president coming out there shortly. just a programming note for you. we ll have a one on one sit down interview with the president tonight. that ll air in with chris hayes on msnbc. blacks are indeed fired up. it is read wrong even if there is a slight difference between the early vote then and the early vote now. don t let that fool you. blacks are going to turn out on election day in north carolina. i can absolutely convince you, i hope i can of what i know and understand about the black community. not only the black community respect hillary clinton but believe in hillary clinton but they got a second incentive and that s we cannot tolerate donald trump. he s dangerous and we know that we got to stop him, we know that this country cannot be led by him. he s demonstrated who he is. and not only is he dangerous he has burglarized this campaign in the way that he has not only limited himself to a certain constituent. mariana had a chance to speak with running mate tim kaine about what perceived to be this slow start. take a look. well, it certainly started slow and a lot of states have done things since 2012 to make it harder to vote. we are worried about that. we are also seeing while the participation at some areas started a little slow, it is picking up. when we heard ronald talking about what s going on in north carolina with voting rights and a decision that s coming down. do you think in a larger scalp picture that the clinton s campaign have taken the black votes some what for grant it or is that a myth? that he is are remarks on the other side who s trying to convince black that they should not be so supportive. that kind of generalization does not play well with most blacks who understand the difference. democrats and republicans and certainly donald trump and hillary clinton. i would not pay any attention to that. the fact that the matter is, if blacks go to the polls, if there are any attempts from keep them voting. they ll get the ballot that ll allow them to vote so that decisions can be made on them later. i am not worried about that at all. what i feel in my heart is that blacks are goi to vote and they re going to vote in large numbers and they re going to get out in the polls and hillary clinton is going to win this election. all right, congresswoman, i want to get you on the record with this. the leak of the fbi, it under mind the clinton s candidacy. i think the disappointment in the fbi director is profound. i think that he made a mistake that he interfered with this election and he caused us to have a little bit of a pause and a little bit of a drop off that we have not recuperated from that. the leaks that have gone out and division appears to be in the fbi is unprecedented. nobody expected that you would have false information coming out of the fbi. rudy giuliani needs to be investigated also because he had a role in this. congresswoman, maxine waters, thanks for your time. you are so welcome. could she turn the tie in georgia? our new polls is showing the dead heat, our chris jansing is talking to the people at the polls, next. on this side of the road is virginia. and on this side it s tennessee. no matter which state in the country you live in, you could save hundreds on car insurance by switching to geico. look, i m in virginia. i m in tennessee. virginia. tennessee. and now i m in virginessee. see how much you could save on car insurance. or am i in tennaginia? hmmm. [dance music playing] [music stops] woman: looks like it s done. [whistle] [dance music playing] [record scratch] announcer: don t let salmonella get funky with your chicken. on average, one in 6 americans will get a foodborne illness this year. you can t see these microbes, but they might be there. so, learn the right temperature to cook each type of meat. keep your family safe at foodsafety.gov. our nbc chris jansing is in georgia speaking to the man leading the soul to the polls effort. chris, what are they say happening this sunday? reporter: well, they got ambition and some one saying at the ebony church in atlanta, that s turning out 100% of its parishioners. that s about 4,000 votes. obviously, it makes a difference to hillary clinton who s looking up to black votes here in georgia. joining me now is our pastor here, rafael, you can get 100% of your people to show up. listen, welcome to georgia and witness the georgia miracles. i am a preacher, somebody has to bring in the water. these people behind me are bringing in the water, our congregation showed up in a powerful way over the last few weeks. yes. this is ebeneezer s votes. i asked people who already voted to stand up on sunday and most of the congregation already voted. reporter: you think 90% so far? that s right, you are shaming the 10% that have been voting. i am shame lessly shaming people in the voting. it is that important. reporter: it is a one point race. what is it going to take in our mind for hillary clinton to pull it out which is what you want. we are in the margins of error. i think we can win, georgia is a blue state. we need people to believe and act on it. the signs so far are great. in 2012, we saw 1.6 million early voters. right now we are already at 2.1 million. we have not seen the full tally for today so i think the signs are good. we are seeing outstanding voter s registration and mobilization and education and that s the recipe to turn georgia blue and that has broaden implications for our polls. reporter: they could make record here that would be extraordinary given the fact that in most of the country the clinton campaign said look, we do not expect to hit 2008 or 2012 record, we like to keep it close here. it maybe a different story whether enough to turn the state, we ll see. chris, thanks so much. looks to be a beautiful day in decatur, georgia. one last look at our pulse question. we have been asking you of concerned hackers from russia may try to under mine our election. are you worried that your vote is compromise. check out the www.pulse.msnbc.com. it is time for your business of entrepreneurs of the week. meet wilmer in minnesota and a mexican immigrant and owner of la fiesta and this owner of a grocery store, they and others are bringing new light into this downtown. for more watch your business sunday morning at 7:30 on msnbc. watch for ideas to help you grow your business. or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. find out how american express cards and services the wolf was huffing and puffing. like you do sometimes, grandpa? well, when you have copd, it can be hard to breathe. it can be hard to get air out, which can make it hard to get air in. so i talked to my doctor. she said. symbicort could help you breathe better, starting within 5 minutes. symbicort doesn t replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. symbicort helps provide significant improvement of your lung function. symbicort is for copd, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. it should not be taken more than twice a day. symbicort contains formoterol. medicines like formoterol increase the risk of death from asthma problems. symbicort may increase your risk of lung infections, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. you should tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking it. symbicort could mean a day with better breathing. watch out, piggies! (children giggle) symbicort. breathe better starting within 5 minutes. call or go online to learn more about a free trial offer. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. the 2016 election is just about to be in the books. today, wonder woman, helsps us escape reality in the next 30 seconds, enjoy. it is what i am going to do. it is our sacred duty. check this out, wonder woman times two. just a few weeks ago. pretty awesome. june of 2017, that s going to wrap up our coverage today, i am