when off the back board to himself for the slam. edwards scoring 28 points, pulling away from the grizzlies when he won. minnesota leads the western conference at the midway point of the season. miami tight end cam mccormick announcing he's coming back for his 9th season of college football. that's right. 9. mccormick began his career at oregon in 2016, missed parts of four seasons because of injury, red shirted and got an extra year due to covid. mccormick is 25 years old, and said the pursuit of excellence, kasie, has no goal line. this man right here is living the dream. i would have loved to stay in college for nine years. >> i don't think i realized that when i was in college, certainly my parents would not have gone for me spending nine years in college. >> helps when you have a football scholarship. >> that's pretty awesome. andy, thank you so much, and have a wonderful weekend. thanks to all of you for joining us as well. i'm kasie hunt, you have a

wonderful weekend, and do go anywhere because right now "cnn this morning" starts. good morning, everyone. it is friday. i'm poppy harlow with phil mattingly in new york. hope you're having a good morning. donald trump, nikki haley, ron desantis, they are all on the ground in new hampshire today selling their closing arguments with just four days now until the primary. haley, tempering expectations as trump goes on the defense. the former president asking the supreme court to keep him on the ballot, warning of chaos and bedlam if thhe's banned. wait until you hear how he's defending his claims of absolute immunity. and a damaging report, cascading failures at the massacre in uvalde, texas. what the justice department says should have happened to save lives as some victims waited to be rescued. cnn this morning starts right now. just four days, four days until the new hampshire primary

and today all three candidates are blitzing that state. the looming reality is that one more good night for donald trump could all but lock up this gop presidential nomination really early. nikki haley set to sprint through six stops starting next hour. her schedule capturing the sense of urgency as she makes the case that she is the only one standing in trump's way. >> now, during her town hall on cnn last night, haley ditched talk of a win or vote share in new hampshire, instead, she told jake tapper, her goal is to finish strong. >> governor sununu is predicting a win, and also saying a strong second place finish would be in his words great, would a strong second place finish be great for you? >> kwwhat i want to do is be strong. we're not going to know what strong looks like until the numbers come in. >> that as trump is rele relentlessly, pushing to undercut haley's ejectability under republicans. >> she's not going to make it.

she's not no chance. no way. maga is not going to be with her. we're leading everywhere now and she's not. she has one obsolete poll, about two months old where she was leading biden. those days are gone. she's not leading biden anymore. >> we begin this morning with cnn's eva mckenld d who's track a very big day on the trail for us. we saw stronger attacks from nikki haley last night in that town hall. what's that tell you about what's ahead? >> good morning to you, phil and poppy, what we saw last night from nikki haley is her telegraphing this new approach where she ties trump and biden together as being part of the past. she argues she offers a new generation of leadership that america needs. >> nikki haley barn storming new hampshire with just days to go before the primary. >> look, i mean, we want to do better than we did in iowa. that's my personal goal. >> reporter: and haley spoke to

a statement she made earlier this week during an interview where she said america has never been a racist concern. >> america is not perfect. we have our stains. >> reporter: she said as a child she experienced racism but also maintains she refuses to believe the premise america was ever a racist country. >> i was a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town. we had plenty of racism that we had to deal with, by my parents never said we live in a racist country. >> reporter: haley wants voters to consider what a rematch between former president trump and president biden will mean for the country. >> do we really want to have two 80-year-olds running for president. we need people who love america, and realize if your time has gone, move out of the way. >> i think cognitively i'm better than i was 20 years ago. >> reporter: trump hitting back at haley calling his former u.n. ambassador weak. >> she would not be able to handle that position.

she would not be able to handle the onslaught. with all of that being said, within the republican party, i want to bring unity. >> reporter: trump has sharpened his attacks by haley, resorting to calling her by her first name, nimrada, an attack meant to be a racist dog whistle against against his rival. >> i know trump well, that's what he does when he feels threatened. >> reporter: trump is claiming biden is the real threat to democracy in response to biden arguing the same thing about him. >> well, we put on three great justices, and you have some other great justices up there, and they're not going to take the vote away from the people. now, biden is a threat to democracy. >> reporter: biden for miz part -- his part is looking to the general election, campaigning in north carolina. the president is facing a

primary challenge in new hampshire even though he is not on the ballot. his supporters are hoping biden can win the primary as a write-in candidate. representative dean phillips who is running a lesser known operation against biden is campaigning in new hampshire and picked up a key endorsement from former democratic candidate a andrew yang. >> reporter: haley is expected to benefit from a moderate primary electorate. trump returns to an event in concord and is hoping to have a decisive victory in the state to dull the momentum of his rivals. >> eva mckend, thank you for all of your reporting. joining us now to break it down, airl lewis, former republican strategist, lee carter, and former director of the new york state democratic

parpay,. >> you can change your registration a month beforehand, and independents can vote. democrats cannot vote. to eva's point, it's a more moderate electorate. at least in iowa, south carolina, nikki haley saying she wants to finish strong but not setting expectations. what's that tell you? >> it tells you that like everyone else who has tried to take on donald trump, she's unclear about what her chances are, and she doesn't want to alienate his base so that rather than put it in dire sort of terms, stark terms and say, either you vote for me or the party is going to collapse. either you vote for me or the democrats will steam roll us in november. rather than say that, she continues to do this dance. she doesn't want to set expectations too high because she's got a very unusual and sort of low odds path to victory. she's got to win new hampshire. she doesn't want to come out and

say it, but that's really what all of the political odds makers will tell you. she's got to win it, and that will change the race fundamentally. if she can't win outright, she has to come close and come out with something like a moral victory. from what she has been doing, all the resources they poured into the state, the messaging she has been doing, that's what her strategy is. she didn't want to come out say it. if it doesn't work out on tuesday it's going to be hard to see a path to victory. >> this is one of the reasons why she's trying to tow the line. gary tuchman who talks to voters and fsets a sense of what's on the ground. this is what some of the voters told him about donald trump and all the charges against him and if they think it makes him ineligible at all. here it is. >> is donald trump fit for the presidency if he's convicted of a crime, 191 counts against him? >> i would say yes, i don't think there's legitimate things they're charging him for. >> reporter: why is that?

>> it's all crap stuff. >> if he's convicted of a crime, i don't think he should be the president. >> reporter: are is he fit if he's convicted of one of the crimes. >> i feel he's fit to be president of the united states, yes. >> this mirrors that iowa ent entrants poll. 2/3 would still vote for him if convicted here. this is the line that nikki haley is trying to tow. >> she is trying to tow that line, and not doing it well, quite frankly. >> thousand do you do it better? >> i'm not saying she can do it better. i'm just saying she's not doing it very well. on the one hand you're not going to be able to pull donald trump's voters away from donald trump, that's just not going to happen. can you walk this line between trying to get some disaffected republicans and democrats to say enough is enough with donald trump. the question becomes does she have a compelling argument and create enough of a differentiation between herself and donald trump to be able to make a compelling case, and i

don't think that she's done that. if you're on a debate stage and saying, well, i'll pardon donald trump or, by the way, yes, these charges don't amount to much, all you're doing, really, is propping him up, not staking out a good enough claim for yourself. what she's doing now, probably should have been done months ago. the fact that she's doing it before new hampshire, i don't know if it has legs. >> would you give a preemptive pardon, she said, no, i wouldn't. you have to let the process play out for trump. she did say after if she's convicted, she would. >> i have been thinking about the haley theory of the case a lot. trying to game it out. right, we all have. what's the map, the pathway, all of these types of things, and the way i think it goes is you show that trump is not infallible, is not invincible in new hampshire, and then all of a sudden things start quickly moving your way. compare it to rocky 4. d drago has a weakness. i'm coopting it from somebody. and all of a sudden it creates a

cascade effect of people rushing to nikki haley. when you look into the numbers, do you see any evidence that that theory of the case would play out if she wins new hampshire? if she stuns the world on tuesday night? >> if she were to win new hampshire and then i think ron desantis would have to drop out. because ron desantis really then has no path, and he's not going to win south carolina. he doesn't have anything, and then things start to get interesting. those votes can shift to nikki haley. what nikki haley does have is the never trump vote and all of these people who ddecided they'e not going to vote for donald trump. she could pick up all of the ron desantis votes, but she would have to pick up all of them, and she has a possible path, but it's very unlikely, and i think what she's saying, she has to be in striking distance, then she can make an argument, i can go forward from here. >> what do we know about the history of new hampshire in

terms of the undeclared voters and how late they make their decision. we were talking about the candidates blitzing the state. six stops for nikki haley, they start in one hour from now. can she change minds in the next four days? >> the fact that independents can come in in the last minute and declare they want to show up, means if you wanted to do an exotic pulling strategy in the final days, you have an opportunity to do that. is it actually going to come together? it seems unlikely. that is a very tough thing to do in the modern age to do it sort of secretly is just not even an option, right, so you'll have to do something where people like korey lewandowski, a prominent trump leader who's there in new hampshire will detect it, will deter it, sort of call it out, and all of a sudden social media and everything else is telegraphing your strategy, a sneak attack at the last minute, pulling in a whole bunch of independents, very unlikely. >> big day today, six events,

making the full on sprint. stay with us, we have a lot more to get to. >> donald trump has been warning of chaos and bedlam if he's removed from the state's primary ballot. his lawyers are using the same language in their actual filings to the supreme court. the latest on this ballot fight next. the house armed services chairman asks secretary of defense lloyd austin to explain why his hospital stay was kept under wraps even from the president. new details on that ahead. .

we put on three great justices, and you have some other justices up there, and they're not going to take the vote away from the people. >> donald trump predicting the supreme court will go his way and strike down the ruling that took him off the primary ballot in colorado. his lawyers urging the justices to do just that. in their new filing, trump's lawyers echoed their client's language, promising unleashed chaos and bedlam if other state courts and officials follow colorado's lead. >> in the legal battle against him, trump digging deeper into the argument that presidents need to be completely immune from prosecution in an interview with fox's sean hannity, trump was asked for nhis closing message to new hampshire voters, trump said of course make america great again, and then this. the president of the united

states, and i'm not talking about myself, i'm talking about any president has to have immunity. if you take immunity away from the president, you'll have a president that won't be able to do anything. when he leaves office, the opposing party president, the opposing president will indict the president for doing something that should have been good. >> let's bring in to the table, to the conversation, cnn legal analyst, elie honig, errol and lee and basil are still with us. we'll get to the immunity stuff, but this filing echoes his language, trying to make arguments and hopes that one sticks with the supreme court. their main argument here, though, that the president, what he did didn't amount to participating in an insurrection, and by the way, if you do this, you will create a chaotic country, which is not a legal argument. how do you expect the supreme court to address this.

>> a lot of focus on the phrase, chaos and bedlam, i can't defend the bedlam part of it. the chaos part of it, they say legal chaos, political chaos, and they're right. i mean, we've done the map. we've shown the map. the red states rejected the 14th amendment challenges, the yellow states are the ones where the challenges have failed so far but not finally, and then you have the two blue states. you have colorado and maine that have thrown him off. that is chaotic, and in fact one of the colorado supreme court justices said the dissenters said the problem with all of this is it's chaos. you can't have some states throwing him off, some states not. >> my question is it's not a legal, constitutional issue that the supreme court would address. can they do it that way. >> that is a policy argument you can make to support a legal argument with respect to the legal arguments. there's two categories in the brief. one is the factual claim, i didn't engage in the insurrection. they don't make findings of facts. that's what judges and juries

are for. then the series of procedural arguments which boil down to in a sentence we don't know how this process works. and we can't make it up on the fly here, different state by state, and then apply it backwards, and so there's various sort of versionis of that. i think procedural arguments where this is going to be decided i think won on trump's behalf. >> i want to talk about immunity, not my own, unless apparently i'm the president of the united states. nikki haley was asked about this issue and what trump has said it by jake last night. take a listen. >> if a president is doing something and it's related to, you know, whether it's terrorist threats or something like that and people die, that's one thing. but do you get just total freedom to do whatever you want, no, that's never the way it was intended to be. there needs to be accountability. no one is above the law. >> just for clarity here, part of this is tied to a trump post on truth social, his truth, if you will, it says even events

that quote, cross the line must fall under total immunity or will be years of trauma triying to be determining good for bad. i'm going to do some criming if you reelect me. walk me through the thought process here. >> it's a pretty straightforward statement of what dictatorship is, right. a president in his case, he is talking about himself, should be able to, must be able to legally do with legal impunity do whatever it is he or she wants. the word salad we got from nikki haley, it ended where it should have begun. no one is above the law is the principle with which you have to start this kind of a conversation if you're serious about democracy. not, you know, sort of trying to do what she's trying to do, i understand she's trying to win an election, so she kind of wanders around it, talks about it, chaos seems to follow him, like mysteriously, like some stray dog seems to follow donald

trump, and she's going to pardon him for whatever crime he might have committed, though she doesn't know what it might be. all of this undermines the core argument and takes us away from what other candidates have tried to do, which is sound a sense of alarm. you cannot have a major party candidate saying at the top of his lungs, trying to influence a supreme court decision and influence the rest of us, the president can do whatever he wants. >> we're going to find out, ba si basil what the appellate court is going to do. and everyone remembers, let's say you as president, seal team 6 take out a political opponent while president would you have immunity, and the word salad answer from the attorney was an eventual yeah. >> right. i think what we have to remember here is that as donald trump talks about political chaos, he's the one that created it. to be clear. and so what he does to errol's

point about what dictators do and how they sound, the whole point here is to get his supporters riled up, motivated to get the sense that he is the aggrieved, right, the system is against him, and in order for me to deliver for you, i have to be able to do what i want. that your path to salvation as a voter is through me. that is a really really stark sort of view of democracy from his point of view. and for nikki haley who's trying to walk this line and this word salad, the problem, again, as i said before, she should have done that earlier. chris christie, god bless him, was trying to sort of sound that alarm very early on. didn't get too far doing it. she's trying to figure out a way to walk that line to get a couple of votes, but too little, too late, the party could have done something to stop this a long time ago, and they didn't. >> it is a stark line where he is right now, the problem that we're facing right now is that you've got a huge number of republicans who really do view

this all as unfair. they all, i mean, more than 80% of republicans view everything that's happened with all of these indictments is politically motivated. they look at this and say this is about political opposition, not about crimes that have been committed. donald trump has this ability to be able to navigate and still have the support of so many folks. >> when i saw it, it doesn't, my first inclination was not to may the usual game, is this going to upset republicans. it's not going to upset republicans. no, his base doesn't care about this at all. if anything, it will make them like him more which makes me wonder, what's the rationale here. they already think everything is fraudulent and an attack and a two-tiers justice system. why are you saying i should be able to break any laws i want. >> i can't really defend he should be able to do anything, and i understand that's playing right into the dictator argument. in some ways, i feel like he likes to stoke the bear, and i think he believes the more that this argument comes that at least a dictator, that he's an

authoritarian, the more his base gets excited, the more likely people are to defend him. it's incredibly effect ive. the crazier people get, the more he wins. >> quickly, what is intellectually stimulating and persuasive is not always emotionally compelling and donald trump needs that emotional argument to continue to lift his candidacy. what others have done is trying to create an intellectual argument on democracy, and it doesn't have the emotional content. >> really good point. thank you, all, very much. ahead, a cnn exclusive, one-on-one, a sit down with the attorney general merrick garland. attorney general garland thinks donald trump's election subversion trial needs to begin quickly. >> the special prosecutor has said from the beginning that he thinks public interest requires a speedy trial, which i agree with. plus, garland's justice

department releasing a blistering report on the police response to the uvalde school massacre, opening a lot of wounds for grieving parents. we'll have more next.

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at nearly 600 pages long, we have a justice department review to the mass shooting two years ago in uvalde, texas. it's the most comprehensive accounting yet of why it took nearly 400 officers 77 minutes to confront and kill one shooter who murdered 19 children and two teachers. cnn's shimon prokupecz has been leading this coverage of the story since the very first day and takes us inside the new report. >> reporter: the justice department releasing a damming report about law enforcement's failures responding to the mass shooting in uvalde, texas. >> the law enforcement response at robb elementary school on may 24th, 2022, and in the hours and days after was a failure that should not have happened. >> i hope that the failures today and the local officials do

what wasn't done that day. do right by the victims and survivors of robb elementary. >> we got shots fired at the school. >> bursts of gunfire. >> the victims trapped in classroom 111 and 112 were waiting to be rescued at 11:44 a.m., 10 minutes after officers first arrived when the subject fired another shot inside the classrooms. >> reports a teacher was shot. >> they were still waiting at 11:56 a.m. when an officer on the scene told law enforcement leaders that his wife, a teacher, was inside room 111 and 112 and had been shot. >> reporter: a desperate 911 call from a trapped student. >> the student was in a room full of victims. that student stayed on the phone with 911 for 16 minutes. >> reporter: major events that

should have prompted police to step in immediately. instead, police waited 77 minutes to stop the gunman. >> 49 minutes after officers arrived on the scene, and they were still waiting for another 27 minutes after that until finally, officers entered the classroom and killed the subject. >> reporter: during those 77 minutes, 19 children and two teachers were killed. the long awaited, 575-page report is the fullest accounting of what happened, highlighting the serious failures in the law enforcement response. >> these families didn't need 400 or 500-page government report to learn that law enforcement failed them in a historic way. >> reporter: while quick to arrive to the scene, their report found law enforcement stopped outside the classroom where the gunman was on a killing spree inside. >> i think the report concludes

that had the law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived. >> reporter: countless other issues identified in the report after the gunman was killed from the emergency medical response to how bereaved parents were told their children were dead. >> some families were told that their family members had survived when they had not. >> reporter: many family members of the victims and survivors thankful for the federal report detailing what went wrong that horrific day. they are still frustrated by the lack of accountability. >> we're grateful we got what we have right now, it's the most updated information any of us have gotten. >> what else does she possibly need to prosecute or remove these people from their positions of power when they can't do their jobs.

>> reporter: the federal assessment does not make recommendations for punitive damage -- punitive steps for law enforcement. attorney general merrick garland says the report provides a basis for accountability. >> the community now has the kind of report necessary to make sure that accountability occurs. >> reporter: the uvalde district attorney says she's continuing to investigate, but families say they want charges brought against the officers. >> we're going to continue fighting that some type of change is made in honor of our kids. >> the governor of texas, greg abbott released a statement thanking the department of justice for their report. he said he's already taken some of the recommendations and put them in place. and he said that the most important thing he's done is try to keep schools safe. we also heard from other offic officials like from texas department of public safety. they have thanked the department of justice for their report, and they say also they have already implemented some of their

recommendations. shimon prokupecz, cnn, uvalde. >> our thanks to shimon for that reporting. meantime, israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu seeming to reject the idea of a palestinian state again, but the biden administration thinks he could still change his mind.

when you say working, are they stopping the houthis, no? are they going to continue, yes. >> that was striking, that was president biden yesterday saying the u.s. strikes against iran-backed houthis in yemen will continue even though they have not, he said, stopped the terror groups attacks. the houthis fired missiles at another u.s.-owned commercial ship on thursday. it was at least the third u.s. ship that the rebel group has targeted this week. >> that happening as long simmering tensions between president biden and benjamin netanyahu have been growing. in a news conference thursday, netanyahu appeared, seemed to outright reject the idea. >> translator: any agreement with or without agreement, the state of israel must control security between the jordan river to the sea. the prime minister of israel should have the ability to say no even to our greatest friends

when he has to. >> u.s. officials responded saying netanyahu has reversed himself on hard line positions before and that his statement may not be the final word. new this morning, a republican-led house panel has asked defense secretary lloyd austin to explain his failure to notify the president and lawmakers about his recent hospital stay. in a letter to austin, mike rogers request that austin testify before the full committee on february 14th. here's part of what he writes, congress must understand what happened and who made the decision to prevent the disclosure. austin and the pentagon have been under scrutiny for failing to alert the white house or deputies that he was hospitalized for complications from a prostate procedure. if you passed fourth grade social studies, you know this line, we hold these truths to be self-evalu

self-evident that all men are created equal. >> when you look, it said all men are created equal. i think the intent, the intent was to do the right thing. now, did they have to go fix it along the way? yes, but i don't think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country. i refuse to believe that the premise of when they formed our country was based on the fact that it was a racist country to start with. i refuse to believe that. >> the intent, and its overarching role in u.s. history is hardly that clear cut. the actual history seems to directly undercut that contention on some level. that's not an attack on the founding fathers, nor is it an inflammatory statement calling into question the soul of the nation. it's history based on facts. thomas jefferson documented that document while owning people.

at any given time there were more than 130 slaves at monticello. that document states unequivocally that all men are created equal as cited by haley, at least 30 of the 56 signers of the declaration of independence owned slaves. that's well over half of the signatories, and u.s. presidents owned slaves as well. slavery wasn't embedded in the u.s. history just in its founders. it's in its founding documents. the founders included the 3/5 compromise that found enslaved blacks in any state to be counted 3/5 the number of white residents. it took 81 years, a civil war to change that. this isn't a history lesson, the 150 years that followed the civil war laid bare how much work was left to do. why do these specific comments matter? they capture a prevalent and pained effort to balance acknowledgment of clearly documented history while

simultaneously not puncturing myth of infallibility created in this country. the confounding thing is those men never claimed to create a perfect union, far from it, the ability to strive towards that aspiration, amid clear failings, that hardly seems to be an indictment. in fact, that seems to be what the country is all about. >> i'm so glad you did that, philment phil. doesn't it raise the possibility of how do we become better, if we don't fully appreciate the facts you laid out. >> what i get stuck on, there are real policy disputes and differences and ideological debates on these specific issues. why it's so hard to say the things that happened, acknowledge them, and then try to figure out what the best solutions are to fix them, it shouldn't be hard. >> that should be the easy part. the harder part is how do we make it better. >> exactly. >> thank you, phil, very much. attorney general merrick garland sounding off on former

president trump and political bias accusations at the justice department. we have much more ahead.

in an exclusive one-on-one with cnn, the nation's top prosecutors, expressing a need for speed when it comes to trying donald trump. >> attorney general merrick garland, by the way, who rarely does interviews, it's a big deal he sat down with evan perez. and spoke to allegations of political bias in the justice department. watch this. >> you have appointed more special counsels than other attorneys general. you did this because you wanted to make sure that there was some independence from the way the justice department operates. but even the president's son, you know, hunter biden, is accusing the department of

political bias in the prosecutions that have been lodged against him. how do you reassure the public that these things are being handled in an independent manner, given the fact that these special counsels do report to you. >> look, we have reasserted and clarified the norms of this justice department. we follow the facts and the law wherever they lead. politics is not a part of our determinations. it would be improper and it's not. the department has regulations about the appointment of special counsels, and we follow those regulat regulations. in each case, we have appointed people who are formerly veteran career prosecutors, whatever their current position is. >> and they're sufficiently independent from you, you believe? >> yes, and the regulations make them independent from me. so with respect to the public, i hope they will see not only from what we've done but from the

outcomes of the cases and the way in which special counsel have proceeded that we have kept politics out of this. >> you know, one of the trials of the former president, donald trump, is scheduled for march. you know, some o. pof the polli shows 3/4 of republicans believe he's being targeted for political reasons. does it concern you that this public perception exists and what can you do to try to change that? >> of course it concerns me. what we have to do is show by the acts that we take that we're following the law, we're following the facts. the prosecutions that you're talking about were brought last year, and the special prosecutor has said from the beginning that he thinks public interest requires a speedy trial, which i agree with. >> you agree with that? >> i do. and the matter is now in the hands of the trial judge to determine when the trials will take place. >> the department has policies

about steering clear of elections. is there a date in your mind where it might be too late to bring these trials to fruition? again, to stay out of the way of the elections as the department policies? >> i just say what i said, which is that the cases were brought last year. prosecutor has urged speedy trials, with which i agree. and it's now in the hands of the judicial system, not in our hands. >> do you look, looking back now, do you think the department took too long to bring these cases, maybe? >> special prosecutors followed the law, they brought cases when they thought they were ready. >> let's bring in cnn special crime and justice reporter, katelyn polantz. were you surprised that he agreed with the request for the speedy trial? >> not at all. it is a special counsel that operates with a little more independence than other prosecutors, but it is the

justice department still. what garland is saying is very much in line with what we've heard from court from special counsel jack smith. one thing to note about the speedy trial is that the prosecutors can ask for a speedy trial, but it really is the defendant's right to the speedy trial, and trump doesn't want a speedy trial here, so how much credence do we give the trump side versus what garland is saying on that. the other thing here that i think is just important to remember is that he says the public interest requires a speedy trial. that's something the prosecutor has said. there's a reading between the lines going on because the prosecutors in this case have said in the writing of the case, the public interest is because there's an election coming up, because this is about the last election. and so there's -- >> what else would the public interest be? >> nobody is really saying it out loud because they can't and don't want to. that is hanging over it. >> important point. what about his response that the belief of 3/4 of republicans

that this is political? >> well, you know, there is this issue where trump is using his bully pulpit regularly. he's going on camera. we're not seeing the proceedings as they're happening. we can sit in and recount what happens in court, but in federal court, there just isn't the ability to capture that. but at the end of the day, what happens and what matters most is what the jury hears, what the jury feels, and if they feel, the jurors on this, if they believe this case was properly brought and they can weigh it independently, that's all that matters. >> katelyn polantz, we'll have much more from evans' interview as well. the country that created the one child policy to slow the population growth asking people to have more kids. ahead, the major threat china now faces. we'll have it.

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it's a crisis now officially in its second year in china. a record low birthrate. the demographic challenge is not only shrinking the nation's population, it's also posing a significant threat to the world's second largest economy. cnn's mark stewart explains.

>> reporter: 35-year-old jesse on the move, her focus, a career in marketing. having children, not on her agenda. >> do you want to have children? >> no. not at all. >> and that is a big problem facing china. for the second year in a row, it population dropped. a record loss of more than 2 million people according to the government. >> i think having children will disrupt all my life plans. i think life is already very hard. >> reporter: besides commitment, there's also the question of cost. right now in china, a sluggish economy makes it hard for young people to find a job. getting married and having babies just isn't a priority. >> translator: giving birth to a child is only one of my choices, it should be up to me, not anyone else. >> reporter: listed among countries with low birthrates, china now has more people who chi each year than those who are

born. this is not one of those issues where the government is staying silent. it is talking about it, and has taken steps to encourage young people to have children. this includes everything from financial incentives to more holidays for pregnant parents. at a women's conference last year, president xi jinping told leaders to promote the idea of marriage, childbirth and family among young people. do you want to have more children? >> no. no. >> reporter: for some parents who already have children, like frances, her little boy is enough. a reminder of the recent past when the government fearing overpopulation only allowed most urban couples to have one child, with forced abortions and sterilizations linked to its sometimes brutal enforcement. but this isn't just about choices. the population slump is a demographic blow to the world's

second largest economy as it struggles to find a work force for the future. this isn't just about the work force. when you have so many older people and fewer younger people to take care of them, it raises all of these other questions about health care and housing. phil, we're in shenzhen, this is china's silicon valley. people here are having children but real estate here is very high. it's really difficult to balance all of these forces. >> yeah, it's a fascinating story and the cascading effects of it are so important. marc stewart, thank you. and "cnn this morning" continues right now. i refuse to believe that the premise of when they formed our country was based on the fact that it was a racist country. >> it shows a stunning lack of leadership on this issue. >> no one can be different in a party where you cannot split from the figure head of the