hello. i'm wolf blitzer. 1:00 p.m. here in washington. 8:00 p.m. in mosul, iraq. wherever you're watching from around the world thanks very much for joining us. following two major breaking stories this hour. a decisive moment in the fight against isis, and moving towards a decisive day in an ugly and very bitter presidential race here in the united states. in iraq, the battle is underway to recapture the city of mosul from isis. the coalition leading the battle is made up of mostly iraqi troops and peshmerga fighters backed by u.s. air power.

iraq's military has inflicted heavy losses on isis fighters. including embedded journalists reporting explosions and heavy gunfire. this could take weeks maybe even months. it's iraq's second-largest city. the last wee maremaining isis stronghold in the country. us defense secretary ash carter calls it a decisive moment to defeat the terror group. take you live to the front lines of the battle this hour. the other big story we're following right now, presidential politics here in the united states. less than 22 days and counting until election day, and donald trump is wrapping up his claim that the system is rigged. earlier this morning he tweeted this -- of course there is large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. why do republican leaders deny what is going on? so naive. trump has presented no evidence of voter fraud. here's what his campaign manager told our jason carroll just a little while ago.

>> -- if there's quelli icompel evidence of voter fraud. >> i didn't say that. >> i said if there is certainly we would take action. in the meantime it's very frustrating to see every day we can't get complete coverage of the race. almost all coverage is about donald trump and not hillary clinton. that's a disservice to the voters who deserve to see what the choices are in stark contrast. >> trump also fighting back against claims of inappropriate behavior made now by at least nine women. the allegations range from unwelcoming advances to sexual harassment and assault. trump strongly denies the ac accusati accusations. meanwhile, brand new cnn/orc polls taken as these allegations begin to surface. the polls were conducted in three key battleground states. nevada, north carolina and ohio. our political director david chalian joins us now. david, how are these two candidates doing in these crucial states?

>> they are crucial states. they are three of our four sort of remaining toss-ups in this election right now, wolf. take a look first at north carolina. look at the horse race and how it's shaping up there. we just released these polls within the last hour. in nevada, sorry. look at nevada. you will see clinton, 48%. sorry. that's north carolina. there you go. nevada. clinton 46%. trump, 44%. gary johnson at 7%, and that's key. take a look at hispanic voters in nevada, wolf. they can make up nearly 20% of the electorate in neff never and look here. hillary clinton is clearly beating donald trump by 2 is points. 54-33% but gary johnson is getting 10% hispanic vote. in 2012, barack obama got 71% of the hispanic vote in nevada. hillary clinton is underperforming where the president was. this is a warning sign and gary johnson is taking some of those hispanic voters. now to north carolina.

look at the horse race overall in north carolina. basically tied. clinton, 48%. donald trump 47%. johnson lower down at 4%. what is keeping donald trump in this race right now? white evangelical voters. look at in north carolina, white evangelical make up 35% of the electorate, wolf and here winning them 77% to 18%. this is a constituency you could expect to be with trump, but in the aftermath of the "access hollywood" tape and allegations of women about groping, he is still holding that evangelical base, and that is key. then finally in ohio. this is the trump stronghold of these three polls. take a look. he's got a 4-point edge against hillary clinton in ohio. 48% to 44%, johnson down at 4% and jill stein at 2%. and independent voters are a key here. look at this. we polled ohio back in september. look at donald trump's growth among independent voters, wolf.

back in september, he was at 42% among independents in ohio. he's now up 9 points. 51%. he's beating hillary clinton there by 18 points. among independents in ohio. that's a key part of what is keeping him ahead there. >> just tweeted he was very happy with those results in ohio from our cnn poll as well. david, stay with us. i also want to bring in our chief political analyst gloria borger and the polling institute patrick murray. a brand new monmouth national poll has just been released moments ago. hillary clinton widening her lead by 12 points among likely voters. patrick, how can trump close that gap nationally with, what, only 22 days to the election? >> yeah. i think the key we're seeing here with national polls coming out pup all conducted since the allegations from all of those women wednesday. the swing polls you talked about cnn just did, some of those interviews were done before that. polling out last week suggested

that wednesday night was a real turning point. so those allegations i think have really given a lot of credence to what's going on here with what trump said in that tape. 62% of voters in our poll said that the allegations that these women are saying about donald trump are probably true, and i think that a lot of this has to go with a swing now that we're seeing in enthusiasm because of that. that the likely voter models are now starting to swing from helping donald trump to helping hillary clinton. >> interesting. david, you've studied these polls as we mentioned earlier. the polls were taken as the sexual misconduct allegations against donald trump began to surface. so what are we seeing? how are women specifically responding? >> take a look at female voters across all three battleground states that we polled, and you see that this is clearly part of hillary clinton's support. this is in nevada you see she's winning women 53-38%.

north carolina, 54-43%. those are double-digit leads among women. ohio, closer. 48-45. mostly because married women give trump advantage. not the case in the other two states. as you just talked about, yes, seeing impact nearly six in ten voters do believe that donald trump did these things that these women alleged he's done, but we also saw in an abc news/"washington post" poll out this week, a majority, nearly six in ten actually say it doesn't sway how they are going to vote in this election. >> interesting. gloria, the voting block, the women out there, donald trump really needs to get a lot more support among women, if he's going to be elected. >> look, women could well decide this election. back to mitt romney. always a good idea to campaign where donald trump is to where mitt romney was, even though mitt romney lost he has to outperform mitt romney.

if you look at women, for example. romney lost women by 11 points. and that was considered large. trump is down by double that. according to a whole bunch of polls we've looked at. that's problem for him. by every measure, not just women, but if you look at latinos. romney got 27%. which was very low. trump is at 17%. and so you see that in almost every category, and i can go down here a long list, is that trump has these deficits. also, one other thing we have to take into consideration, which we see in the monmouth poll. saw it in the "wall street journal" poll last week, the favorable view of donald trump. 26% of voters have a favorable view of donald trump. hillary clinton's isn't that great either. 38%. but 26% is quite a deficit to make up, and it would be unpress

definited and dramatic if he did make that deficit up on that favorability issue. >> he has three weeks to go. three week and a day. david, magic number, 270 electoral votes. look at polling. where do the candidates stand in reaching that goal of 270? >> well, right now it's still advantage clinton. no doubt about that. if you look at all of the states that are currently leaning in her direction or solidly in her corner, she is pretty much over that threshold already. about at 272 electoral votes. so donald trump can win all three states we were just talking about in our new polling, ohio, nevada, north carolina, he can add florida to that and still doesn't get to 270, wolf. he has to flip a state already leaning in hillary clinton's direction. whether that's new hampshire or pennsylvania, wisconsin, where he will be later today, or michigan. and those states have just not been trending in his favor.

>> at least all the polls in those states show she is clearly, has a decisive advantage at least for now. patrick, your poll has clinton up nationally by 12 points. the abc "washington post" poll released over the weekend, up by only four points. nbc "wall street journal" "washington journal" poll closer to your poll. how do you explain the discrepancies? >> likely voter modeling and how much self-reported accesses you put in. we ask people what they're going to do. if you ask them how enthusiastic they are that could change. i think trump voters remain more enthusiastic down -- if you get to the real gut level. the question is, does that add any new voters to the list, to those who are going to turn out? i think the key thing we're seeing, a lot of clinton voters not necessarily enthusiastic, and might lose points if you ask them that question. now starting to say, but still i have to come out. i think that's what we're seeing the difference in these poll numbers.

>> you know, gloria, listen to what the republican presidential candidate donald trump and his running mate respectively will to say about the u.s. electoral process. listen to this. >> the election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect hillary clinton president. >> we will absolutely accept the results of the election. look, the american people will speak, in an election that will culminate on november 8th. but the american people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media. that's where the sense of a rigged election goes here. >> but -- seems two different assessments of the rigged election process from the presidential nominee and the vice presidential nominee? >> i also think donald trump has brought that beyond the media to, at the state level. where you've gotten a lot of pushback from party officials who say, wait a minute.

and from pence. you know, wait a minute. the interesting thing to point out here is that donald trump is charging that there's election fraud and a lot of these battleground states, which, by the way, have republican governors and in most republican secretaries of state. so those republicans who are running the party apparatus and watching voting are pushing back against their own candidate. so it's not just the media he's talking about. he's talking about challenging the very electoral process itself, and that's what has republicans quite upset. particularly since they're running a bunch of these states. >> david, pretty unusual to have the presidential candidate, the vice president candidate, offering different asszments like this, on such a critically important issue. >> but this is the third time maybe in the last three weeks we've seen them offer different

assessments, and seems that donald trump has no qualms whatsoever about making sure that when mike pence speaks and says something he doesn't agree with, he gets out, tweets, makes sure to drive the bus right over mike pence. >> and by the way, mike pence has no problem, i don't think, disagreeing with donald trump when he feels that he needs to, because mike pence is somebody who's got a political career in front of him and i think when he wants to distance himself, whether on foreign policy, and the question of assad or whether it's, you know, on voter fraud, i think he's going to continue to do that. >> certainly is. all right. gloria, david, patrick, guys, thanks very much. meanwhile, new documents just released by the fbi that raised questions stemming from hillary clinton's e-mail controversy. at issue, whether there was any quid pro quo between the fbi and state department specifically, did someone at the fbi declassify a state department document in exchange for

something the fbi denies improper activity. joe johns join us. what is this all about? >> reporter: wolf, the fbi says nothing was declassified, but this is the latest red flag. some congressional republicans say they've identified in their continued look back into the hillary clinton e-mail server situation, new documents released by the fbi shed light into back and forth between the fbi and state department over questions that got raised about whether a top state official, state department official, was trying to strike an inappropriate bargain with the fbi to change the classification of a secret document relating to a report of arrests in the benghazi attack. now, this gets a little complicated. the question was whether undersecretary of state patrick kennedy was suggesting the state department would consider addressing a need for additional space for fbi personnel

stationed in other countries in exchange for making the classification change. fbi says it looked into the situation putting out a statement today, and said it was actually an fbi employee who brought up the issue of overseas fbi agents. the statement said that while there was never a quid pro quo, these allegations nonetheless were referred to appropriate officials for review. congressional republicans starting at the top with speaker ryan saying, "these documents further demonstrate secretary of state hillary clinton's complete disregard for properly handling classified information." now, the state department also released a statement on all of this today asserting that the allegation of a quid pro quo is inaccurate and does not align with the facts. so the question is, where all of this goes. some that occurred at the state department around and during the watch of hillary clinton, who, of course, is running for president. congressional republicans are

raising smoke about this, and they say there could be fire. wolf, back to you. >> joe, thanks very much. joe johns reporting. hacked e-mails raising new questions about hillary clinton's views on wall street as well. we've got details of that, and the battle to liberate mosul from isis is being called historic. just ahead -- we'll go live to the front lines. i'll also ask the pentagon spokesman to lay out exactly what role u.s. troops are playing right now in this battle.

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we'll get back to today's big political developments here in the united states in a few minutes. right now, i want to go to iraq where the battle to push isis out of mosul is under way. thousands of troops led by iraqi security forces, they are clearly moving on the city. they are fighting to liberate mosul from isis fighters who have occupied that city for the last two years plus. cnn nick pating walsh is embedded with peshmerga kurdish fighters outside the city and here's what happens earlier today as we he was reporting. >> reporter: this has been an effort with much international support. a lot of coalition planning -- [ gunfire ] american air power.

[ gunfire ] >> and nick joins us now live near mosul. you okay? first of all. what exactly happened that made you duck down? >> reporter: well, that stage we had just joined the peshmerga on the main road to mosul where that gunfight took place. now, they cleaned out the road, but obviously not the hills and village and houses around it. isis fighters kept popping out it seemed, of tunnels or hiding places. at that instant we appeared to be taking fire from both sides. one bullet rushed over my head and peshmerga not knowing where that shot had come from. earlier we watched peshmerga chase down one isis fighter and another popped up from a tunnel, opened fire on them and when they shot back, he blew himself up right in front of us. that's the tenacity of the fighters they're facing here as

this fight continues, wolf. >> and what about now? what's the latest? what are you hearing from all of your sources? >> reporter: well, at this stage, this is always the beginning of the operation. the peshmerga moving down a key highway on the east of mosul city, securing about five or six kilometers of it. that has been patchy in success today. a lot of ground taken, but as you saw there, it's not entirely secure and safe. we saw one village, they held back quite some time. keel keep that fight up a while. the iraqi army is supposed to pile up down the road and move on to the next village. the idea is to keep the pressure up, but this is just the plains outside of mosul. the flat expanse of deserts and villages, which many perhaps hoped isis might give up with less of a hope saving gun powder as it were for the sprol of 1.2 people thought to be potentially trapped and brace themselves for

this assault. isis, though, not giving up the plains that easily. we saw today they will put up a fight. a lot of coalition paair power used. the peshmerga convoy we're will, no u.s. troops involved on the ground. we certainly saw western faces in the mix here advancing a complex situation where the united states, coalition, providing a lot of technological expertise trying to make this move more smoothly, but there are mines, and you saw there, the sheer tenacity of isis' fighters that might well slow them down, wolf. >> no reason to believe these isis fighters will give up by any means. you say 1.2 million people. this is the second largest city in iraq. 1.2 million people and i assume everyone is bracing for enormous numbers of civilian casualties as a result of this military offensive right now. getting in pictures right now of a car bombing in mosul. i suspect that probably is only

just the beginning of what is going to be taking place. it looks very, very devastating. how are they dealing with the potential huge number of civilian casualties? >> reporter:-it-is potentially utterly horrifying. 1.2 million people caught in what could, if worst fears come to realization, be a more sectarian kind of fight. the population of that town is predominantly sunni caught in tight, dense urban areas. the west of the city we understand a lot of people moved there and will face the iraqi military and potentially iranian backed shia militia moving in there. the real fear. there are camps placed around the city trying to take temperatutens of thousands of refugees. no safe departure. many feel they may try to use them as human shields and

reticent to themselves -- a lot playing into border concerns how quickly can you get people to stay in thoeir homes and peace o return. we're simply in the opening stages of this fight and a staggering number of human souls in the balance, wolf? >> certainly is. a horrible situation indeed. thanks very much. >> nick paton walsh. be carol over there. just a little while ago i spoke with a state spokesman and if american service men and women are in harm's way. >> peter, thanks very much for joining us. >> wolf, happy to do to. >> what do we know right now about this operation underway to liberate mosul? >> first of all, it's going according to plan and this is iraqi's plan to retake mosul after being first taken over by isil two years ago. started moving out about 6:00

baghdad time. iraqi time. it's progressing as expected and the coalition, the united states, our international partners, all standing shoulder to shoulder with iraqis offering support we have been providing for some sometime and will continue to provide. >> what's the u.s. assessment? how long do you expect this operation to last? >> wolf, this will be operating under the iraqi's timeline. prime minister abadi would like to wrap it up before the end of the year, but, of course, the enemy has a vote in all this. we'll proceed according to the iraqi plan worked out carefully with not only commanders on the ground but secretary c.a.r.arte involved talking with the prime minister how this plays out. it's a difficult fight, wolf. be clear about that. but we stand ready to, again, support iraqis and ready to take the fight to isil and to try and once again restore some seam ambulana semblance of a decent life, in

this city taken over by isil and those in the city suffering through the bar barrebarity of . >> what's the role in the city? >> all u.s. forces are carrying out specific responsibilities with regard to our overall campaign. they may be part of the logistical work, the advisory work we've been doing with the iraqis. some of them have been very involved in training the 12 brigades that are carrying out this mission in mosul. others, of course, have been involved in the air campaign. we continue to deliver combat air support, which has been critical to this fight in terms of rolling isil back in iraq. we'll continue to be critical in mosul specifically. they're all doing a variety of responsibilities carrying out a variety of responsibilities, but what's important here, wolf is that it's the iraqis in the lead. we're in a support role doing all we can to help them along with other members of the international coalition. >> i take it, though, there are

at least 200 or so u.s. special operation forces on the front lines right now along the combat with these isis forces subpoena that right? >> wolf, we should be very careful, first, i won't talk about our special force where is they may be located either in iraq or syria. even our special operations forces are performing and advice an assist mission. helping and advising forces. counterterrorism services in particular as well as the kurdish peshmerga forces taking the fight to eisele. special operators serving carefully in this advisory role because that's the role carved out for us in iraq. this is the iraqi's fight. we're doing everything we can to support them to be sure this is a dangerous situation including for those americans but it's the iraqis in the lead, wolf. >> how active are these u.s. air strikes? how many are being conducted at

least right now? >> as you know, we've conducted more than 100,000 sorties both in syria and iraq and we've continued to fly them. that's the whole coalition, not just the united states. just in mosul alone, wolf, there have been more than 70 air strikes since the start of the month, a lot of those air strikes trying to soften up isil positions, allow for movement of these iraqi forces and restrict the movement of isil forces. we'll continue to carry out those strikes again oftentimes at the request specifically of the iraqis, specific strategic targets they feel are important to their movement going forward. >> where are the u.s. air strikes being launched from? >> a variety of places, wolf. won't get into details specifically, but as you know, we have capabilities throughout the region. we are thankful and appreciative of our international partners including some from the region who have aided this effort, and this has been very well quartanat quartanated. the air campaign a real success and will continue to be pap critical component of this

campaign. >> we know plumes of smoke coming up from the oil fields in and around mosul. that the isis forces are launching. it's horrendous saying it's designed to prevent, make it more difficult for these u.s. air strikes. is that your understanding? >> well, wolf, they may be trying to prevent those air strikes and may be trying to if you will cloud the battle space, but you can be sure that our forces and our -- our air campaign will continue uninterrupted. we have ways to deal with some of those, those efforts to obscure the battle space and i'll leave it at that. doing more harm than good to the environment, to the people of iraq. they certainly aren't doing much to help the infrastructure of iraq. we'll continue our air campaign no matter what they do peter cook, thanks very much for joining us. >> you bet. an coming up, looking into hacked transcripts, stolen transcripts, from hillary clinton's paid wall street speeches, and our private message differs from her public

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stolen e-mails raising questions about hillary clinton's views on wall street. regulating big banks and who's to blame? clinton expressed different views in private than in public. alison kosik joins us from new york with details. walk us through what the e-mails show. >> reporter: okay. the reality with hacked or stolen e-mails, no big bombshell. no smoking gun. as i've gone through the hacked e-mails, it quickly became

apparent hillary clinton said certain things in public, said differently in private when haven't been tv cameras rolling. case in point, regulation on wall street. tough regulations put in place after the. crisis. listen how she statalked about m on the campaign trail. >> trump would roll back the tough rules that we have imposed on the financial industry. i'll do the opposite. i think we should strengthen those roles so wall street can never wreck main street again. >> reporter: the thing, these hacked e-mails show that in october of 2013 at a speech she gave to bankers paid by goldman sachs, she take as very different tone look at this. a softer tone saying there was a lot of complaining about dodd/frank. that huge piece of regulation that was put into effect after the financial crisis, but says, there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of congress, and people

in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press saying it's all the fault of wall street you can't sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important. notice that she isn't holding wall street accountable. only holding them accountable for political reasons. especially when you look at this next excerpt. so many places in country the banks are not doing what they need to do because they're scared of regulations, scared of the other shoe dropping. here actually empathetic about regulations possibly hurting some banks. another severexcerpts about the middle class, how she feels and sinceri sincerity. the economy should work for everything, not just those on top. here says, obviously i'm kind of far removed from the middle class because of the life i've lives and economic fortunes my

husband and i enjoy so i haven't forgotten it. shows she is removed from the middle class and acknowledges, though, wolf, that she does take two sides when it comes to politics saying this -- saying, it's unsavory, but it always has been that way, but if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back-room discussions and deals, then people get nervous, to say the least. so you need both. a public and a private position. so you've got hillary clinton admitting she does say something differently in public than she says in private. wolf? >> how are people on wall street, folks you've spoken to, reacting to the release of these hacked e-mails? >> reporter: a lot of the bankers and the investors and traders i've talked to are not surprised by the fact that hillary clinton apparently says, as in these hacked e-mails shows she talks differently in public than in private. one investor saying this, "she may be a lot of things but not

stupid when it comes to raising money and currying favor with those who have it." they acknowledge hillary clinton is a politician, and at least one of them did say to me that if she is elected they believe she will move towards the center. wolf? >> alison kosik reporting, thank you. coming up, the clinton campaign is sending one of its biggest surrogates out there. the first lady of the united states, michelle obama, to a state that voted republican in presidential elections for decades. our political panel is standing by will break down the race to 270. that's coming up.

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that can camp out in between our teeth, if we'll let it. use gum® brand. soft-picks®. proxabrush® cleaners. flossers and dental floss. gum® brand. the first lady, michelle obama, is hitting the campaign trail once again for hillary clinton this time in arizona, a

state the clinton campaign thinks will be critical keeping donald trump out of the white house. meanwhile, republican sources tell cnn despite earlier reports, donald trump is not pulling out of virginia and buying ads there. discuss the race to 270 electoral votes. ladies, thanks very much for joining us. >> nice to be here. >> the new polls that came out, cnn/orc polls in nevada, north carolina and ohio shows trump ahead by four points in ohio and close in the other two states. very close. three states right fou he desperately needs to win all three of these states. >> he does. and he needs to win a bunch more. right? in some ways the more things change the more they stay the same with this campaign. look two, three months ago essentially what the state of the race was in these different states. ohio tends to be a little more republican even in times that democrats have won that state. they haven't won it by that

much, if you look at last go-round, i think obama won ohio by about 165,000 votes, but trump has to grow his support. he needs to be thinking about, can he win states like wisconsin? states like pennsylvania? states like michigan? otherwise, the truth is even if he wince all three of these states, hillary clinton could very well still win, because of her strength in those traditionally blue states, and you see her even now trying to widen the map looking in states like arizona and even texas. >> are you surprised that in ohio even at all the sexual allegations were emerging in recent days trump is still ahead now by four points? >> the polls out of ohio have been really interesting this cycle. we see ohio versus arizona is an interesting case study. one state that's always been competitive, ohio, for demographic reasons looking redder than in previous cycles, an older state. the other hand democrat graphics are trending more to the

democrats. a latino vote that is energized by the, against him, the trump candidacy and the clinton campaign airing six figure ad in arizona. a pretty unusual thing and the trump campaign acknowledgealed they are in some trouble there how is the clinton campaign, molly, dealing with latest so-called quid pro quo allegations involving the state department, which he was secretary of state and the fbi? >> the whichen campaign of course says nothing to see here. pointing out the alleged quid pro quo in the e-mails not to get too far into the weeds never occurred. proposed to have the classification change didn't actually happen. beyowee beyond that there's a lot of stuff in these transcripts and in the fbi documents that we can expect secretary clinton to be asked about in the third presidential dee presidential debate on wednesday and has had a hard time answering a lot of these

questions. previously what's keeping the race close. so many of these leaks and revelations play right into this distrust voters have for hillary clinton. >> polls show there is still a very high number of americans who don't like or distrust not only hillary clinton but donald trump as well. both pretty much when it comes to honesty and trustworthiness, don't have good numbers. >> they don't have good numbers. historically high unfavorability ratings both candidates have's in ways they cancel each other out in terms of honesty andwori clinton gains hooshs is prepared to sit in the oval office? the temperament, judgment, experience. what she's talking about. why she's been trying to prosecute this case against donald trump being unhinged, erratic, someone you wouldn't want to have his finger on the nuclear button. what her ads are saying. so we'll see. i mean, she, i think, probably their campaign feels pretty good right now in terms where they

are in standings. you hear donald trump saying the whole thing is rigged suggesting he already thinks this is going to be a loss for him come november 8th. >> the notion he says, the whole system is rigged. different than what his vice presidential running mate is saying, he believes in the honesty of the american electoral process. >> you have a lot of republicans including mike pence and a lot of others trying to distance themselves from this allegation by trump. really worrying about what could happen in the aftermath of the election if he continues to pound this theme. you know, after mitt romney lot the election in 2012 trump tweeted he didn't think the results were legitimate and called for a revolution. as the presidential nominee, if he were to do something like that it could cause serious instability in society and a lot of republicans including his own running mate signalling to trump they want him to back off this attack. the question is, does anybody have the standing to tell donald trump to change his tone? and they really don't.

>> some saying it's rigged because the media is in line with hillary clinton, not necessarily the voting procedures. >> that's not what trump is saying. >> good point. ladies, thanks. coming up, cnn gets a unique look inside the war against isis unfolding right now. bringing you aboard an aircraft carrier assisting u.s. backed forces in the battle to liberate mosul. on a perfect car, then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises your rates. maybe you should've done more research on them. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise your rates due to your first accident. and if you do have an accident, our claims centers are available to assist you 24/7. call for a free quote today. liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance.

. turning back to the war against isis right now, cnn got a firsthand look at a french aircraft carrier as it joined the battle to push the terror group out of mosul in iraq. here's our senior international correspondent. >> reporter: takeoff to a comb bat mission over iraq and syria. france is one of america's closest allies in the fight against isis. with the aircraft carrier, the country is drastically increasing its strikes against the terror group. the 24 jets carry four, 500 pound laser-guided bombs each, a quadrant leader telling me, only

referring to him by first name, according to regulations. >> the aircraft is capable of doing intelligence missions to give firepower to the people on the ground. the aim is to help the iraqi forces on the ground to fight against isis. >> france has been hit hard by isis' terror, and franterrorist killed more than 130 people, prompting france to unleash its military, flying missions over iraq and syria, and deploying ground forces, as well. the squaund win commander says his men and women are determined to destroy isis. >> it's to prevent any more terror attacks in france for me, which leaves families and relatives, so that's very important for all the people on the charles degal, and in my quadrant. >> the charles degal operates almost the exact same way as

american forces, allowing forces to work seamlessly. >> reporter: its jets play a major role in the effort to liberate mosul from the terror group. >> and french fighters are commanding forces over the terror group. >> translator: this intensification around mosul come at a key moment as efforts of the coalition are bearing fruit. isis is retreating on the ground and has lost big cities lycra maddy, fallujah, and mabije. this goes with the liberation of france and raqqa, and france haw vowed to keep its forces in the region until the goal of eliminating isis is achieved. cnn on the aircraft carrier, charl degal in the mediterranean sea. that does it for me. i'll be back, 5:00 p.m.

situation in "the situation room." amanpour is coming up next. for our viewers in north amer a america, newsroom starts after this quick break.

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hi, there. he we go, start of the work week, i'm brooke baldwin. you're watching cnn. let's begin with donald trump that the election is a scam and the results cannot be trusted. >> and remember this, it's a rigged election, because you have phony people coming up with phony allegations with no witnesses whatsoever, ending up from 20 years ago, 30 years ago. the process is rigged. this whole election success rigged. these lies s