>> those families the heart break, pain and frustration of having been abandoned. tuesday night we will hear from those families directly and be surprised. the stereotype about trump voters, there are some you might be mad at, not those trump voters. >> thank you for watching. more news ahead. >> this is the moment. this is our chance. this is our window for action. this is the hour when the great deeds can be done and our highest hopes can come true. we're going to do it, folks. we're going to do it. >> a raucous rally, cheering crowds, not business as usual for a president-elect. this is contract cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. tonight's rally comes after his visit to carrier's plant in indianapolis and this promise. >> the companies are not going to leave the united states anymore without consequences.

>> donald trump promising tonight to bring this country together after what may have been the most divisive campaign in american history. let's listen. >> now is the time to embrace the one thing that truly unites us. you know what that is? america. america. it's america. because when america's unified, nothing is beyond our reach. i mean that. you're going to see. you're going to see. we're going to have a country that was never so great. you watch. in so many different ways. you hear a lot of talk about how we're backing a globalized world but the relationships people value in this country are local. family, city, state, country, they are local. we'll compete in the world, we want to compete in the world but

we're going to compete in the world where it's a two-way road, not a one-way road. the advantages are going to come back to our country and they haven't for many, many years. there is no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. we pledge allegiance to one flag and that flag is the american flag. [ crowd chants "usa" ] from now on, it's going to be america first. okay? america first.

>> now i want to bring in cnn's jim acosta live in cincinnati. the president-elect taking a victory lap as he announced his pick for defense secretary as well. fill us in on that. >> that's right, john. the transition was billing this as a thank you tour but this was really a touchdown. donald trump was celebrating his big victory over hillary clinton on november 8th. he called it a landslide even though he won in the electoral college, he did not win in the popular vote. he talked about his upcoming agenda, that he's going to build that wall between the u.s. and mexico and repeal and replace obamacare. the big news of the night is when he announced his pick for defense secretary, retired general james mattis, here's what he said. >> we are going to appoint mad dog mattis as our secretary of defense.

[cheers and applause ] but we're not announcing it till monday so don't tell anybody. mad dog. he's great. he is great. i asked one of the generals, i love the generals, and i won't use his name but he probably would come forward. but i said to him, you're a good general, aren't you? yes, sir, i am. i said, so how do you compare to general mattis? how do you compare to mad dog? sir, he's better than i am. i loved it. i said, i loved that you said that. they love him. so we're going to be announcing him on monday of next week. keep it inside the room. and he's our best. they say he's the closest thing to general george patton that we

have and it's about time. it's about time. >> and donald trump made that announcement despite the fact that a couple of hours earlier his own transition spokesman jason miller went on twitter and said that no decision had been made when it comes to defense secretary and so, don, we in the press, the whole country, was essentially told something that was flat out wrong. donald trump went out a couple of hours later and told the country that he was in fact picking james mattis for defense secretary. >> you've been on the trail with him for months, jim. was this the same kind of feeling in the room tonight? >> reporter: absolutely. there were chants of "lock her up," "drain the swamp," and it felt like we were in the thick of it at this rally. trump talked about on election night that he wants to bring the country together, he wants to unite the country.

but this was a speech that really inflamed a lot of divisions in this country. he not only railed against the news media, called them the extremely dishonest news media, he mocked protesters saying he didn't realize that they lost the election a couple of weeks ago. we understand that he has more of these events coming up, more of those thank you tours coming up. but donald trump tonight, the president-elect of the united states, a man who is going to be sworn into office in about a month and a half from now, don, sounded like somebody who wanted to keep the election going instead of putting it all behind us. >> jim acosta, thank you very much. seems like donald trump has a love affair going with ohio. listen. >> i love you ohio, this is a great place, you people have so many friends. thank you. thank you. in the true sense, history called and the people of this great state answered and you're going to be very happy.

we're going to say right now, what are we going to do? make america great again. you watch. >> let's discuss now the chairman of the hamilton county republican party. good evening to you, sir. thank you so much for joining us here on cnn. you just came from that thank you rally tonight. let's listen a little bit more and then we'll talk about it. here it is. >> but then the people back there, the extremely dishonest press -- [ boos ] >> so what was it like? >> well, don, it was terrific. it was great for those of us who have been supporting donald trump to see him back here in cincinnati and in ohio specifically where he won historic victory. the crowd was great, very energized and he said a lot of things that make us love him. >> your county didn't go for donald trump but you say your phone has been ringing every ten minutes.

people wanted to be there. >> no question about it. people far and wide. the southwestern ohio region, don, is very strongly republican and very strongly for donald trump. so this city of cincinnati, this area particularly, did not necessarily go for the president-elect but the region certainly did and my phone has been ringing for the last 24 hours and more so a really good showing. >> what did they say to you? >> i'm sorry, what -- >> what did they say to you when they called and said they wanted to be close to the arena. >> the folks wanted to be near him and it's interesting, people want to meet him. i can't deliver on that kind of a message but people wanted to be near him and be in this arena and hear what he had to say. >> what's your reaction to the carrier job situation, keeping a thousand jobs in the u.s.? >> obviously very pleased by

that. carrier is not far from here. the indiana border is just west of here from cincinnati so very happy about that and governor mike pence is well known to us here in cincinnati because of his congressional district bordered the cincinnati area so i'm just very pleased by that. i think the people in this room were also pleased by that. don, as a republican, it's great to have someone talk into america's workers and donald trump is doing that in a way that previous republicans have not done. >> thank you, alex. i appreciate it. thank you for coming on. here to discuss this is kristen powers, executive editor mark preston and cnn analyst gloria borger. hello to all of you. apreebt having you on, as well. mark, i want to start with you. we're going to talk about the carrier situation in a moment but he's clearly energized. >> no doubt. this is certainly his forum and what really gave him the energy to run the campaign that he did.

i thought he spoke for a very long time. i was kind of shocked at the length of time that he actually spoke. at times i thought the tone was really strong and he tried to be inclusive and talk about inclusion. there were other times that he did fall back into the old donald trump and i think as he continues to work his way, you know, being president-elect and becoming president, that's going to have to change a little bit. >> the inclusive part was a small part of it. we're sort of reaching here but give him his due. he did it. the biggest part was not inclusion. >> no. but again, as jim acosta said, this was supposed to be a thank you tour. it really was a victory tour for him, going around saying i had won. but i thought he tried. he tried to change his tone. he's still got to work on it, though. that's the truth. >> gloria, did you hear a unifying message? >> i did. yeah, i did.

at one point he said, you know, the people don't -- we're not going to be divided for long. i have always brought people together. i know you find that hard to believe. he did bask in his own victory. but you know what, honestly, he's allowed to do that. he won. and what struck me, as i was standing there listening to him, i thought, this is going to be the presidency we're looking at when donald trump is going to have a problem with congress and they are not going to do what he wants, he's going to do what reagan did only more so. he's going to go to the people directly. he gets his energy from the people, he gets support from these crowds and i think that this isn't going to be a president who kind of wanders around the rose garden and ponders his decisions the way we saw president obama do that. i think it's going to be more a president who wants to get out there and -- and get energized

by it and if congress doesn't do what he wants, he's going to get them or try to get them to do what he wants by going over their heads. and it's starting today when he was talking about the carrier deal, which i thought was, you know, brilliant pr for him. he's standing -- and for carrier, of course, because he's standing there in front of carrier signs. and he's thanking the ceo as a company, making the company seem very patriotic. we don't know what kind of a stick he had to throw out there and say, well, i'm going to raise tariffs to 35% but they got a big tax cut. it's going to be controversial, but you know what, for this new president-elect, he promised something and he delivered it before he got into office. i mean, i think that's a pretty good day. >> and it's interesting that you say he gets energy from the crowd because remember when maybe he'll be the second campaigner in chief. remember, president barack obama would get his energy from the crowd and people said he didn't look happier -- couldn't look

more happier than on the campaign trail. maybe donald trump will exhibit -- >> i don't think president obama got out as much as he wanted to, to be honest. >> that's when you saw the energy come out. >> right. >> that's exactly what you said. kirsten, what did you make of this? do you think he spoke to the folks who were of the trump presidency? >> no, i don't. i agree with gloria. you know, he won. if he wants to come out and do something with the people who supported him, i say fine. i don't have a problem with that. i don't think that now is the moment that he has to try to do the unifying and i'm going to separate myself from most people. i don't even -- i'm not even bothered about attacking the media. look, we got it really wrong. really wrong. and the fact of the matter is, he had to live through a campaign of people saying over and over that he was never going to win, all of these things were never going to happen. he's allowed to vent about it. i don't think it's presidential for him to continue to do that, but if he wants to have this

rally, i think that's fine. >> we're trying to understand the supporters. we still don't understand the supporters that backed him, certainly us in the media. we got it wrong. >> we understand the supporters. >> you think? >> absolutely. listen, i think that -- and this is going to sound odd to you but that "saturday night live" skit with the black trump supporter on jeopardy, marginalized people and donald trump supporters have more in common than they think they do but they have more common than they think they do except there's one issue where they can't quite get together on and that's race, right? so maybe he'll address that and we'll talk about that coming up. >> as he should. he absolutely should and if it was me, i probably would have but i'm not donald trump and donald trump is going to do things his way and hopefully

down the road he's going to address those issues and try to bring people together. >> let mark finish his point. >> let me just say this. and i stand by it, that we're still trying to understand where -- what we missed basically, which was middle america. we're going to try to understand how not to make that mistake again. but what was said during the speech tonight, which i think was extremely important and it goes to what gloria said about what reagan would do is that he asked for help and he said i need your help to get this stuff done because donald trump knows he doesn't have a lot of allies in washington, d.c., but his allies helped put him in office and they have a lot of power and sway over their congress men and senators. he said that tonight and i think you'll hear that over and over and over again and barack obama tried to do this if we go back and he created a separate organization and said that these people were going to come out for him and push through his agenda. that wasn't necessarily true. didn't go the whole way. we'll see if donald trump can do that. >> gloria, i'll give you the first word on the other side of the break.

we'll be right back. >> that's fine.

coming back now, kirsten powers is here, mark preston and gloria borger. i want all of you to look at this and then i'll get your reaction in a moment to the trump rally tonight. >> we're going to seek a truly inclusive society where we support each other, love each other and look out for each other and that means that people coming into our country have to be people that have the potential to love us, not to hate us. we condemn bigotry and prejudice

in all of its forms. we denounce all of the hatred and we forcefully reject the language of exclusion. and separation. we're going to come together. we have no choice. we have to and it's better. it's better. we seek a future where every american child is fully included in the american dream. we're going to have our own american dream. and we're going to bring back the american dream. >> gloria, what do you think of that message? >> look, i think it's a great message. it's the language of inclusion. i wish we would have heard more of it during the last year and a half. but i think -- he's the president-elect now and i think he understands, as well as anybody, that this country is very divided heading into his presidency. and if he's going to get anything done in congress and if he's going to have the people behind him and not just the

people who were in that auditorium but the people out who didn't vote for him, that this is a message that he, you know, he has to continue with. and i think he's now got the bully pulpit for it and i'd like to hear him preach it more. i was just thinking, as we were talking in the other segment, we were mentioning carrier and what he did with a thousand jobs. tonight in the speech he mentioned flint, michigan, for example. he said, we have to fix that. well, maybe that should be the next thing that he goes after and says, you know what, i, president trump, am going to make sure that six months from now the water in flint, michigan, is clean. how about doing that? that would be an interesting way to start. >> kirsten? >> i think that would be great. >> what did you think about what he said about bigotry? >> it's the low bar, right? so it's the fact that he mentioned this. so there was a sentence and so previously he didn't say this and so i think, you know, on the one hand it's good that he's

doing it but i don't want to overplay it into he just gave some wonderful speech calling us kumbaya and come together and be inclusive and not be bigots. but maybe it's telling that he would put a line in there now in the way that he wouldn't have in the past. >> to gloria's point, where was that in the last year and a half, donald trump? i can hear people say, you said that tonight but why not say that on the campaign trail? that's fair. >> entirely fair. the thing drabt act donald trump -- and if you talk to people who are close to donald trump or who will be close to him, they can tell you that they understand that whatever he says has meaning, whether it's one words, two words, a sentence, he can move markets, crash markets, foreign policy decisions are hanging on the tip of his tongue and he needs to know that. at the same point, i think we need to look at donald trump and say, you know, he's not going to be as eloquent and professorial as barack obama. he better surround himself with

very smart people and he did today with mattis. >> he's also somebody who takes to twitter and make it is very clear when something upsets him. and so if he's really, really upset about bigotry, then, you know, maybe he could go on a twitter rant about bigotry. i'm being serious. i think that this is -- versus a throwaway line in a speech. >> i think he should just give up twitter. >> listen, i think many people are willing to give him his due and give him a chance but there is so much scorched earth from the campaign trail. >> right. yeah. >> by things he could have easily said like he said tonight and didn't. gloria, did you want to weigh in? >> yeah. no. look, i agree with that. i think this not only poses a problem for him as he wants to spread a message of inclusion if

indeed that's the case and to have people who didn't vote for him believe it but i think it also presents a problem for the democrats. how do they approach donald trump? what he did today with carrier was keep a thousand jobs here. that's -- that's a good thing. i mean, you can talk about corporate welfare and all the rest as bernie sanders did. but what do democrats do? do they just disregard everything he wants to do? i mean, there's an opportunity on an infrastructure bill because they've been trying to get that past for years. are they the naysayers? do they try and work with him? how do they deal with this president who is so different from anybody else they've ever known and who has the ability, as we were talking about before, to go right over their heads and directly to the american people. it's interesting. >> we've had eight years of that. i don't think anyone wants more gridlock.

going to make you a one termer. we don't need more of that. >> we could very likely see it. i think that the lesson that's been learned from what the republicans did is that it works. >> yeah. i want to talk more about this carrier deal, okay? so in the behind-the-scenes story of how it played out and why he picked the phone to call carrier. let's listen to this. >> and i'll never forget, about a week ago, i was watching the nightly news, i won't say which one because i don't want to give them credit because i don't like them much, i'll be honest. i don't like them. not even a little bit. but they were doing a story on carrier. and i said, wow, that's something. i want to see that. and they had a gentleman, a worker, great guy, handsome guy, he was on. and it was like he didn't even know they were leaving. he said something to the effect, no, we're not leaving because

donald trump promised us that we're not leaving. and i never thought i made that promise. i actually said -- when they played it, i said i did make it but i didn't mean it in quite that way. so now because of him, whoever that guy was -- is he in the room by any chance? >> that's my son. >> that's your son? stand up. you did a great job. right? that's fantastic. >> that's a pretty remarkable story, don't you think? >> first, i think he was watching news and not cable. i think it's a remarkable story because it's so candid. he's telling a story that he made a promise that he forgot he made and then he saw it on television and this is a president-elect of the united states, who watches a lot of tv, as we know, saying to us, oh, okay, i forgot i made that. let me call in my vice president who happens to be the former governor of indiana and i'm going to do this.

and sort of the ad hoc nature of it is quite striking. it's not the way things operate generally and i think it's actually kind of refreshing, to tell you the truth, that he just decided to try and do something. say what you will about the deal, say what you will that he may have bullied the united technologies and all the rest. it was stunning to me that he was so sort the candid about it. >> all right. we have more. hold your thoughts. stay with me, everyone. when we come back, donald trump announces his pick for secretary of defense, the closest thing we have to general patton. when it comes to healthcare, seconds can mean the difference between life and death. for partners in health, time is life. we have 18,000 people around the world.

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i've spent my life planting a size-six, non-slip shoe into that door. on this side, i want my customers to relax and enjoy themselves. but these days it's phones before forks. they want wifi out here. but behind that door, i need a private connection for my business. wifi pro from comcast business. public wifi for your customers. private wifi for your business. strong and secure. good for a door. and a network. comcast business. built for security. built for business. donald trump has narrowed down his choices to five people. general john kelly, general petraeus, bob corker, rudy giuliani and mitt romney. how much about this is building anticipation do you think and

we'll talk about that with my panel now. i don't know. the dinners, the public fighting, what do you think? >> it's like the apprentice, like the president of the united states. it's really -- the idea, even if you look at the romney dinner, when i first heard about jim acosta, in the middle of a restaurant, he's clearly creating a show for the public, you know, to make this as much of sort of a mystery for us all to follow who is he going to choose. >> i don't know if he knows how to do it any other way, though. i know it sounds trite but that's the way he is. he's just a wheeler and dealer businessman. he cuts deals over dinner. he calls people on the phone and tells people how he thinks it is. he doesn't have any of that political acumen that you would expect somebody to have that would be in that position. it is bizarre -- >> he has people around him. >> well, he does have people around him certainly that do. but it is bizarre to have that dinner in a very public place

but having said that, i mean, i do think that he's looking at one of his worst enemies, perhaps putting him in one of the most important positions in his administration. >> that would be fascinating, gloria. >> yeah. really. i think maybe i'm being a little machiavellian about this but when you have criticism that goes public, kellyanne conway about mitt romney, if trump chooses romney, romney will know in no uncertain terms that trump put himself on the line for him and he better be loyal and i think the whole public kerfuffle over it is something that he doesn't mind because it let's romney know. if he paraded him out there and we know that romney ate crow

publicly and a lot of romney folks i talked to it was kind of hard for them to watch that but they consider romney a patriot and would like him to have the job. but if he doesn't pick romney now after all of this, he could look a little vengeful. and romney could look a little dumb or humiliated, right? i mean, the stakes are now very high for both of them at this point. >> kirsten, donald trump announced his pick for defense -- did you guys want to add to that? >> i think it's all there. >> i think that's the best theory i've heard where donald trump doesn't seem like a total jerk in this situation. i think the way he's been treating romney has not been great and the way these people have been treating romney has been pretty bad. >> he also announced -- he's a showman -- he announced his pick for defense secretary james mattis in a very dramatic way as

well. what was your reaction watching that rally tonight in. >> i think he's great at stagecraft and he understands how to keep things interesting, keep people engaged. that's part of the carrier deal, was about -- it's like what you would want your -- that clip you played earlier of him telling the story of how he made the deal or decided to make the deal is like what americans would want and if you were watching a movie about the president, right, that's the story, the president who picks up the phone and saves the jobs right before christmas and trump gets that. >> mark? >> if you talk to republicans and democrats alike, this guy is a social general and his nickname is mad dog and people think he's probably this killing machine. perhaps he is in some way if he was in that role but also a very smart guy, spent the last three years at stanford university at the harvard -- excuse me. at the hoover institution studying and looking at how to reform the military.

very smart guy and i think, again, it's a testament to trump who is going outside the normal bounds of people that he really knows and going for the best people for the job. >> gloria, quickly, one more question so if you can do it quickly -- >> i was going to say, he's very skeptical of the iran deal and about russia. and that's different from the president-elect. >> mark, i wanted to get to this. top operatives met at harvard university for a postmortem. what do we know about that? >> there's a lot of bad blood between the clinton campaign and the romney -- listen to me. go back four years. the trump campaign. the bottom line is, the clinton campaign is accusing the trump campaign of running a campaign based upon racism and that's basically how they won and it all blew up at this conference

in harvard and for people who were there and from the press reports, it was really, really uncomfortable. >> that's when i said i'm trying to convey the reality of it, right? donald trump is a president-elect and we've got to move on but that's when i say scorched earth, that's what america's feeling similar to what the clinton -- >> go ahead, gloria. >> mark and i have been at these and four years ago i moderated that panel and, you know, people sort of said, okay, the election is over. we're going to talk about what we each did right and what we each did wrong. >> uh-huh. >> and today -- and i didn't go this time but today, from reading the reports and talking to friends who were there, it really seems to me that this is different, that this was so heartfelt and that the charges that are being thrown back and forth are so difficult that i -- you know, it's going to take longer than harvard gave it to kind of settle down after this election. it's not like it was in 2012

where people could sit around a table and just sort of discuss their strategy. that wasn't this session. >> i bet it was interesting being there, though. thank you very much. i appreciate all of you. when we come back, listening to donald trump america. the wall street trader who quit his job and traveled 100,000 miles to trump country. m to tru. . . . .

>> it is no coincidence that donald trump kicked off his victory tour tonight in cincinnati. southern ohio is the heart of trump country where workers saw

there good manufacturing jobs really disappear. let's discuss this now with chris arnade, a writer and photographer, who drove across the country to talk to trump voters. j.d. vance is also joining me and political contributor van jones. welcome back to the show to those who have been on. chris, i don't think you've been on but thank you for coming on. >> thank you very much for having me. you traveled a hundred thousand miles through what you called trump country meeting and photographing american voters. what did you learn from the people you talked to? >> i had originally intended to -- my travels were dedicated to talking to people suffering from addiction and focusing on poverty and so i was going to places where basically hope was leaving and that's where i saw addiction entering but i also saw in those places the trump voters and i saw his message resonating with people in those same communities.

what i saw was america extremely frustrated, feeling left behind, communities destroyed and people were humiliated. >> you say that the -- i thought this was interesting -- that the real divide in this country isn't necessarily between blacks and whites or rich and poor but between what you call front row kids and black row kids. explain that to us. >> well, firstly, i would say that there is a huge divide in race. we segregate ourselves. we're a segregated country. but beyond that, the second divide there is education. i'm a front row kid and i think a lot of people who are listening to this are front row kids. people who have post graduate degrees might have grown up in towns that once had factories and then left them and went to get education and then moved on

and got jobs and careers that focused on their education, that used their education and defined themselves through their careers. >> and that's a front row kid, right? >> that's a front row kid. you know, the nerds. the people who always sat in the front row and followed the rules and got out. but we've built a culture and a society over the last 30 years that has rewarded those people, like myself very well. we reward people who have good educations. and what we left behind, in many cases, were people who perhaps didn't have those chances, might not have excelled at schools for various reasons and might not have had the opportunities and we have demeaned people who don't have education, both economically and socially. >> van, i've been listening to you talk about this because you also went and spoke with trump

supporters, as he says, the front row kids have really excelled and the back row kids haven't -- they got a smaller piece of the pie. when you spoke to those voters, what did they tell you? >> well, i went even before the election. my fear -- and we've talked about this before -- tuesday you had an election. what's going to happen wednesday? the trump voters aren't going to leave america, hillary voters aren't going to leave, black lives matters isn't going to leave. the cops aren't going to leave. you have the same country after the election except one side is going to be defeated so i wanted to build a bridge of respect to trump voters and really listen to them and i discovered something that we're going to talk about on tuesday night, there is a misunderstanding of a big chunk of these trump voters. you're smiling. i see you smiling. >> because there is. >> yes. >> and there's a misunderstanding about how the country works. >> yes. >> but also a misunderstanding about how this election would work. you remember me telling you in

the beginning, i don't know, a lot of people -- i think people were just sort of in their own little bubble that they didn't. >> one of the things, there are some trump voters who are really fired up by some of those racially inflammatory statements. we focus on those. >> right. >> but there's a bunch of other people for whom those statements were distasteful but they were not disqualifying and those voters have a different story to tell and it's a story about being economically left behind and culturally looked down on and they found a vehicle with trump. >> what are you, front row or back row? what do you think about all of this? >> i think chris' distinction there is very important and it makes me think of the carrier

both parties talk about work and economics that they don't have a vocabulary that people don't want a handout from the government and what they want is a job and a job that's respected and dignified in their communities. >> does this negate the whole argument because you hear conservatives all the time talk about american exceptionalism. maybe the back row guys are not getting their due or maybe should never aspire to be in the front row? >> what donald trump said was he managed a bunch of people tonight but he was saying i don't want you to downsize your dreams and i think that is medicine for a lot of people. >> let's listen to some of that. >> okay. >> i love american workers. i love these people. you know what i call the

american workers? the forgotten men and women of our nation and those men and women came out to vote. nobody ever thought that was going to happen. they came out by the millions. these are great, great people. >> continue on, van. he got the american workers' vote. >> for the white working class in particular -- let's not forget, sometimes when we say the white working class, we forget the african-americans, asian-americans, latin americans voted against trump in large numbers. but for some of those folks part of the working class in the rustbelt, especially the white workers, they felt that they had been abandoned and i did this thing called the messy truth. i decided i think both local parties have a problem, the democrats are too elitist though they think they are for the ordinary people. >> yes. >> and the republicans think that they have a color blind but

in the back door a bunch of bigots came in. both parties have good ideals but we call it the messy truth because the truth is messy. neither one of these parties are good. they both have problems. >> and this election only just exposed that. >> yep. >> all right. >> especially for those rustbelt voters who actually voted for obama for the first two times. >> j.d., go ahead. >> it makes me think that one of the things that we continually focus on, of course, is that these rustbelt voters have really struggled in the past 10, 20, 30 years and when van says both parties have problems, of course what he's really getting at something that is captured in their political behavior, which is these folks have been swinging like a pendulum and i think it's important to just imagine how powerful it is when you feel forgotten as an entire group of people and for the president-elect of the united

states to stand before you and say, you are the forgotten class but not anymore, i listened to you, i heard you and we won. i think that we can't overstate how powerful that is for a lot of these folks. >> so chris, i want to ask you, you write about a woman you met in louisiana. her name is florence johnson. she said, hell, yes, i'm voting for trump. tired of politicians. he is putting on a great show. pissing them other bastards off. these are her words. they deserve it. >> it was both but i think i liken it to hearing both what j.d. was saying and -- look, people are kicking over the -- people are kicking over the checkerboard. the game is stacked against them.

they think that they feel left behind. nobody has come into their communities. their jobs are leaving. nobody has -- no one addresses that. and they have left. and for them it's a visceral. you look out the window in these towns and you look out the window in danville, virginia, in clarenton, ohio and there's a vacant lot where there used to be a factory and that's visceral. the carrier deal was huge in the sense that it was very symbolic. someone came into their community and said we're going to bring these jobs back and stop them from coming. so, yes, it was a little bit of voting against establishment, knocking over the checkerboard. but at the same time, it was also voting for somebody who came in and hit -- checked all the right boxes off. >> and spoke to them directly. >> and spoke to them. but, you know, a lot of people

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back with me now chris arnade, j.d. vance and van jones. chris, you mentioned addiction earlier, didn't you? when i spoke with you. you talked to voters about that. >> that's correct. >> okay. this is a question i have to ask to the entire panel. we're talking about the sort of differences and the similarities between people who feel like they're forgotten. and i understand that the comparison though is so simple to me because the people in the rust belt, many trump supports, many of them white feel like

their voices have not been heard, that they are underrepresented in this government. they have problems with addiction as chris said. but many people of color feel the same way. they're underrepresented. they had a problem with crack addiction in the '80s and '90s and no one listened to them. why aren't these twos groups talking, van? what's the holdup for -- why can't they get together and discuss this? >> that's part of the tragedy of trump is that really, you have underdogs in red states and in blue states who have very similar problems. democrats have let down the urban poor. republicans have let down the rural poor. there's problems with overincarceration, undereducation. we should be working together. >> people who say that guy knows what it's like to be black in america or to be hispanic in america. >> you hear that. >> you feel like you don't have a voice. this time why is it different for you than it is for me? >> when we had the crack thing they sent in the police and demonized us.

now there's heroin and everybody's feeling sad and sorry and let's do something about it. those differences are there. the tragedy of trump is mixed in with all the good he's saying about let's get jobs is marbled in all this toxic stuff that is anti-muslim, anti-black pro effort, anti-mexican. it's preventing what could be a real -- common pain should lead to common purpose but we're not seeing that right now. i think the character of trump's campaign has something-to-do with that. >> chris, what make of the analogy i just made? >> look, we're a segregated country. and that's not a good thing obviously. so much that happens in this country takes place in a racial context. and i would say that yes, i spend an equal amount of time in black communities as a did in white communities. i started this project on addiction in black communities.

i would say that how that frustration in those communities gets manifest, how it gets rendered is different between a white community and i black community. that's unfortunate. >> talk to us about that. what is that? >> that's where a lot of the racism comes in. and i'll put it in a different way. being white allows a trump voter to overlook the ugliness of trump's language. does it mean that every trump voter is a racist? no, i think that's a overly simplistic way of looking at it without context. but it does allow them to overlook what i find some abhorrent language on his part and some abhorrent policies. and i would also say that democratic party has done a very good job over the last 30 years of signaling and proving to the african-american community that they are working for them.

i don't think the republican party has done that to the working class whites. >> so okay. so explain the difference in the black community. you said it allows white who support trump the to overlook, not that all of them are racist, but to overlook some of the language and the sentiment. >> right, i think some of those language and sentiments are directed at the black community. of course, they're not going to support trump. i'm not denying that trump is -- i mean, there's a racist component to this. i'm not denying that. >> j.d., i want to give you the last word. go ahead, finish your thought and i'll give j.d. the last word. >> i was saying but to put that on the entire all trump voters i think is extraordinarily unfair. >> agreed. absolutely. go ahead, j.d. >> i think that the reason these groups haven't been able to find great common purpose is frankly because they've been failed by their political leadership. the democrats are very bad in talking to working class white votes.

in the same way, republican voters have not been good attracting working brown voters. that speaks to a failure from the political leadership of both parties. the last thing i'll say is that we should keep in mind the fact that obviously in their own way, black and latino working class voters were not super excited by what the democrats were offering this cycle. if they had been, and the turnout want so suppressed, then hillary clinton would be the president. the failure to recognize very real working class concerns expresses itself in different ways whether it's working class whites gravitating towards white -- towards trump or working class minorities staying home. >> i love this conversation. very honest conversation. we should continue that. thank you, i appreciate it. van jones is going to continue that conversation with a special look how voters are feeling after donald trump's election victory called "the messy truth," tuesday night at 9:00 eastern right here on cnn. we'll be right back.

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you know what's a great way to celebrate being elected president of the united states? road trip. this is cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. donald trump kicks off what he is calling his thank you tour in cincinnati. >> we spend too much time focusing on what divides us. now is the time to embrace the one thing that truly unites us. you know what that is? america. america. it's america. >> meanwhile, questions swirling about the incoming first family particularly ivanka trump. is she a good role model for girls and young women?