correspondent evan perez here with us this morning. you were in front of the news that the white house knew that russia was behind these hackings and did not act from as far back in july. >> that's right, chris. we're learning that russians deployed sophisticated hacking tools to break into u.s. political organizations in the past year. u.s. officials tell cnn that it's part of the reason why intelligence officials believe that russian president vladimir putin ordered the disinformation operation that targeted mostly democratic party groups and hillary clinton's presidential campaign. investigators haven't found any evidence directly linking back to putin but officials believe that because the nature of the operation he would have had to give orders to do what to do with these stolen e-mails. now in recent weeks, intelligence agencies have directed more evidence, including from human sources to back up their assessment. first in october that only this most senior members of the russian government could have ordered this operation. so how is the u.s. government

going to respond to all of this? president obama talked about it in an interview with npr. take a listen. >> i think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action. and we will. at a time and place of our own choosing. some of it may be explicit and publicized. some of it may not be. but mr. putin is well aware of my feelings about this because i spoke to him directly about it. >> kremlin spokesman said the russian leader gave a response to president obama that doesn't really fit with the u.s. narrative. officials tell us that the president has ordered government agencies to give him a range of actions that he can take before he leaves office. now in the meantime the hacking hasn't stopped. law enforcement officials tell cnn that the fbi is now investigating hacking attempts after the election that were

targeting former clinton campaign staffers. campaign official tells cnn that they've received security notices as recently as last week indicating attempts to get into their private e-mail accounts. now officials say that despite russian expectations of better relations with the incoming trump administration they fully expect that the russian hacking activity is going to continue largely unabated. alisyn? >> evan, thanks so much for all of that reporting. so russian hacks are not new and now foreign defense officials and a former head of state are saying, i told you so. cnn's senior international correspondent ivan watson is live in kiev with more. what have you learned, ivan? good morning, alisyn. a number of high ranking officials and former officials from former soviet republics all saying that they had previously warned the u.s. government that their countries had been the target for years of what they believe to have been russian cyber attacks, and russian other forms of hybrid warfare. i spoke with the former president of the republic of

georgia, who accuses russia of meddling in georgia's 2012 parliamentary elections. take a listen to an excerpt from that interview. >> well, i almost was vindicated when they speak about russian involvement in elections. so they were the same people telling us, no, no, it cannot possibly be true. and now it came to their doorsteps. >> now, alisyn, i'm hearing ukraine, ukraine announcing that it has just recently been targeted by at least ten major cyber attacks including today the infrastructure ministry, and its website, was taken down. now they haven't pointed the finger directly at russia yet but last december they did point the finger at russia for a hack attack, a cyber attack, that took down electricity to more than 100 cities across this country, and a partial electricity to more than 150

other cities across ukraine. of course, ukraine is currently fighting a war against separatists that are supported by neighboring russia. alisyn and chris? >> ivan, as important as that point is that you made there in the last, that's something that russia also denied the same way it's denying the hacks right now by saying put up the proof, otherwise leave it alone. thank you very much for your reporting from ukraine. so how might this back and forth between trump and the white house over the apparent hacking impact the peaceful transition of power? cnn's sara murray is here with the latest. what do you see in >> good morning, chris. everyone was playing nice at the get-go. hillary clinton said we need to give donald trump a chance as president. president obama made it clear he wanted to see a peaceful and orderly transition of power. but now a rift is emerging and we're seeing the president-elect is exchanging barbs with the white house press secretary. a week of russia revelations and donald trump denial. creating a rift between incoming and outgoing administrations.

>> this foolish guy josh earnest. >> the president-elect taking shots at president obama's press secretary. >> he is so bad the way he delivers their message. he can deliver a positive message and it sounds bad. he could say, ladies and gentlemen, today we have totally defeated isis and it wouldn't sound good. >> reporter: lashing out after the white house sharply criticized trump's continued dismissal of intelligence about moscow's election meddling. >> mr. trump, obviously knew that russia engaged in malicious cyberactivity that was helping him and hurting secretary clinton's campaign. >> the president is very positive, but he's not positive. and i mean maybe he's getting his orders from somebody else. >> reporter: russia putting a strain on the roller coaster relationship between trump and obama. the two attempting a show of unity for a smooth transition after a bitter campaign. now, tensions rising between the camps. fueled in part by trump's tweet

accusing the white house of only complaining about the hacking after hillary clinton lost. but, in fact, in early october, the intelligence community was saying they were "confident russia was behind the dnc hack." clinton herself addressing the hacking for the first time since the election. telling donors that russian president vladimir putin's grudge against her prompted the attack against the dnc. this as clinton's former campaign chair john podesta penned a scathing rebuke of the fbi's handling of the hack. writing in "the washington post" when the fbi discovered the russian attack in september 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior democratic national committee officials. adding something is deeply broken at the bureau. podesta's criticism echoed by outgoing senate minority leader harry reid. >> i think it's about time that comey acknowledged publicly that he's done nothing except interfering with the election.

he's become such a partisan, that he should become the new chair of the rnc. >> reporter: sources tell cnn a federal investigator reached out to the dnc, including senior officials there, repeatedly to warn them about hacking attempts. and they say that the democratic party did not take efforts to remedy the situation until months after the warnings. >> okay, sara, thanks so much. you've given us a lot to talk about. joining us now is a great panel. cnn senior political analyst and senior editor for the atlantic, ron brownstein. cnn political analyst and "usa today" columnist joseph powers, and senior law enforcement analyst and fbi assistant director tom fuentes. great to have all of you. ron let's talk about this rift that has emerged between the obama administration and the trump transition over russia. you heard mr. trump going after josh earnest. what does all this mean? >> first of all, i don't think we have seen anything quite like it. the pattern of kind of biting

your lip no matter how unhappy you are about the election result, and being civil toward the incoming and outgoing administrations, being civil toward each other, really is the rule in american politics. we are seeing, i think, a kind of rift or a scene unfold that we haven't seen before. how many times have we said that in the last year? i think it does increase the incentive for the obama administration to be as aggressive as they can in both investigating what happened and making public their view of what happened. because i think what you saw above all in the josh earnest comments was the concern that donald trump was still not taking this as seriously as it needed to be viewed. >> right. and then mr. trump counterpunched, as he is known to do, so once josh earnest put that out there then donald trump felt that he could sort of personality attack josh earnest. something else interesting happened last night and that was that hillary clinton, you know,

who has not been seen much obviously since losing the election, she went to this thank you dinner for her fund-raisers and she talked about russia's meddling in the election. her theory is that russia and vladimir putin in particular had long been angry with her since 2011 when she made comments about the elections there, not being free and fair, and that that is why they retaliated directly against her to make her lose. >> well, she also -- yeah, she was an advocate of getting tougher on russia. she has sent in one of her last memos before she left as secretary of state, she had suggested the fact that the obama administration snubbed putin, that they should not flatter him, the kind of things i think we've seen from donald trump a little bit. it certainly appears they were trying to help donald trump. the question is did they help donald trump? it doesn't appear this was actually a major factor in the election. that doesn't mean it's not a

serious issue. i think it should be investigated. i think we need to look into what the fbi was doing, the things that john podesta brought up for example. and i think we need to be much more extensive hearings on this issue. but i do think there's a problem with suggesting that this was determinative in the election. even the clinton campaign has really pointed more at fbi director comey's letter as being more, you know, having a direct impact. whether that's true or not we can set it aside. that's their argument. >> yeah. >> there's not a lot of argument that the leaked memos were determinative in changing the election. >> i hear you. but john podesta sees it as part and parcel of all of the same thing. tom that's where you come in. i know for the past couple of days i've been making you be sort of the voice of the fbi because you worked there for years and i'm making you explain any and all possible ills at the fbi. so here let's do it again. because basically what john podesta is saying is that when the fbi learned, and believed,

for sure, that russia was meddling, that they did not handle it in any sort of appropriately aggressive way. in fact, he claims that they did not go and alert the dnc, that their computers had been hacked, that they made a phone call and left it on some sort of i.t. help line. here's what he wrote in his op-ed. he says comparing the fbi's massive response to the overblown e-mail scandal, and the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the fbi. comey justified his handling of the e-mail case by citing intense public interest, yet he refused to join the rest of the intelligence community in a statement about the russian cyber attack because he reportedly didn't want to appear political. what's broken in the fbi must be fixed and quickly. tom, your response? >> well, first of all the fbi did warn that the fbi would be briefing the white house continuously through the process of what type of hacking is going

on against the u.s. systems, or involving the political process of the campaign. we've seen this repeatedly the hacking of opm believed to be by the chinese. the sony attack by north korea. so you know we -- >> so, tom, let me just stop you there. you're saying that the fbi would have briefed the obama white house but you don't know if they briefed the clinton campaign. >> i don't know it directly whether they did. my understanding from talking to some people was that it was. and that they did brief. and that later on, the democratic national committee did hire a company, crowd source, to do something about it. this past summer. but the point is that this kind of hacking has been going on a long time and it's normal trade crap, especially with the russians, to try to disrupt our elections, no matter who they're for. just to create a disruption -- >> so, does that mean no biggie? >> i didn't say no biggie. i'm just saying that this is

what they normally do. and apparently, you know, we've had hack after hack in the last couple of years where there was no real response to it. >> hmm go ahead. go ahead. >> what john podesta was responding to is the detailed account in "the new york times" that maybe there's more to the story. certainly in that detailed reconstruction of the hack and the response to it, there was no urgency on the part of the fbi. and it went for months between, in that account relatively lower level officials at the fbi, and the dnc both failing to take this seriously enough, and you know, the issue here is not -- as i said, not necessarily, you know, impacted and tipping this election. it's unlikely that that was the factor that tipped this election but you do have really an unprecedented level of meddling and a precedent as you've been talking about in your coverage. we have consequential elections coming this year in france and germany. that will also be important in the future of the western alliance. and it's clear that putin's goal, one of putin's goals here

is to unravel the western alliance and the u.s./european alliance from both ends. and you know, they've got to look at this investment in the u.s. and say, this is a pretty good strategy at the moment. >> kirsten very quickly, i mean, what podesta is saying is that the agents took time to travel to denver to check in with the people who managed hillary clinton's server but they couldn't travel a few blocks to alert the dnc that they had been hacked. that's basically john podesta's point. >> if it's true that they just didn't drive over to the dnc to talk to people, that -- that -- that's highly problematic. and i think if you add in the fact of the comey letter, which i also found to be pretty problematic, that there needs to be some sort of investigation into what's going on. i don't understand why there wouldn't have been hair on fire screaming about the idea that russia would be hacking into the democratic national committee. >> okay. kirsten, ron, tom, thank you very much.

for helping to explain all of this. chris? situations often can have simple aspects and complex aspects. the conflict facing the president of the united states is a perfect example. conflicts are real. so will the president-elect divest from his companies? probably not. so, why are ethics experts calling for that? why are they saying that these conflicts are a powder keg ready to explode? we're going to explain next. about making movies. nol i'm victoria alonso and i'm an executive producer... ...at marvel studios. we are very much hands-on producers. if my office... ...becomes a plane or an airport the surface pro's perfect. fast and portable but also light. you don't do this 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for... ...decades if you don't feel it in your heart. listen, i know my super power is to not ever sleep. that's it. that's the only super power i have.

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senate democrats are planning to introduce legislation requiring president-elect trump to divest from any financial assets that could pose a conflict of interest in the white house. but with a new record saying he ain't going to do it, what are the democrats going to do now? what would be the right thing to do? that's an interesting question. not the legal thing, the right thing. let's talk to somebody who is in the business of right and wrong, former bush white house ethics lawyer richard painter and former obama white house ethics czar norman izen. let's have a little bit of a dialogue on this. now the democrats are rooting some of their reckoning in very arcane line in the constitution. article 9, section 1, the emoluments clause. emoluments, again, an arcane word for fee for service and had to do with keeping corruption out of government by not allowing any nobility titles, 

not allowing gifts or graft to those in power in the united states. never been litigated. so we don't really know how it would play out in realtime. mr. painter, do you believe such a law would be the right thing to have? >> well, absolutely. the founders were very worried about corruption of our political system by foreign powers. and that's exactly what we are hearing happened this year. over 200 years later. an attempt to corrupt our political system by foreign powers. and the emoluments clause is one selection to that problem. so is the require that the president be a natural-born citizen. but much more important is the emoluments clause which prohibits profiteering from deals with foreign governments. emolumentum the word in latin means profit or benefit and quite clear that the founders did not want anyone holding a position of trust with the united states government profiting from dealings with

foreign government. and that is what is required. that he not be dealing with foreign governments and be making money off of them. >> but the balance question is this, norman, that's who trump is. people voted for him knowing he has a huge business and asking him to divest would be a huge burden on him. it could either tank the values because he's under time pressure and the seller would know that. or, it could create the exact problem that you're trying to protect against which is i'll come in and buy some of his stuff to curry favor, maybe even an inflated price. is that the right selection forcing divestment? >> chris, good morning. and it is the right selection. this is not complicated. he tweeted yesterday, he's feeling the heat that it's complicated that people are trying to make it complicated. but it's not. every president for the past four decades has used a blind trust or an equivalent. all that means is, and mr. trump

can do it today, one piece of paper, he appoints an independent trustee, somebody who is good at this stuff, he says, i'm signing all my interests, and operations, over to you, mr. trustee, or miss, i'm signing it over to you, you sell it. and then take the money you get, put it behind a wall, and reinvest so i don't know what the investments are, i'm not conflicted. that will not adversity affect the value of the businesses. the trump brand is at an all-time high. he'll never do better than he does now. and not only that, he ran on a promise to drain the swam. he did not run saying he would have his children managing his business interests in all of the official transition meetings. the meetings with heads of state. the meetings with heads of corporations. so that's the opposite that swam flooding not draining. >> just because you have a conflict, and again this isn't

about owning positions, this is a socratic dialogue. this has to be chewed on. you mentioned the etymology of the word emolument from the latin. it comes from the verb to grind up. trump's argue is going to be that you're grinding up my business because it is a brand business. i don't own buildings as much as i put my name on buildings. this is a licensing business. my kids, the family, our name is fundamental to the brand. yes there's a real conflict. it's an incurable one. but it doesn't mean that it's a fatal one. why isn't the answer just transparen transparency. know what the businesses are. know who they do business with. see the taxes. but don't make him sell the business because it would be too big a prejudice. >> the founders put the emolument clause in the constitution for a reason. the grinding up you're referring to is the cost that a mill operator or owner gets for

grinding up someone's grain. in other words, it's a profit from dealing with that other person. no profit for dealing with foreign governments, period. the voters voted for donald trump. the voters did not vote to rescind the constitution of the united states. he's going to have to read the constitution or abide by it and he's not going to last in that job. that's the decision of the founding fathers. they anticipated the type of intermeddling in american government that we've seen in 2016 over 200 years later. and the constitution has some remedies to that. one of them is the emoluments clause and he's going to have to adhere to it. he needs to sell off the businesses that are dealing with foreign governments, in order to comply with constitution. for other reasons i think he ought to sell off the other businesses. but right now the constitutional issue is of immediate importance and as i say it's a national security issue, and it's one that was anticipated by the founders of our country.

>> richard painter you have a very impressive knowledge not only of ethics, but of latin. well done on tracing the etymology all the way back to the millers grinding grain and norman thank you very much. these are -- these are intricate ethical questions. the questions will be what will be the practical solution and we're going to see that going forward. gentlemen, please come back to continue the conversation. alisyn? >> i thought emolument was an ointment of some kind. >> you were wrong. >> this week i sat down with a group of passionate hillary clinton -- need a salve. and that's what we're going to get to in a minute they're struggling to come to grips with the election outcome. they're hoping for a virtually impossible twist. how many of you as you sit here today think that something might happen before inauguration day to change the result? we've all been here.

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so on monday the electoral

college votes for president. now, the chances of them changing the results of the election are virtually zero. but that's not stopping some hillary clinton supporters from holding out a sliver of hope. so, for our latest, real voters, real voices panel we sat down with a group of passionate clinton supporters, two of whom volunteered for her campaign, four of them are from pennsylvania, two from new york, they describe to us how they continue to struggle to accept donald trump's victory and how they're hoping that something will happen before inauguration day that changes the outcome. >> how many of you as you sit here today think that something might happen before inauguration day to change the results? what do you think? >> i'm just leaving it open. you never know. >> anything's possible. >> just like i was not expecting pennsylvania to go red. anything can happen. >> a somewhat of a surprising

election. >> i'm hoping that, you know, somebody up there is looking down and saying, you know what, this is a law and you can't break that law. you know -- >> what law? >> your conflict of interest. hamilton -- well i think i'm holding out hope for that. >> you're holding out hope that the electors will change their mind? >> yes. i'm hoping maybe five, six or seven of the republican electors will change their mind. >> and just follow that line of logic for me. so, the seven electors change their mind, that doesn't change the outcome. >> not enough. unless every single one of the democrats -- i mean -- i'm not 100% sure. somebody educate me. i thought that -- it -- ten of the republicans change their minds. but you're thinking ten of the electoral college people have

asked for a briefing by the cia about the russian hacking and the russian involvement in swinging the election. >> we actually are 2.8 million votes ahead in the real vote. the vote of people voting all over the country. >> okay. >> i don't call it the popular vote. i call it the vote. there's an electoral college vote. you can call that the other vote. >> i understand but this is how the founders set it up. we do abide by the electoral college. you don't have to like it -- >> i'm very excited about that. because perhaps the electoral -- i'm very excited because maybe the electoral college will do what hamilton and the other founding fathers saw as the role of the electoral college is to keep a sociopath from gaining the office of president. >> if enough defect to bring him below 270 they don't have to defect to her, then it goes to the house. >> are you pinning your hopes on that? >> no, no, i don't think there's any hope. i think that he will be sworn in. i still think there's a big point here which is that the electoral college, which donald

trump won, is really an acreage game. we have this winner one based on acreage not on population of this country. >> but that doesn't speak at all to why the democrats didn't win. pennsylvania specifically. >> i'm not arguing that this is what happened. this is what happen and we should have run a better game against the acreage issue. but you know, this is something that we have to think about in terms of whether the electoral college serves our country when so many people live in urban areas, and -- or whether this is a completely outdated mode of elections. >> all right. so you can hear them still processing the outcome there. you heard people like saying maybe congress will have some sort of solution at one moment it sounded like she was looking for divine intervention. i think she was talking about congress that maybe the electoral college. look, on monday, it would be, once again, shocking and out of the complete realm of reality if the electoral college were to

change the outcome. but you hear democrats, not just these six, trying to cling to some hope, ones that particularly felt des spondent about the election. >> two points, one, you're great in this. i love watching you with the trump people. i love -- >> go on. >> not as easy as it looks. so i love you. i'm biased. i love you. but it's good. two, there's a little bit of a delusion about the electoral college. not only are you right because legally, there would be so many challenges. the states control what the electors do. the first amendment. it would take a long time it's not practical. two, this idea that hamilton's electoral college would have made it -- hamilton's electoral college was designed to allow slave owners to have equal say because of population differences because slaves didn't count as human beings to vote and it was a direct relationship to let land owners steal elections from the people. >> don't bother me with your facts. >> i'm just saying. >> this is about feeling. >> you're giving a dignity to the electoral college it may not deserve. >> sure. >> so this is the season of

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president obama will likely face tough questions today from reporters about his response to the russian hack of the u.s. election. also, michelle obama has just given a new interview so for the bottom line let's bring in david gregory, our cnn political analyst and author of "how's your faith." >> good morning. >> so what -- okay, it feels as they something -- there's a rift between the obama administration and the trump transition team. they were all playing very nicely together, has something turned? >> it feels like it has on the russia issue. and it's based on what they're saying publicly about just how big of a threat this russia hacking is. the intelligence communty has determined and warned of this

back in the fall, back in october before the election that russia was trying to interfere in the election, and hacking in ways that we all know about, the dnc and others. and that that was extremely dangerous. and now you've got trump, who's saying that people are out to get him in the intelligence community and being dismissive of it. which is deeply troubling to the president who spoke to npr and said that's not the right response. he's talking about retaliating in some fashion before he leaves office. i think this is a major rift. >> okay. so trump has his issues with how he's handling this arguably poorly in light of what the intel community says is true. but on the flip side, i could envision a younger but not better looking david gregory looking at the president at this news conference upcoming and saying, if it were so important, mr. president, why did the white house do nothing way back in july when it found out about this? why the urgency now? >> i think there's no question that that is absolutely a valid

question, as well as declassifying what sources of the leak they have right now. and what exactly they have. who was behind it, and why they didn't do it -- do something stronger before now. and if it was an issue of influencing the election, was that a good enough reason? no i think that absolutely is a fair question. >> but david -- >> here's what i worry about. this becomes the fodder for politics in a way that's really dangerous because in this case the president-elect cannot know what he doesn't know. he doesn't know what it's like to deal bilaterally with putin, president to president. he also doesn't know the potential for russia to then target him. his administration, and the institutions of government that he will now preside over. that's what he's got to be very careful about. i keep saying i think it's troubling that the president-elect has to understand this is about the institution of the presidency, and the united states is not just about him. it's not just about this election. >> but david how do we know president obama didn't retaliate or the obama administration?

this stuff is all so cloak and dagger. we know that he didn't address it publicly. how do we know that there wasn't some sort of counter cyber attack? >> i don't have a way to know that. but i mean the president is talking about the need for response now. now post-election. so i think that chris' question still holds. and there's the bigger question of what exactly do you do about it? there's been good reporting about how difficult it is to identify exactly who is behind it and how you want to respond and how you classify it. i think more of this will be done as congress investigates, as well. post, you know, post start of the year to figure out what was behind it and what should be done about it. >> every time you validate anything i say alisyn breaks a pen in her hand. >> no, i asked him to put ear muffs on -- >> -- accept that? >> what i'm sorry i can't hear you. >> americanle obama can we move to her? she just gave this interview. let's play an excerpt because i think it's going to get some buzz. >> we're feeling what not having

hope feels like. you know. hope is necessary. it's a necessary concept. and barack didn't just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes. i mean, he and i and so many believe that if you -- what else do you have in you don't have hope? >> yeah. >> what do you give your kids if you can't give them hope. >> david gregory, could this be construed as the follow-up to her, i'm finally proud of my country comment that she made at the beginning of the administration? now, this we know what it's like not to have hope at the end of the administration? >> um, i guess i haven't thought a lot about that. but i -- i -- i put it a little bit differently. i think about it a little bit differently. i think she's giving voice to what a lot of democrats in the country feel. which is not just disappointment that their side lost. but a real sense of being disconsulate about the future.

despairing about the future. michelle obama was a critical voice down the stretch. they didn't pose for that picture of the trumps visiting the white house. i don't think michelle obama wanted to do that. president obama wants to try to influence the president-elect. i think he feels an obligation as president of the united states to work with him as closely as he can. michelle obama i don't think feels that and i think she's giving voice to a lot of that despair. this is a tremendous challenge that the president-elect has. there's going to be a lot of these feelings here that aren't about the contest of ideas, they're about his temperament, about his qualifications, his overall approach to kind of reassuring america about the future. and i think there will be a lot more of that. >> yeah but i mean just very quickly 60-plus million people who voted for donald trump do have hope today and feel as though finally their voices will be heard, that they lives may turn -- >> no doubt. it's absolutely fair point. but this again -- look, president obama was a divisive leader at a polarized time. there's no question about it. and, so, yes, there are people who have a very different view

of what donald trump means in terms of shaking up the system and the kind of hope that price. but i think michelle obama is speaking in a very powerful way to the fact that i think a lot of democrats, liberals, are going to have a hard time getting over it and just kind of moving on to an administration. they're going to feel a kind of deeper wound. and again a lot of opponents say yes, you've got to get over that. but i think she gave vice to what they're feeling. >> thank you, have a great weekend. >> wise man once told me every moment that you stay stuck here is a moment that you're not moving forward. so if we want to talk about hope -- it was me that was talking. one of the biggest low lights of the 2016 campaign was this moment. remember it? this trump supporter in the hat, old guy comes over, sucker punches a protester being led out. we want to talk about why there's no hope. how about why there is hope. look at this scene. how did this happen? we have the young man in this picture. the man who got sucker punched is with us now to tell us why he decided to go from a punch to a hug. thank you for being with us, my

friend. oh, how waso good!en house? did you apply? oh, i'll do it later today. your credit score must be amazing. my credit score? credit karma. it's free. that's great! um hm. just whip bam boom, it's done. that apartment is mine! credit karma. give yourself some credit.

oh. for the love. >> you'll remember this moment. that was when a trump supporter sucker punched a protester at a rally in north carolina. now in this big update when these two men came face-to-face in court look what happened. the victim offered a hug. the victim in that altercation joins us now live. rakeem jones, welcome. >> hey, how you doing? how you doing? >> we're so glad to be talking

to you, because we need to know how you worked your way around from being blindsided in that first shot, being punched by that man, to then in court hugging him? >> it was more so a natural reaction. it wasn't anything that was planned, or you know, thought about. it happened. >> rakeem, what do you say to people from back when this first happened. there were people who were happy that trump supporters, a slice of them, we don't want to generalize, a slice of them, they were happy he punched you. they felt that people were going to protest trump under false pretenses. that they were there just to cause trouble and start trouble. what do you say to people like that? >> well, to those, first off, i'm not a protester. i was never at a protest in the first place which i said and i will keep saying. >> what were you there for? >> i was never there to protest. >> social experiment, and as a

spectator. you know, with a diverse group of people. we wanted to see what was going on. >> so what do you say to them? what do you want needs to be done to be more unity? >> i mean, i mean just try to get an understanding of the other side. that's it. >> hmm. that is beautiful rakeem. so rakeem, in court, okay, this guy was 79 years old, john franklin mcgraw, he's the one who punched you, so in court what happened when you came -- when you saw each other and confronted each other. >> we saw each other, prior to court we had a conversation via the internet, which kind of got to understand who we were. >> what did he say to you via the internet and e-mails or whatever what did he say to you during that? >> he basically -- he basically wanted to, you know, let me know that it wasn't a racial thing.

that he didn't threaten me, you know. he reiterated that most of the time, you know, but as far as people wanting to say what he was saying was scripted in court. it wasn't scripted. he actually -- the things he was saying about being caught up in the political mess and everything, he actually said the same things when we were, you know, when we were actually talking to each other. >> hmm. so you felt he -- >> -- anything that was scripted. >> so he wasn't scripted. you felt he was genuine. you felt that he reached a genuine understanding of who you are and what you stood for? >> yeah, i mean, he just -- it was genuine. even if it wasn't what people expected him to say or felt like he should have said. it was him. all the way around. and you know, i got that feeling because we had a private conversation and everything he said in court was the same thing he said in private without any lawyers, without anyone else. >> well you know, look, one of the reasons we're telling this story is to show how it

concluded but also we're talking about hope on the show today and where is the hope. should there be hope. this wasn't about a war of words. he punched you in the face and if you had felt differently about it in court he may be in a different place right now because i'm sure the judge was very swayed by your own mercy in his reckoning of what the law would provide as justice. so we want people to hear from you about why you thought you could rise above what was done to you in the sake of coming to the and understanding a little bit better. rakeem thank you for telling your story here today and all blessings to you and the familiar little for the holidays. >> thank you for modeling that hope for everyone. great to talk to you. late night laughs -- >> please. >> next. touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don't stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox.

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stockings ♪ ♪ among the finer things ♪ ♪ i just want you for my own more than you could ever know ♪ ♪ make my wish come true all i want for christmas is you ♪ >> this is awesome! >> there's the one and only, though. mariah. >> i know. but look at him. look at the cast of characters. first of all, this is the best, do you agree? >> it is intoxicating. >> it's intoxicating. >> i mean -- >> but i love what he's done with this cordon it started off as a little bit of a gimmick. now it's become like a real cultural mainstay. this is the highest form of it yet. >> part of what's so great about it is he can sing. >> he can sing no question about it. look at all the big names he gets to do something like this

and made it one big party. >> how come he hasn't had us on there yet. >> you can sing. >> no i can't. that's the problem. >> i don't even know if i could fit in that car. >> that's a problem also. that is so great. >> awesome. >> i love that song. merry christmas everyone. have a great weekend. >> now, someone who actually in a prior career was a lounge singer now brings you the news -- >> how did you know? >> carol rumba rumba costello. >> oh. >> i have the cd. >> it's good, too, isn't it? >> oh, yeah. >> hey you guys have a great weekend. >> you, too. >> starts now. and good morning, i'm carol costello. thank you so much for joining me. president obama vowing retaliation against russia for up ter fearing in the presidential election. sources now telling cnn the intelligence community has concluded russian leader vlad