i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. we welcome viewers in the united states and around the world. the fbi and cia now in agreement that russia was trying to help donald trump win the presidency. and president obama confirmed the hack saying he told putin to knock it off. will the latest news cause the president-elect to change his view? i'll ask sean spicer and you remember our conversation from last week. i need to ask you an additional question. speak to the -- wait, wait, address this. >> i don't think any foreign entity. >> why don't you say that? >> i'm saying it. i just said it. >> alexander hamilton in the news and not because of the broadway musical. trump opponents have been

calling for hamilton electors to change the electoral college vote on monday but did the founding fathers really envision our current situation? donald trump called for a return to water boarding during the campaign. i'll talk about enhanced interrogation with the man who implemented the methods used after 9/11. dr. james mitchell water boarded the worst of the worst and here to explain. but first, 538 members of the electoral college will meet in state capitals on monday to finalize the results of the presidential election, causing some americans to invoke the name of alexander hamilton almost as often as when mike pence was lectured by the cast of the hit broadway play. that's because when our new nation was first ratifying its constitution, alexander hamilton wrote a federalist paper in which he describes the electoral college process. he wrote the goal to ensure,

quote, the office of president will never pfall to the lot in n eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. some critics think we face that extraordinary circumstance. and that on monday, the electors need to step in and correct the outcome of the election because of their important role. let me be clear. i see no chance that that happens. it's beyond unlikely. but that didn't stop martin sheen this week among 18 hollywood celebrities who implored electors not to vote for trump. >> republican members of the electoral college, this is for you. >> the electoral college created specifically to prevent an unfit candidate from becoming president. >> 538 members of the electoral college. you. >> and 36 other conscientious republican electors can make a difference. >> by voting your conscience on december 19th. >> i question the logic of those asking the electors to go rogue

and here's why. true, we don't have a direct election of the presidents in the united states. when we cast our ballots for president on november 8, we were actually choosing between competing states of electors. the same numbers of congressional representatives and senators. that's how we get the magic number of 270 elected to be president and the 12th for the electoral college but doesn't obligate an elector to vote a particular way. those who don't follow the wish of the electorate are called faithless electors and guidance on them. many look to federalist paper number 68 for insight where hamilton wrote this, quote. it was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adopted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were

proper to govern their choice, unquote. that sounds good in theory. but is that really what we have on our hands? put aside for a moment whether you think trump lacks requisite qualifications. have we assembled, quote, men most capable to relaplace the wl of the electorate? look at the texas elector who was the only trump elector to publicly state that he would be voting against trump. and weeks earlier, he had actually appeared on this program to declare his belief in the electoral system and said that he would be voting for trump when he appeared on screen, i first saluted him for his service. chris, first, i salute you. one of the first responders on september 11 to rush into the pentagon. thank you for that, sir. i said that because as far as i or anyone else knew, he was a first responder at the pentagon

on 9/11 and he repeated his claim of being a firefighter on 9/11 in his "new york times" editorial to take his anti-trump stand. but then texas abc affiliate found some of his resume questionable. the fire fighting unit he claimed to be on didn't hire him until october 10, 2001, a month after the attacks and the department didn't respond to the 9/11 sites. wfaa found more droutroubling information. his job listing is false, last five years in bankruptcy, they say. he then released a defense, which read in part, quote, that story exhibits a reckless disregard for the truth. i never claim to be a first responder on 9/11 with the manassas park deputy. i was a volunteer firefighter at the time for the dale city fire deputy when i responded to the attacks at the pentagon.

many say he's a volunteer paramedic. let me be clear. my point is not to bash suprin in lparticular but he's the mos publicized but we don't really know anything about any of them. the requirements for the office of an elector are outlined in article 2, section 1 of the constitution. no senator or representative or person holding an office of trust or profit under the united states shall be appointed an elector. that leaves a wide range of people. many of who are total unknowns, but nevertheless, empowered with this sacred trust. joining me, a man who feels differently. launched the electors trust and working with suprin and other electors if they can vote against the popular vote. harvard law professor, former presidential candidate. tell me how i'm wrong. why should we be entrusting

these 538 who we really know nothing about to change the will of the electorate? >> michael, i didn't hear you argue whether we should or shouldn't. i heard you describe the 12th amendment to the constitution. i thought you did a very good job of describing it. the 12th amendment creates this office that we are now describing as the electors and the electors have as justice jackson put it in ray versus blair. we don't like this. we ought to change the constitution. the difference between the electors we have today and hamilton was speaking of is that today, the electors have taken a pledge. they've pledged to vote for one candidate or another. and i believe they have a moral obligation to live up to that pledge unless there's an overriding reason why they can't do that, for example, the presidential candidate doesn't live up to the qualifications of

being president. so i think it's a narrow discretion but ushl constitutio, they have that. and can't wish it away. >> i have to ask why you question whether the president-elect has the requisite qualifications but let me just drill down. i can't believe we're having this conversation but thrilled we're having it. it seems esoteric, but let's drill down for a moment on the federalist paper where hamilton describes men most capable. what reason do you have to believe that we've got 538 people ready to go on monday who are men most capable? >> that's the point. when hamilton was describing the electoral college, they imagined these people would be getting together and deliberating and engaging in high discourse about who should be president or not and we've evolved that system. we now have a system with what we're basically doing is

electing people who have pledged to support a particular candidate or someone else. but still, their residual constitutional liberty, their freedom to make the judgments of conscience remains. i don't think we have the hamiltons and the madisons and the washingtons sitting around in these state capitals, necessarily. i'm sure many are quite serious citizens but we do have people who take seriously their constitutional obligation and that obligation is to be the final check before someone becomes president of the united states. and so it's incredibly important that they consider the charges that have been raised about whether, in fact, donald trump should be the next president of the united states. >> how many of the 37 that are necessary do you believe are ready to go and vote opposite of the way the electorate casts their ballots? are you anywhere close to that number? >> well, i don't know and i don't think anybody knows right now. what i said at the beginning of

the week is that i had done a survey of the three groups that were working with electors and absolutely confidence at least 20 at that point were seriously considering voting against their pledge. since that time, those groups have upped the numbers but i've not done the homework to check them so i'm not going to make further representations, but the number is maybe a handful and chris will be out there and a couple of others and i don't think many people risk the retaliation and the hatred co coming out and voting if they're not confident the vote will have an effect. to nail down the number for the people engaged in the process of recruiting electors. >> when we speak of requisite qualifications, we're not raising an issue of whether donald trump was 35 and born in the united states. so take your best shot, what is the requisite qualification that you think he lacks that an elector on monday should be cognizant of before they cast

their ballot? >> yeah, so, you know, many people who are attacking donald trump are attacking him for or trying to recruit electors for a reason i don't think is legitimate. they're saying donald trump is not fit. and my own view is i don't think he's fit to be president. but 62 million americans heard that argument and they went the other way. so i don't think that the electors are supposed to be guardians of our democracy, second guessing the people. with respect to the issues, some people had a chance to know something about. but there's two issues that have come up after this election which are incredibly important for evaluating whether this man should be president. the first of them, of course, is his unwillingness to divest himself from foreign assets and liabilities despite the constitution's clear requirements in the foreign bribery clause that he do so. his unwillingness to give up his own wealth to be president is an extraordinary show of callousness about how our constitution tries to protect us

from foreign intrigue and the compromise caused by that. that's number one. number two, the idea that every intelligence service in our federal government now has concluded that the russians were involved in this election and the trump campaign itself was directly involved as the russians said immediately after the election, should in an elector's mind raise the question whether we should have a zero tolerance principle when we have this kind of foreign intervention in our election and as you know, because you read federalist 68, this was the prime concern that they had when they set up the tsystem for selecting tpresidents. no way to stop foreign ties unless they have an electoral. these are new facts. this is nothing anybody knew at the time of the election or could prove and it's incumbent on the electors to consider these facts now. i'm not going to tell them what to do with them but completely

reasonable in my view for them to see their moral obligation to their pledge overridden by this moral obligation to uphold his principles part of our constitution. >> final question, professor, don't you worry that if the electoral college and i don't think it happens and i don't think you think it happens and i don't want to present to cnn viewers around the globe that we think there's a chance of this happening on monday but having an abstract conversation. don't you worry of literally, a revolution? if 60 million people who cast their ballots, 60 million plus have the electoral college go in a different direction? >> well, you know, no, i don't fear a revolution. there's a procedure here. if the electoral college votes against donald trump, it's going to go to the house of representatives and the house of representatives, three times in the past has done exactly the same thing where they have had to choose the president. and of course, the 62 million

americans supported donald trump and 64 million americans supported hillary clinton. hillary clinton won't be president. it's pretty clear despite that overwhelming popular result. if it goes to the house, most likely to be either donald trump or another republican. now when in 2000, one justice of the supreme court effectively stopped a recount and stopped the election of the person who had won the popular vote, many people thought it would be a revolution then because that procedure is not in the constitution. nobody outlined the supreme court as being part of this process. but i think america understood in the end that the procedure that got us to the place that we got in 2000 had to be validated and i think this procedure has to be validated too. so i say right now that if on monday, as people expect, they vote to uphold donald trump, he's my presidet, and i do my duty as a citizen in continuing to fight for america to be as great as it can be but i don't think there should be any question after that point but i do think the constitution gives us an electoral college and this

is the election it was created for. so i think we ought to take seriously the serious considerations they are engaged in right now and give them the respect they're owed for this incredibly difficult decision they never expected they would have to make. >> i appreciate the dialogue, professor lessic. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, mike. >> to those of you at hole, what do you think? tweet me at @smerconish. i'll read them throughout the course of the program. smerconish, get over it. trump won. i know, julian. i'm having a conversation to educate folks as to the constitution and the federalist papers because there's a heavy discussion out there as to what happens monday and i want to disabuse cnn viewers of false information and i think i just did that. smerconish, donald trump may be the most unfit president we have ever chosen. i wish the electors could save us from ourselves. they won't. those electors are not men most capable, as envisioned by

hamilton. and that was my whole point. and also this week, a viewer question. don't answer on twitter. go online at cnn.com/vote and weigh in and we will track the results in realtime. see, later in the program, i'm going to be speaking with dr. james mitchell who designed the post- 9/11 enhanced interrogation program and personally waterboarded al qaeda detain kne detaine detainees. does the saving of american lives ever justify the use of enhanced interrogation methods? go to cnn.com/vote. up next, things got hot here but in the true christmas spirit, rnc's sean spicer is back and maybe this week, we'll exchange gifts. >> trump's spokespeople in the media can't agree on basic facts. at the least given us fantastic new entries, that's what i call white guys screaming each other on the news. >> president-elect trump is saying, move on folks, there's

nothing to see here, but i need to ask you an additional question. >> no, but -- >> wait, i want you to address this. >> i don't think any foreign entity, any individual, any entity -- >> why don't you say that and why didn't trump say that? >> i'm saying it, michael. i just said it. >> i'm just an american trying to discern all i'm reading. >> no, answer the question, micha michael. >> what was the question? >> i don't remember!

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>> check out this headline. fbi in agreement with cia that russia aimed to help trump win white house. that's the headline from the "washington post," yet donald trump continues to say he doesn't believe it and just partisan sour grapes and final press conference of 2016, president obama blamed vladimir putin and told him to knock it off. >> in early september when i saw president putin in china, i felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly. and tell him to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he didn't. and in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process. >> joining me, rnc strategist and communications director sean spicer. the only two not surprised you're back this week are the two of us.

i'm glad to see you. hope you didn't bring any coal. >> never would. thank you. >> so yesterday, president obama vowed retaliation against russia and vladimir putin. will president-elect trump carry that out when he's president? >> i think to presume that he's going to do anything at this point would be premature. he's not president yet. president obama has every right to carry out the duties he sees based on the information he has through the rest of his term. >> okay, but things have changed since we were last together. now you've got the cia and the fbi reading from the same hymnal. so everybody sees this the same way except the incoming president. >> well, again, i think one of the things that we have to just sort of bifurcate is did russia or other entities try to probe

web sites and extract data, et cetera and were they successful? in other words, did they have any impact on the election? one of the things we need to make sure we're clear about when we talk about this is that there is no evidence that the outcome of the election was changed. and i'll tell you why this is important. a week before the election, the department of homeland security called us, the dnc, and the various campaigns to meet with them. and they wanted us to understand that because of the way that we as americans vote, ie, that there are disparate voting systems throughout the country. some use paper ballots, some machines. at no time, ever connected to the internet and no way except for downloading results at the end that there's any way to change the outcome of the election and asked us, could we stand in unison together and make sure that we reinforced to all americans that the integrity of the voting systems and our outcomes were sound? and now, it seems as though they've shifted that tune. and it's interesting how prior

to the election when everybody thought that hillary clinton was clearly going to be the winner, they wanted everybody to sit and sing kumbaya about the integrity and now that donald trump has shown he won resoundingly, it's interesting how that tune has changed. and i think it's sad because there's a difference between whether or not we should be concerned that entities, foreign or otherwise, tried to hack systems or what have you, and whether or not they were successful and what's happening is that some folks in the media and a lot of democrats have now changed the tune that they had prior to november 8th. >> okay. i feel like i should be saying serenity now. i feel my blood pressure rising again because sean spicer seems to be saying it's dependent upon whether russia altered the outcome and i don't agree with that. what matters is -- >> it's not, sorry. no, just to be clear. >> let me finish. >> i understand that entities

tried to probe and different sites. we do that. other entities do that. we all understand that's why we take precautions i.t.-wise to prevent it, but there's a big difference between, are entities trying to probe different wbeb sites and are they having an impact on the outcome of the election? people conflate two issues into one and they are very different. >> but let me be clear. it's unknowable whether the outcome was altered by virtue of the russian hack. i mean, what was it, 80,000 votes in three swing states changed the course of the white house. she won the popular vote. i need not remind you. who's to say how many sanders people weren't pissed by the revelations in the dnc with debbie wasserman-schultz having the thumb and the scale and sit out where they otherwise would

have voted for hillary? we could never know that. i want to be clear, i think we need to be uniform as americans. fine thought, we need to be uniform as americans against putin and russia, regardless of whether they were ultimately successful in electing donald trump. >> but one of the things, michael, that has been devoid of any of this conversation, you talk about what we know and what was certain based on what you guys hear and leaks and third party sources. this is what the director of national intelligence james clapper said in open testimony to the house of representatives. as far as the wikileaks connection, the evidence there is not as strong and we do not have good insight into the sequencing of the releases or when data may have been provided. we don't have good insight into that, end of quote. so you all want to talk in the media about these anonymous sources. that's what the director of national intelligence said on the record to the house intelligence committee, so why is that not part of the conversation that you want to have? >> you've made it part of the conversation.

i think we know more today than when clapper said what he said because as we are here on this saturday, the president, the fbi, the cia, clapper, the entire intelligence community is lock step in saying that vladimir putin tried to alter the outcome and i simly wa lplyo know, what's the new guy, the president-elect, going to do about this when he takes office? that's my question. what's he going to do? >> but as president obama said yesterday, to discuss what would happen and he made it very clear, that he's not going to disclose how or when america's going to act and i think i would agree with president obama on that and it would be very, very inappropriate for president-elect trump to discuss that at this point as well. >> merry christmas. let your boss know it's okay to say it here. got no issue with that. thank you, sean. >> merry christmas. thank you, michael.

the russian hack detailed in a horrific "new york times" piece the perfect weapon how it was invaded by david sanger and scott shane. ticktock of russian information warfare campaign devised to disrupt the 2016 presidential election and i should mention that scott shane is the author of "objective troy: a terrorist, a president and the rise of the drone." scott you heard that conversation. react to what you just heard. >> well, mr. spicer said that, you know, intelligence agencies probe certain web sites and that's sort of a normal part of espionage today and he's absolutely right about that. what was different in this case and what i think took the u.s. intelligence agencies somewhat by surprise is that not only did they probe the dnc, the democratic congressional

campaign committee and john podesta, chairman of hillary clinton's campaign, not only did they probe and break into those sites, they stole documents, again, that's traditional espiona espionage, but what was different was they started making them public through a series of essentially, front organizations and eventually through wikileaks. so, you know, it's one thing to steal the information, take it back, put it in your safe in russia and try to use it to understand the united states, the u.s. government, u.s. politics better, but this was something different. this wasn't just cyber espionage. that was information warfare. it wasn't simply probing web sites as we recall. a big dump of dnc e-mails on the eve of the democratic national convention created an uproar completely distracted from the democrats' planned wreckage and

debbie wasserman-schultz and the night she was supposed to oversee. wikileaks over the last month or so, the campaign put out john podesta's e-mails, hundreds each day, sort of drip drip drip. and we in the media, you know, we find it hard to resist inside material like that and so we at "the new york times" and the rest of the major media, you know, wrote about those messages and, you know, sort of speculated about the sort of inside gossip on the democratic side and it definitely cast a sort of, you know, sense of back room dealing and back fighting and inside sort of dissent on the democratic side. as you said, it's impossible to say whether that was enough to turn the election, but i think

it's undeniable that it hurt clinton in the, you know, in the crucial last month of the campaign. >> sean spicer has been critical of "the times." i want to put on the screen where he said, times, you got it wrong. i think he was saluting "the wall street journal" for having gotten it right this particular time. there it is right there. "wall street journal," shane harris, got it right. "times," miller, got it wrong. this is your beat. national security. when i said to sean spicer that there's uniformity now, the president, the fbi, the cia, jim clapper, the intelligence. they all see it one way and then the outlier is the president-elect. am i accurate as far as you know when i say that? is it only trump who is an island unto himself on this issue? >> you know, it's not only trump. he has a number of supporters

on, you know, avid supporters who accept his view of this and on the left, there are a bunch of people who believe that, you know, the intelligence, american intelligence agencies are warmongers and express skepticism about this. >> but they're not in the know. is there anybody in the know who is -- go ahead. >> well, i would say that there's a very strong consensus. both of the u.s. intelligence agencies and of the private independent cyber research communities that study these russian hacking groups that russia, that the russian state, you know, directed and sponsored hacking attacks on the democratic side of the election and if you think about it, putin had, you know, this is an old theme for the intelligence agencies. putin blamed hillary clinton personally and publicly in 2011 for stirring up trouble against

him. people will remember big demonstrations in moscow against putin. that very much upset and scared vladimir putin and he -- >> i remember. >> he blamed hillary clinton, secretary of state, by name for that. >> i think i'm hearing from you. go ahead, finish your thought. >> it would not be surprising if he thought this was a good opportunity for payback and furthermore, most of the american experts thought that hillary clinton was going to be the next president of the united states, my newspaper famously and completely wrongly said she had an 85% chance of becoming president. >> there's a lot of company. >> naturally, the russian hackers are going to concentrate on the next president of the united states, weaken her, try to darken her reputation a little bit and learn more about her, so none of this is terribly surprising and the fact is if

you're attacking clinton or weakening clinton in what's basically a two-person presidential race, you are, by definition, helping donald trump. so i don't think any of these conclusions are terribly surprising. >> scott shane, thank you so much for your expertise and your time. >> thank you, michael. >> time for everybody else to check in and see what's going on via twitter. @smerconish, i can't believe a cnn anchor actually in a way defends trump. there is a god. i don't know, did i defend trump? you know what, this is evidentiary broadcasting. that's what i'm trying to engage here. i'm not trying to defend trump. i'm trying to talk, as a reformed trial lawyer, about evidence. while campaigning, trump embraced harsh terrorist methods including water boarding but has suggested to make the advice of general mattis who claims you can get more from a subject with a six pack and some smokes.

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you totally nailed that buddy. simple. don't let directv now limit your entertainment. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. ♪ if we need to get information out of someone who is plotting to kill lots of innocent people, is enhanced interrogation a necessary evil? it's a divisive issue for many americans, but few know it firsthand like my next guest, he literally wrote the book on enhanced interrogation. james mitchell has a ph.d. in clinical psychology, served 22 years in the u.s. air force he personally performed those techniques on five high valued detainees including khalid sheikh mohammed.

you know the narrative about you. the cia was clueless about what to do with high value detainees. they came to you and a colleague of yours. you charged a fortune. you didn't get anything worthwhile. none of this worked. and, oh by the way, you committed torture. we can only parse so much of that in the time we have. i'll ask you this -- did it work? >> yes, it did. in fact, you shouldn't take my word for it. take the cia's word for it. it said it disrupted attacks. that it allowed them to understand better the enemy that we had. that it saved lives and that it presented another catastrophic attack here in the united states. >> in your book, you take us inside the room. in fact, i'll reference abu

zubaydah. you wrote this, bruce poured the weather out of a one liter plastic bottle and i controlled the duration of the pours by standing at the top of the abu's head raising and lowering a black cloth to cover his face. when i lowered the clothe, bruce was to pour. i would watch the guard count out the seconds. when i raised the cloth, bruce was to stop immediately. the legal guidance said we could pour water for 20 to 40 seconds, allow the person to breathe unimpeded for three to four breaths and lower the clothe and pour water for 20 to 40 seconds. was that torture? >> well, it wasn't at in 2002 and 2003. this was looked at by the justice department four or five times. in fact, prior to them making the decision it wasn't torture the last time they did it. i water boarded two attorneys, one of whom was an assistant attorney general of the united states. how many attorney generals do you have to water board to get a straight answer? i suspect it was one. >> and yet some of that which took place offended your sensibilities, al-nashiri was the master mind of the bombing

of the uss cole. you didn't like what you saw. i watched the chief interrogator use a variety of physically coercive measures that i believed were not on the list of approved techniques. they included the two stress positions discussed earlier. dousing al-nashiri with cold water while using a stiff bristled brush to scrub his ass and balls and mouth and blowing cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous. so what is it about that that you regarded i don't know if you would use the word as torture but that crossed the line and yet your own water boarding was within limits. distinguish. >> the main distinction is that the president approved of it. the justice department, the highest law enforcement agency in the country decided -- judged that it wasn't illegal and that it wasn't torture and those other things he imported that stuff from south america

somewhere. that wasn't on that list of approved techniques. and i thought that there weren't the kind of safeguards in place. if you remember reading that section of my book, i tried to stop those interrogations and he told me to get the hell out of the room and had the guards remove me. >> how do you go from water boarding abu zubaydah to water boarding khalid sheikh mohammed. he was a magician in the way he could manipulate his nostrils. how do you go from carrying out those acts and doing calisthenics, reading books, watching movies. the most bizarre part of your book is that there were personal moments you entertained with the worst of the worst. >> well a lot of people have misunderstandings about how long those interrogations took place. you know, abu zubaydah was held for 1,620 something days.

of which only 14 days did he receive rough interrogations. the rest of the time he didn't. similar ksm was held for over 1,289 days, i think. that's three weeks and he had three weeks of rough interrogation and then 170 weeks of living in relative comfort without any kind of mistreatment. >> dr. mitchell, it had to be hard for you. i was frankly sympathetic as i read the book for you being a part. you didn't go asking for this, right? you get a phone call on i-95 after september 11 and they said we need you. do you still live with the memories of this ugliness? >> for me, it was a moral decision. what i had to do -- in my mind, the temporary discomfort of a terrorist who has voluntarily taken up arms to destroy our way of life does not outweigh my moral obligation to do what i can to save hundreds, maybe thousands of people. >> yes or no question, is trump -- are trump and mattis

wrong when they say you can get all you need with smokes and a six pack. are they right or are they wrong? >> here is what i would ask general mattis. i have a lot of respect for him, he is a hell of a warrior. he has to ask himself, what would he do? would he give up information if he was captured by isis or al qaeda that was likely to get americans killed for a camel or miller lite. i don't think so. ksm didn't either. our president-elect needs to ask himself, what is he going to do the next time that there is credible intelligence that our enemies intend to set off a possibly nuclear bomb or some other catastrophic weapon inside of one of our cities. is he willing to live with the results of that? is he willing to live with the outcome of that if we just focus on the army field manual? my local mall cops can use interrogation techniques that the cia can't use. good chance we'll stand on the moral high ground looking down

into a big smoking hole that used to be several city blocks and some city like los angeles. >> i pray not. dr. mitchell, thank you for being here. >> thank you, sir, for having me on. here is a remind e we've got still to come, a special look back at 2016 and more of your tweets like this one -- smerconish, if you are a pro-torture, at least be brazen enough to call it what it ask. it is torture. do not hide behind cute names. osagie, look, if it's a ticking time bomb case, i'll give you your answer, you ready for it? if it's a ticking time bomb case and the only way to save american lives is through what dr. mitchell did, i'm for it even if you call it torture. there. ♪ p is for privileges. o is for ordinarily i wouldn't. l is for layers of luxury. a is for alll the way back. r is for read my mind.

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♪ get exceptional offers on the lincoln family of luxury vehicles. sign and drive off in a 2016 lincoln mkx with zero down and complementary first month's payment. so here is the final tally on the viewer question. does the saving of american lives justify the use of enhanced interrogation methods. 46% say yes, 54% say no. maybe the electoral college will overturn that on monday. okay, i admit it, the russians tortured me and forced me to vote for trump. uncle johny, i don't think it is funny. if a result goes a way you don't like in 2020 and it's because of

the russians, what do you say then?

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treat me good, but i will give him some publicity. >> i watched you and i think i know who you're voting for, and so do your viewers. >> i don't think so. >> the number one tool to provoke change -- >> are you watching this play out on tv saying hey, todd, i should be in this mix. >> i'm saying hey, todd, how come they have so much defense, nobody defended us at the time. >> i don't know who the e-mails came from -- >> apparently anthony weiner. >> oh, god. anthony weiner, i should not comment on anthony weiner. >> you want me to do this? >> you're a man of your word. how was it? >> a little nutty. >> i don't think any foreign entity, any -- >> why don't you say that why

didn't trump say that? >> i'm saying it, stop and let me, i just said it, let me take yes for an answer. >> i want a person for president whom i can honestly say merry christmas. >> why can't you say merry christmas now. who stands in your way of saying that? >> the government. >> the government? come on. >> i truly believe that. >> they told you that on fox, right? every december they roll that out. >> it was good that we got to watch for half an hour. >> gary johnson and bill weld waited half an hour to make that appearance. they apparently liked what they saw. hope you have happy holidays, happy electoral college vote from us, i'll see you in 2017. twenty-one years ago we created blue moon.

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top of the hour, i'm poppy harlow and you're live in the cnn news room. we begin with politics and president-elect donald trump just wrapping up his final stop on his thank you tour with an hour-long speech and rally at mobile, alabama. he said this is where it all began, and saying you should never give up. ryan nobles was o