president trump back to being the uniter-in-chief. will he stay that way when he's off the teleprompter? "new day" starts right now. we'll see you tomorrow. it's time to heal the wounds it is time to heal the wounds that divide us. these are bad people. >> he'll make a scripted teleprompter speech and go back with unbridled trump. >> dangerous for our role in the world. we wanted a president to break the system, to break washington. >> don't make it personal. remember, these are members of your team and you'll need everything you got. >> someone beat the odds to win the powerball lottery jackpot. >> the largest prize with a single winner ever in north korea. this is "new day" with chris cuomo and alisyn camerota. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and ab round the

world. this is "new day." it's thursday, august 24th, of:00 in morning. here is our starting line. these newspaper headlines say it all, presidential whiplash. three personas in three speeches. different day, different crowd, different trump. these are just a few of the offerings from a befuddled media. president trump wildly swinging from united to divider. the president is about face tone, the president cannot believe one of these two versions of the truth. it comes as republicans watch in horror as the president remains at war with his own party. the widening rift with mitch mcconnell and republican leaders threatening trump's ability to get anything through congress. >> we also have two cnn exclusives to tell you about. congressional investigators have found an e-mail that captures another attempt from a top trump campaign aide to arrange a

meeting with russian president vladimir putin. we'll give you the details. cnn tracked down sergey kislyak, russia's former ambassador to the u.s. and talked to him about his contacts with the trump campaign. then the story everyone is talking about this morning, who won the massive powerball jackpot? we did, but not the one winning ticket sold in massachusetts, that hit all sikx magic numbers for the $758 million, largest jackpot ever by a single person. we did win, chris, $24. >> now all this talk about what to do with the wings. >> i thought phil absconded with the money. he did show up this morning. >> everything only costs about $18. he didn't use the wings on that. let's begin with cnn's suzanne malveaux live at the white house with our top story.

what's the latest? >> reporter: good morning, alisyn. president trump displaying how starkly different he is, delivering a message of unity following the fiery campaign rally, leaving some lawmakers questioning whether they can do business with this president as they ready to go back to work. >> one day after delivering an angry and divisive speech at a campaign rally. >> they're bad people, and i think they don't like our country. they're trying to take away our culture. they're trying to take away our history. >> president trump striking a dramatically different tone than reading the teleprompter at the american legion convention. >> it is time to heal the wounds that divide us and to seek a new unity based on the common values that unite us. >> the president's wildly different speeches again prompting krit tim from the nation's former intelligence chief. >> he'll make a scripted

teleprompter speech which is good and turn around and negate it by unbridled, unleashed, unchaperoned trump. and that to me, that pattern is very disturbing. >> reporter: president trump's attempt to tamp down tensions comes as a new national poll says 62% of americans think the president is dividing the country and 59% say his behavior encourages white supremacist groups. growing in the aftermath of tuesday's unhinged rally. >> believe me, if we have to close down our government, we're building that wall. >> house speaker paul ryan responding. >> i don't think a government shurtdown is necessary and most people don't want to see it. >> reporter: president trump reiterating his claim that republicans are just wasting time if they don't get rid of the filibuster rule, an idea senator mitch mcconnell already

rejected, releasing a statement wednesday insisting he and mr. trump are committed to advancing our shared agenda together, amid reports that the relationship is rapidly deteriorating and they haven't spoken in weeks. this as cnn learns the president has begun efforts to inseat one of his top critics, hiding with challengers to jeff flake before taking the stage tuesday night. >> nobody wants me to talk about your other senator who is work on borders, weak on krooim. >> reporter: politico reporting president trump called senator tom tillis earlier this month to discuss a bill that tillis had designed to protect special counsel robert mueller from being fired n. a separate phone call in july, he expressed frustration with the russian sanctions bill, voicing concerns

about the president's temperament weeks later. >> the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the confidence he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. >> president trump today meeting behind closed doors with director of office and management budget nick mulvaney to discuss the debt ceiling rise and the fierce debate that will take place with senate republicans. he's also reportedly preparing to roll out the military ban for transgender individuals. >> suzanne, thank you very much. let's bring in our political panel. we have cnn political analyst john avlon and karoun demirjian and cnn correspondent michael warren. just to cover the whiplash of what president trump has been saying in the past week, lest anybody has missed it, the

differing tone, the differing positions. here is a brief montage. >> my original instinct was to pull out, and historically i like following my instincts. but all my life i've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the oval office. >> i'm really doing this more than anything else -- you know where my heart is. i'm really doing this to show you how damn dishonest these people are. >> it's time to heal the wounds that divide us and seek a unity based on the common values that unite us. >> i know you think teleprompter trump is not -- that's not his real heart and real gut and where he is. why then the vacillation? why do we see trel prompter

trump? why are his aides fitting him in an unnatural box. >> because that's where he should be because that's where he sounds remotely presidential. it would be weird if he was standing in a military base in a small room of soldiers and ranting. he's not going to get the crowd response energy that town hall trump is dependent upon. he's not going to be able to be filtered away, tweeting to his heart's content. >> there are not two trumps here, people. i'm a former speech writer. i was rudy giuliani's speech writer and proud to do it, proud of the work we did. there's not two people here. there's one perp and a speech writer. the speech writer is trying to summon the angels and the best ideals of the situation, and the president keeps undercutting the effort. >> karoun, i don't know why the president deserves the benefit of vacillation because the audience is irrelevant. he could be talking in any forum

in any moment and be equally disruptive and abusive of the truth. it's all about where he is in terms of his perception of how it's going for him. he doesn't like the idea that the media catches him doing something. so he won't apologize. he doesn't like the idea that he's perceived as having been wrong, so he goes into attack mode. isn't that the ob vase explanation for what we see? >> yes. we can say the audience doesn't necessarily matter because you started your montage the last few days, if you extend it into last week, we see the teleprompter trump and non-teleprompter trump. one of the episodes last week talking about charlottesville, he did president like the way he was put into a box the day before so he let it rip. he can go so far before he's bottled up a bunch of stuff he

wants to say that then comes out. this is continuing. the question is will the next trump we see continue the pattern or will they manage to corral him better going forward? the country is getting used to seeing this back and forth for better or for worse. >> there's new quinnipiac poll numbers to share with everyone. is president trump level headed? do you see him as level headed? 68% say no, 29% say yes. does he divide or unite the country? 62% say he divides the country. only 31% say he unites them. i know, michael, you find it very interesting that his own pollster has begun polling republicans where his approval still remains strong. what does that tell you? >> tony fabrizio is the

president's pollster. he asked a question released on twitter yesterday asking essentially if the republican primary for president today am mochk these republicans, who would you support? i think among definite gop voters 54% picked trump. under 60%, that's not a great number for him. i think there's a recognition among trump's political team he does have a problem here. you look at those quinnipiac numbers. most of the country says he's not doing a good job, he's dividing the country. i think right now practically, the bigger problem for trump is not losing his base and losing more people who are with him through thick and thin. it's losing people in washington, losing republicans in congress and sort of the people who have kind of shrugged their shoulders and said we're going to try to get through our agenda even though we have an r erratic president. now i don't ear seeing that slow burn and republicans are saying

we don't really need this president to get what we want to get through. and that's a problem politically for the president as we head into 2018. >> getting nothing done and being consistently ugly on issues about -- some of the fundamental fabric of the country is going to make you unpopular. remember, the idea of being popular within the base, his party, is totally routine. you are always at 85 to 90 to 95% within your base. i talked to pollsters just to make sure i wasn't losing it. they've never seen numbers like this. put up more of the numbers in this poll. left pollsters, right pollsters, they shouldn't be from different political wings because they're just measuring numbers, but they are. no one has ever seen anything like this. total disapprove, close to 60%. within his own party he's struggling to stay around 75%, 80%. remember, you are traditionally well over 80% and into the 90s.

you always own the home team. john, they haven't seen numbers like this. it can't be argued that it's not hurting him the way he is. of course it is. >> it absolutely is. you can try to go through some ornate ritual of denial which certainly someone in the west wing is trying to do this morning. the reality is his strategy has been keep the base, keep the base. the base keeps shrinking because he becomes more and more difficult to defend. that 77% number, look at the independents down to 33%. that's the swing. >> they're the ones that are really important to look at. >> he's losing his base as well is the point. >> until he starts delivering on the big-ticket items. >> until and if, and there are only a few more months to do it. republicans on capitol hill are starting to say do we really need this guy. they keep putting up with abuse and haven't been able to get anything done. they only have a couple more months. >> it's not just the republicans on capitol hill.

one of my colleagues reported at that rally in phoenix that there were people were getting tired of it. the president may not have acknowledged that in his comments when he's going after the media and everything else, but he had to have seen it. >> was it fatigue from winning, karoun? were they tired from win? >> exactly. that's a problem, he can see that physically playing out, not just in poll numbers but in front of his eyes. perhaps that was one of the -- switch around the 180 between tuesday and wednesday. >> the embarrassment number is the key one to look at. we get at this point, he's a divider, not a uniter, a version of george w. bush. when people say they're embarrassed that he's president, that's bad news for the country and bad news for the president. we have to get to the

powerball numbers. somebody's life very different. powerball, $758.7 million. only one matching ticket matched all six of last night's winning numbers. that's the largest ever won by a single ticket in american history. carrie corado live at the store that sold the winning ticket. it's clutch a big deal that just the place that sold it winds up becoming famous. >> they get a little money, too. >> so, what do we know? >> reporter: this person who won may or may not know they just became a millionaire. they could be quite surprised if they wake up and were sleeping through all of this. the lucky winner walked into handy variety one day not knowing they just purchased a ticket that could forever change their life. the winning numbers are 6, 7,

16, 23 and 26. the powerball is 4. this is the largest won by a single ticket in north american lottery history like you mentioned. this is the game's highest since the world record $1.5 billion in 2016. this is the fourth time a powerball jackpot winning ticket has been sold in massachusetts. since the store sold the ticket, they, too, get some of the wings. we are told about a $50,000 bonus. that store was set to open at 6:00. we haven't heard any signs or seen any signs of an owner just yet. back to you. >> here is how magical the thing is. i have a plan for what i would do. >> share it with us. >> christine romans, you have to see her eyes roll around in her head. here is my plan. one, i take the lump payment. it's going to cut me in half. only looking at about $370 million, but i'll make do.

what i'll do is set up all the kids for everything they need. i won't give them too much. then i would fund -- myself, no outside patrons, a charity that does sports teams and tutoring, you have to have them altogether in all the pockets of poverty around the country. that's what my foundation would do and i would run it. i would go on legendary speak truth to power tour of all the people i want to say things to but haven't. >> you're leaving out the obvious one. you'd buy a bigger boat. >> i'd buy everyone i know a bigger boat. >> you did win, you won $24 but you'll reinvest into the scratch ticket. >> and i get to be next to you every day. >> meanwhile, back to our top story, there is another

potential problem for president trump. there's the discovery of this new e-mail written last summer by a top campaign aide trying to set up a meeting with russian president putin. what does this mean? we have a cnn exclusive for you next. no artificial preservatives in any of the food we sell. we believe in real food. whole foods market. year with the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses and automatically adjusts on both sides. the new 360 smart bed is part of our biggest sale of the year where all beds are on sale. and right now save 50% on the labor day limited edition bed, plus free home delivery. ends saturday! where's jack? he's on holiday. what do you need? i need the temperature for pipe five. ask the new guy. the new guy? jack trained him. jack's guidance would be to maintain the temperature at negative 160 degrees celsius.

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trump campaign aide that reveals an attempt to arrange a meeting with russian president vladimir putin. rick dearborn is now the president's deputy chief of staff. jessica schneider is live in washington with all of this. what have you learned? >> reporter: this e-mail was disclosed to congressional investigators in a patch of 20,000 documents from the trump campaign. the e-mail is from then campaign aide rick dearborn. in it he explains an individual was seeking to connect top trump campaign of firms with vladimir putin. he's identified only as being from wv, one saying that's a reference to west virginia. in this e mail dearborn appeared skeptical to set up a meeting with putin and it's unclear if dearborn ever actually acted on that request. what is notable is this e-mail was sent in june 2016, around the same time of that trump tower meeting involving donald

trump jr., jared kushner, paul manafort and russians who offered damaging information on hillary clinton. it's unclear if this e-mail had connection to that meeting. officials are saying this fits the pattern of russians trying to gather human intelligence from the campaign and trying to gain entry into the campaign itself. rick dearborn who is now the president's deputy chief of staff, he did not respond to multiple requests for comment. white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders say she would not comment on potential leaked documents. this is another point of contention. the question being did the campaign do anything with this request for trump to meet with russian president vladimir putin. a lot of questions swirling. this just another one. >> jessica, thank you for explaining that. let's bring back our political panel. senior writer for the daily

standard michael warren and the author of washington's farewell and cnn contributor karoun demirjian from "the washington post." michael, the russia investigation has fallen off the news cycle given all the other things that have eclipsed it, no pun intended. do we know how the administration or how congress is doing with this russia investigation now? >> no, we don't. i think it's important to remember that just because we're not talking about it in the news media doesn't mean it's not happening. in fact, it is happening, not just with the congressional investigations but the special counsel investigation as well. let's remember what is the purpose of these investigations? it's to find out how much russia was doing to interfere or meddle in our election process.

as the president and the president's supporters and allies have been saying, there's nothing here, it's time to move on. it's not necessarily time to move on. we're learning more about it in the media. i think that's the tip of the iceberg. does that necessarily mean there's any wrongdoing on the part of the president or his campaign? no, not necessarily. but we just have to find out more. the little bits that we're finding out through leaks and that sort of thing really suggest there's a lot more here to be looked through. you mentioned 20,000 documents that congress is looking at. that's a lot of paper to look through. >> this raised eyebrows because it's about disclosure. the sum and substance of this potential meeting itself is only interesting because of any efforts to not bring it forward. of course, the man at the center of all these things was the former ambassador, kislyak. cnn finally tracked him down which is a story in and of itself about how the russian government didn't want us to find him, but we did. here is some sound. >> what about this allegation that you're a spy master, spy

recruiter, did you attempt to recruit any members of the trump administration? >> you should be ashamed, because cnn is the company that keeps pointing to this allegation. it's nonsense. >> u.s. security officials, intelligence officials that made it. >> i heard that in statements by them, also by former -- and i was a little -- i had no reasons to doubt that he knew what he said. >> matthew chance there doing yeoman's duty, finally tracking down kislyak so he could scoff at the suggestion. but still, to hear -- i don't know anybody has heard his voice before. you've always seen the picture of this russian diplomat. >> john avlon, your thoughts? >> it's not surprising that kislyak is going to be dismi dismissing all this, saying i was just a diplomat doing my level best and all this is simply a distraction.

by all accounts and intelligence sources he had more nefarious aims. i think the reason the report is significant isn't only because it's another trump aide who has ooh senior role in the white house, not just to the legislature but the social security community, is being recruited himself. that's not insignificant. it seems the russians had more contact with the trump campaign than the trump campaign had with people from oregon or hawaii. we'll see what the investigation holds. it's got to move forward. people trying to deny it and say let's move on, they're being motivated -- >> the president didn't help on this. he keeps conflating any attachments by his staff and/or campaign to russian efforts and the russian efforts. karoun, the russian efforts are of primary importance. mueller has his own jurisdiction

to look into nefarious ties with trump staff and campaign people. these questions matter and that's why we keep watching the investigation. something else that matters is what's going on between the president and the gop, specifically the leadership. mcconnell came out yesterday and said no, no, no, the president and i are talking all the time, in constant communication. we're always working on the big shared agenda that we have and anybody else who says otherwise is clearly not part of the conversation. is that it? we were wrong, they're fine, everything is good? >> i think keeping up appearances has been a very big thing to for the gop right now with the president. there certainly are many frustrations bubbling under the surface. sometimes they come up to the surface. we've seen that play out. there is -- there is tension. there's tension we've seen between trump and the gop explode over things like the health care bill, certainly over the russia investigation periodically. this isn't surprising they would try to clean up the mess because there's other things in the agenda they have to worry about

going forward. episodes like this raise questions. i'm not particularly surprised that kislyak responded the way he did. he's kind of -- i've met him a few times. that's kind of his personality as well, to be very dismissive of things especially when we're in the middle of an investigation like this. the investigation is about trump, but it's also about what russia was trying to development when you have things like this e-mail come up, first the question is, is it credible? if it is, it shows you there is a coordinated campaign going on by russia to try to have influence over the election. we knew that. you can't expect a country that's as sophisticated as russia when it comes to various sorts of spy games, and they have done this sort of election influencing stuff in europe frequently, that it would be an accident or a one-off. even if there isn't this e-mail that's sort of a smoking gun, it reminds us this is a broader campaign than just the allegations surrounding trump which is sometimes something

that gets lost in all this political infighting between trump and the gop. >> the unifying theme is, if the president thinks it's bad for him, he attacks it. the russia investigation, no matter how fundamental it is to our democratic process and integrity, it's bad. he doesn't want it if it's bad for him. >> we'll be talking to some of these senators later in the program. the pentagon is about to receive orders to implement the president's ban on transgender service members. we have all the details next. ♪

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way of enforcing immigration law. the question remains just when the president is ready to do this supposed pardon. trump said, he thinks sheriff arpaio is going to be, quote, just fine, at that fiery rally in phoenix tuesday night. >> the pentagon is about to receive its marching orders for implementsing the transgender military ban. the white house mem be calls for an immediate halt on banning transgeneral ter people. the memo instructs the pentagon to stop paying the medical treatment expenses of current transgender service members. the president impulsively announced the ban in a tweet last month without providing specifics. the white house attempting to restart middle east peace talks with a powerful face-to-face today. the president's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner is going to meet the israeli prime

minister benjamin netanyahu and palestinian president mahmoud abbas. kushner has already met with leaders of egypt, jordan and saudi arabia all this week as he leads a delegation through the region. >> tropical storm harvey is gaining strength and taking aim at texas. residents are buying sandbags with the threat of major flooding coming their way. the state's governor already declaring a state of disaster ahead of the storm. cnn's chad myers has the latest for us. >> heading right towards the texas coast. i don't see it missing. i can see it stopping and continuing to rain for days, but this storm is going to be hurricane harvey as it makes its way towards the texas coast. the first hurricane to hit texas in a decade. maybe category 1, maybe category 2. hurricane watches and warnings will be posted all up and down. the big threat, even if the wind is 85, that's going to knock some things down. the threat is there's a front north of here that won't allow the rain to go any farther.

look at the numbers for san antonio, for austin, over a foot of rainfall there. some spots to the southeast of there over 20 inches of rain. there's not a place in the world that could take that kind of rainfall without a lot of flash flooding. texas is in trouble. i'm glad they have the warnings already posted, chris. >> how bad do you think it can get there? are you and i going to be in the waders standing in some situations that are hit, or do we believe this is survivable. >> this could be flooding there for weeks, for all the water to finally come down from the hill country, going to be a mess. >> chad, thank you very much. obviously keeping everybody apprised of the situation. more u.s. cities moving to table down or cover up confederate monuments. the president railed against this saying they're trying to destroy our history and culture. take a listen. >> how many people, show of hands, think the statues should stay put? >> those are trump supporters, part of our pulse of the people

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the city of charlottesville is covering up statues in black. they're doing that to honor heather heyer, the woman killed by suspected white supremacists during those charlottesville anti protests. a black tarp is draped over the 30-foot-high statues. a man strapped with a gun to his leg was stopped by police. at the same time charlottesville officials will hold a town hall tonight in partnership with the

justice department. >> that brings us to part three of this week's voter panel. on monday i sat down with a group of ardent trump supporters to get their take on the removal of these confederate statuetion and the infighting inside the gop, so here is this week's final installment of "the pulse of the people." >> how many people, show of hands, think the statues should stay put? you think the statues should go? >> if we take the statues down, replace them with someone else. >> do you think the statues should stay up? >> i think that it should be decided by each jurisdiction. >> are you comfortable with them? >> i'm not really affected by it. what statue, where are we going to stop? mlk, rocky? every statue has an issue, i guarantee you. >> we have a hundred years of more heroes, if that's what you

want. the civil war is considered the war that has the most american casualties in history. that's because both sides are considered americans. >> of course, it was our civil war. >> they or both considered americans in death. when it comes to counting numbers, how many died, they're all americans. not traitors, not confederates. to this day there are people that have relatives that fought on both sides. >> but despite that, you think the statues should come down? >> i think it's up to the cities. put something else that represents america, something else to be proud of the that's the problem. >> and do we go beyond statues? look at our money, take out your wallet. dead presidents that owned slaves all over our money. >> you think george washington is the same as robert e. lee. >> do you think they are the same? >> no. >> why are you using the slippery slope argument? >> i agree it's a slippery

slope. where do we go taking down monuments, pictures of our history and past because we need to teach our children in the next generation from the history that we have survived and made better because of. >> what do you think about the president going against people in his own party, going against other republicans? i can go through the list, susan collins, lisa murkowski. >> there's democrats that don't get along with all democrats either. >> of course. but do you think it's effective, effective for president trump to go against, say, jeff sessions? do you think that helps get things done or do you think that adds tension. >> if y'all would quit talking about his son, that's how he did it. >> president trump went after jeff sessions so he stop talking about don junior's e-mail. >> that's what he did. >> that's what you think. >> he's still there. if trump wanted him gone, he'd be gone. >> we have a great deal of republicans, the never-trump

republicans. >> jeff sessions was not a never trumper. he was all in from the beginning. >> you can't paint everyone with the same brush. i agree with jamie over here, they're throwing out rabbits. let's all go look at this rabbit so we leave this alone over here. >> what are we leaving alone over here? >> republicans are worried about infrastructure, health care -- >> l.a., what do you think the rabbit is distracting us from? >> there's so many issues because there's so many rabbits. >> president trump is trying to distract us from what? >> depends on the negative issue of the day and where we're going with this. where is the good news? >> is he distracting us from the russia investigation? >> i think the distraction is from him quietly transforming -- retransforming america back to what it needs to be. if you look around, you may not cover it, but the things he has done to roll back the transgender bathrooms, the regulations. he's doing things, undoing the

agenda -- they want to say it's obama's legacy. but i say he's doing what he promised to do. there are things that nobody is reporting. like you said, chasing rob bits. >> we've heard it many times. they see progress. they're happy with what the president has done with the executive orders, with border crossings being down, deportations being up. rolling back environmental regulations. that's what they want to focus on. >> right. i think you have a fundamental problem with this group of people, the difference between fact and feeling. what they feel is true versus what is actually true. >> yesterday we heard that in technicolor. >> the likelihood that the one woman with the hat says they're throwing rabbits out to distract. yet she sees that as a virtue. but they can't identify what it's being distracted from. what does this tell you? this tells you that what the president says matters. to people who support him, they absorb what he says, even though they clearly don't fully comprehend it.

that is always true in politics. >> listen, they think he speaks their language. they think they do fully comprehend everything he says. they think we misinterpret it. these are snapshots of how his most diehard supporters are feeling. >> true. and 60-plus% of people in the country right now say he is not level headed. so there are a lot of serious questions that are being raised right now, some by former intelligence officials, and those questions go to president trump's fitness to lead the nation, hence the level-headed number. are these legitimate questions, or are we still really just in the world of political criticism? is this a real health and fitness issue? we'll discuss next. [woman 1] huh. can't find my debit card. [woman 2] oh no... [woman 1] oh, it's fine.

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he'll make a scripted teleprompter speech which is good and then turn around with unbridled trump. to me that pattern is very disturbing. >> that's former director of intelligence james clapper, worked for democrats and republicans, a career public serviceman. there's a growing number of intelligence community leaders

breaking their silence after president trump's most recent roller coaster week. joining us is cnn contractor garrett grath, author of "raven rock." first, let's start with your feeling about this general assessment, that what we're seeing with president trump isn't just about politics. it might be about fitness. would you go that far? >> i think jim clapper's comments should be really troubling to americans. he is an incredibly sober, thoughtful person, mostly prone to mono syllabic answers. so to hear him speak as bluntly as he is after a 53-year career in the u.s. military and u.s. intelligence is really troubling. this is someone who has been in

the u.s. military and u.s. intelligence almost since the days of the cuban missile crisis. >> because of the suggestion he made, and we have heard it from others, to be fair, it does raise the question of what's the practicality of this concern. that goes with clapper and others to the nuclear football, as we call it. the suitcase that's carried around in close proximity to the president and his ultimate and almost unilateral authority to use them. put some meet on the bones for that. how absolute is the president's power to unilaterally engage in n nuclear warfare? >> chris, it is not almost unilateral. it's entirely unilateral. what surprises most americans is that is actually the entire point of the system. this is something that was designed during the cold war to be executed as quickly and decisively as possible, and we have spent billions of dollars over decades ensuring that that system responds as quickly and

without question as it possibly c can. there's no second voice in the room. from the time the president gives the launch order, the first ufrmt s.icbms leave their silos four minutes later. >> the story about business sin ski getting woken up in the middle of the night, he was about to alert the president and got the call back that false alarm, false alarm. hopefully our warnings systems are better than decades ago. how does it work in the case of imminent threat and then we'll talk about no threat. >> in the case of an incoming threat, the u.s. would have perhaps as little as 15 minutes to respond. that's why you have a system that relies just on the president's go order. there's no time to reach the vice president, chairman of the joint chiefs, congressional leader, some second voice in that radio. that's a system though that i any is not reflective of what

the modern geopolitical reality is. we don't face what we did during the cold war. >> it's important for people to know that. it's not by committee. even though congress declares wars, in edge dent circumstances, this would fall solely on the shoulders of the president. how about when there is no, accounting for caprice and volition and the president being pissed off about something or someone? what's the ability in those situations? i think that's what clapper is talking about. what would be the president's ability to use nukes then just because he wanted to? >> absolutely the same as anywhere else. the president is followed by that nuclear football, that black briefcase you mentioned. it's out on the golf course with him. when he gets in an elevator, that nuclear football gets in the elevator with him, and he can launch that nuclear war wherever he wants at any given moment. and that is an entirely

unchecked power, the only time in our history that we have known that a president has had that power prescribed was in the final days of watergate when defense secretary james schlessinger told the pentagon, if you get a nuclear launch order, please check with me or henry kissinger first. nixon was drinking heavily, he was despondent. there was fear he would launch an unprovoked nuclear war. there's no stims in place to actually protect against something like that. >> you know what, it is very helpful to know that regardless of the political discussion. garrett, appreciate it very much. garrett graff, a great book. i hope people read it. meanwhile president trump's wild ride to uniter to divider to uniter to divider, how will all this impact his ability to govern? our panel takes that on next. t,!

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. we saw two different displays, one trump using the teleprompter. the night before we saw the real trump. >> we are defined by the love that fills our hearts. >> i hit them with neo-nazi. i hit them with everything. >> so what did they say, right? it should have been sooner! >> i don't think most people want to see a government shutdown, ourselves included. >> president trump has sent a good message to the congress. >> if he's going to continue to criticize the republican leaders, he's not going to get very much done. >> who won the massive powerball jackpot? >> this person who won may