that's why xfinity mobile comes with your internet. you get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. so all you pay for is data. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit, or go to xfinitymobile.com. welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. thank you for sharing your day with us. president trump hits the road to sell tax reform. will he talk dollars on cents or escalate fights with key members of his own party? >> i don't think he's alienated anyone. i think congress has alienated themselves by not actually getting the job done that the

people of this country elected them to do. >> plus, friends or foe? breitbart's steven bannon says he's trying to help the president will you will targeting incumbent republicans make it even harder to get things done? it's a free country. people can do what they want to do. i think the best thing for the party is to focus on our shared agenda and stay unified. >> and why. >> why did it take five days for president obama and hillary clinton to condemn harvey weinstein's reprehensible conduct? >> if she gives the money back, does that make it better for you? >> no, first of all, she doesn't need to molly phi me. hesley needs to not be a hypocrite about women's empowerment. >> bernie sanders hour. republicans face giant tests in the coming days as they try to finally pass something big, tax cuts. they need the president's help and are really, really worried that his focus might be elsewhere.

yes, the president headed to pennsylvania this evening to hold an airport rally pushing his big plans to overhaul the tax code. but will he stick to the script or do the president's tweets in recent days and hours suggest he might want to talk about other things? today his targets included among other things the nfl, what the president likes to call the fake news media and the stock market. plus, he's still fighting with his own cabinet and his own party. paul ryan could only laugh today when asked about the president and bob corker. the speaker's advice, figure it out, gentlemen. >> i think it's talk it out among yourselves. my advice is for these two gentlemen to talk through their issues. that's the best way to get things done. >> maybe a beer summit. here to share insights and nia mallika henderson, michael warren, jeff zeleny and carmen of the "washington post." should i tell everybody you made deadline here? we're laughing about this, but

the president is going on the road tonight senate has to pass a budget next week if you're going to have a vehicle to pass tax reform. republicans know they need the president's help but petrified he's going to escalate his fight with bob corker and go after mitch mcconnell in the speech tonight. he's going up to harrisburg, pennsylvania. we're going to have rally trump mysteriously tweeting about his chief of staff john kelley and staying on the job. >> a lot is going on inside his head. that's clear. one of the things that is not front and center it seems is this tax proposal. this is what worries people in the white house even before this fight with bob corker, even before the secretary of state ongoing feud. tax reform, tax cut was going to be very difficult. what it does to the deficit, et cetera, you know, just the inability of congress to do anything. it was always going to be hard. now it is much, much harder. there is some officials i talked to said they're concerned about a lack of focus from this president on the bill. he said something yesterday in

the oval office with henry kissinger. he said we'll make some adjustments in the tax plan, make it stronger. we don't know if that means change the rates or what. but that is also what is worries people. sara sanders saying no, no, no, we're looking the plan as it is for now. is the president's head in the game on what all republicans know they need to pass if they do not get an accomplishment on this there are republican house members, senators going home without doing anything in this congressional cycle. >> anything, their big promises in congress repeal and replace obamacare and pass tax reform. the president added infrastructure. infrastructure, obamacare repeal gone for 2017. the clock winding down going into 2018. they're increasingly nervous about the president and his focus. why? >> because they've seen this movie before. over and over again. with big ticket items. with the health care debate. him not seeming to be focused on health care.

and the sort of logic around that was that the president didn't really know sort of the details of health care policy. but in many ways the expectation around tax reform and cuts was that he would be more engaged and much more disciplined because he's a business guy. you know, and you would think he would know more about tax policy and be able to frame it. i think we'll see what he does in harrisburg, pennsylvania. and one of the problems i think they've always had with tax reform is it a populist message that people believe, right. >> or is it really about kind of a corporate giveaway as democrats say. so we'll see what kind of messaging he has tonight beyond what we've heard him say which is this is the biggest tax cut in american history. >> i think republicans on capitol hill have said and they will tell you they believed that tax reform would be easier for the president to sell on the hill than health care. not easy but easier. the problem is, the distraction, what do we get already this

week? we're getting supposedly a new health care executive action of some kind that he's going to submit. we got legislative principles on immigration, the question about this daca deal is thrown up in the air. we've got a decision on the iran situation which is going to be kicked to congress on the iran deal. that's all coming, as well. the question of focus i think is one that's real and has to be not just concerning people in the white house but concerning members on the hill. >> i was just going to add, i don't know that it's universal that members on the hill thought this would be easier. one of the people worrying it would be harder to do tax reform than health care was bob corker. so high ironic now we're in the situation we're in. it's a question of, he responds to a lot of things impumively and doesn't think of the consequences for everything else in the agenda in the room and this week even. >> just remember obamacare. 52-48. that's what they got in the

united states senate. you lose more than two, you're done. bob corker is a big question mark on the budget. they need the budget vehicle to do tax reform. they can't pass a budget, they can't pass tax reform. he's a question mark. rand paul is a question mark on the budget. >> john mccain. these names sound familiar. don't they? then you have the other pieces. the iran deal, budget issues, also the canadian prime minister here today. a lot of establishment republicans are worried the president will blow up efforts to renegotiate nafta. the president seems to treat them separate or if the republican establishment is mad at the president, does it cost him a key vote when he needs it? >> in substance it could. i don't think bob corker or any other senator would vote against something just because the president is picking fights with them because they want a win on the substance, but it makes it much easier to defy a president in a close vote. i think everything is related. everything you just said, nafta is related. look at all the red state

republicans. i spent several days last week in the midwest in a red state, nebraska, my home state. a lot of farmers there and others as it becomes harvest time, they are keeping their eye on nafta. a lot of farm unions others, the chamber of commerce. this is fight we don't talk about much in washington. what's happening between the chamber of commerce and other farm groups and business groups and the president, it is a fascinating discussion. he did doing something a lot of supporters don't want him to. we'll see how that plays. >> the head of the u.s. chamber of commerce in mexico city making sure the chamber and the united states are on the same page in arguing to the trump white house. that's a fascinating development. >> even if you can file these issues off and not have them relate to each other, what congress is being asked to tackle, none of it is very narrow. we talk about these things all the time, any one issue becomes a massive issue. tax reform, that's huge. a lot of times what members of congress have to do is they're

sitting on a bubble. there's things they despise about these bills but decide if they're going to take one for the team or not. the team is the president and that decision is less clear if you don't think there's anything that you will get out of staying on the president's team when you don't want to. >> what do we make of this? we know the president's hot at the secretary of state and mad about other things not getting done in washington. his good friend tom barrett who speaks to reporters a fair amount doesn't smeek to reporters on the record a lot is quoted by name in the "washington post" saying this about the president. he thinks he has to be loyal to his base. i keep on saying who is your base? you don't have a natural base. your base is how now is the world and america. so you have all these constituencies. show them who you really are. in my opinion, he's better than this. for a very close friend of the president, perhaps his closest personal friend to go on the record saying you're a better

person than this, i took that as a personal intervention because he knows how to get the president's attention. >> you go to the newspaper saying we've seen this before from people it the president might not listen to, mish mcconnell going to "the new york times," bob corker going to the times" recently to all of this intervention to get the president to be a different person, to care less about his base and care more as barrack said about the world. the key is, you imagine he's had these private conversations with the president all along and other people too, but the president feels most comfortable playing to his base. it's sort of an echo chamber. he watches fox news and gets the talking points from the base and sort of has an ongoing conversation with them. that's what you see on his twitter account most definitely. but i think you know, he's tweet bth stock market and fake news, he's tweeting about the nfl. it's sort of a broken record but it would for the base and it's also i think in some ways he's looking to 2020 and in some ways

this is kind of a re-election strategy. >> he was elected on disruption. and as long as he keeps the environment disrupted he believes that benefits him. i'm not sure that, would in the governing department. that's his mind-set, keep the disruption. to the point about the tweets today, he's mad at nbc news and says they hyped a story about tillerson. he says with all the fake news at what point is it appropriate to challenge their license. >> if citizen donald trump said that, you would roll your eyes. he's the president of the united states. this is the president of the united states saying in a country with a first amendment and a free press maybe he's just joking, maybe he's trying to ginn up his base against the news media, but it is not insignificant when the president of the united states raises the prospect of yanking a media organization's license. >> i'll believe it when the fcc does it. >> i'm saying it will ever happen but these are things if a past president has said this we would be up in arms about it. >> i think that's right. the norms have now shifted as

angry -- going back to thinking about what the president's agenda looks like going into the next several months and into next year, we also have to think about how his political calculations might reorient. we talked about the base and what they think. the republican base despises their own party's establishment. i think this is something that president trump realizes sort of at a visceral level and understands that. let's think about what exactly the president could be doing if suddenly his political calculation seems to be maybe it's more beneficial for me as the president to run against not just the swamp in particular but against my own party going into particularly if 2018 is looking like a bad year for republicans. >> yeah. >> how aggressive does he get. does he save that or do it in pennsylvania tonight which would complicate tax reform. the house speaker today was asked a couple days ago we thought it was possible there had be a bipartisan piece of legislation to outlaw the

so-called bump stops, the device that turns a rifle into an automatic rifle. you don't have to hold the trigger down for rapid fire. bipartisan legislation introduced. republican leaders saying we have to do something. the house speaker was asked about this last week. he sounded somewhat open to legislation. listen to the tone here. clearly he wants the trump administration to do this with executive actions, no bill on the floor. >> we are still trying to assess why the atf let this go through in the first place. what happened on the regulatory side to allow this to occur in the first place. that is something we're both trying to assess. it yes, it makes sense this is a regulation that probably shouldn't have happened in the first place. why is it they let this go through in the first place. the regulatory fix is the smartest quickest fix. i'd frankly like to know how it happened in the first place into it seems pretty clear to me there, he does not want to make other house republicans take a vote on a gun control measure. >> which is interesting because the nra came out in some

respects in saying they would support this narrow instance. anytime you open a gun debate on capitol hill it, becomes much more than that, it becomes a full-on, full-blown gun debate. he clearly wants to avoid that because of a lot of members there. we'll see if the trump administration takes him up on that for all the things the president has been tweeting about, he's not been talking much about this. >> some red state democrats probably breathing a sigh of relief. they don't necessarily want to vote on this either, joe manchin or heidi heitkamp probably don't want to take a vote either. >> if you pass this is narrow, probably 99% of americans would support this narrow thing. that's a telling remark from the speaker. sit tight. up next, bannon declares war on the republican establishment. do he and breitbart really have the power that some republicans worry about? ing to give families a second chance.

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here's a question being asked a lot in washington these days. who's afraid of steve bannon? judging from some of these headlines, this is just this week, a lot of republicans here in washington. one thing is for sure, bannon has big plans for the 2018 midterm elections. he says he's recruiting primary challengers against six of the seven republican senators running for re-election. none of those senators are known as moderate republicans but all part of what team bannon likes to call the swamp. here's the big question though. is bannon's clout among republican voters being vastly overstated? that is the question as we go forward. there's no question republicans are mad about this. they're nervous about this. they would like the president to step up publicly and tell his friend to shut it down, but is this i want a lot of attention, i'm going to get one or two primary challengers, i have a moment of fame or is this a real threat. >> it's real but the bigger reason why it's real is because

of the money behind it. the mercer money which has been funding breitbart, funding other operations sorts of on the right and the far right of the republican party. and that's what makes it real. i think alabama is not the test case necessarily that we may think it is. roy moore was a guy who had a pedigree in alabama politics. bannon really didn't get involved till the runoff. he probably had a big impact in that runoff but these are other states where i don't think you can translate that alabama model into these other states necessarily. may work in some of them. maybe it will work in all of them. we don't know enough about their poll. >> i was talking to some republicans in wyoming and nebraska, two senators on the list. what is he talking about? the reality there is that john barrasso and deb fisher respectively in wyoming and nebraska aren't sufficiently safe among republicans there. it certainly was a schlock to people on the ground which is

often how these things are. there's a washington reality and on the ground reality. which is why it's important to talk to voters and party officials. but that doesn't mean people aren't nervous about this because the unknown power of bannon is sort of a -- an uncertainty and mish mcconnell is radioactive. he could also be gaming the refs early on getting barrasso and deb fisher to think how close do i want to get to mcconnell here. it's something to keep an eye on but it's important to keep the entire scenario in mind. mitch mcconnell has won many more of these than the outside. >> to your point, if we go back to 2010, a lot of people on the ground in these states didn't understand the tea party was coming either. bannon said he's going to be better than that, but candidates that can go on to win in a general election. they knocked people off in primary buzz weren't good enough candidates to get to the finish line. bannon says he's going to get it right this time.

>> we're spending a ton of time with the grassroots organizations to make sure these candidates are vetted. you'll see people announced this week with experience in government, some outsiders that are authentic. it's not like 2010. that was the beginning of the tea party when things first got going. you'll see real candidates taking on incumbents in every state and take on the democrats after that. >> proof is in the pudding. that's a pretty broad threat. >> it is a bloud broad threat. it's scary enough having gone through one of those rounds for the gop. what it will do is focus resources on directions they would have had other priorities to spend it on. their financial resources are not limitless. when you have a threat like that from a very real quite in the center of the gop in the white house person, it's not something you can take lightly. it will mean they will rush to stop the bleeding whether or not there's bleeding in those places he's targeted. >> you have other conservative voices who stir up trouble

seeing all the attention bannon is getting. writing a new letter for mcconnell to step down. that's not going to happen either. does it help the party, focus the party or does it divide the party heading into the election year? when we come back though, after days can of silence, two key democrats finally speak out about the allegations against harvey weinstein. republicans want to know, i think everybody wants to know, what took so long. after brushing, listerine® total care strengthens teeth, helps prevent cavities and restores tooth enamel. it's an easy way to give listerine® total care to the total family. listerine® total care. one bottle, six benefits. power to your mouth™.

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evacuate. there's great concern for those who might be cut off from help. >> we want to get the message out people are looking for people. there are still areas in the county, the unincorporated part where they haven't been able to get up the roads to make sure there were not people trapped. that weighs heavy on us >> meteorologist chad meyers joins us from the cnn weather center. how many fires still burning and will the weather help the fooir phi fighting today. >> thousands of hot spots scattered around so quickly with wind gusts on the mountain tops of 79 miles per hour on sunday night. from sunday into monday, there was a point where there were so many fires burning so quickly, it was consuming one football field of land every three seconds. so think about that. there are a lot of fires added up to do that. we went from nothing on fire to now 120,000 acres about 190

square miles. here's the area of critical concern today. north bay. the exact place that has been burning. the winds will be 25 to 30 miles per hour today. that's not 70. i get that. but there is still enough wind at 25 to move those embers away and rekindle those parts of the fire that never technically went out. i'm going to drill down here, this is the first time i've done this, i want you to see what we're talking about here. every spot is a hot spot. i'm going to drill down to sonoma and also noose napa county so we talk about santa rosa. why? because it burned in the city. but it burned in napa, as well. over here to napa, here's the town of napa that everyone will go. there's a beautiful downtown. it's the wildland areas they say they can't get to the yet just on the east and west side of napa, especially on the east side near the springs. now back up here towards santa rosa and kenwood, it burned through that town especially the north side and santa rosa.

it's the wildland, it was the urban interface where the trees got too close to the city orvis versa. you should see houses there. here fountain grove, you should see cities here. there are no houses left, completely gone. that's the areas consumed by the fire, john. >> chad meyers keeping us posted. that's a sober assessment. thank you very much. >> back to politics now, politics of a different sort. one after another, women who crossed paths with harvey weinstein are telling their horror stories of alleged sexual misconduct. two top political figures now joining the chorus of outrage after waiting five days. hillary clinton, barack obama both put out statements late tuesday. clinton saying she was appalled and obama saying he and michele were disgusted by the recent reports about his alleged behavior. both democrats got a lot of financial help from weinstein while running for office. he's raised about $1.5 million for the democratic party. two years ago, the clintons rent

the a home in the hamptons next to weinstein. he bundled donations for obama's re-election campaign. the former president's daughter malia once interned at weinstein's company. i don't get it why wait five days. >> especially when you're on the -- i mean, it was not going out on a limb here to criticize the behavior. it was not that as more reports have col out that explosive new yorker report that came out yesterday, both secretary clinton and the obamas put their statements out after that as if it wasn't bad enough before that. this is something that liberals often are very reluctant to weigh in on this. from the obamas' perspective, i was talking to some people in their orbit and they're like look, they don't comment on most things. he's a former president trying to stay out of it. that might wash somewhat although there are connections. secretary clinton has commented on virtually everything since

leaving public life. it took five days for this. >> central to her campaign message in 2016 was criticizing donald trump particularly around the access hollywood tape. so odd she waited five days. yeah, i think but in some ways i think if you're a woman who has been in these sort of situations and lots of women have, maybe not in a severe way as some of the allegations against harvey weinstein, but you know, i think the issue is do women feel comfortable enough to say something in the moment. right? after all of this goes down, sort of dies down and the political part of it and whether or not the democrats give the money back, the issue is still going to be that women deal with this kind of stuff in the workplace, all the time. and what are people willing to do to sort of reverse this is that women don't feel like they can speak out in realtime. >> would they feel more capable, more supported in speaking out in realtime if they knew their political leadership which says

this is key to their program woman step out in a moment and not wait, not be hyper cautious and not wait five days to say if you have to add the if or the alleged, that's fine. that's fine. but from what i see, this is reprehensible. yes, i'm going to call my campaign and make sure every penny, every last penny is redirected to charity. >> john, if you read these stories but setting an side what the victims do because i think that is that you can read the pain and suffering and the guilt that they have which is i can't even imagine what they're going through, you look at the institutions around these women, the film industry, the sort of money around it. what it is, this kind of rut where everybody is sort of not doing what the right thing is because they're worried about you know the job or the career down the line. i think that's what you're also seeing here from these democratic politicians. i mean, money talks. it becomes increasingly

difficult terrify say anything because i think this rot has -- has gone not just from hollywood but into our politics, as well. it's reprehenceable and i think it's something that ises a political in this way. we see people who are influential on the right, as well who have faced allegations like this and have turned out to be true. there's an inertia that you can see in these stories and i think that's why we're seeing this play out this way. >> that's an excellent point as republicans understandably and some democrats gave them the opening said why are you waiting so long, some of the republicans waited a long time when it came to roger ailes, as well which is why there should be a simple default here. outrageous conduct should be condemned. >> as a society, we are encouraged or expected often to separate the actions of reprehensible human beings from

the great cultural, artistic contributions that they make historically and in the present day and you saw that even with weinstein's first response to the times" which was to say i'm going to redouble my efforts toffee fight the nra. this has nothing to do with the nra. there's been a lot of the discussion and criticism of the whole thing. this is the changing climate we're having a lower bar of where our patience is with in that we -- you know, is one action is one legitimate accusation of this enough? no, there should be responses to that. it had to build to this critical mass over several decades at this time before people started to say wait a second, separate the two of them the standard is not okay. hopefully that continue buzz again, this is a lot of cultural conditioning that we have to get over. >> it was an open secret in all these circles his behavior. the reality is, california is the biggest and most flush atm for democratic politics in this

country. he stood at the center of that. nancy pelosi put out a very short statement on this. but the reality is, most of the leaders of the democratic party are beholding to him, have been beholding to him and she still is the leader of the house democrats here. why not give an interview, give a press conference or something. they have personal relationships with harvey we know steen. this is hypocrisy this week, this is not a secret. >> the democratic congressional campaign committee, the national committee, chuck schumer, pat leahy. i don't fault them for taking the money. how quickly do you condemn it. the dnc says they'll return $30,000. isn't there a lot more than $30,000 to look for? the triple c, senator schumer, senator warren. here's my question. still nothing. six days later from the former vice president of the united states joe biden which i find mysterious in the sense that if you look at his career in the senate, he was a leader in the

violence against women act. he has been a leader on these issues for many, many years and giving a speech at rutgers tomorrow about the subject he sment a lot of time on on sexual harassment and assault on campuses. why is joe biden quiet. >> he's been vocal on many issues recently. it is interesting. we'll see what he says tomorrow, whether or not he mentions it, but you're right, part of his political identity has been someone who has talked about violence against women, a leading effort in the senate and from the white house around that. so we'll see. >> yeah, i think the bottom line here is that we do have a culture where people are sort of expected to respond to every sort of thing, particularly politicians. the difference here i think is the scale and the scope of money ha harvey weinstein is so critical to the democratic electoral sort of infrastructure and these close personnel relationships that you were talking about. there was an e-mail revealed between hillary clinton and

harvey weinstein or between she and his assistant that showed a very close personal relationship here. that i think is the big difference here. it's why the silence or the long gap between their statements is so damning. >> they associated with him for a long time when it was not a question of yes, give back the money is one thing. i think soul searching of who your friends are is also warned here. >> but in the short term, this seems like a no-brainer what the response should be. so when it's the number one story everywhere, why does it take so long to think about it. >> if you call yourself a leader, you should lead. up next, touchdown trump. the president claims a win in the national anthem fight thanks to big help from the nfl's big boss. we are the tv doctors of america, and we may not know much about medicine, but we know a lot about drama. from scandalous romance, to ridiculous plot twists. (gasping) son? dad! we also know you can avoid drama by getting an annual check-up.

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of these nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say get that the son of a [ muted ] off the field right now out, he's fired. he's fired! >> remember that are off the cuff remark from rally president you might say sparked a national discussion about race, patriotism and free speech. whatever your view on the protest, it looks like the president is about to get what he wanted on this one. roger goodell penning a letter to all team owners asking him to support a plan to move past this controversy and ensure that players stand during the national anthem "to honor our flag and our country." the president took notice tweeting this morning it is about time that the nfl is finally demanding that all players stand for our great

national anthem. respect our country." in response, the nfl clarified there will be discussion about these issues with owners in the coming days. a discussion, the nfl saying no final decision has been made but it sure seems from the commissioner's letter that he wants to turn the page and get out from under a bit of a tornado created by the president. >> yeah, we'll see what happens on on their game thursday night and sunday night. a lot of players have been committed to protesting in this way. way back to last year, people like eric reid for the 49ers has been doing this for about a year now. we'll see. it sounds like goodell is essentially is in the same place which he thinks they should stand. the question is whether the owners want to compel their players, mandating that they stand. it seems like they sort of not wanted to do that. it's not clear they're going to do that now. >> now if they try to do it, the players say the in has a policy and it says it will enforce its policy.

the nfl did not. the question is can they find some middle ground or will the players say no, not if the president is going to take credit for it. >> it doesn't make much sense for the nfl to try to jump in the middle and grandfather in. it doesn't work well. then the public backlash would be potentially swung in the other direction where you would have a lot of pushback against them. i mean, i don't think the players will say okay, the nfl sent a directive down, we're going to stop now. that's not going to happen. you're lynx getting playing into the president's hands. >> if there's actual punishment you could see that. the thing i keep going back with, when the president said that in alabama, there were maybe four or five nfl players kneeling. >> not in the league. >> not in the nfl anymore. and for other reasons. but having to do with the way the game is played now. and the president revived this whole controversy. and yes, he got away, because cultural little this is where the country is.

the country wants players to stand for the american flag. i don't think there's any sort of animosity in the broader culture toward them for their protest but they want people to stand for the flag. it was easy win for the president. what are we not talking about? not talking about wins in congress, wins where the president coactually have a actual impact on legislation that affects the country. we're instead having talking about cultural victories. >> that is it might be cynical at times. that's why he does this. >> that's right. >> he gets you talking about other things good to his base and on this one, it looks like he'll get a win or partial win. you're right. we are approaching month nine. obamacare is still the law of the land. infrastructure will not happen this year. tax reform is on the high wire. >> it's a win that shines a light on all the things he's not doing. so it's a sweet sort of sugar high win but at the end of the day, it continues to divide and i think that's one of those things we're talking about earlier on in the show that tom

barrack was wondering about. are you better than this. a win among his base. he's told constantly by a few advisers this is your base missing a big opportunity to broaden that base that presidents can do in moments of leadership they can only do in those times. he's pretty much missed the ball on all of those. >> it's a choice. try to keep what you got, try to build and grow. he setted on how to keep what you got. next, lose yourself in the music. a moment. wrapper eminem ripping on the president. i don't want to sound paranoid, but d'ya think our recent online sales success seems a little... strange? apper eminem ripping on the president. business has been great. they're affordable and fast... maybe "too affordable and fast." what if... "people" aren't buying these books online, but "they" are buying them to protect their secrets?!?! hi bill. if that is your real name. it's william actually.

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♪ ♪ i'm a man time for me to stand up ♪ >> not sure how many eminem fans watch "inside politics" but he's

back in the news because after attack on president trump last night. one of his early hits, it's about eight mile road runs right across northern detroit separating it from the suburbs. why does that matter? let's look. detroit goes democratic on the northern side, sorry come on down, macomb county this is the reason here why donald trump won michigan. why he won the presidency of the united states. in an attack on president last night on a hip-hop award show, eminem criticizing president trump and any supporters who maybe live on this side of eight mile road who backed the president. >> this is his form of distraction, plus he gets an enormous reaction when he attacks the nfl so we focus on that instead of talking puerto rico gun reform from nevada all these horrible tragedies and he would rather cause a witter storm with the packers. any fan of mine who is a supporter of his, i'm drawing in the sand a line, you either are

for or against. >> does it matter? >>, i don't think it's going to be a hit. >> it's going to hit. it adds to the cultural discussion we can't play all of that because of the language in that. >> right. >> look, i don't think it's any surprise that he and others aren't a fan of this president. but you never know who is listening. i think it's one of the culturally divisive things out there now about this president. >> the conversation we were having earlier, harvey weinstein. eminem is no saint here, talking about violence against women and the like there. this is not somebody who gets a place in sainthood but he is joining the cultural conversation about the president and i have no idea if he has influence over people in his home state. that's a big one. >> there's two questions. does he have any influence over changing anybody's mind or people not engaged in his home state? that was the two sides of the problem. you can try to convince people

who are maybe not able to be convinced that they should change their politics. that's one approach that you can make when you're dress addressing voters. the other is get voters who are not engaged off the couch and actually play -- actually going to polls and paying attention to this stuff and being invested. i don't know that eminem is like the key to unlock anybody's heart on this one. it adds to the growing number of people that are talking about it and somebody that's very different than a traditional pol like hilary clinton that has reach into a different part of the population. >> we have two figures e"american morning"ing. two figures emerging from michigan. one is kid rock and apparently he might run for senate at some point. very much a trumpist. in some of his shows he'll sound like he's riffing on fox news topics about the lgbt issues, on the flag he embraced the confederate flag in many ways and eminem doing something

different and a more urban progressive liberal critique of this president. we'll see which side wins in that state of michigan. we know who won last time. it is that division i think that mirrors where public is. >> yeah, i think this also reflected or the division, it was just a few years ago that eminem and his songs were in a chrysler commercial. it was all about imported from detroit and this whole idea he was representative of detroit. and probably a lot of people who worked or whose parents worked for chrysler or the other big three who vote ford trump, he was sort of seeing a few years ago, seen as an ambassador for detroit. now an ambassador for a part of michigan, that part that did vote for trump. it sort of underscores the way cultural figures now feel like they don't have to sort of be appealing to a general audience. they have to be appealing to a smaller audience that's more of a symptom than a leading indicator. >> this president certainly

brought that out after his performance last night, lebron james who was critical of the trump a few weeks ago, racism is the only thing he's fantastic for he tweeted. you can read it right there on the screen. but it is an interesting piece. continue the conversation. thanks for joining us. see you tomorrow. wolf blitzer up after a quick break. ake a closer look at geico... you know, geico can help you save money on your homeowners insurance too? great! geico can help insure our mountain chalet! how long have we been sawing this log? um, one hundred and fourteen years. man i thought my arm would be a lot more jacked by now. i'm not even sure this is real wood. there's no butter in this churn. do my tris look okay? take a closer look at geico. great savings. and a whole lot more.

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hello, i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 p.m. here in washington. wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. >> this is cnn breaking news. we begin with breaking news. in a new interview, very ominous words from north korea's foreign minister. he says president trump "lit the wick of war in a speech before the united nations general assembly." if you remember, the president put north korea's leader on notice in that address referencing kim jong-un as rocket man and saying the