i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. we welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. president trump still bashing the fbi just before speaking at its training academy. what should we think not only of the president's words to the quantico audience but also the response he received? i'll ask former assistant fbi director tom fuentes. is net neutrality the end of the internet as we know it or just a return to the free market? i'll ask former commissioner of the fcc robert mcdowell. the me too movement. will this end well? i'll ask legendary editor tina brown, who says we're living in the arab spring for women. and with california legalizing recreational marijuana and new jersey maybe on deck, has the tide finally

turned for legal pot? or might jeff sessions' opposition be a big bummer, man? first, the president drew laughter and applause yesterday when going after what he recogas as fake news. that's not new. what made it note worthy was where he said it. he was speaking to graduates of the fbi academy. these are individuals graduating from a ten-week program which is an accredited semester of study from uva. the episode reminded me of an appearance the president made at the cia headquarters in langley. he said then that visiting the cia was his first official stop and he thanked them for their service. that was appropriate. as he stood in front of a wall memorializing officers killed in the line of duty, the more he

spoke the more political he sounded. he defended his inaugural crowd size and even bragged about the number of times he'd been on the time magazine cover. and he went after the media. >> as you know, i have a running war with the media. they are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. [ laughter ] [ applause ]. >> right? >> many commentators noted the inappropriateness of the remarks in this context as well as the favorable way in which they were received. >> i always call them the dishonest media, but they treated me nicely. [ laughter ]. >> follow-up reporting revealed that because the event happened on the weekend, the audience was comprised of agents willing to come in on a saturday and that the first few rows were filled with non-cia personnel brought by the president and his staff. cbs reported at the time that the makeup of the crowd includes 40 peoplevited by

trump, pence and pompeo. yesterday the president went to quantico. again, wonderful that the president would offer his praise to those in law enforcement, even where leaving the white house he'd said this -- >> it's a shame what's happened with the fbi. >> he also used the word disgraceful, apparently referring to senior fbi official who is exchanged anti-trump and pro-hillary clinton text messages and did so while working on last year's probe of clinton's use of a private e-mail server and again during special counsel robert mueller's investigation into possible collusion with russia. the president, i think, is justified in his anger about an agent apparently swapping texts with his mistress while both played important roles in federal investigations. but when the president got to the fbi, just as he'd done at the cia, he treated the crowd like it was a campaign event. like at the cia, that was a

mistake. and equally reprehensible was their response. >> but as i look out in the audience today, i see many young, bright faces. to them and to many other young americans watching at home of which there are many -- you see there's the fake news back there. look, everybody. [ laughter ]. >> when he heard how well that comment was received in the room, he doubled down. >> no. actually, some of them are fine people. about -- let's see who's back there. about 30%. [ laughter ]. >> here's my point. the president again violated the time and place rule that many of our parents instilled in us. we've come to expect this from him. but equally troubling is the laughter and the applause. this cannot be the new normal. these were not kids. the folks in that room adults in their 40s and 50s. the intel and law enforcement communities need to remain above politics and to be perceived as

beyond approacrapproac -- rapro. >> tom fuentes ran the fbi's international program. tom, is my concern warranted in your view? >> well, in a way, michael, i think it is warranted. however, i would like to maybe clarify the audience makeup here that was doing the laughter. you know n thin that room there probably 800, 900 people including family members of the police officers attending that course. very, very few fbi agents at all in that ceremony. it's a graduation for the state, local and foreign police officers who attended the semester of education from the university of virginia. but their families are also in the room. and what we forget is that when

the media seems to constantly criticize law enforcement officers or immediately take the negative view of a law enforcement action, including police officer-involved shootings, that affects the families. those families were in the room and they feel very strongly about the negative coverage that police in general and in some cases members of their own department specifically get. the children go to school and they get harassed. people know that their father or mother is a police officer. they take abuse. the parents, the cousins, everybody that's close to that officer in their family is affected because being a police officer is not a job. it's a way of life. that's true for all of them. at this point, the attendees of that course are senior executives of state, local, foreign police agencies, as well as a couple of federal agencies and even the u.s. military. and they really do resent what they think is a media bias

against law enforcement. >> i hear you. i understand that. i guess you're saying i'm asking too much if i wish for them to disassociate the president's comments about fake news from the bias they see in some of the reporting. they've got to be perceived beyond -- the president often says put the cameras on the crowd. you're making me wish the cameras were on the crowd yesterday so we could see who was providing the laughter and the applause. i'm worried about the diminution if they're perceived as picking sides. >> we don't know about the cia whether other family members were there or only employees of the cia. in the case of this graduation,

there were almost no fbi employees in the room. really the audience is predominantly family members or friends of the graduates of that course. for them to spontaneously feel that the president is agreeing with them that the coverage is often negative in an unwarranted way, they do feel that. they would be sympathetic to the president calling the news fake news. and it may not be appropriate for him to say it or for them to laugh, but i think that does express how they really feel about the reporting that often, you know, is done in connection with law enforcement activities. >> i get your point that the composition of that room was largely not fbi personnel. but now let me ask you a distinctly fbi question. when the president uses words like disgraceful -- and i think we know he's referring to the text interplay between those two agents, but when he uses it in a broad sense, what kind of harm, if any, does that cause to the

morale of fbi personnel? >> it is harmful. the president needs to be more specific. what occurred on the seventh floor at fbi headquarters regarding the former director comey, deputy director mccabe, agents and others was absolutely disgusting and reprehensible and he has a right to be absolutely disgusted with that. but that's not majority. even i'm talking almost all over fbi personnel world wide are doing an incredible job. unfortunately they've also been tarnished, not just by the reporting that's coming out about the comey and others in their investigations, which that reporting is true of the damage that they've done. but i think the president should just -- what i would like to see is distinguish more of who's at fault here. the fbi -- one of his comments on the white house lawn, i believe, was we're going to rebuild the fbi. they don't need rebuilding. they need somebody to exert

leadership at the top of that organization. i'll go all the way to the attorney general. i think attorney general sessions has been an absentee landlord with the department of justice and with the fbi. don't forget he was recusing himself from the russian collusion case and a couple of specific investigations. at any given time the fbi has more than 20 or 30,000 investigations world wide. where is he in leading that situation? where is he on leading the executive management that does need to be straightened out? that's what's missing here from the attorney general, the deputy attorney general. and we're yet to see what director wray is going to do now that he's in charge. >> i think when it's a shotgun blast approach using the words at the t tatters or disgraceful -- thank

you. i appreciate your analysis. >> thank you, michael. >> tweet me @smerconish. investigate who laughed and disciplined them the way the agents who sent the text messages were demoted and take off mueller's investigation of collusion. they're clearly not fit to be fbi agents. to tom fuentes' point, that room is comprised of far more than fbi personnel. i just had a visceral, negative reaction watching this live on tv. i thought, who are these people to be joking and laughing along with that criticism. i was offering it has an american that doesn't want to see the politicalization.

richard, why don't you say my thick head? are you not unsettled, richard, by the prospect of the intel community at the cia even if there were ringers that room or law enforcement who are the thin bl blue line out there protecting all of us being perceived like everything else in this world along partisan lines. it used to be that partisanship used to end at the borders. up ahead, are the chicken littles about net neutrality going overboard with their sky is falling scenarios? later, does a recipe for a cinnamon roll make a sexual harassment apology any more palatable. work keeps me busy. so i've asked chase sapphire reserve cardmembers to find my next vacation.

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might all the worries about the death of net neutrality be overblown? the fcc voted to end the neutrality rules for internet providers, which had only been put in place since 2015. the fcc's 3-2 party line vote opened up internet providers to the free market, marking a major victory for the te telecommunications companies. is this the dire situation most have painted it to be? joining me is robert mcdowell. he served as commissioner of the fcc from 2006-2013. he was nominated by both presidents bush and obama. robert, i want to briefly talk the three cs. content, cost and competition. i need you to dumb it down for

me. i've got this stove pipe. it comes into my house, it delivers my internet. if my internet service provider also controls content, won't they seek advantage over other content providers and impact my bandwidth? >> excellent question. first of all, thank you for having me on. this is my first time on cnn. thank you for this inaugural moment. >> sure. >> that's at the heart of the debate. the question is really what laws best apply here, whether it's the 20 years of the clinton gore administration policy of using three federal statutes versus a fourth statute that the obama administration tried in its last two years. and so when you have more competition in the broadband space and the fastest growing segment of the broadband market is mobile broadband, we're seeing people cut the cord or shave the cord or never corders going straight to mobile broadband and going to over the top video. downloading preloaded video or sometimes live streaming on

their mobile devices. that's actually shaking up this whole ecosystem in a wonderful way, in a way that's very good for consumers. that's part of the competitive counter balance to the monopoly argument. if you only look at the market as a cable pipe into your tv that's bolted into your wall and your living room and you're sitting is down for appointment television, if that's the only way people are looking at it, that's not the complete picture. what's in the denominator of what's competition here is wireless and unwireless. so it's actually a great time to be consumer broadband and content. i'm optimistic. >> maybe the original sin in the view of the detractors was when the internet service providers were also allowed to control conte content. >> right. what's an interesting argument

there is some internet service providers are vertically integrated. obviously your company is trying to get bought by at&t you have comcast, nbc universe, verizon owning yahoo and aol. the question is, is there an incentive for them to have their content viewed by fewer eyeballs, fewer people or more eyeballs and more people? the easy answer is your content is more valuable if more people are looking at it, right? so you want your content to be on more platforms. you want people watching your show on this wherever they are. there's actually an economic -- for them to shut out other isp's content. if it becomes a war of attrition, it's mutual direction. wireless and unlicensed

wireless, it's going to be a wonderful time to be a consumer. >> all right. as a consumer, am i going to pay more? >> so per bit per second you've been paying less. especially the wireless space, you've been seeing broadband prices drop precipitously. just a year ago, we didn't have all the major wireless carriers offering unlimited data plans. as of the first quarter of this year, they all offer unlimited data plans. per bit per second, in other words, the volume of data you get and how fast you get it, the price for that has actually been going down per bit per second. grow' you're getting more for your dollar than you did last year or five years ago or when the iphone debuted ten years ago. >> the third c, competition. you know the criticism is that

in this new era no one who's sbentrepreneurial will be able compete with the giants. >> what the fcc reversed yesterday was an order that went in place in february of 2015. before february of 2015, you had a legal construct. i don't want to get into the weeds unless you want me to on the laws. but you had a legal construct that was adopted in the clinton-gore administration that worked quite well. it was flexible and nimble enough for the lightning fast innovation that happens in the marketplace. that used three federal statutes. and yet the ftc is a great op ed by obama's first chairman of the ftc john lebowitz. it actually outlined why the fcc is going to continue to do a great job. it was kicked off the beat

because of a legal quirk in 2015. now it's going to be back on the beat. it manages competition in all sorts of high-tech and complex areas of our economy. they have a budget of 315 million. they have 640 lawyers. what they do is they rove around the economy looking for bottlenecks and anti-competitive behavior and sue companies. they've sued an a, the and, t t comcast and they've had 500 violations of privacy law against isps and edge providers too. plus doj is involved in this space as well. there's a lawsuit involving your parent company and the merger with at&t. so they are looking at these things as well. that's what works so well. that's what gave us this beautifully blossomed internet marketplace for 20 years before february of 2015. >> it's a difficult subject to follow. i'm happy to have you here because i thought a guy who was appointed by both w. and obama

hopefully can present it in a nonpartisan way. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you so much for covering it. >> let's see some of your reaction. how is net neutrality a partisan issue when more than 80% of people want to keep it? it was a 3-2 vote at the fcc. that tells you it's become a partisan issue. i had a poll on my website where it was at like 91-9% said they did not -- there it is. 93-7. i was close. should the fcc end net neutrality. overwhelmingly the polls say this is what people want. but it was partisan at the fcc. that was my point. up next, inspired by the hashtag me too movement, a new website sorts movies and tv shows by whether they have any rotten apples in the basket. but is that fair?

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call, visit, or go to xfinitymobile.com. ♪ after a string of hollywood downfalls for sexual harassment, now there's even a new website called rotten apples rating whether shows and movies are rotten or fresh. i want to discuss this and much more with one of the premier cultural observers and taste makers of the past quarter century, tina brown. she brought vanity fair back to life in 1986. her new book is the vanity fair diaries which is full of juicy observations of new york in the

1980s. i did the hollywood read on your book. i went to the index. i looked up donald trump. and oh man, what afoui found. put up on the screen what i thought was absolutely prescient from 1987. "the art of the deal," which has a crassness i like. there's something authentic about trump's bullshit. it feels when you've finished it as if you've been nose to nose for four hours with an entertaining conman and i suspect the american public will like nothing better. i mean, i love the assessment. i wondered as i read it, what do you think he'd think of that? >> well, he might well think it's right, actually. i mean the trump of the 80s would have probably agreed. the trump of now, oh my god, he's way more serious about himself. but at the time i met him, you

know, he was just a great salesman and he was funny about it actually at the time for a while. as in the later part of the diaries, i start to have a different view about him. >> would there be a president donald trump -- i don't want to put it all on your shoulders -- but without the celebrity culture that you chronicled, would he be where he is today? >> we really mirrored and kind of developed and turned into something sort of iconic, i guess, the rise of celebrity culture. i can't say we were responsible for it. we has an actor in the white house as i took over. he is the obvious offshoot of that time that the rise of celebrity culture led to reality television, led to the apprentice, led to the white house. there's no question that the arc begins in the the '80s. >> you have him in 1991 taking

umbrage at something published in vanity fair, i think, over a year prior and dumping a drink down the -- >> what happened was that we published a very kind of skeptical, critical, deep dive into his financial chicanery as we saw it and of course this crazy tawdry divorce. we also did a piece that took that whole thing apart. the author of the piece was sitting there at a benefit, you know, at the tavern on the green eight or nine months later and she felt something cold and wet down the back of her dress. she looks around thinking it's the waiter and sees donald trump just having emptied a glass of wine down her back, scooting across the room without daring to confront her. he kept this great grievance burning automati ining all the .

second, he doesn't really like confrontation, which i think is true today as well. >> what if an event like that were to take place in 2017 going into 2018? would that individual be hoisted by their own petard? >> this was pre-social media. this writeup appeared in liz smith's column. but it didn't have that kind of huge national wild social impact that happens today in the internet age. undoubtedly it would have been a huge explosion then. also that piece did say -- and this is why he was so furious, actually -- that he kept the speeches of hitler on his desk. that was what made him crazy, because it was a very very interesting thing, which is that he had this volume right there on his desk at trump tower. >> tina, let's talk about that website i made reference to a moment ago. how do you feel about being able to go to a place and having

aspersions cast on an entire tv show or an entire movie project when there were a couple of bad apples? and are they worthy of professional death sentences? that's really my question. >> i do not think the shows are worthy of professional death sentences. quite honestly, if you start to take that view of all the creative artists, actors, directors, et cetera who have been involved with a project, you wouldn't see anything on the air. there would be nothing on netflix if you took that view. i don't think it's really fair to the people working there. there are a lot of people who are going to go down as collateral damage, which i don't think is correct. i think that's wrong. i think the individuals can be called out, but not the shows. that's too far. >> mario batali, one of the names that recently enters the mix via social media, he posted an apology, interesting he says as many of you know there week there's been some news coverage about some of my past behavior.

i'm so very sorry, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and then p.s., in case you're searching for a holiday inspired breakfast these pizza dough cinnamon rolls are a fan favorite. your reaction? >> i would say how about pigs in a blanket, mario. how about that delicious british suet and raisin dessert spotted dick. sorry. mario, this ain't the right kind of apology. >> you were a boss in the industry at age 25 and beyond. did that position of authority at an early age spare you from being on the receiving end of sexual harassment? >> quite honestly, it is true that the best way to keep sexual harassment at bay is to wind up being the one in charge, right? so it's true that i had all kinds of other frustrations and other senses of being demeaned,

but sexual harassment wasn't one of them. i was able to define my world from 25 years old. i was a boss lady. i was an editor in chief. the more women we have in positions of authority doesn't have to be the boss itself, but in middle management the more you're going to see that atmosphere of bro culture, if you like, gets blown up. it isn't an accident that there were ten men on the weinstein company board. i mean, no women at all. it's like there isn't any kind of sense of how women are thinking or reacting to things in so many positions of authority in so many places. and that's when it all goes wrong, when women are just sort of an add-on or a sort of borrowed interest. that's when it really goes awry. >> is there any risk of reaching a point that you desire, i think that we all desire, when there are many women in those management positions that it continues except it's now the

women who are the perpetrators? >> well, that can happen too. there's no doubt that power can corrupt anybody. this is about power. there's no doubt that it's about inequity and power to create situations where one kind of victim is created. i'm sure that there are obviously -- let's put it this way. it's pretty outlandish to think of senator lisa mur cow ski putting her hands down somebody's pants. there is something different perhaps about the way women take their positions of authority that is not, you know, going to lead to this mass kind of abuse of it. obviously there are going to be women who do abuse it and we have seen women who do that. horrible stuff with teachers and so on abusing it with young men. i really feel that in terms of management, the problem we've had is it's been so glacial. there's all of this talk and all

of these men ceos go to davos, the big world economic forum in switzerland and they all make these speeches about women in the pipeline. women are sick of being stuck in that, quote, pipeline. they've been in that pipeline for years and years. we've seen changes. we have women taking up these top jobs and we've definitely had a huge improvement but it's still too slow. only 1% of women are in american newsrooms since 2001. it's staggering to me how slow things are. >> tina, come back. i love the book and i love when you write about dominick dunn. i was such a fan of his work. >> what a wonderful writer. i discovered him when he was a film producer. he was sort on down on his luck and i had this wonderful connection with him and he became a magazine journalist and the rest is history. >> thank you, tina brown. >> thank you. let's check in on your tweets and facebook comments.

what do we have? i'm unclear as to where exactly is due process in the metoo movement. it's something that i talk about each and every day on my radio program on sirius xm. i'm looking for that case where i can say the due process rights of this individual have been violated. the closest i've come, i'm not convinced that glenn thrush deserved to go to the penalty box of the "new york times." but where so many of these guys quickly put their tail between their legs and admit fault, it's hard to say he was denied due process. still to come, when california legalized recreational pot next month, does it signify a game change in the movement to make it legal nationally? or will jeff sessions bogart that momentum?

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is the legalization of recreational pot finally here to stay? it's been an endless debate in america. while marijuana remains illegal on the federal level, there's leeway for state and local authorities to decide. next month california joins the list of states where recreational marijuana is legal. and in new jersey the incoming democratic governor who promised to legalize marijuana takes office on january 16. so keep an eye on the garden state. on the other hand, u.s. attorney jeff segssions has a longstandig opposition to pot. he says that marijuana's effect

is only slightly less harmful than heroin. is it going to go nationwide or be nipped in the bud? joining me now somebody who's tracked all the ups and downs, emily duffton author of the book grassroots. it's hard for me to see the clock getting turned back and yet i read the book and i appreciated the up and down topsy turvy nature of pot. >> thank you so much. i'm glad i have the opportunity to be here to talk about this. i do believe there's not a definite clear path toward full legalization just yet. as you said, new jersey is probably going to be the first state to legalize recreational legalization via a state-based legalization initiative through the legislature, which is hugely important. all other states have legalized

via ballot initiatives. that really changes things because ballot initiatives are only available in about half of the states. new jersey being the first to push it through the legislature marks a new form of territory for these to take place. ba in maine there was a ballot initiative that passed in 2016 but the governor has vetoed it and has no interest in passing it. these laws are being pushed through on a state level. but there's still several roadblocks that might prevent them from being taken to full action. >> and is jeff sessions the unknown? >> he is. the power that jeff sessions has is that he doesn't have to do anything. even in states where marijuana is recreationally legal, that doesn't change its federal standing. it remains a schedule i drug. in doing so, there's still a lot of limitations against it.

as you said, california is going to be enacting its legalization laws january 1st. it's huge. california is the most populous state in america. but there's still a lot of problems it's facing. most recently the fires in northern california burned millions of dollars worth of marijuana. because marijuana remains a schedule i drug, there's no crop insurance for those farmers. so they're losing out on a lot of money. it's still very much a gamble to grow marijuana when you can't insure your crop. other thing is that of course marijuana being a federally illegal substance, it means that it can't be trafficked across state borders. all the marijuana grown in california should, according to state law, remain in california, which means there's potential for a flooding of the market and lowering prices overall. so legalization as a whole is not like a golden road. there's still a lot of problems with it. i think states are trying to figure that out as they go

through these piecemeal measures. >> a final point. i think what deaf frifferentiat current climate are the number of americans receiving relief from medicinal purposes. i recognize that's not recreational. but would we turn back the clock on them and say, no, you can't for the side effects of chemotherapy smoke pot. your thoughts on that? >> marijuana as a medical substance i do believe is here to stay it's been legal in states for almost 22 years starting again in california and spreading to 29 states. i think the evidence of the relief that it can provide is so obvious. you see children's seizures being relieved from it. you see people getting relief from kechemotherapy from it. the medical marijuana, it will be very difficult to turn the clock back on that. >> thanks for being here.

>> thank you so much. still to come, your best and worst tweets and facebook comments. what have we got? smerconish, i'm saying it now, we have to legalize pot nationwide to pay for the gop tax bill. yeah, maybe come tuesday this is how we bail out of the $1 trillion debt that we incur as a result of

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follow me on twitter. here's what's coming. smerconish, last november, you said you'd give trump a chance. give us an update. will, i believe i've been giving him a chance each and every day. for example, at the outset of this program, i had a good conversation with tom and i presented you the text messages from those fbi agents who were having a relationship. i told you it was totally inappropriate. tom said it was totally inappropriate. at the same time, i don't want to get in political in front of cops and the intel community and i don't want them applauding. is that biased or nuanced? next. what's up? smerconish, the president is uncomfortable with a free and uncensored press. he would rather be king with a private police force. gary, there have been mistabs made. there have been mistakes made by journalists this 24/7 cycle. sometimes makes people move too quickly and they screw up.

that's unfortunate, but we're living a golden age of journal israel. we wouldn't know what we know but for the cnn, "the new york times," the noex "new york post." next. the president gets in credit when he deserves for a booming economy. william lancaster, the economy is doing very well. and i believe that a he is deserving of credit for aspects of that. by the same token, fairness demands that you say the table was set for him by president obama. was it not? so i'm thrilled to give him credit. thrilled with the dow, one more if we've got time. smerconi smerconish, you used some big words this morning. keep up the multisyllable words coming. papadopoulos, papadopoulos, papadopoulos. i will see you next week. ars ru. but some people still like cable. just like some people like wet grocery bags.

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top of the hour. you are in the cnn news room. thank you for being here. so much of california is is in flames ch. and this is not a figure of speech. 12 days straight of roaring wildfires and despite emergency crews pounding these fires non-stop, they are still nowhere near contained. it is windy. it's dry and that's the worst thing to hear when nearly 260,000 acres of forestland is gone. hundreds of homes and buildings with it. right now, thousands more people are follow iing the orders to evacuate to find somewhere safe. the fires already killed at least two people. one of